How to Know: Spirit Music - Crazy Wisdom, Shamanism And Trips to The Black Sky

By Ken Hyder

“The result is a seductively uncomplicated lattice of musical and spiritual cosmology from someone who has immersed himself in some of the most remote cultures on Earth.”

Alex Neilson, The Wire Magazine

“Although not a long read, it is a very enjoyable one, frank and funny and often profoundly deep.”

Nicholas Breeze Wood, Sacred Hoop Magazine.

Ken Hyder’s memoir is unusual. It is short, and tight. And it reflects the way he gained insights along his path...from Dundee, Scotland to the heart of Siberia and the shamans of Tuva, on the border with Mongolia.

He said: “Of course I read books. Lots of books. And I learned a lot from books. But what really struck me was that all along the way, everyone who gave me insights did it and a simple, brief way.

“They did not go on and on, deluging me with words, nor binding me with coils of instructions.

“So that is why the memoir is brief and to the point. It is more about showing how to find the knowledge rather than giving a booklist.”

He argues that most of what we need to know, we already know inside ourselves. But we are unaware of that fact. So we need to know how to find the knowledge which is often so simple, we just don’t see it.

Hyder examines how spirit manifests itself in different musics – including Gaelic psalm singing which was the fore-runner of American gospel - and how musicians working in spirit music put themselves in the right frame of mind to create that fusion of spirit and music.

He says: “There is no single right way, though there are plenty of wrong ways. Individuals need to find the right way for themselves.

“Some people may do better with peaceful meditation, while others will thrive better on active meditation.”

The insights of Siberian shamanic practice were gained just as shamans were coming out into the open after decades of oppression under the old Soviet regime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ken Hyder
• Release date: Nov 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310273827

Ken Hyder

Ken Hyder is a London-based freelance Home Affairs correspondent specialising in policing, drugs, and race for a range of national daily and Sunday newspapers. He is also an cutting-edge musician who has made over 30 albums, starting with five albums fusing jazz with the music of his home country, Scotland, latterly collaborating with folk-based musicians from quite differing backgrounds - Tibetan and Japanese monks, Siberian shamans, South American and South African musicians. In 1990 - with another player - he did the biggest tour of Russia by any British musician up till then. They played throughout the country from Leningrad to Vladivostok. Later, Ken began studying shamanic music in Yakutia, Buryatia, the Altai and Tuva in Siberia. He performs and records with a shaman from Tuva, and that connection made it much easier for him to gain the confidence of local shamans who were very generous with the information they passed on. Lots more detail, with videos and tracks here - www.kenhyder.co.uk

Book preview

How to Know

Spirit Music – Crazy Wisdom, Shamanism And Trips To The Black Sky

A memoir by Ken Hyder

Copyright 2013 by Ken Hyder

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Acknowledgements.

This book is intended to be short, and to focus directly on the points I want to address. In part, that comes from the style of the dozens of people who have taught me some of the most important things I have learned so far.

Most of them didn’t waste time. They summed up what they had to pass on in short statements, but also often without words … by example … even by gestures.

My grannie, Helen Kitt and my father, Joe Hyder started it rolling in Dundee with passion, and a grounding in Scottish common sense. In Edinburgh, I enjoyed religious and philosophical discussions with Church of Scotland luminary Lord MacLeod of Fuinary. And on coming south to London, my drum teacher, John Stevens introduced me to a whole lot of different ways of listening to, and playing music.

When my music started to cross into Spirit Music, along came a whole heap of players who helped me intensely. I’m thinking in particular of Davie Webster, John Rangecroft, Maggie Nicols, Marcio Mattos, Elton Dean, Nick Evans, Jim Dvorak who introduced me to several groups of Tibetan monks with whom I toured and recorded, Dick Gaughan, Pete McPhail, z’ev (flo copy), Andy Knight, Scipio - and Tim Hodgkinson with whom I toured all the way from Leningrad to Vladivostok for the first time.

The man who organised that first tour in 1990 changed our lives. Boris Podkosov from Khabarovsk, in what was called the Soviet Far East, introduced us to a hitherto underground, almost secret network. Everywhere we went, we met people who showed us their local culture, music, geography, and ways of being with a remarkable openness. I’m thinking of people like ex-Spetsnaz paratrooper Spartak Chernish of Angarsk, near Lake Baikal and a wildly friendly team of local people like the eccentrically creative pianist Boris Tolstobokov who devised a way of improvising with the 12-tone scale. And Vladimir Rezitsky of Arkhangelsk, up near the Arctic Circle, with whom I played, and with whom we visited the Gulag archipelago of Solovki in the White Sea. Gipsy singer Valentina Ponomareva’s take on the Russian Soul was memorably insightful.

Later on, Eugene Kolbashev of Barnaul organised concerts in central and southern Siberia, and took us deep into the Altai mountains on the Mongolian border.

However the place which is my second soul home is Tuva in southern Siberia. The Tuvan musicians were generous with their time, knowledge and friendliness. Sainkho Namtchylak, Albert Kouvezin, Alexei Saaya are some of the Tuvan musicians who reached out. And of course my brother, Gendos Chamzyryn, with whom I have been developing a Spirit Music alongside Tim Hodgkinson in a trio – K-Space - which has lasted about 20 years, and which feels more like a family of brothers on the inside.

Alongside that development, and indeed driving that development are the Teachers of the Steppe School – the shamans of Tuva, foremostly Kenin Lopsan Mongush, Kungaa-tash ool-Buu and Kara-ool Dopshun-ool. Their teaching is the cake under the icing I had constructed in the years getting ready for the events I had no idea would transpire. The instruction they gave was Zen-like in its stripped-down, simplicity. But so deep, that it was often months later, back home in Britain, that I more fully realised what they were imparting.

Their teaching made everything clear, and it provided the tools necessary to forge a unity in Spirit and Music.

Finally, thanks to Brian Morton, who gave his time and expertise to clarifying my own expression of these thoughts and experiences.

1. Spirit Music introduction

For me, the question was never - what is spirit?

It was more a question of answering - how can I access it? And what can I do with it?

Later when I started honing in on the kind of music I wanted to play, it was a question of how can I blend music and spirit together?

For a long time, spirit and music were separate quests. The spirit came first by about two or three years. When I was around 11 or 12, I joined the Scripture Union. It was a Christian thing. At that time, in Dundee at least, Buddhism and other vehicles to spirituality had not penetrated sufficiently, so Christianity was really the only option.

After a year or so of reading the gospels in the Scripture Union, it was clear to me that Christianity was not a worthwhile patch for pursuing spirituality. The morality was fine, but to me, few of the professional practitioners or the followers seemed blessed with spirit. But I was a Proddy (protestant), and I thought I should give the Catholics some attention. Just in case.

I sneaked into their Sunday services, and it was a bit of an eye-opener. I liked their showbiz and smoking thurifers, and I also took to sitting at the back of their chapels during the quiet times of day. The atmosphere was much better than in Proddy churches.

I even went up to Lawside convent, knocked on the door and asked a nun about the difficulty I had in believing in spirit via Christianity. I must have been 14 or 15 at the time, and I remember her