RECOMMENDED READINGS
Medicine Melodies. Emotional Magic & Music
By Silvia Nakkach
In the Universe, everything sings:
plants, animals, waterfalls, bones, people, the stars,
the rain, and many things we don’t see; even silence
makes a sound. Every spiritual tradition of the world
has used sound to facilitate the passage between states
of consciousness. From time immemorial the shaman hears
the hidden music of the universe and sings it back through
“medicine melodies,” simple tonal configurations
that reflect a sacred unity with nature and have the
power to heal body, mind and spirit. Many people in
our own culture today are visited by such melodies—as
if spontaneous transmissions from nature or the spirit
world are “singing in” to the person rather
than the person “singing out.”
Medicine melodies can be found in all
traditions: from our own lullabies to Gregorian chants,
Hebrew davennen, the kirtans, mantras and ragas from
India, Tibetan ritual prayers, the zhikrs of the Sufis,
Buddhist sutras and tantric chants, indigenous songs
such as the icaros, and healing songs from Africa and
the Americas. These melodies are divinely inspired,
constructed with simplicity and minimalism and rendered
with a great deal of repetition to most effectively
convey the emotion, memory, revelation, or spiritual
transmission and manifest it in the dimension of healing,
music, and magic.
Evoking the original function of music—which
is to quiet the mind and make it sensitive to divine
intervention—these archetypal melodies clear and
open energetic channels, giving birth to healing, kindness,
and connecting us with ancestral lines and love.
In the musical spectrum, melody is
defined as a tonal configuration with movement that
unfolds in relation to time, with an intention that
can be conceptual, intuitive, expressed or conveyed.
Melody is the most affective and effective attribute
of the transformational power of sound and has always
been a means for expressing meaning and feeling.
Medicine melodies are based on simple
melody lines that allow for variations in tone, rhythm,
harmony and expression. They can be found in all cultures,
sharing similar attributes as devotional music that
had been preserved for centuries. These melodies create
a contagious sensation of unity and well-being. Anyone
who cultivates familiarity with healing music or chanting
can find herself creating or remembering medicine melodies.
It requires simply the ability to be completely present
in the moment, allowing oneself to be subtly immersed
in a transpersonal field of sound, positive intention,
a reliable rhythmic pulse, and spontaneous song.
These healing sound formulas help to
transform energy patterns and enhance deep listening
and receptivity. By balancing the activity of the left
and right brain hemispheres, medicine melodies can produce
measurable effects in the physical body. They induce
concentration and sharpen our capacity for self-awareness,
allowing us to see not only what is there, but also
what is felt, and what others feel, giving us access
to a insightful vision of the past and the future.
As sacred sound travels through consciousness it can
transform everyday occurrences into a mythical dimension.
A fundamental part of shamanic healing, medicine melodies
possess profound consciousness-altering effects. Examples
are the icaros from the Peruvian Amazon, songs that
the plants themselves transmit to the healers after
they become physically, mentally and spiritually prepared
to receive them. Interestingly, after their initiation
individuals in completely different locations have been
known to receive the very same icaros, evidence of their
direct transmission from sacred realms.
Sometimes accompanied by wooden flutes
and percussion, these chants have transformative qualities
that make them central to medicine ritual. We recognize
the medicinal power in a melody through it simplicity
and its spiritual resonance with nature and the spirit
world. These are the chants that shamans use for divination
and protection.
In the shamanic realm, medicine melodies
provide a skillful means to support the inner journey.
The practice involves using evocative voices that imitate
nature and spirit sounds, simple chants, and deep drumbeats
to facilitate the transference of energy, and connect
with the healing power of nature and the spirit world.
The latest discoveries in neuroscience
confirm the healing power of sound, of devotional singing
in particular. Chanting awakens all the physical and
energetic psychic centers, stimulates the immune system
and the emotional body, allowing greater meaning and
spiritual insight into the mysteries of the shamanic
and the creative state. The melody evokes, clears and
pacifies the emotion.
The voice as a fabric of breath, tone,
and expression has the capacity to convey and release
emotions like no other instrument. In music and sound
therapy one may discover the beneficial use of medicine
melodies, with the range of breath to tone, using humming
as a preliminary practice to generate an atmosphere
of calm receptiveness for both clinician and patient.
Before entering into the dimension
of melody, one may slowly chant ascending and descending
notes over a drone (long tone), at times bending the
pitch ever so slightly. The space of silence between
the notes in this way is a metaphor for the spiritual
journey.
The Eastern concept of microtonal intervals, or divisions
of semi-tones, as well as the practice of meending or
portmento—i.e., the slow sliding up and down within
the space between two notes—is of great relevance.
This gentle microtonal movement has the capacity to
expand the senses and proves to be naturally entrancing,
reaffirming the therapeutic potential of a meaningful
relationship. It also creates a sense of ‘journeying,’
while allowing enough time to connect with the emotion
that needs to be released.
