The Connection Between Music and Nature with Bob Hemenger Part 2 (of 2)
“When you get quiet and it’s just you and nature, it is a very deep, profound thing”
YOUR KEY INSIGHTS FROM Bob Hemenger
Bob Hemenger is a Colorado based Musician, Educator and Naturalist. His soulful approach to the saxophone and years of teaching how indigenous people lived with the land have led him down many interesting roads. He grew up in Michigan and has spent the last twenty five years in Pagosa Springs, CO (where he continues to grow up). Bob has performed and recorded with a long list of musicians including 5 time Grammy Award winner Victor Wooten; Darrell Scott, Zac Brown Band, The Motet, Band of Heathens, Elephant Revival, Railroad Earth and more. He is known for his ability to step onto the stage and let the music guide him. For the last 13 years he has been an instructor at Victor Wooten’s Center for Music and Nature where he helps people deepen the connection between music, nature and themselves.
Awareness
“Maybe one of the most important skills of all is this concept of awareness. As creatures, our ability to be aware of our surroundings was phenomenal. You would understand just subconsciously listening to what the birds are telling you, that there's a fox running down along the river right now, by the change of their sounds and what they're singing about. We used to be so in tune with all of that. Awareness is really a muscle, and it's atrophied over time for us. Now we're aware of other things. We're aware of our phones, and we're aware of this. It's not that we don't have any awareness, to walk through a city, you have to have some awareness of what's going on. But we were creatures that could feel and we were so connected. And we were still creatures that can feel, we just got to get back to exercising those muscles, using all of our senses, including the ones that are listed in elementary school. The more you can make yourself do that on a daily basis, the better it is.”
connection between music and nature
“Awareness is, is everywhere, in everything that we do every day. The more aware you are, the more you notice things that drive you to finding the answers, seeing the answers, seeking new questions, and new direction. So for me, there really is we talk about the connection between music and nature. And this is something I really gained through Victor Wooten. When he first came out in 1991, to the tracker school, we asked him about wilderness survival and tracking as as music. He saw a gallop pattern of a fox who put possible sticks in the back of this heat. So you could stand back and see the gait of this box, he realized that those four sticks are closer. And then those next four clothes, he was seeing 16th notes, and knowing that the animals going faster, and that kind of stuff just blew my mind. I was like, wow, I never thought of it that way. He saw these through that.
And what that did was start this journey of what is this connection between music and nature. To me to be a great musician, especially in an improv situation, or a group or a band, you must have awareness. You must be aware of the audience and how they're responding and what they're doing, and the connection you have with them.”
stillwater loons
“Yeah, so this this song is called Stillwater Loons in the 80s. I did a couple summers of research up in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. I was looking at the Common loon, a water bird. It has beautiful calls, moans, and all kinds of sounds that it makes. And it's representative of anybody that's ever sat on a lake listening to the loons at night. It's just a deep, profound thing.
I was looking at how acid rain was changing their behaviors in there. Every morning before the sun came up, I got out on this little canoe and I went into the East Coast, there was 16 territorial bears on the Stillwater reservoir. And I focused on a couple of them. And I would drift into the cove. And I would sit there quietly talking to my recorder once in a while, and document their entire day. What they were doing, how often were they preening? How often were they foraging for food? How much time they spent with their chicks? What were they doing? So it was kind of a time budget study. I would stay out until the sun came down and I battled back to the cabin.
It got me so quiet, I didn't realize how powerful that was. When you get quiet and it's just you and nature, there's a very deep, profound thing. All the sages, all the people who've found a level of depth to share, have quiet time by themselves. It doesn't have to be months and months or years and years. But find a place that you can, even if it's in a park where you can sit on a bench, and just be quiet and observe and watch, even in the middle of a city. You can watch a house Sparrow flip from tree to ledge and just tap into their little world. I encourage you to find ways in your daily life to get quiet and connect with nature that way.
For me, it was what I did for two summers. And I'm looking back on it. It was a profound moment in my life, I didn't realize it as a 20 something year old, just how powerful those two summers were. I was being by myself and connecting so deeply with this wild bird. I went and sat down to make a CD a couple years ago, and was listening to their nature sounds and I heard a loon patch. And it instantly brought me back to sitting on that lake. And I sat down and you know how it is when you write - sometimes things just show up and that one just wrote itself.
I basically co-wrote it with this bird. I took its call. And I answered on the soprano saxophone. I just have a conversation with this Loon. And I actually used to sit on the dock and play sometimes at night with my saxophone with the moon calls. So it just brought all that back for me. And I've been told it relaxes people. If you've ever experienced a loon before, you'll recognize right away some of the vocalizations and things that are on the track. Of course I have to throw in a little bit of a thunderstorm and all those things, but it is my my example of how nature and music are connected.”
Be sure to SUBSCRIBE on your favorite platform for listening to podcasts.
Please rate the podcast and leave a review, and of course share it with any friends who are ready to discover the Nature Advantage!
.