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Sandy
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This is a timeless fan tribute. The day after Thanksgiving. I'm thankful for so many things. One of them is you––my readers. My web page on Robert Mirabal has been one of the favorites among my readers for many years. Thank you for your continued readership. You'll find Robert's page and pictures below, with the stories you've come to know. Robert's page here on Spurs Magazine still has its own domain, www.robertmirabalonspurs.com. You can reach this page through the new address, or through the index on SPURS MAGAZINE. Either way will take you to the articles below. Thank you, readers new and old. And thank you, Robert, for inspiring the interest and loyalty you that you do. My very best wishes. May you live the life of your dreams!
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ROBERT MIRABAL'S MUSIC AND BOOK HERE:
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INTRODUCTION TO THIS PAGE 10/28/99: Robert Mirabal's CD, Mirabal, moved me to set up this page about a year ago. Things grow around here: I've updated the original article and added a commentary about Mirabal's new CD, Taos Tales, among other things. Many other things. Robert's page now takes on the status of a journal, which happens with artists I especially like. (See Bill Miller's page.) If you surfed here directly and haven't read the Introduction to our Spurs Magazine "Musicians & Artists We Love" section, you may wonder what this is about. It isn't a "music review". You know, some guy in an office going, "I'll give him two and 5/17th stars. Overall, the technique was derivative. The playing mediocre... My cat could have done better." I hate that. The only proper reviewer is another artist who could do it better and is offering his/her feedback in a positive way. Privately. This section of the Spurs contains essays around a musician & his/her music. When we run across someone's music, art, poetry, or writing that resonates deeply and affects our souls, something has directed us to that artist. I try to define the connection and say what wants to be said. MIRABAL:
I originally posted this article about a year ago. Some fun developments have occurred recently, which are reported at the end. So, read this again or for the first time-- enjoy! (This article was produced on a Peruvian Paso horse ranch by a horse fanatic--if you can't tell.) 9/98: I have one thing to say about the new CD, "Mirabal", by Robert Mirabal: "Riders of gaited horses! Buy this album now!!! Use link above and just buy it. While you're waiting for the CD to arrive, wire your arena for sound and saddle your horse!!" I'll tell you why-- Many of Mirabal's songs have strong, four beat rhythms-- and what do our horses have? Paca-paca- paca- paca- paca- paca? Four beat gait! If you can't imagine yourself riding to Mirabal's sound, here's a visual aide: (I'll talk more about this picture below.) I have several older albums by Robert Mirabal. "Land". "Warrior Magician." "Native Suite" with Bill Miller. These are more traditional Native American music with lots of flute. They're very good. Sophisticated. Far better than much Native and pseudo-Native music on the market. (Some of which is amazing. I have a CD featuring what sounds like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Chief Seattle's Farewell. This CD produces cognitive dissonance in banana slugs.) Robert Mirabal's latest album, "Mirabal", is different. It's rock music. I hate most rock-- as I have explained in great detail in the Introduction to the Music Section. Before buying "Mirabal", I read a very positive review which said that Robert Mirabal may end up the first Native American rock star. On "Mirabal", he combines traditional native sounds with international and contemporary rhythms. Hip hop. Rock. Dijereedo. Sound good? It did to me. I bought the CD.
I
could go on about specific songs, but I'll let you discover
them yourself. I must make a couple of comments. The song "The
Dance" could be composed to illustrate certain concepts
of Eastern philosophy. It talks about pairs of opposites. Fear
and hope. A bunch more. Then it talks about "The Dance".
If I'm understanding correctly, that's exactly the same dance
of life depicted by the Nataraj-- the Dancing Shiva. You may
be familiar with the beautiful Hindu image of a many armed man
dancing in a circle of flames. That's the Nataraj. The image
connotes the play of divine energy throughout all creation.
That dance is what our ranch name means-- the play. It's the
drama of life with the volume turned up.
