#sodina

Tarika Rakoto Frah - “Zanak’iza” A World Out of Time, Volume 3: Music of Madagascar 1996 Sodina Music / Malagasy Music / World Music

I’m going to do something a bit different with today’s post and write about music that hardly any of us are ever exposed to. For whatever reasons, African music doesn’t get much attention in North America or Europe and that’s really just a total shame. But over the years, there have been two American men, both accomplished guitarists and ethnomusicologists, Henry Kaiser and David Lindley, who have been able to successfully bring African music to American shores. And one of the greatest focuses of their long-running project has been the wide variety of music from the island nation of Madagascar

.Resting in the Indian Ocean and located off of Africa’s southeast coast, Madagascar can probably claim itself as the continent’s most unique country. Because of a culture that mixes Indian, Middle Eastern, Polynesian, and South African traditions, the Malagasy people have consistently managed to generate some of the world’s most extraordinary and inimitable music. And up until 1991(!), nearly all of America remained completely oblivious to that fact. But that began to change when Kaiser and Lindley returned from Madagascar with about six CDs worth of recorded material. The result was a series called A World Out of Time, named after a photo-book by the same name that depicts Madagascar’s beauty.

One of the musicians that Lindley and Kaiser had the pleasure of meeting and recording was perhaps Madagascar's most famous: Rakoto Frah. In his 60s at the time, Rakoto Frah had already lived quite the life. He had risen to national fame decades earlier as a master of the sodina (a native flute made of bamboo) and he famously played when French president Charles de Gaulle came for an important visit. He was also featured on Malagasy currency!

By the time Kaiser and Lindley had met Rakoto Frah, he was already a known entity on the world music circuit, though still virtually unknown to Americans. The liner notes from the second volume of A World Out of Time heap a ton of praise upon him:

Rakoto Frah is one of the most amazing master musicians and individuals anywhere, by any standards. His mastery of the sodina is at a level that you could only compare to other great, instrumental masters like John Coltrane, Ali Akbar Khan, Billy Pigg, Bill Monroe, or Miles Davis. Rakoto Frah certainly seems to know mysterious things about the phrasing of melodies that nobody else knows. During Rossy [another Malagasy musician] & Rakoto Frah's American tour, Ornette Coleman remarked to Rossy and Henry that Rakoto Frah must be the greatest phraser on the planet. Rakoto Frah says he has written over 500 songs [he tapped out at about 800 before his death in 2001]. He seems to have been present at many of the major political and cultural moments of 20th century Malagasy history. He's a real character. Rakoto Frah, paradoxically, is wise & crazy, young & senile, traditional & eccentric, foolish & crafty, con man & exemplary citizen, dark & light...all at the same time.

Not mentioned in those liner notes is that Ian Anderson, the lead flutist of Jethro Tull, also counted Rakoto Frah as one of his biggest influences. I wonder how Anderson discovered him.

One of the many things that Rakoto Frah became renowned for were his performances at famadihana ceremonies (the "turning of the bones"), a sacred funerary Malagasy tradition, described by Musical Traditions Magazine in the following way:

Famadihana ceremonies feature troupes of sodina and amponga (a European-derived military-style drum) players. The events are rooted in the immense respect which the Malagasy people show their ancestors, manifesting in day or even week long celebrations of the dead. Far from being sombre or macabre occasions, they are infused with joy and celebration, reflected in the wild, frenetic music that the musicians play for dancing (to please the dead).

It's not stated anywhere in the liner notes from A World Out of Time's third volume, but I'm willing to bet that the song I'm posting today, "Zanak'iza," which is performed by Rakoto Frah's band, Tarika Rakoto Frah, is from a performance at a famadihana ceremony.

Feast your ears upon this song because it's probably one of the most novel pieces of music you’ll ever hear. "Zanak'iza" has no formulaic song composition like the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus structures we’re largely accustomed to in North America and Europe. The amponga in this song isn't there to hold a steady rhythm and there's no consistency to the multitudes of sodinas that concurrently play. "Zanak'iza" is free flowingly virtuosic and its unpredictability is key in just about every way. It's that level of unexpectedness, that total mystery of what sets of notes or rhythms are to cone next that keeps the listener so engaged. And it's amazing how just two types of instruments, flutes and drums, can combine to produce music like most of the rest of the world has never heard or ever come close to imagining.

Sodina from PS1 game Thousand Arms.

Alex Sullivan was killed on July 20th 2012 in the Aurora theater massacre, celebrating his 27th birthday. In this interview, Tom talks about his relationship with Alex, what he does when he watches a movie at the theater. He reflects on what life is like today without Alex and what he would like America to know. Leaving the statistics to others, he shares the personal things he now knows as a father of a murder victim, all with a goal to get people talking, to get people to do something before they have a similar story to tell.

