Music Is

A Poem by Jazz Bassist William Parker

Music is the abysmal rainbow that bridges endless galaxies.

It is the waterfall flowing through the desert,
the mother, the offspring, the ointment, the foot and hand of the wind.

All of nature is music: the many colored skies, space and planets.

Music is every wondrous canyon in a miracle’s dream. Music is evolution, the seed of change.

Music existed and exists with or without human beings.
No race invented music.

Music is a form of energy, like the sun.
Music is the voice through which spirits speak, using a language that is beyond words,
a music that is beyond notes.

Music informs us with a reality that is scented with the eternal.

Music is the tireless swan knitting landscapes of hope.
Music is the cry of life and death at birth and conception, the heart beat, the pulse, the healer and the healed, the color portrait, the magical stone and the magical mists living side by side.

Music is the chirping of birds; is the grass beneath the cracked shells.
Music is dance and the dancer. It is poetry and the poet. Music is all children. Music is hot cornbread. Music is the kindness one finds in a crayon drawing.

Music is wood touching word.
Imagine a doorbell made of light.
Imagine the house that we would enter if we rang that bell.
Music is the rhythm of butterflies.

Music is hungry stomachs being filled. Music is justice.
Music is blue water, blue whales, and blue cornmeal.
Music passes through some while others reject the image.
The best music teacher is an oak tree. Music cannot be taught.
Music is alive. Music is a pasture of yellow grass 6-foot tall.
Music tolls from the earth and lands on the sky of another universe.
Music is drone over the Ganges.

Music is a snowflake floating on the ocean.
Music is silence.

There is no music in capitalism and imperialism. Music is the answer and the question.
Particles of music cannot be measured by scientific instruments. Music vibrates. Not all music vibrates at the same rate. Music is radiant. The blessing, the understanding, the fundamental eye revealing the surrender in the realm of brightness.

Music sometimes manifests itself as sound.

Music’s only wish is the well-being of all human beings.
Music exists to feed the spirit. Music is no war, not ever, for any reason.

Music is the fertilizer and the seed. Every second we live, music is dying for us.
Music will save the day. Music must save the day.
Music is the mother to the motherless, father to the fatherless.
Music is home to the homeless.


Dance music, wedding music, funeral music, march music, waltz music, wood music, steel music, voice music, tree music, ocean music, soil music, baking bread music, pastoral music, union music, trance music, religious music, perpendicular music, circle music, square music, Zion music, Shinto music, Buddha music, Islamic music, Hindu music, Winti music, music for Damballah, Erzulie, Ogun, Ghede, Asacca music for Quetzalcoatl, for the Adena Hopewell, music for the Red Paint people, music to make the moon laugh and cause the sun to turn blue. Music is the incubation of joy.

A symbol of music is Kokopelli, the hump-back flute player...

Music is the lasting response, the elixir. Music is nothing; music is everything.
There is more music in a baby’s smile than in a thousand symphony orchestras.
Music lives in the flute mountains that are made of melted diamonds. We drink them.
Our eyes sparkle like petals of a black rose.

Music to plant beans, to plant corn. Music the burning throne, the prodigal daughter, and rain cloud over the profound branches. The cry of praise, the memory, the entrance to the fire, oupas chanting.

The effect pulls on gravity.
Through music life is altered.
This energy, if visible, might resemble bands of light stretched
across fields of flowing ash going past layers of infinite habitation.

- William Parker