Sunday, June 14 , “What’s Going On?” Livestream of Qigong For Health Class #12 with Terry Dunn
Taoist Elixir Method 31 Basic Meditations + Flying Phoenix Celestial Healing Qigong Combined Qigong Practice
“Calmness (meditation) and wisdom are like a lamp and its light.” — Hui Neng, 6th Patriarch of Chinese Buddhism and founder of the Ch’an (Zen) School of Sudden Enlightenment
“Moving meditation is a hundred—a thousand—times more beneficial than meditation in repose. – ancient Taoist adage
--My apologies to everyone for not having published a Newsletter issue ahead of last Sunday’s class. But all of the appalling and disturbing news coming non-stop out of D.C. since June 1 on the heels of the horrendous spectacle of the viral video of George Lloyd’s murder by police on May 27 took a toll on the psyche and spirit in many ways that I did not realize. But who could have predicted that the first days of June would be twenty times worse than the last week of May – so as to present the ultimate challenge to equanimity, serenity, self-discipline and fortitude for every person of conscience, reason, compassion, and faith?
[NOTE: if you are apolitical and wish to get straight to my advice pertaining to the “Qigong For Health For First-Responders” Livestream course, skip down below to the subtitle, “BASIC BREATHWORK PRELIMARIES TO QIGONG PRACTICE.” But if you want to read my take on the events since May 27, continue:]
And who would have predicted that nationwide public outrage caused by the terrible video of the slow murder of a handcuffed George Lloyd by a blithely sadistic Minneapolis cop on May 27 would inspire so far 18 days of massive but overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations against racism, social injustice, and police brutality against people of color driven by the watchword-mantras, “Black Lives Matter” and “I Can’t Breathe” (“BLM/ICB”) and seen on countless shirts, signs, placards and murals—that would by the third day spread to worldwide protests also ongoing?!
Even the most cynical and hardened tracker of Trump’s profanities and atrocities could not have imagined that 6 days after George Lloyd’s murder and the outbreak of nationwide demonstrations that this President-- rather than attempt to unify the country over the common cause of healing the national psyche by correcting racial injustice--would instead inflame the passions of the aggrieved BLM/ICB protesters and deepen the cultural rifts in American society in a literally explosive manner by ordering the deployment of a newly assembled Praetorian Guard—comprised of un-insignia’d and unnamed federal police heavily armed with riot gear to violently remove peaceful protestors exercising their right to free speech and assembly in Lafayette Square in D.C. with tear gas, flash-bangs, rubber bullets, and O.C. spray—just so that he could pose for news cameras in front of historic St. John’s Episcopal Church while holding up a Bible upside down and back-facing. This was a televised spectacle that more than one pundit has called an act of “groping” and that bishops and archbishops from Episcopal and Catholic churches condemned that same day as sacrilege and idolatry.
Uncalled-for violence was inflicted on hundreds of peaceful demonstrators because the President was upset because word leaked out of the white house that the Secret Service had him sequestered in the protective bunker under the white house over the weekend of May 30-31, So he felt compelled to get out and make a public spectacle of himself with a Bible while “being tough” on protesters. What turned out to be an obscenity was burned into the retinas of tens of millions watching tv news for days afterwards. Trump’s misuse of federal police and his threat to deploy active U.S. military to quell demonstrations around the country drew distancing by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, an apology from Chairman of Joint Chiefs General Mike Milley, condemnation from other top generals and admirals, and a scathing rebuke from former Sec. of Defense and Gen. James Mattis, a Marine’s Marine for 45 years, who in his article in the Atlantic denounced Trump as a threat to the Constitution and the rights of every American that it guarantees. General Barry McCaffrey said that watching Rector Gina Gerbasi’s account (see below) of the tear gas and pepper spray attack on her and her staff on church property made him sick and appalled.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." -- Hunter S. Thompson
I've invoked this formerly tongue-in-cheek sardonic observation about human nature several times on social media with respect to 45th POTUS’s enablers who blatantly sell their souls day in and day out to do the bidding of a malignant narcissist and pathological liar (19,127 demonstrable lies Between January 6, 2016 and June 8, 2020). But with Trump tear-gassing and pepper-spraying hundreds of peaceful protestors plus Episcopal Church ladies led as Rev. Gina Gerbasi on their church’s patio--
https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/06/02/donald-trump-gini-gerbasi-st-johns-church-of-georgetown-sot-vpx-lead.cnn?fbclid=IwAR0MZLWlyQULblaiXAjPfTuBjeDZG56Fj5dHn6jfVD7cwvPL_pV9WkoS5Jw