I realized something else: I wanted to ride my horse!! A lot!! The powerful beat practically demanded I get on a horse. Something hit me: This is perfect "musical exercise" music! Peruvian Paso horse shows often have a "Musical Exercise" class. Just a horse, rider and music alone in the arena with 3 minutes to show their stuff-- in front of the judge, crowd and a few other riders who want to win as much as they do. This class is one of the most popular for a simple reason: It's spectacular! Some of the major trainers have gotten into the class as a way of demonstrating what they can teach a horse, so winning is rough. The horses do everything but fly. You'd better have new moves and music every year, because every year the competition gets tougher. I listened to Robert Mirabal sing and thought, "You could win the musical exercise class with this, no sweat!" I didn't have a horse that would do "Mirabal" justice. But--the image of Gail Goodwin and Debbie Tibbitt's magnificent stallion, Maracaibo, popped into my head. "Bo" is a two time National Champion of Champions Performance Stallion and undefeated in Musical Exercise Classes. If you've ever seen him perform, you'll never forget him. His trainer, Paddy Korb of Performance Horses International, has Bo doing high school dressage now. This was a horse that could really dance to "Mirabal!" I sent the CD to Debbie and Gail, who loved it as much as I did.
A FUN STORY: Sending "Mirabal" to Debbie and Gail kicked off a fun series of events. They chose "The Dance" for Maracaibo's performances in 1999 and 2000. His trainer, Paddy Korb, developed some spectacular moves for musical exercise classes and his other appearances. Yes, Bo is an equine celebrity! Maracaibo and Paddy perform for very large charity events--with 10,000 to 12,000 people watching-- and on TV. Bo has already performed to Robert Mirabal's music several times this year! Their most exciting performance occurred in May, 1999. Paddy Korb rode Maracaibo to "The Dance" and thrilled more than 3,000 people at the Festival of the Spanish Horse at Los Angeles' super equine facility, Griffith Park. The Festival was a potpourri of Spanish horses, horses descended from animals originally raised on the Iberian Peninsula. The breeds included Andalusians, Lusitanos, Paso Finos, Peruvian Pasos, and Spanish Mustangs, to name a few. Some pretty fancy equines. Well, people went nuts over Maracaibo's performance! I wish I could show you the performance-- the best I can do is these photos. You'll have to play your CD of "The Dance" for effect.
Gail and Debbie told me that people went crazy over Bo's performance and Robert's music. They also told me that a number of videos had been made of the performance. I thought, "I bet Robert Mirabal would like to see Bo dance to his music." So I e-mailed Robert and found that, yes, he would. Ah. The fun began. Has a seemingly simple thing ever become unbelievably complicated? Do you ever feel like the entire universe is against you? That's because it is. Getting the tape to Robert became something like finding the Holy Grail. This is how the world works: As soon as I really wanted one, all the tapes disappeared or had problems. For instance, take the tape that Diana's family made. While Maracaibo and Paddy were performing in the center of the arena, Diana Whisenant and her uncle were circling the huge ring on two very fine Peruvian horses. The thought was, "The arena's huge and Bo can't be everywhere. How about giving folks something to look at when Bo is on the other side?" So Diana and her family were drafted to ride around. If you were sitting on the sidelines videoing your relatives, you'd focus on them, right? Which is what Diana's family did. The tape they made is like our family videos. You hear the crowd screaming and Robert's music going like crazy. You see Diana and her uncle riding around. Period. Every once in a while, between shots of the arena's dirt floor or its ceiling, the announcer's stand and the people in the next seats, you see Maracaibo shoot through, doing something fantastic. Side passing the length of the arena, about 3 miles. Doing a "caracol"-- a snail. This move comes from Peruvian bullfighting. In the old days, bullfighting wasn't done with a committee. There was one guy on a horse with a lance. He fought the bull. The horse learned to turn very fast. To maneuver off his front end, rather than off the rear legs like a Quarter Horse. Anyway, Diana's was a nice tape, but didn't really show Maracaibo. A
better tape was shot by Debbie and Gail's friends, but they
moved, putting their tape in a box somewhere. It's never been
found. Maybe never will. And the official Festival tape never
came out, or at least it hasn't yet,
Meanwhile, we planned a trip to Taos and could deliver a tape in person, except that Robert was touring with the Spirit show and wasn't home. But that didn't matter. I was excited to meet his mother-in-law, Marlene, who is a horsewoman and apparently enjoys our website. (Hi, Marlene!) Debbie and Gail got me two copies of Diana's tape just in time. We were ready to deliver. All four of us Nathan's converged on Taos, ready to meet the Mirabal relatives-- We were very excited, as a matter of fact. We stopped at the Taos Pueblo -- which I will write about later on this page-- and were wildly impressed. Finally, we took off for Marlene's house, tape in hand. And got lost. I thought I took good directions... We didn't have a cell phone and couldn't call. We arrived somewhere-- at a very empty house which we thought was the right one. "Oh, we must have spent too much time at the Pueblo. They probably had to leave." So we went back to where we were staying, sadly. Meanwhile, Marlene and family and Robert and Dawn's little girl were down the road, waiting for us. Marlene had her horse saddled. She rode it around. And around. Waiting. And waiting. And waiting. When we finally touched bases, Marlene was laid up with cataract surgery ... And we were leaving.
