Jubilee - the trumpet shall sound

My recent hypothesis that the vuvuzela is becoming the protest instrument of choice for the emerging movement against austerity has received some independent confirmation. Bat020 spotted one on the demonstration outside the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham last weekend (pictured below):



Meanwhile from Sweden, Birdseed reports that in the anti-racist mobilisations in the lead up to recent elections the vuvuzela has 'been ever present both as assertion and as sonic disturbance (of the extreme right)'.

All of this put me in mind of Peter Linebaugh's classic article 'Jubilating; or, how the Atlantic working class used the Biblical Jubilee against capitalism, with some success' first published in the journal Midnight Notes in 1990. In this text, Linebaugh looks at how the Biblical notion of Jubilee as the periodic cancellation of debt and slavery has inspired radical movements through the ages. And he notes how this is heralded by the sounding of a trumpet:

'Jubilee. Etymologically, jubilee comes from yobel, a Hebrew word meaning 'ram's horn'. Ever since, it's been associated with music, a horn, a cornet, a trumpet, and later with singing. The cornet descends from the shepherd's cornu; the trumpet and bugle from the Roman soldier's buccina; these horns are instruments of gathering and militance. In the West Indies and the South Sea Islands the spiral conch emits a very large sound. It was used by the Tritons of ancient mythology, and by the Haitian slaves on 21 August 1791 as a call to the war of liberation in the first successful slave revolt of modern history. The first thing about the jubilee, then, is that it is heard'.

Linebaugh quote from the Bible:

'You shall send the ram's horn around. You shall send it through all your land to sound a blast, and so you shall hallow the fiftieth year and proclaim liberation in the land for all its inhabitants' (Leviticus 25:9-10)

... and from the Jubilee Hymn written in 1782 by English radical Thomas Spence:

'Hark! how the trumpet's sound
Proclaim the land around The Jubilee...
Now hath the oppressor ceas'd
And all the world releas'd from misery!'

On the subject of radical Biblical references, good to see that in my old town of Luton, some people from the former Exodus Collective (famed 1990s drum'n'bass free party sound system) are still going strong, putting on regular parties as the Leviticus Collective.

Of Cattle and Music

How much do the origins of music owe to cattle? I was prompted to think about this when reading 'The Storr: unfolding landscape' (edited by Angus Farquhar) a book documenting an ambitious 2005 public art project staged on the Storr mountain on the Isle of Skye by nva (a group with their origins in Test Department).

The event seems to have involved a nightwalk around the mountain with various light and sound happenings - seemingly including the sounds of ancient horns. Hence the book includes an essay by ancient musical instrument expert John Purser, Paths of our Ancestors, which discusses their significance:

'there were much older instruments belonging to the peoples who herded cattle in Ireland and Scotland - the beautiful curved bronze horns from the Bronze Age itself, of which many still survive. The orginals - some still playable - are derived in form from the horns of cattle and can reproduce the sounds of cattle among other things. They date from three millennia ago and, with their accompanying rattles shaped like a bull's scrotum, they carry with them a fertile memory of a great herding culture...

Besides being able to imitate the sounds of cattle, bronze horns can also convey a sense of fear or of magic - sounds which relate to the mythology of the cattle, in to which much that is magical is woven. That deeper sound world which is shared by all living things, in which the sounds of warning, or enticement and allure, have some strange commonality beyond analysis, will carry to you the sounds of our ancestors, human and animal, from deep in their throats. Listen in silence and you too may, in imagination, follow those paths where human and animal, reality and myth, meet without embarrassment in natural companionship'.

The notions of the horn section remains at the heart of soul and jazz, even if the instruments no longer resemble their animal ancestors. But the name itself is a reminder that some of the earliest musical instruments were made from cattle (from actual horns, and in the case of drums from the skin of cattle), partly in imitation of the sounds of these creatures. Later bagpipes too were made from animal skin, as well as the belly of some stringed instruments.