--just so he could grope a Bible to pander to his base of deplorables, the Thompson paradigm now pegs him to the “t”: He's a travesty of a human being to begin with. (No pun intended.) But when a malignant narcissist such as him is melting down in crisis over having lost control over external events that are eroding his grandiose self-image (that were ignited by the racial hatred that he himself emboldens through both policy and dog-whistle), he has only one reflex—to double-down on what he has modeled after his master, Vladimir Putin--and thus he turns PRO (“pro” as in “professional thug” in his depraved indifference to the suffering of others), which sends him gleefully thrashing and burrowing deeper to reach hitherto unimaginable new lows of spitefulness, profanity, cruelty, and odiousness--such as invoking the name of a stranger's cruel murder to use as window dressing and a fake ornament for his political façade.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-trump-unemployment-jobs-report-george-floyd-20200605-molui5vyyvfdpn5mjefumokl5y-story.html?fbclid=IwAR3TtfBEOxcIDYojjQxFn3UYEUVRPx7AyaUZ6MMNqubEShno4N6ZmqiryBM
Trump’s manner of invoking Floyd’s name, saying,“Hopefully George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country,” referring to a recent jobs/unemployment report that Trump was gloating over was much more than another one of his callous, irreverent and profane statements. It was a slick, specious and conniving semantic distortion–the worst of which may have gone over most people’s heads. For Orange Nero through a common idiom insidiously nominalized and spun the murder and martyrdom of George Lloyd, as if it was nothing to be mad about or protest about—because Floyd’s spirit was now all of a sudden “looking down from above” and lauding Trump for the job growth in the country that Trump claims responsibility for—and, by inference, he was approving of Trump’s performance, and, by further inference, he was in support of Trump’s re-election campaign—when it was the white racist culture in Trump’s base that he dog whistles to and emboldens on a regular basis that arguably led to his murder by police. The audacity, venality, and hubris to attempt to spiritually reframe the outcome of a murder for the sake of a PR pivot by enslaving the spirit of a dead person and speaking for it is beyond repugnant. It is vile and gives new meaning to the word heathen.
Trump’s act of sacrilege is a case of
the blind lying to the blind
--something that even the Buddha and the Great Syrian Sage Jesus never thought they needed to forewarn the world against.
If you're the least bit spiritually astute and discerning, you can bet that George Floyd's spirit and the those of his ancestors will be waiting on 45's ass when he crosses over on his way to hell. For 45 bought himself an “E-ticket” for a super dose of karmic retribution by uttering Floyd's name in service to his venality.
∞ To qualify the above statement, we will quickly segue back to the value and importance of meditation and yogic art to the attainment of wisdom: it doesn’t require an ontological leap to believe in such karmic reckoning or in reincarnation and the transmigration of th soul, for that matter. All one has to do is meditate enough and in the right way in order to see reincarnation and karmic repercussions in action and to naturally know that they are operative in human affairs—without the having to “believe” in type of religious doctrine. Some Taoist monastic systems of Qigong, such as Taoist Elixir Method and Bok Fu Pai’s “10,000 Buddhas Ascend to Heaven” have advanced yogas that enhance visual perception to enable one to literally “see” (as in the normal physiological function of the eyes) spiritual entities, both incarnate and dis-corporated, and a myriad of phenomena not ordinarily seen and thus not deemed to exist by the consensus reality, such as your past lives changing on your face with every breath you take as you meditate in front of a mirror at certain optimal hours during the day. But “meditating enough” varies from person to person. Some people are born with the gifts of vision and discernment, others require years of cultivation and learning, others require a lifetime or many lifetimes. ∞
Well, aside from Orange Nero’s relentless acts of sacrilege, the positive fallout from the George Floyd tragedy and from the Trump administration’s is the nationwide and worldwide, multicultural activist movement that’s unprecedented in scope when compared with other notorious cases of police abuse. The 1991 videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King by Los Angeles Police Department officers provoked extensive rioting in Los Angeles and a several other cities, and an international outcry, but it did not spark anything close to this movement. This global wave of overwhelmingly peaceful protests, now proceeding into its nineteenth day, which at various times has been met at times with violent repression, is starting to have an impact on governments, institutions, and culture here and abroad:
• NFL commissioner Roger Goodell declared "Black Lives Matter" on video last week and then later said that the NFL is open to working with Colin Kaepernick in battling systemic racism.