On June 17, 2009 my precious daughter, Emma Jane, passed away, five days before her 17th birthday. Emma was beautiful, bright, and articulate, with an effervescent personality. She was a talented musician who shared her musical gifts generously and participated in every musical ensemble she could fit into her schedule. She was a caring daughter, sister, and friend and a bright light in the lives of many, many people. Emma took her own life. When Emma killed herself she created a tsunami of destruction that swept up family, friends, teachers, ministers, mentors and neighbors. All of us struggled against the current of guilt, pain, shock and bewilderment. For her immediate family: her father, sister and me, life as we knew it ended. I’m not sure we will ever fully understand why Emma ended her life; what caused what must have been an incredibly deep sense of despair and hopelessness; or why she couldn’t reach out to us or to the many other caring adults and professionals she had in her life. Nonetheless, in the days, weeks and months after Emma’s death I turned to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) to learn more about suicide and to search for clues that would help explain why my beautiful, bright, talented daughter was gone from our lives.

 The facts that I discovered about suicide shocked and alarmed me. Suicide claims close to 39,000 lives in the United States, which is nearly as many as breast cancer and more than twice as many as HIV/AIDS. According to the CDC, suicide is the tenth leading cause of death across all ages and the second leading cause of death for children ages 12-17. It is the only one of the ten leading causes of death that has not seen a decline or leveling off in the number of deaths each year. And the fact that is often missing from the debate on gun control is that 60% of deaths by firearms are suicides.

 With statistics like those, how is it that no one; not our schools, not our pediatrician, not even Emma’s therapist of three years, had talked to us about suicide and alerted us to the warning signs? If my husband and I knew the warning signs, would we have been able to get her the right help? My daughter’s pediatrician saw Emma just 3 weeks before her death for a hormonal disorder that causes depression. Had she understood the risk of suicide in teens like Emma, would she have treated that disorder more aggressively or, perhaps, referred her to a psychiatrist for an assessment? If her therapist, who she saw the night before she ended her life, had had specific training in assessment of suicide risk, would she have picked up a sign that would have allowed us to intervene before it was too late?

 I became involved with AFSP as a field advocate because I believe we can do a better job of preventing suicide. We can raise awareness about suicide prevention and mental illness and reduce the stigma that prevents people from seeking treatment. We can get all the information we already know about suicide prevention into the hands of the people who are best positioned to identify and intervene with those at risk: school personnel, primary care physicians, and behavioral health providers. We can fund research that will unlock remaining mysteries about suicide and mental illnesses and lead to safer and more effective treatments.  If we join together to do these things, I know we can save lives.

 There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about Emma and remember the gift that she was in our lives. Working on behalf of AFSP is my way of honoring her and thanking her for the many beautiful memories that I treasure.

It’s not about me. It’s not about you. It’s about us.

We’re here for a very brief period. Although we are ultimately responsible only for ourselves, we do not walk alone on this earth. We rely on each other for companionship and survival.

I live in Newtown, CT and have many questions stemming from the mass murder that occurred here. I never imagined it could happen here, in my neighborhood. Violence is not as remote as it once was. I continue to be horrified, angry, and feel profound sadness for the victims, their families and each degree of separation outward from this massive epicenter. How did we as a country, a community, a neighborhood, a family, a person, allow this to happen? Obviously, no one with implicit knowledge of what would occur would have allowed such an unspeakable act. You wonder about all the potential steps along the way of a person’s life where someone could have changed one thing that may have made a difference and kept the killer from picking up a gun that day or any day. Could the course of events have been altered to the extent that this tragedy possibly would never have happened?

It felt like we as a society have failed so many people along the way, and in small ways we fail a little every day. We also succeed in small ways every day. Can we increase our successes and decrease our failures at a more rapid pace in our struggle to creating cultural change and a more peaceful world?

I see this cultural change as moving from a “me” to “we” attitude and it echoes the golden rule of treating others as we would like to be treated. Of course we need to do what’s best for us and our families. We’re all facing the same basic needs to survive, minimize pain and finding meaning in our lives. If these are the fundamental forces in our journey, can’t we seek happiness and meaning not just for ourselves and our families, but also for our neighbors, our community, and our country? Increasing happiness and/or minimizing pain around us, directly and indirectly, would bring us more happiness, no? While I may be the center of my universe, I can still empathize and have compassion for others.

The word for constellation in Navajo is: "So' Dine'é.” It means "Star People.”

SODINA

We are all human.

We are all here for a very short time in relation to the universe and thus rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But although we may look at our existence as insignificant at times, we hold enormous power over how we lead our lives and our potential for doing both good and bad.

We are all on the same journey, trying to make sense of our world, our place in it, to find meaning in our lives, trying to find happiness.

We are limited only by what we believe are our limitations. While we may have limited power and influence as individuals, if we cooperate and collaborate with like-minded people, we can accomplish much more than we may imagine.

We should ask ourselves why are things the way they are?

Why can’t things be changed?

There’s great probability that others feel as we do and we simply need to find each other, listen to each other and collaborate toward a common goal.

SODINA.org is about finding each other, sharing our personal stories, and giving them a place to shine for all to see.