We experience singing as one of the
most directly transformative art forms because it liberates
self-expression, promotes physical and emotional balance,
and engenders a sense of devotion and happiness. We
notice that singing in a slow, sustained, and sliding
manner effects profound change in emotions and states
of consciousness. When the voice wanders through ancient
sounds, trancelike melodic repetitive patterns, and
textural prayers, it creates an optimum coordination
between brain, breath and heart, which helps to reduce
stress, clear emotions, and sharpen intellectual focus
and creativity.
Through working with the voice singing
medicine melodies, the realm of sounding becomes a state
of consciousness—a kind of trance—where
the attention is not on the Self but in the experience
of sound. Free from selfish demands, the voice soars,
listens, receives, and reveals divine frequencies and
songs. We wonder “Who is singing?”
The practice of being in sound, dwelling
in simple sound, becomes a devotional gift. We begin
to realize that we are not singing; but calling in divine
qualities; we are not performing but transforming, simultaneously
playing and praying. We enter a state akin to meditation,
where singing becomes a doorway to the most inner silence.
We are one with pure and divine vibration. Our breath
is the breath of God. The heart is open, the voice is
open, the hands are open, the eyes are softly closed—we
experience no fear.
Singing medicine melodies connects
us with our true energetic and emotional nature and
helps reveal deeper aspects of our ancestral lineage.
Awakening the whole body of the voice becomes a spiritual
practice that involves both the body and the mind—the
ultimate aim being the experience of divine remembrance
and transformation.
Another way to experience medicine
melodies is by repeating a mantra, or singing an Indian
raga. Raga comes from the Sanskrit word that means “color,
or passion” so it can be thought of as that which
colors the mind with an emotion that stimulates brain
and heart activity. I describe ragas as melodic entities
that live in the threshold between passion and music,
humanness and cosmic-ness, religion and spirituality,
time and consciousness. Through ragas we become cosmic
singers, connecting through sound to time, eternity,
and light. In this lies the healing power of these distinctive
melodies that have no composer, no ownership, but the
intervention of the divine, In particular, we realize
the raga’s potential to connect us with archetypal
consciousness, emotional nature, and magic.
Some of the psycho-spiritual qualities
that may be conveyed when singing medicine melodies
include inner wisdom, serenity, open mindedness, selflessness,
compassion, devotion, calm acceptance, wonder, affliction,
detachment, inner joy, radiance, and relaxation.
When offering the music of medicine
melodies as part of a healing practice, the sound practitioner
must rely on his or her experience, belief, and intuition,
spontaneously selecting the modality and the music that
is appropriate for each situation and setting. I refer
to this treatment of melody as spiritual melodicism—the
mindful use of melody in the perfect synergy of pace,
nature, and consciousness. The melody leads the emotion
and becomes a metaphor to evoke meaning, aid memory,
hold, embrace, and comfort, improving the ability to
cope with stress and fear.
By experiencing the devotional nature
of music, we open our hearts to the deep longing of
the enchanters, those who journey through the magic
of sound to attract spirit power. The evolution of the
art of sound healing may depend on deepening cross-cultural
sophistication and the conscious treatment of musical
structure (melody, rhythm, harmony and mood) with a
spiritual emphasis.
When Creating Medicine Melodies
with a Drone
A Practice
Begin… in a relaxed state
Focus… the attention on breath
Breath… peacefully
Choose… one long tone
Dwell… peacefully in one tone as a home
Move… slowly approaching neighboring notes
Focus… on minimal change
Align… melodic imagination with a particular mode
or scale
Focus… on the melody that comes to you
Explore… simple movements of the melody
Find… the medicine melody
Repeat… the melodic pattern as often as possible
Empower… the melodies with
words of wisdom and beauty
Remember… lullabies, indigenous prayers, and mantras
Deeply listen… to pace, pause, texture, and breath
Slow down Focus… on soft and
equal quality of the voice or any instrument
Focus… on repetition
Focus… on rasa (feeling)
Focus… on divine nature
Focus… on the space between the notes
Focus… on sound and listening
Focus… on listening silence
Dwell… in Silence
• Recording examples will be
download soon at www.voxmundiproject.com
Medicine Melodies
workshop will take place on March 7& 8
at CIIS on 1453 Mission Street
Silvia Nakkach, M.A., MMT
Has cultivated a voice that transports listeners
into the heart of devotion. She is an award-winning
composer and recording artist, psychologist, author
and voice-culturist. She is an internationally accredited
specialist in cross-cultural music therapies, including
music shamanism and the use of sound to transform consciousness.
In addition to her many academic credentials, Silvia
has devoted more than 26 years to the study of classical
Indian music and the art of raga singing under the direction
of Maestro Ali Akbar Khan. Silvia is teaches at the
California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco
where she co-created the certificate program in Sound,
Voice and Music Healing. Silvia is also the founding
director of The Vox Mundi Project and The School of
Sound and the Voice, an international organization that
has devoted more than twenty years to the preservation
of unusual musical traditions and combines teaching,
performance, service and spiritual practice, with locations
in the San Francisco Bay Area, New Mexico, Brazil, Argentina
and India.