• The U.S. Navy banned all Confederate flags and depictions of it from its bases and vessels.
• The U.S. Marine Corps followed suit a few days later.
• NASCAR banned all Confederate flags and emblems—representing a big moment for white America
• Statues of Confederate leaders are being torn down all across the country—
• The Pentagon said it is open to renaming the 10 remaining Army bases that were named after Confederate generals during the Jim Crow era after all the Civil War veterans had passed away.
These symbolic acts are all good and necessary starts toward transforming culture. They are the the first fruits of 18 days of generally peaceful protests.
But the enormously difficult task of undoing systemic racism in American institutions will be long and arduous process requiring a massive upgrade of the educational system from K to 12, a bolstering of college curricula as well—that would infuse them with effective programs and courses teaching and instilling Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), and organizational development in every public and private sector entity and institution that impacts people of color.
Hopefully, the Black Lives Matter/ I Can’t Breathe movement will lead to meaningful improvements in police management in terms of transparency and accountability, policy-making, improved hiring practices and most importantly, unilateral improvements in police training--the last of which I have special knowledge and experience in.
• COVID-19 UPDATE
All these events took place over the past two weeks during which the deadly Covoid-19 pandemic did not rest for a second and that, thanks to 45’s ineptitude and abject failure to mobilize an effective national healthcare strategy in response to the coronavirus outbreak, places America in the lead worldwide in terms of both number of coronavirus infections and deaths--2,142,224 and 117,527. With the CDC forecasting a total of 130,000 deaths by July 4, and the University of Washington forecasting 170,000 deaths by October 1.
Except for New York state, every other state that has opened up its economy has opened up too soon and unfortunately will pay the price for it in the same way that Texas is now experiencing a peak level of hospitalizations—using 80% of its bed capacity, and Florida has now suffered more than 1,000 new cases per day over the past four days. South Carolina is breaking out. Southern California is experiencing a resurgence of cases. The country is in still in its first wave of infections and it will be a long wave due the lack of a national strategy and completely decentralized testing and contact tracing. There will definitely be a second wave of infections in the winter that will coincide with the normal flu season. Deaths could exceed 200,000 by the end of the year.
Therefore, it is absolutely essential that (a) Physical distancing, (b) wearing a mask in public without fail, and (3) hand sanitization be constantly practiced to prevent infection by and transmission of the coronavirus.
For one of the most informative recent articles on the risks of coronavirus infection, see this article by Australian microbiologist and immunologist Erin Bromage, of UMass Dartmouth:
https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them
• QUICK RECAP OF LAST SUNDAY’S TRAINING
Last Sunday we great attendance and everyone enjoyed a very full and complete workout where in Hour One we practiced the first twelve standing exercises of the Tao Tan Pai Basic 31 Meditations capped off by TTP Meditation No. 18 (a seated meditation with five breath retentions done with five repetitive movements and postures. Hour Two consisted of Flying Phoenix Qigong practice in this order: “Monk Gazing At Moon,” “Monk Holding Peach,” “Bending the Bows” (8 rounds), two rounds of “Wind Above the Clouds”, and ending with the last Monk Serves Wine seated meditation on Volume 2 of the DVD series known as “The Waker-Upper” with the breathe-control sequence (90 80 50 20)
These unprecedented times of stress call for extraordinary methods to manage stress.
The ongoing Sunday combined Qigong course provides a wealth of truly extraordinary tools to effectively manage stress and promote wellness and longevity.
• BASIC BREATHWORK PRELIMARIES FOR QIGONG
WELCOME to this SEVENTH edition of our Newsletter for Qigong for Health and Tai Chi for Health! This week, I continue to recommend again that all Qigong practitioners—beginners to advanced-- get the new book by journalist James Nestor titled 'Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art’ and while it’s on order, listen to this very informative podcast on the NPR program called, appropriately, “Fresh Air”, in which interviews James Nestor.