Do things like this ever happen to you? No matter how hard you try, everything screws up? My dad used to say, "Sometimes you can't win for losing." This has been one of those years. In a year like this, the entire Mirabal clan could have been sitting in their front yard, mounted on elephants, and we probably would have missed them. In yoga, we say that Ganesh, the playful destroyer of obstacles who sometimes throws them in your path just for fun, has been up to his tricks. Whatever. But-- we did get to meet Dean Johnson, Robert's brother-in-law and Marlene's son. (Hi, Dean!) We met a very nice person and gave him the tape. He came to our place, by the way. Probably figuring that we couldn't get lost in our own house. Dean was going go send the tape to Robert in Chicago that day, but the person who was going to take it had already left when Dean got home. Of course. This story isn't about things working out right. Perhaps some day, Robert will see the fleeting glimpses of Bo dancing on that video. And Debbie and Gail promise to do their own taping next year, Robert. They'll get you a decent tape. Really. Before the year 3000.
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Taos Tales was a long time coming into this lady's life. While Robert Mirabal and his fellow musicians were composing and creating, I was going through a number of trials, lovingly detailed in the companion article to this, THE LONG ROAD TO TAOS. To summarize The Long Road to Taos in a sentence, the universe made sure that I remembered the last year of the millennium by throwing everything from plague to pestilence in my path. Cancer. You name it. Ending with my mother becoming dreadfully ill just before we visited Taos in October. The bottom line about Taos Tales is: I needed this album.
Back when I first posted this page a year ago, I was pleasantly surprised to receive and e-mail from Robert Mirabal, thanking me for the review of his CD, Mirabal. He talked about a project he was working on, which looked at the "death and birth" occurring as the the ancient culture of Taos Pueblo changed. The theme fit what was going on in my own life: Trying to keep what was good of the old and shape change so it was beneficial. When I finally heard Taos Tales, it slipped into a groove in my soul like it had been custom made. Which I knew it would before I heard a note. This CD moved me enough to write two companion pieces to this article. One, the already mentioned Long Road To Taos, is about my personal struggles and what came of them, and the powerful impact the Taos Pueblo had on our family. The second companion piece, The Journey, combines the themes of Robert Mirabal's music and his writings inside the CD jacket, and my reactions to them, with original photos to illustrate the spiritual path. The Journey deals with the most fundamental issues of human being. Many thanks to Robert Mirabal for inspiring these two pieces. My writing here relates more or less directly to Taos Tales itself. Words about music. Kinda silly, writing about music. Music is so much deeper, so much more profoundly affecting than the written word. Music enters you, vibrates inside of you. Outside of you. You can't escape it. It's not just a creature of logic. The mind. The intellect. Music dives far deeper. Sounds trigger memories, smells, sensations. A heart beat. A mother's kiss. The cry of a hawk. Music touches and involves you whether you want it to or not.
Taos Tales sounds like it might be kids' stories. Cute bits about a charming place. It isn't. Listen. Read the CD liner. Taos Tales is philosophy. In it, Robert Mirabal and his fellow musicians raise the fundamental questions of human existence: What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? Can we survive rape and predation? Have we learned anything from the past? Can we? Will we survive? Robert provides an answer: Love. Love is the only way we can make it. What is the future? Our children. And our love for each other. Our caring for the planet. The CD honors the dead-- our ancestors, who are always available to guide us if we just listen. And Taos Tales gives us a quiet season at the end-- time to be still and reflect. Life cannot be lived consciously without stillness and silence. A pretty ambitious agenda for a CD. Taos Tales is beautiful. How do you define beauty? Drawing upon my ancient course work in fine arts, things are beautiful when they conform to the five principles of design: They have balance, proportion, rhythm, scale and harmony. A piece of art can be beautiful and roar with anger. Be a bloody massacre. Scare you to death. Like Picasso's "Guernica". Ingmar Bergman's film, "The Virgin Spring". And Robert Mirabal's song, "Tony and Allison". Dark and painful themes, but beautiful because they are well-designed. Works of art create tension, then release it. To be great, art must not merely be well designed. It must express a human theme powerfully. Bring up essential pain, essential meaning. The deeper questions of life. Taos Tales does this. I felt satisfied by it, like I'd had a good meal. A meal for the soul.
