The Dance of a Musical Journey - Bob Weiner, Jazz Drummer and BDIC Advisor

I am thrilled to advise BDIC with its philosophy of creating new syntheses of existing disciplines. I worked last semester with a student exploring sound, music, anthropology and spiritual traditions, as well as a student a few years ago studying drumming and ethnomusicology, with specific emphasis on West African music and culture. I see my own journey reflected in the creative directions being explored by students at BDIC.

I am a professional musician, a drummer/percussionist. I have explored many angles of playing music as vocation, especially in New York City and Boston, from the mid-70's through the 90's. What comes to mind in relation to BDIC is this burning desire I had to travel to certain far-off countries to experience their music and culture. It was 1995 and I had traveled for 5 years with a popular singer named Harry Belafonte, which took us throughout West Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.S. The music was a pan-African music which celebrated the rich melange of African, European and Native musics as they developed in the Caribbean, Brazil and the U.S.

I was learning 'on the job' from great musicians from Trinidad, Puerto Rico, Brazil, South Africa. It was overwhelming taking in all the information, musical languages and sensibilities. Then I went to Africa with my brother, who was doing geographical research in Zimbabwe and Kenya. I spent 3 weeks in Harare, Zimbabwe and came through Lagos, Nigeria and Dakar, Senegal. It was a life-changing trip. When I got back on the gig with Harry, everyone said 'what happened to you??' They said my beat got deeper and stronger and I was finally 'getting it,' the deeper aspects of the music and its feel. It was an incredible lesson- I hadn't picked up sticks for almost 5 weeks, but I had been absorbing, observing and being in deep cultural experiences. Aha, this was another kind of learning, beyond the technical information we would normally get in a music school. My experience of learning was shifting.

So based on that positive experience, I got a round-the-world ticket and planned a trip to Morocco, Turkey, India and Thailand, all places I would most likely not visit touring out of NYC. I gathered names, contacts, got my shots and Lonely Planet books and off I went, with two cartons of Marlboro cigarettes as gifts from the US. Another life-changing trip, which I did with no camera or recording equipment, only my journal and small luggage. I was experiencing some kind of 'gestalt' learning, where the experience is full, only later to be sorted out, theorized about, reflected upon for ideas, themes, similarities/differences, influences, etc. I had not heard of the word 'inter-disciplinary,' but there it was. I was focused on music and culture, so there was a sense of purpose and a collecting of data and experiences.

   Since this time, I have explored music, psychology and expressive therapies at Lesley University (Cambridge, MA) in an Inter-Disciplinary Masters Degree. I specifically was interested in how meditation and contemplative practices could influence and be influenced by the arts. My final thesis was a video project called 'Contemplating Improvisation,' where I interviewed several dancers and musicians about how meditative practices related to their improvising.

What I have learned and continue to learn is that experience is inherently holistic, even with a specific focus in mind (disciplinary focus). Yes, we can isolate phenomena and data to study its' properties, but in the natural world, nothing lives in pure isolation. I would like to see academic studies keep the rigor of specific disciplinary studies, but widen its lens to allow a broader, inter-disciplinary approach. BDIC has its finger on the pulse of the future, as I am reading it; young students thinking out of the box, creating new combinations and juxtapositions, ways of seeing the world.

If I have learned anything in 35 years in music, it is to expect the unexpected, to not assume that anything inherently 'works' or not, to be open, to allow true play and humor to enter our endeavors, and to see process as a valid field of experience and study in itself. The world is not as solid as we are told- so the quantum physicists and the ancient mystics agree. It is a world that is creating itself in each moment; we are co-creators in the largest 'classroom' we could imagine.