Nestor talks about the basic benefits of deep breathing and reviews the basic findings that ancient masters of meditation and yoga from numerous cultures developed at different times at different places. He explains the complementary/counter-balancing functions of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems: that the sympathetic triggers the flight or fight response that involves the the release of stress hormones, while the parasympathetic nervous system regulates the rest, relaxation or the stress releasing response.
His book articulates all the basic parameters, functionalities, and universal characteristics of ancient Qigong arts as well as the regulated breathing in Tai Chi:
(1) that humans can control the autonomic nervous system by simply breathing; that just by breathing in certain special ways one can elicit these different autonomic nervous states and strengthen them. In Qigong, we do exercises that are inherently designed to induce the sympathetic response through inhalation, while balancing or coordinating the induction of the parasympathetic response through the exhalation.
**Now think about how you are exercising the autonomic nervous system each time you perform the unique percentage exhalation formula at the start of each Flying Phoenix Qigong Meditation.
(2) that deep breathing is very healthful: increasing the duration of one’s inhalation and exhalation has a profound effect on your blood pressure, mental state, emotional state, and will ultimately increase longevity. [Now think about how you are increasing steadily increasing the tidal volume in your lungs every time you practice Circling Palms and each and every one of the Tao Tan Pai Basic 31 Mediations.
(3) Nestor explains that the diaphragm is considered the “second heart” because it is so essential to proper breathing. And you will recall that throughout our entire practice every Sunday—from the warm-up exercise known as “The Silkweaver’s Exercise”, to the 50 minutes practicing the Tao Tan Pai Basic 31 Meditations, to th 50 minutes of Flying Phoenix Heavenly Healing Qi Meditations, we are constantly breathing diaphramatically—expand the lower abdomen on every inhalation and contracting the lower abdomen, letting the stomach wall fall in, with every exhalation.
(4) Nestor’s book also has a fascinating chapter about his research into how the evolution of the human skull over the past 300=-400 years had led to the shrinking of the teeth and jaw and breathing orifices. He explains why so many chronic breathing problems are tied to the shrinking of the human skull over the past 400 years, and that shrinkage has been due to the ingesting of industrially processed foods that have enabled humans to not have to chew as much or as vigorously as his predecessors just 6 generations ago.
(5) An interesting finding that is so relevant and fundamental to Qigong: that just by increasing the length of the inhalation and exhalation can improve health. More specifically, it has been scientifically proven that by increasing the duration of one’s breath cycle to a minimum of 5.5 seconds for each inhalation and 5.5 seconds for each exhalation, the rest and relaxation response is induced and “parasympathetic tone” is enhanced.
So isn’t it interesting that the vast and complete Tao Tan Pai Qigong System created in the 10th Century A.D. begins with its very first exercise known as “Circling Palms”, which systematically conditions the practitioner to deepen each exhalation and inhalation to reach a norm during practice of 20 seconds in duration, surpassing th 5.5 seconds duration recommended Nestor by almost four-fold?
The one relatively minor criticism I have of James Nestor’s book is his title--'Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art.' I’m of the naturally biased opinion that his title is quite inaccurate—for there is really nothing new under the sun when it comes to “Breath”. Homo sapiens have been doing it for well over 200,000 years. And some ancient cultures in more recent millenia discovered and created breathing methods and refined and codified them into therapeutic sciences that promote health and actually heal disease. There is no new “science of breath”—there is only ancient Qigong that works! And some of these ancient methods, such as Taoist Elixir Method and Flying Phoenix Qigong are intact and produce tangible health and restorative effects that are repeatable and verifiable with every practice.
Bear in mind that James Nestor’s podcast and book discuss some interesting things about only one aspect of Qigong: Qi – or breathing method. But there are two other essential aspects of Qigong, “Xing” (the shape/form of the body and posture), and “Yi” (mental focus and concentration) that need to be synergized with Nestor’s concept of deep breathing or some unique style of dep breathing—before you have a Qigong art that is transformative.