Taos Tales is beautiful: It's parts relate to each other, leading the ear, mind and soul in a satisfying way. Some cuts are very traditional, others rock softly, reminiscent of Mirabal. The musicians are excellent craftsmen. The flute and cello are wonderful, and the effects-- heartbeat, howling wolf-- consistently add to the music. It's a musical story moving forward like a brook. Still sometimes, rushing others. Some cuts are quite catchy: The refrain from Skinwalker's Moon grabbed my mind. (What's a Skinwalker? Great word. It holds a story, I'm sure.) Acid Rain Dance rocks. Other songs evoked deep feeling: The Bataan Death March and Ornate. I felt the same sadness I felt in the Taos Pueblo when I heard these pieces. The sadness reminded me of Ravi Shankar and what he can do on a sitar. "This raga evokes a profound melancholy," Ravi said of one of his compositions. It did. Day of the Dead is downright scary-- which it should be. And Quiet Season commemorates the time at the Taos Pueblo when the earth rests. So does the listener in this lovely piece. The haunting heartbeat is lovely. In Hunting Party, the three beats of a galloping horse show up intermittently, making the hunt seem real.
WOW! IS IT SPIRITUAL! OR-- THE HIGHEST PRAISE I CAN GIVE: I found Taos Tales extremely calming. This is very important, given my nervous system. My nature is fiery and I go very fast. This CD slowed me down. More than that, it allowed me to effortlessly complete the tasks I hate most in the world. Tasks so horrifying that I have been known to go into a deep depression, close to a coma, contemplating them. Yes, while listening to Taos Tales, I was able to wash the dishes, clean up my desk, pay the bills and balance my checkbook. Easily! If you saw my house, you would know I am not kidding. I sometimes wish it would burn down just so I could escape. But! But! One playing of Taos Tales, and I found myself, bustling around, cleaning. Balancing. Paying. Voila! All done! Painlessly! Many people have erroneous thoughts about spirit. "I had a vision and it changed my life!" "His music put me into a trance for three days!" "I saw ET's space ship land and take off!!" While visions are pleasant enough, true spirituality rests in doing the job in front of you. If you are too spiritual to deal with the outer world, you will have visions of another kind: The Bill Collector! The Eviction Notice! Repo Man! These visions will change your life for sure! Taos Tales moved my spirituality in a direction it needed to go.
THANKS FOR ANOTHER THING: Profound thanks to Robert Mirabal for producing non addictive music, in the sense of neither promoting or praising addictive substances. [Readers have indicated that Robert's work itself is addictive. Oh, well.] Nowhere in his work does Mirabal sink into singing about or praising the ever-present, socially approved ways we have of getting away from what we're supposed to be doing here on the planet. Addictions! To almost anything! Popular music swims with them: Love/sex/relationship addiction. "Baby, Baby, don't leave me! I'll die without you." Almost all country western music goes for that one. Addiction to emotional states: Rage is very popular these days. If you are raging, you don't have to notice that your life is falling apart and you're not actually doing anything about it--or the state of the world. Which is what you're supposedly raging about. Musicians invoking rage usually also grab onto the boring and overused traditional addictions--drugs and alcohol. Talk about trite. Almost anything can be made into an addiction and someone will sing about it. None of this is good for you. The key is noticing if music brings you up and makes you feel elevated and better about yourself. Or does it make you feel depressed, no good? Like you've indulged in a naughty bit? You won't find any music on this site like that-- Including Mirabal's. Thanks. Robert!
WORDS
ON WORDS: Language and the Brain First off, what makes us human? Most basically: We use words. Human beings use symbols-- words-- for meaning, reality, and things, and we combine words to form language. We use spoken and written language-- and that sets us apart from animals. (Above animals? I don't think so. My horse is one of the honest creatures I know. My dog could give seminars in loyalty. And there's a gorilla named Koko who lives in my old home town, Woodside, CA, who can speak in universal sign language. She talks. Is she still an animal?)
