[Don Cherry]
[Peter Rowan]
[Allen Ginsberg]
Don Cherry at Naropa in August of 1976. We featured him yesterday, we thought to include him
again today, alongside Peter Rowan (who
we’ve previously featured here) in a
discussion (and performance) of Buddhism–in-song. Audio for the occasion is here
Transcription follows.
“I’m gonna study mind and breath now that I’m gonna be age
fifty/I won’t be in America forever, some day I’ll go away/I’m gonna see my
mama, my papa and my grandma/gate gate
paragate parasam gate bodhi svaha”
“I’m gonna come in and teach my poetry and also teach (attitude)/ Gonna make up the words out of spontaneous mind and sing them all to
you/Gotta come out of the back of my ear and come forth from my mouth, ah ha ha / gate gate paragate parasam gate bodhi svaha
It would be kind of interesting to start up a new genre of
song/ Come find the old-time ancient blues that (Don) Cherry’s
grandma sang all along/ same time thinking of the sufferings/ of my old insane mama/ passing through – sing
gate gate paragate parasam gate bodhi svaha
I had a.. Not making use of Buddhist terminology, but
trying to make use of Buddhist conceptions, I wrote a gospel which put together
the three marks of existence - suffering, change and – anatta (soul-lessness, or
no soul, or no ego – anatta) – the Four Noble Truths – Suffering,
Ignorance as a cause of Suffering, End of Ignorance - and the fourth Noble Truth,
the way out, the Eightfold Path on
the dharma wheel, the eight spokes of
the dharma wheel, which are…you all
know that? – formulaic matter – Right Vews, Right Inspiration, Right Speech, Right
Activity, Right Labor, Right Energy, Right Mindfulness, Right Meditation - and then I included a stanza giving
instructions for sitting, standing and laying down (which are, like, the three
possible things we can do with the body, laying down.. lie down, sit, or stand,
sort of samatha instructions, or basic mindfulness instructions) and
then a run-down of the five senses, or six senses, Sight, Hearing, Taste, Touch,
Smell – and Thought – six. So..
[to Peter Rowan] – Shall we tune up? – My “A” is… [to Don Cherry]
- You wanna play bells? – The rhythm’s easy – gospel-style – I’ll try
and keep the rhythm regular, and Don.. most of you saw Don Cherry the other
night ? [Allen sings “Gospel Noble Truths”, Peter Rowan provides the echo/response] - Erm.. see, what else is there? . I had a..one
other, “Guru Blues”, that.. which I had recorded – or recorded, so I’d like to
play that. That was tending to take direct..direct Buddhist material and lay it
on sort of a devotional to the guru ,
and mix it up with totally modern Pete Seeger-ish or faggot-crazy poetics, so, put it all together, like, the
devotional material and the Buddhist terminology, (and) American ecological
preoccupations. So, this is “Guru Blues" – [Allen plays a recorded version of
the end of “Gospel Noble Truths”, followed by (recording of) “Guru Blues”] - That was sort of
more blatant, in that it was direct use of any kind of terminology that came
into my head like direct Buddhist.. The.. but the.. both.. most of the melody, and
the first stanza, actually, came in a dream. I, literally, wrote it in a dream, saw it written in a dream, or sang it in a dream, and then woke up almost
instantly and wrote out the first stanza then copied.. copied the form to
continue.
[to audience]
- So anyway, actually, all three of the poet-musicians here on the
floor, on chairs in front of you, have all been occupied, in some extent, over
the last few years in trying (to).. how do you translate dharma
into communal language? (Don) Cherry, actually, doing it in terms of, to some
extent, in terms of classical, classical Black blues (but family music, for
children), Peter (Rowan), in terms of like..how do you..how did you make it a
private practice?, at the same time how did you get up on a public stage as a
folk singer and..?
PR: Well, it depends on the situation, really. Some
situations you can be a lot freer with combining, you know, actual dharmic things, like prayers in Tibetan
and dharmic instruments, you know,
subtle instruments. Some situations are open to that. Other situations you ‘ve
gotta.. you’re playing in a bar or something like that, so you play what you’ve
recorded, and stuff like that..To me, dharmic
music is where there’s room for inspiration in the actual creation within the
material, you know, at some point in the compoisition, to do something that
hasn’t been done, that you don’t know what you’re gonna do..
AG: Do you think of of it in terms of, like, creating on
the spot, or?
PR: Yeah.. or a framework, you know, because that’s
inspiration and intuition and all those things come into play when.. In some situations people aren’t asking
for that and if you give it to them it just doesn’t.. you know.. It depends,
you know. That’s the magic of it..