Two issues ago (announcing the May 24th Livestream), we examined the very specific instructions in I Ching Hexagram #52 “Keeping Still” for practicing meditation and Qigong. Those instructions in the Judgement and Image are about the Shape/Form of the body, or “Xing,” and about the focus of the mind, or “Yi”. Be sure to review and carefully study these classical instructions governing Shape-Form and Mental Focus provided in Hexagram 52 of the I Ching (Book of Changes).
“Keeping Still. Keeping the back still until you no longer feel your body.’
“Joined mountains. Stilling.
A noble one reflects, and does not come forth from his situation.”
• June 14 Stream Session
Our eleventh Livestream session is set for this Sunday from 4pm to 6pm Eastern Time (U.S. and Canada), with 30 minutes of discussion and Q&A immediately following. Each class immerses you in—not one, but—two authentic and powerful ancient Taoist Qigong systems that will improve your health: Taoist Elixir Method Qigong and Flying Phoenix Celestial Healing Qigong:
A. Warm-up: The class will begin as usual with our healthful warmup practice of “the Silkweaver’s Exercise”, which you can learn beforehand by practicing to this video I made in 2017: https://www.facebook.com/236579434951/videos/10154646296514952/
(If you do homework and get part or all of this choreography memorized, you’ll hit the deck running at each Sunday during our practice and attain deeper levels of relaxation, mind-body integration, and mental concentration/jhanic absorption.)
B. After warming up this manner, we will do 50 minutes of Tao Tan Pai Basic 31 Meditations—usually the “TTP Short Form Power Yoga” consisting of 5 of the 31 Meditations. New meditations will be added from each week until we cover all of the 31 Basic Meditations of Tao Tan Pai—15 standing exercises and 16 seated meditations.
• Eight of the Tao Tan Pai Basic 31 Meditations (“TTP-31”) are seen on this video, including the all-essential first of the 31 Meditations known as “Circling Palms”, which is traditionally practiced by doing four sets of 8 repetitions:
**A fact I want to re-emphasize this week: Just like one can never practice enough of “Wave Hands Like Clouds” (an outward circling pattern done in the bow stance) in Tai Chi, one can never practice enough of “Circling Palms” (an inward circling pattern) in Taoist Elixir Method Qigong, with one’s eyes continually focused on the fingertips of the extended arm as it sweeps 180 degrees to the other side.
C. After our practice of the Tao Tan Pai “Short Form Power Yoga”—that is easy to do and good for all ages— we take our excellent body mechanics, mind-body integration, newly cultivated “shen” energy (from our mental and visual concentration on movements synchronized with breath cycle) to use as a strong foundation for our second hour’s practice of “Flying Phoenix Celestial Healing Qigong”. On this video (1:40) his is what one of the basic FP Qigong standing moving meditations, “Bending the Bows”, looks like:
Both the practice of the Basic TTP-31 Meditations and the Flying Phoenix Qigong involve standing and seated, moving and sedentary meditations. Both are complete and powerful health-enhancing and consciousness-transforming systems of Taoist hygienics in and of themselves. But as explained in an earlier issue and on each one of my emailed invitations, I discovered about 6 years ago while teaching at Emperors College in Santa Monica that the TTP-31 Basic Meditations just happens to work as a superb foundational catalyst that enhances the sublimely restorative effects of the Flying Phoenix Healing Qigong. Hence the format of every class in this series is one hour of Taoist Elixir Method Qigong followed by one hour of Flying Phoenix Qigong.
Both Tao Tan Pai and Flying Phoenix Qigong are esoteric systems, especially the latter. There are about 10 instructors of Tao Tan Pai Kung Fu/Qigong in the world. Most are in the western states. As for the Ehrmei Mountain Flying Phoenix Qigong, I am the sole 7th generation preserver of the art.
• Joining the Livestream Session
To experience these two easy-to-do and yet transformative and truly restorative health regimens, and join a lively worldwide community of students dedicated to health, personal growth, self-empowerment, inner peace and world peace, sign up for the next session!
The Zoom Meeting ID is: 838 7922 5209
FEE: $40 per class; $280 / 8-class series; or $480 / 16-class series
• Please send tuition via Paypal to zenbearinc@gmail.com (before noon on June 14) —or send an email to zenbearinc@gmail.com asking to be sent a Paypal money request that you can use any credit or debit card to pay.) You will then be sent the Meeting Password by 2pm on Sunday.
