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May-June 2008
FOOD IS MUSIC
By David King
Food and music have a lot in common. Throughout history,
food grown in the community, like music in the community, was not just the best
- it was the only food or music available. The last one hundred years witnessed
a transition as these homegrown resources have been replaced by commodities for
mass consumption.
The effects of both have been similarly corrosive. Lots of
people can eat and hear the same stuff, but is that the best we can do? Most of
the food we eat from the market, especially the pre-packaged microwave and
instant meal items are composed of a chemist's mutation of corn and soy beans.
The varieties of plants we actually eat have been whittled down from hundreds
to a few that modern science can manipulate into different concoctions with a
box and a label. The Los Angeles FM dial reveals a similar phenomenon. Most
radio listeners are given sparse choice from music that has been homogenized to
conform to a format that the recording companies believe will ‘sell.'
Even before they developed agriculture, human beings
composed and performed songs. Music is the perfect accompaniment to raw trial
mix for a weary hunter gatherer, and later comforted the back sore cultivator. In his provocative book Deep Economy, The Wealth of
Communities and The Durable Future, Bill McKibben describes music and its
relationship to agriculture, "... in 1900, in the state of Iowa alone, which was then crowded with small
farmers, there were also thirteen hundred local opera houses, all of them
hosting concerts." Similarities with what has happened to food and music, he
points out, are found throughout modern life and have a severe destructive
effect on the "happiness quotient" society now experiences.
The influence of government and a veritable army of
economists have declared the small farm to be a relic of the past as farmers
are told to "big or get out." But big farms, like big radio, lack soul . "Consolidation,"
the watchword for most our collective adulthood (Clear Channel, Wal-Mart, Cargill
come to mind as apropos) are now being given a run for our souls, if not our
money, by local institutions springing up, like farmers markets or the
quintessential ‘local' radio station (which we don't really have anymore, but
McKibben thinks they are just around the corner again). The advantages of
"local" are touted by some bestselling insightful authors, mostly writing about
food and the ecology, but it turns out, by an astonishing act of fate, that
music is right in there with the rest of what makes a culture tick. It is no
accident that most farmers' markets feature live music, sometimes jazz,
sometimes folk, sometimes a mix, but the market managers seek to find the
balance that reflects their market.
You can't get any more local than pulling your own fiddle
out of its case and drawing a bow across the strings for your own enjoyment. Even
if it isn't perfect, there is a joy, a sense of life in that mere action that
isn't present in listening to a recording of someone else play the same thing,
no matter how perfectly. Like the man who cuts his own wood, there is a twice
warmed soul in home made music. Gardeners know the same is true for food.
An accounting is coming: food prices are already on the
rise. Reports indicate that the price of food in supermarkets has more to do
with the price of diesel than any other factor. Food brought in from a distance
is expected to be continually more expensive. Food relying on corn as its basis
is going to get even higher in price faster as more corn is diverted for fuel.
This is but the tip of the zucchini - the world's oil supply is limited. It
helps to remember that vegetables can be grown with a lot less water than lawn.
The weight of economics is on the side of growing as much of your own food as
you can, or at least making friends with a local gardener!
We may never get away from whoever the current
industry-hyped pop star is and we may never completely leave the supermarket
behind, but every little bit we can do to support our own creativity and to
nourish ourselves on all levels is a good thing. With that, we feed our soul
and honor the culture of who we are. When faced with challenges, creatively the
solutions often leave us better off than we were before. The current crises
could be local music's big break.
Rosin that bow up as soon as you get the tomatoes planted.
Grandson of a Great
Plains farmer, David King is the
Garden Master at the Learning Garden, on the campus of Venice High School.
He shares his love of the land and music through teaching, writing and playing
in a folk/country band. Contact:
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