Our Festival of Harps(sm) concert series, begun in 1990, is a series of concerts and educational outreach programs featuring the harp. The vision for the Festival is to bring the different races, styles and periods together on one stage—showing the basic unity of the human spirit through the harp. The Festival of Harps brings together master musicians from places as diverse as Paraguay, Ireland, China, Germany and Peru.

We believe it is natural to love and respect people whose music has moved and delighted you. Every culture expresses itself through music. When you learn how to appreciate another culture’s music, you learn what is most precious to people who are very different from you, and soon that essential beauty becomes precious to you as well. Melody, harmony, rhythm, the ebb and flow of tempo and dynamics, have a universality that transcends language, customs and politics.

Festival of Harps 20th Anniversary Video (Click play on the control bar to view video)

Everyone knows that music expresses itself by varying certain qualities of sound in certain patterns, such as melody, harmony, rhythm, and tone color. What is not so well recognized is that every form of music is necessarily simple within certain qualities, so that it can be complex within other qualities. If a listener has developed sensitivity to one set of qualities, and she listens to music that expresses itself mainly in some other quality, she will assume (incorrectly) that what she hears is all that is going on. For example: Symphonic music has extremely complex variations in dynamics (loud to soft) and tempo (fast to slow). This is why a conductor, who plays no instrument himself, is needed to control those two qualities. Most Baroque music has comparatively little variations in dynamics or tempo. When Leonard Bernstein listened to Baroque music as a young man, he compared it to the symphonic music he loved, and all he heard was “a lot of sixteenth notes, chugging along like a train.” It was only when he learned the intricacies of counterpoint that he was able to appreciate the subtle beauty of Bach’s interlocking melodies. Conversely, people who have become sensitive to variations in rhythm ( perhaps through listening to Jazz or other forms of American music) frequently complain that Symphonic music all sounds the same to them, because they are listening for syncopations and cross rhythms, which are almost never present in symphonic music.

Given that this is true, wouldn’t the most sophisticated music be one that puts as much variation in as many qualities as possible? No, for certain kinds of variations inevitably cancel each other out. The tempo variations of romantic symphonies make it impossible to do complex rhythms, because it is impossible to hear a rhythm going against the beat unless there is a steady beat to provide a foundation. It is also impossible to play jazz chords through a distorting rock and roll guitar amplifier, because the amplifier adds harmonics that clash with jazz harmonies. In the hands of a master like Jimi Hendrix, however, this distortion can become an expressive tool that creates tone colors that are impossible to create on a jazz guitar (and impossible to notate in traditional western sheet music.)

Every culture’s music thus makes certain choices about what to vary and what to hold constant. These choices train a sensitive listener’s ear, even when that listener thinks of herself as being “musically illiterate”. When a person hears a new style of music, she naturally tunes her awareness to where she has heard the most musical variation in the past. If this new form of music has little or no variation in that particular region, her reaction to the music will inevitably be “It all sounds the same”. And indeed it does–to that listener. But such a judgment should be taken as a starting point for discovery, not as grounds for dismissal.

To find out more about Teed and his music go to:
http://www.myspace.com/teedrockwell

Copyright © 1998, by the MultiCultural Music Fellowship

We are training the harpists of tomorrow through our children’s harp ensembles: Bay Area Youth Harp Ensemble, Mission Harp Ensemble, and Bahia Vista Harp Ensemble. These groups provide an opportunity for young harpists to not only learn to play the harp, but to acquire the skills and confidence that improve their academic achievement and civic engagement, and a safe space to nurture their creativity and envision their own potential. Many of these young harpists have gone on to develop their own musical careers, sometimes even performing in the Festival of Harps.

We produce opportunities for musicians from different cultures to play together— on the same stage, and sometimes at the same time in unique ensembles created especially for our concerts. In addition to the Festival of Harps, we have also produced and sponsored concerts by great Indian Classical musicians such as Warren Senders and G.S. Sachdev. When the musicians play together under the same roof, they bring their audiences with them, and everyone hears music that they never realized that they could like. We encourage you to contact us any way you can: through email, phone, or best of all by attending one of the musical events that are our reason for being.

Teed Rockwell
President, MCMF