All participants must register in advance for this meeting at this URL:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZclcOCqrD4oGt1mCpx-GvDxLY8iaCIPyWTf
See you all this Sunday for continuing our easy systematic practice of Taoist Elixir Method Qigong’s and Flying Phoenix Qigong’s sedentary meditations to perfect ”stillness with stillness” and of their moving meditations to develop “stillness within movement”—to become one with the Infinite Event, aka the Tao, aka the Ever-Conscious, aka the Godhead, aka the Big Bang that’s happening second to second to second.
Cathartic/abreactive Emotional Release accompanying the mind-body integrative effects of Qigong—elicited by Qigong’s simultaneous postural realignment, refocussing of the mind’s thought processes, and conscious regulation of breathing:
Last Sunday, one of the participants wanted me to share his story of side effects of the practice while remaining anonymous: This person experienced symptoms of extreme queasiness and nausea following our practice of Tao Tan Pai Meditation No. 9 (the one where we hold our palms facing each side of our neck, bend forward to horizontal while holding a deep inhalation, move the palms to face the throat while still holding the breath and then roll the shoulders and arms forward like the “butterfly stroke” in swimming while keeping the elbows bent and the palms in front of the throat): he had to drop out of the practice, give bent to deep emotions that had arisen, then compose himself, and was able to resume the practice in the middle of TTP Exercise No.10.
Comment: I just want to say briefly that the surfacing of emotions tied to time-bound pains when those repressed pains are viscerally “remembered” or sometimes even reactivated through the practice of any good system of Qigong or meditation is a common occurrence. As any good authentic system of Qigong adds no stress to the system but only re-integrates the mind-body into an accelerated self-healing mode, Qigong induces meditative states where he can “feel what we think and think what we feel”--with no excessive mental filtering or misinterpretation of experience by the critical mind that was once necessary to repress awareness of the injury and of the cause of pain when it was originally experienced. But with the passage of time and maturation of the person, the healing of time-pound pains can be triggered and facilitated by Qigong or any authentic form of Yoga that’s properly taught and supervised.
As Carl Jung put it: “There is no coming to consciousness without pain.”
Or, as Alan Watts put it: “There is no such thing as meditation without tears.”
An authentic system of Qigong such as Tao Tan Pai, or any of the Ehrmei Mountain White Tiger internal arts, including Flying Phoenix Qigong, can facilitate self-healing of a person if one at least the “mood of a warrior” as explicated by Carlos Castaneda and does not need tea and sympathy:
If a warrior needs solace he simply chooses anyone and expresses to that person every detail of his turmoil. After all, the warrior is not seeking to be understood or helped; by talking he's merely relieving himself of his pressure.
Qigong is not just calisthenics coupled with deep breathing and some New Age homilies—which unfortunately is a lot of what is passed around these days as Qigong—including a lot of broken traditions that have been exported from China since the early 1970’s after the Cultural Revolution decimated China’s classical culture and its classical martial, yogic, and healing arts—the bits and pieces of which then got repackaged here by self-proclaimed “energy masters” and new age quacks, including--I’m not afraid to say (because I’m beyond the age of tolerance when it comes to downstream hokum): materials that were aired on PBS.
• ART PICK FOR THIS WEEK
Renowned but reclusive and anonymous British graffiti artist Banksy finally strikes again—this time with his tribute to George Lloyd—and all victims of wrongful death by the hands of police and racist governance. He crafted the perfect imagery to deliver a powerful message: a call to action on the part of, yes, the white-controlled power structure in America to finally live up to the founding ideals of the country--equal justice and opportunity for all--and a warning that the American experiment will go up further in flames if its people don't eradicate the deeply hidden cancer cells of white racism that is prolonging the 400 year history of violent racial oppression and social injustice in America.
Powerful image below of picture frame on altar may have at least two meanings: Is it in commemoration of a black person who was wrongly killed? Or does it depict a dark hooded evil force that is being secretly revered by a white supremacist?
Banksy’s “romance” that goes with the art seems to indicate that his painting depicts the problem in America:
• SONG PICK FOR THIS WEEK
Just as last week’s song pick “Life during Wartme” by The Talking Heads was prophetic for these coronavirus pandemic times and our hunkered down in our bunkers lifestyle, this week’s pick is just as relevant—if not more—given the massive worldwide demonstrations against police brutality and social injustice, rioting, looting and arson that’s taken place across 130 cities for 12 days and counting, following the murder by police in Minneapolis of George Floyd.