I was reminded of some of the primeval power of music last week, and indeed of Test Department, when I came across this lot in Glasgow's Buchanan Street. Clanadonia are self-styled 'Tribal Pipes and Drums band', and they do make a fearsome sound.

We dead lie unburied

War in Gaza, and (less publicised) war in Sri Lanka, war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, not to mention Afghanistan and Iraq. It's too soon to say whether and how these tragedies will be commemorated in song, but some of the earliest known ballads deal with the misery and suffering of war, offering a kind of counter-narrative to the patriotic sagas of kings and generals.

These examples are from the Han Dynasty period (202 BCE - 220 CE). Remarkably, the government of the time established a Bureau of Music (the Yueh-fu) which collected popular ballads and song. As a result lyrics from this time have survived for over 2000 years.

We fought South of the City Wall

We fought south of the city wall.
We died north of the ramparts.
In the wilderness we dead lie unburied, fodder for crows.
Tell the crows for us:
'We've always been brave men!
In the wilderness we dead clearly lie unburied,
So how can our rotting flesh flee from you?'
Waters deep, rushing, rushing,
Reeds and rushes, darkening, darkening.
Heroic horsemen fought and died fighting,
Flagging horses whinnied in panic.
Raftered houses we built,
And south, alas! and north;
If grain and millet aren't reaped, what will you eat, Lord?
We longed to be loyal vassals, but how can that be?
I remember you, good vassals,
Good vassals I truly remember:
In the dawn you went out to glory, At nightfall you did not return.

At Fifteen I Joined the Army

At fifteen I joined the army,
At eighty I first came home.
On the road I met a villager,
'At my home what kin are there?'
'Look over there- that's your home!'
Pine, cypress, burial mounds piled, piled high,
Hares going in through dog-holes,
Pheasants flying in through rafter tops;
The inner garden grown wild with corn,
Over the well wild mallow growing.
I pound grain to serve for a meal,
I pick mallow to serve for broth.
Once broth and meal are cooked
I'm at a loss to know whom to feed,
I leave by the gates, look east.
Tears fall and soak my clothes.

Source: Popular Songs and Ballads of Han China, Anne Birrell (University of Hawaii Press, 1988)

Back to the Classics (1): Gilgamesh

Just how fundamental is musicking and dancing to human experience? To be sure, 'music', 'dance' and indeed 'human' have meant different things to people in different times and places, but it is also clear there are continuities across time and space. As one of my favourite DJs might say, let's get back to the classics and have a look.

First up, there's Gilgamesh, arguably the oldest surviving substantial work of literature. Various tellings of this Babylonian epic tale have been found written on stone tablets some four thousand years ago. The story tells of a king who goes on various monster-slaying, goddess-defying adventures in search of the secret of eternal life only to discover the futility of his quest in the face of human mortality.

In this tale, music and dancing are presented as being very much part of the good life. Making offerings to deities and heroes, Gilgamesh presents ‘A flute of carnelian… for Dumuzi, the shepherd beloved of Ishtar'. Another character is tempted into Gilgamesh's city with the promise that 'Every Day in Uruk there is a festival, The drums there rap out the beat, And there are harlots, most comely of figure, Graced with charm and full of delights'.

The most remarkable section for me is where Gilgamesh encounters Shiduri, a goddess who keeps a tavern at the edge of the world. She urges him to abandon his quest and focus instead on human pleasures:

'But you, Gilgamesh, let your belly be full, enjoy yourself always by day and by night! Make merry each day, Dance and play day and night! Let your clothes be clean, Let your head be washed, may you bathe in water! Gaze on the child who holds your hand, Let your wife enjoy your repeated embrace!'.

This is timeless advice and arguably still holds true for those fighting today in the land where this story was first written (present day Iraq), as well as for the rest of us.

Quotes from the 'The Epic of Gilgamesh' translated by Andrew George (Allen Lane, 1999)