Why is it?

What does the traditional music of the future sound like?

Traditional music is not just old. Traditional music is not stagnent.

In being removed from our traditional song and indigenous languages, people have suffered a deep loss.

And some of those same people have inflicted that loss on others.

Colonialism and empire have muted tongues and banished regional creativity in the name of progress.

At a certain point, we were trained to think that traditional music is the realm of a long-dead past.

Everything now is but a reenactment.

I tend to disagree.

Because as I sit here in the year 2020, I know music is evolving.

Children, families, communities, towns, countries, regions - we make up our own.

Maybe traditional music is the sound people make outside of a desire for fame and fortune.

Maybe it’s any music in a state of evolution.

Maybe it is the song you remember from childhood but know not the name of, which fills you with memory and the warmth of grandparents and summertime.

Music as the link between ancestors. Language as the sonic mirror of seasons and landscape.

We live in an incredible moment.

By some tellings, we are more divided than ever.

Our earth family is wounded by centuries of conquest.

We are charged with healing this planet.

With dismantling the oppressive structures of white supremacy.

With caring deeply for women, girls and the female in all genders of people.

Caught up in a moment of music, in the thrill of a dance, in the heart of a poem -

can a person be anything else but an agent of healing and love?

If music returns to the hands of the people,

if we look to our neighbors for entertainment,

do we not become better stewards of place? Better ancestors for the future children?

If white people no longer sense our traditions as always under threat,

but instead feel that we’re surrounded and nourished by the best parts of it,

will we need to inflict more pain and suffering onto those whose traditions have not yet bowed

to our very narrow vision of progress?

How to make this world a house for diversity.

Not in a cursory way. But really, deeply.

To not in witnessing difference feel under attack,

but to know that oneself is enough and good.

The simplest way is perhaps to appreciate.

Appreciate the art of others, not appropriate.

Between People gives an audience multiple venues for appreciation.

Blog, Podcast, Newsletter, Instagram, Online Workshops, and one day, a TV Show.

This is the special possibility of the digital age.

The potential for connection has never been higher.

We can learn with one another from across oceans and mountains once believed impassable.

But with this electronic distance

the potential for isolation has never been so vast.

Isolation which turns to suspicion which turns to hatred for strangers and friends.

To all of those who would rather stew in the loss of a culture, instead of create theirs from the materials about their feet,

I open the question.

What sound does this place like? What music does your heart sing?

If no one told you you had to be “good enough” to make music, what music would pour through you?

Outside of profit and fame, why would anyone want to make music together anyway?

Collectivity. Community. Family. Friendship.

An intangible, unquantifiable memory.

A wealth, a richness.

For this I work as witness.