“What’s Going On?” by Marvin Gaye was released in May of 1971 during the height of the Vietnam War—and was an instant No.1 hit because it captured the zeitgeist and mood of the younger generation during its years of rebellion against the Vietnam War and social injustice—and governmental authority behind. And it’s lyrics are just as relevant today as they were in 1971. And the melody and rhythm has proven to be timeless.
From my Facebook post:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10220684384531221&set=pcb.10220684400691625&type=3&theater
The song's inspiration came from Renaldo "Obie" Benson, a member of the Motown vocal group the Four Tops, after he and the group's tour bus arrived at Berkeley on May 15, 1969.[8] While there, Benson witnessed police brutality and violence in the city's People's Park during a protest held by anti-war activists in what was hailed later as "Bloody Thursday".[8] Upset by the situation, Benson said to author Ben Edmonds that as he saw this, he asked, "'What is happening here?' One question led to another. Why are they sending kids so far away from their families overseas? Why are they attacking their own children in the streets?"[8][9]
Upset, he discussed what he witnessed with friend and songwriter Al Cleveland, who in turn wrote and composed a song to reflect Benson's concerns. Benson wanted to give the song to his group but the other Four Tops turned down the request.[8] "My partners told me it was a protest song", Benson said later, "I said 'no man, it's a love song, about love and understanding. I'm not protesting, I want to know what's going on.'"[8] In 1970, Benson presented the untitled song to Marvin Gaye, who added a new melody and revised the song to his liking, adding in his own lyrics. Benson later said Gaye tweaked and enriched the song, "added some things that were more ghetto, more natural, which made it seem like a story than a song... we measured him for the suit and he tailored the hell out of it."[10] Gaye titled it "What's Going On". When Gaye initially thought the song's moody feel would be appropriate to be recorded by The Originals, Benson convinced Gaye to record it as his own song.
Mother, mother
There's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There's far too many of you dying
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today, eh eh
Father, father
We don't need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today, oh oh oh
Picket lines and picket signs
Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh, what's going on
What's going on
Yeah, what's going on
Ah, what's going on
It was such a beautiful song with meaning and relevance that even offered spiritual guidance for rebellious youth, because as Obie Benson put it, it’s a love song, about love and understanding. Everyone I knew was moved by this song. Much more so than “Something In the Air” by Thunderclap Newman in 1969 (which was a call for violent insurrection), I believe that “What’s Going On” became the first American protest song (against police brutality and the Vietnam War) to reach national and worldwide popularity and acclaim. It came out during my junior year in high school when I was having the time of my life—during an idyllic phase of my upbringing with everything going smoothly—academics, sports, social life, family vacations to La Jolla, San Francisco, and to Asia every summer, etc.
But when the Grammy Awards came in 1971, “What’s Going On” was nominated but the election committee gave the Grammy to Lou Rawls for “Natural Man” as Best R&B song by a male. While “Natural Man” was a bouncing hit with a little soul, it had no social, political, or spiritual import. It was politically neutered fluff, a safe pick for the white run music industry that wouldn’t instigate more revolution in the streets or questioning of authority. Well, at 15 years old, I wanted to throw bricks through the TV and hit the Grammy judges in their faces, as did all my high school friends. We were beside ourselves and screaming “WTF???” because we felt that the Grammys had sold out to the conservative, white-run corporate power structure that just could not recognize any song capturing the spirit and energy of the tumultuous 1960’s protests—that were protests against the wrongful deaths of young men of all colors drafted and sent off to fight and die in Vietnam and wrongful deaths of young blacks on the streets in America.
But for those of the younger generations who weren’t around when Marvin Gaye could be heard live at major arenas around the country, here is a lovely 2008 cover of “What’s Going On” by Annie Lenox (formerly of the Eurythmics) and Seal during their tribute to Marvin:
mitakuye oyasin,
(Lakota prayer that means “To all my relations” or “All are related”, or “Help and Health to all my Brothers and Sisters”)
Sincerely,
Sifu Terry Dunn