Chanting Discovering Spirit in Sound

A Journey: From Bach to Rock to Chant "Music is well said to be the speech of angels." --Thomas Carlyle At the age of eighty-five, my grandmother Miriam was still wearing miniskirts and teaching folk dancing on the boardwalk at Coney Island. She had studied yoga, and whenever I came to visit she immediately demonstrated her continued splendid health by standing on her head in her miniskirt. I once asked Nana, who had outlived four husbands, the secret of her vitality. She confided that she had taught herself meditation and had been practicing for over ten years. I was intrigued, given my own many years as a meditator, and asked her, "Nana, what do you do when you meditate?" "I read in a book on yoga that you're supposed to take an Indian word and repeat it over and over again," she answered. "So I picked my own Indian word, and I've been chanting my mantra (she pronounced it man-tra in her thick Brooklynese accent) every day all these years." Growing more curious by the moment, I asked, "Nana, what is the word you use?" Proudly she answered, "Cheyenne, Cheyenne, Cheyenne." Not knowing the difference, my dear Nana had chosen the name of a Native American tribe instead of one of the sacred Sanskrit syllables from India that are usually used in meditation. But as she talked about her experiences of chanting her sacred "man-tra" over ten years, I was struck by the obvious benefits to her life and being--physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And so it is with profound respect for the power of chant, as well as a smile in the face of the mystery that is life, that I begin this book. A Personal Path Many people I know speak of the deep connection they felt to Spirit when they were children. I'm not sure that was true for me. I grew up in a liberal Jewish family with a strong emphasis on values, but there seemed to be about as much living Spirit in my synagogue as in an average shopping mall. As a child, my only Gods played for the Boston Red Sox, and the chief deity I worshiped was leftfielder Ted Williams. I came out of childhood and many years of religious-based education a proud agnostic. Yet one of my earliest memories is of sitting at the old ebony piano in my grandparents' house on Sunday afternoons, turning dog-eared yellow pages of musical notes, pretending to read, my hands romping freely across the keys. I would lose track of time, journeying far from their musty house with its faded memories and bric-a-brac of another era, and entering another world, a magical place filled with colors and energy. As I grew up, the piano became my playmate in times of happiness and, later, my refuge when, at eleven years old, a great darkness settled over our home as my mother lay upstairs painfully dying of cancer. Swaying on the piano bench, my hands now more masterfully working the aging ivories, I felt and expressed things through music that were too hard to express in words. Again, I was transported into another realm where colors were brighter, where pulses of energy created a continually changing tapestry of patterns, being woven and rewoven; a realm where I was no longer desperately alone, and where I felt alive and connected to something larger than myself. Some years later as a graduating high-school senior, I was asked to pick a quote to accompany my yearbook picture. Though I was still an avowed unbeliever with no conscious relationship to religion or Spirit, I chose the quote, "Music is well said to be the speech of angels." Looking back, I see that even without a religious context or any concept of spirituality, I intimately knew God through music. Recognizing my passion and my gift, my parents had supported me in intensive study of keyboard, music theory, and composition from the age of six. My piano teachers saw in me the possibility of realiziGass, Robert H. is the author of 'Chanting Discovering Spirit in Sound' with ISBN 9780767903233 and ISBN 0767903234.