The Harmonium-Journey of the instrument across continents and history
Informative article, which concludes with Allen Ginsberg with the harmonium chanting the Hare Krishna maha-mantra to William Buckley.
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Very interesting. Thank you for sharing this. I looked up the Chinese Sheng and couldn't help checking the history of the Irish bagpipe. I read that the bagpipe came from the Roman. Where did the Roman get it from... Marco Polo? -
In every case there is either theft or honest exchange of ideas from one cultural to another, one ethnicity to another. The idea that the Europeans, White People, steal from everybody else especially from the black people is true but it is also true that those other cultures steal from the white people. In Asia, it is the Japanese who are said to steal from everybody else whom they tried to enslave, as the White man tried to enslave the Black man.
There is one sad thing about the use of the harmonium in India, which is that the hereditary brahmins use the instrument as a means of social and political control. In fact many brahmin families who are proficient in the musical instruments, use music as a dope to attract the lower caste and then keep those people under their thumb. Music is beautify but it is also a very ugly feature of our lives because of how it is used to control us because of our greed for the internal happiness which is provides.
It is a type of narcotic where it gives happiness but does not really relieve our status or situation. If you are living in a ghetto when you first hear a piece of enjoyable music, you will be sure to be in that same living condition long after you cease hearing it. It adds nothing in real terms but it does give mental and emotional relief for the time being.
However the musician may become wealthy if you had to pay to hear the enjoyable performance.
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Undoubtedly however the inventors of the instruments are geniuses of the first order.
In the heavenly planets, music is created on the fly with or without musical instruments. One does not have to learn to play the instruments. As speech potential is in the human mouth apparatus, the skill of playing is embedded naturally in the subtle body, which makes it easy to produce music.
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Thank you for the great expansion:
... It is a type of narcotic where it gives happiness but does not really relieve our status or situation. If you are living in a ghetto when you first hear a piece of enjoyable music, you will be sure to be in that same living condition long after you cease hearing it. It adds nothing in real terms but it does give mental and emotional relief for the time being.
However the musician may become wealthy if you had to pay to hear the enjoyable performance.
And, now the music industry in the US also fashions the taste of the population upon what they decide should be enjoyed, according to which new band (boy bands...) they select to use a means of monetary exploitation.