AG: What’s the furthest out you’ve got as far as combining
American form, American pop form and
Buddhist doctrine?
PR: Who’s doctrine?
AG: ..or
Buddhist presentation. At the same time, American.. disguised in American.. have
you ever tried that? (no?)
PR : Not in.. not in the way that you actually took deep doctrine and translated…
AG: Yeah, I tried to translate it
PR: Yeah I’ll just play something that.. [to Don Cherry] Were
you gonna say something, Don?
DC: No go ahead
PR: I wrote this after a seminar on Naropa, about four years ago at the Tail of the Tiger, Karme Choling, and then I wrote the part that will
follow it. I read (Chogyam) Trungpa Rinpoche’s
book Born in Tibet and friends of
mine were in Nepal and they were sending back letters describing how the Khampa army of Tibetan herdsmen were
being pretty much slaughtered by the Chinese, and the Nepalese were siding with the Chinese, and this
is all part of the spreading of the dharma.
The lamas would never have left Tibet if they hadn’t undergone this terrible
suffering to that whole country. It’s not doctrine so much, it’s just my
feelings about it.
AG: Yeah, I heard this. This is a funny combination of
Wild West, Western ballad, cowboy
ballad, (or outlaw ballad), and esoteric Buddhist history
[Peter Rowan begins singing – “I’m an outlaw on the run/John
Law swears I’m running guns/joined the rebels in the mountains of Tibet/ for
the coral and the turquioise I can get..”…”o Naropa!”…” sweet little dakini, she came dancing on the
mountain./I’m gonna let that Rapture capture me”.]
AG: I like that line – “Milarepa was a..?", "Milarepa was a yogi"?– how
did you use it? how did you use Milarepa there? It just sounds like some
country 'n western.. rapist!’
[Peter Rowan puts on mock Southern accent] “Mila-rape-a was a yogi”
DC: Giving all that love.
PR: Giving all that love, right .
Student: You know that song “I’m proud to be a Yogi from Muskogee”?
PR: No! – It’s happening…
AG: [to DC]
What kind of reaction do you get from musicians when you introduce mantra?
DC: Yeah, well that’s one of the reasons that.. you know,
you have to live what you do and do what you live.
And if you’ll be trying to learn the dharma and enter the dharma and go out into (that other) world, you have to try to do it in a positive way,
and by trying to write
compositions with the mantra is a
good way of trying to
suddenly.. because [to AG],
I
remember the first time when we met, you gave me the first mantra which was..
Student: Excuse me, you can’t be heard at all.
DC: Oh yeah? – Well (you know) what they say, - “you
gotta listen”! – [DC then, purposefully, whispers] - what I’m saying is the first time Allen gave me a mantra, which was om mani mani maha muni shakyamuni ye soha , that to me, was very powerful, I remembered, and I worked upon it and worked upon it..
And then I remember Kalu Rinpoche and him giving me the first mantra
- om mani padme hum, and it was very powerful, and I felt that I
should share that with other musicians (and) that it’d be just as powerful to them, and it’s a seed, you
know – and so, working with you, and I asked Kalu Rinpoche. I
said, “I’m working with children, what would be the best way of working with
children at the
beginning, and he said, "om mani padme hum”, and teach it to them
and let them realize that it brings a happy feeling. So that’s the way that I
ended up trying to.. incorporate it into the music.
AG: What I figured was.. what you were doing was using
the..taking the rhythm of the mantra
DC: Yes
AG: and then just
building, building (up)
DC: Yes
AG: Using that a seed and building up
DC: Yes..as the form. It’s very strong and goes into
different times and..but it’s very strong.
PR: And Kalu Rinpoche talks about the sound of mantra,
and many people chanting mantra, as
the sound of millons of bees buzzing, the sound overlapping, like ocean waves.
DC: Yeah, yeah
AG: It’s funny . Amazing. Peter Orlovsky got.. took his
refuges from Kalu too.
I got one last song I want to lay out.
Again, application of dharma. Running
around with the Rolling Thunder Review,
Dylan said he believed in God, and,
you know, and was carrying too much weight for.. and he said “I’ve been up on
the mountain”, and.. We had a long conversation and he said he’d been up on the
mountain, and God (had) said, okay, you’ve been up on the mountain now go down
- come, see me, check in, later, you know! – I’’m busy! (so) check in.. So he
was carrying a mountain around with him, I thought, so I thought good Buddhist
advice was.. [Allen concludes with his own “Lay Down Your Mountain”]