Well, Koko the gorilla aside, most philosophers would agree we humans are apart from animals because we use words. Symbols. The word implies meaning, consciousness, and light. Awakening. Words and language are crucially important to culture. Why? Well, fresh from my older daughter's college course work in neurobiology and stale from my very old studies in counseling: Language shapes your brain. Consider a baby. Pops into the world. Lots of noise, sensation, sights. Buzzing confusion. Baby is programmed to succeed in the world-- her brain immediately starts creating order. "My toes are here. Mom is that lady. Hang on to her-- she's got lunch." No words yet. Intention. Will. The minute that baby can, she'll be saying things. Training her parents to behave properly. They'll be going nuts, "Oh! Did you hear that? She said, 'Mama!' Isn't she brilliant!" The baby learns if she says more, she can train her parents to do more, grinning like fools all the while. Eventually, she will have them completely trained and leave home. As the baby learns words, nerve impulses jump across the synapses in her brain. Paths are forged. Paths become stronger. Become superhighways. And Wham-o-- She can really talk-- and she's got a way of looking at the world. It's inherent in the structure of her language! Language is the first filter through which we view the world. The structure of language-- the way the verbs and nouns and parts of speech fit together-- shapes how we see the world. There's a finite time to gain language, too, because it's literally branded into the nerves of the brain. The brain "gels up" pretty fast. For instance, kids can learn to be totally fluent in two languages if they do it before 7 years of age. That means that a native speaker in each language would think the kid was a native speaker. After seven, the pathways in the brain are too fixed to allow total learning of another language. We can learn languages, obviously, but we'll have an accent. A native speaker will be able to tell that isn't our native language. Neurobiology.
Language is vitally, vitally important to culture. It shapes culture, holds it together. The speakers of a particular language see the world differently than speakers of other languages. That's why conquerors have typically ripped the native languages away from people they conquer -- That's the easiest way to wipe out a civilization. Destroy a language, a way of seeing the world disappears. Makes imposing the majority culture easier. That's why it's so important for minority cultures to keep languages going. To resurrect them. That's why Native tribes emphasize the learning and using old languages. Why the founders of Israel resurrected an ancient tongue-- Hebrew-- as the language of their new, free state. That's why my ancestors, the Icelanders, are fanatics about it. Iceland is a place where not too many people go. They've kept their language pure: Icelandic is 10th century Norse. Modern Icelanders can read thousand year old sagas in the original language. That's what they speak and write. Keeping the language pure is so important to them that they've got a committee that makes up new, Icelandic words for modern inventions. Whereas in Spanish you get telefono for telephone and computador for computer, in Iceland, you get a word in Icelandic that doesn't sound anything like the English and means something particularly Icelandic. Some of the names are absolutely hysterical. "Telephone" might be ancient words meaning "a woman who gossips too much and butts into things." The language has stayed distinct with its own point of view, not corrupted by the worldwide tendency to turn into a verbal strip mall. Who do Icelanders hate more than anyone? The last I heard, the answer was Bill Gates. Why? Icelandic kids have computers. They get on the Net. Use Windows. Bill Gates refuses to translate Microsoft programs into Icelandic! There's only 250,000 of them, why bother? It's not a big enough market! He won't even let them do it if they pay for it! Grrr.... Language is very important. What is Iceland without its language and culture? Just a bunch of blond-headed people sitting on a cold rock, that's what!
THE WORD-- what you say. VOICE -- how you speak. Voice is about making sound, about vibration. It's very intimate. Listen to Mirabal's voice as he speakers and sings. To describe it, I'm going to quote something I said about my good friend, Mark Kennedy, leader of Dreamtime Continuum, in an article on this website. Of voice and Mark's voice, I said, "As I listen to Mark Kennedy, thoughts arise about the human voice and how truthfully it displays the soul behind it. Think of it: In speaking or singing, we pull air, that element on which we are most dependent, into our lungs. We swirl it around, keeping it near our hearts. We hold the air a moment, and then we release it into the universe. It carries our unique vibration, picked up from our most intimate depths. Our voice never lies: It sounds just like we do. Those who hold hatred and rage inside put those out. Those stuck behind envy or revenge, lack and doubt, register those in our ears. Souls who carry peace and love sing the only notes they can. Mark Kennedy's voice entered my ears like a caress, touched my heart like a kiss." I don't know Robert Mirabal, but I have the feeling I would like him if I did-- just by the timbre of his voice. It has a truthfulness. A ring of authenticity. The crystal quality of coming from his heart. (Actually, everything I talk about in this website has the same quality. You might as well pick up all the CD's I write about. Musicians & Artists We Love.) Voice, words, language: what we say. All very important. All express who we are. *** So, my friends, that's all I have to say about Taos Tales. Best wishes,
AUTHOR SANDY NATHAN IS THE WINNER OF SEVENTEEN NATIONAL AWARDS!
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