{"id":1410,"date":"2024-03-02T16:41:24","date_gmt":"2024-03-02T16:41:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yoganandafortheworld.com\/story\/?p=1410"},"modified":"2024-03-02T19:08:48","modified_gmt":"2024-03-02T19:08:48","slug":"conversations-with-ananda-ch-60-david-eby-professional-cellist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yoganandafortheworld.com\/story\/conversations-with-ananda-ch-60-david-eby-professional-cellist\/","title":{"rendered":"Conversations With Ananda — Ch. 60, David Eby, Professional Cellist"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Cellist<\/a>
David in 2012. (Photo: Barbara Bingham Photography.)
<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

David served for many years as Ananda\u2019s music director. He now lives and teaches in Portland.
\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> You\u2019ve had a long career as a cellist and music teacher. Did your involvement with music start at an early age?<\/p>\n

David:<\/strong> My dad is a Presbyterian pastor, and when I was growing up he was in charge of the youth group. We would have gatherings at our house, and I vividly remember the young voices all singing beautiful, heart-opening songs from Godspell<\/em>, Pass It On<\/em>, and Prepare Ye The Way Of the Lord.<\/em> This was when I was five or six, and I loved being in that energy.<\/p>\n

A strong seed was planted by that music that made me feel good. When I was six, I had an incredible experience during a production of Godspell<\/em>. After the performance, I got to meet the cast, and the character who played Jesus knelt and gave me one of the balloons he was handing out. In that instant, I felt an energetic connection pass from him to me, and it was an incredibly uplifting moment in my pre-musical career.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Not long after, still at age six, I started playing cello. I don\u2019t have a clear recollection of saying \u201cI want to play the cello because it\u2019s shiny and because there\u2019s a bow.\u201d It was a simple feeling \u2013 \u201cThat\u2019s my instrument. It\u2019s what I need to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

I stuck with it, and I ended up going to Eastman School of Music and getting my bachelor\u2019s in cello performance, and then I went to Indiana School of Music for a master\u2019s.<\/p>\n

In my junior year in college, I suddenly woke up to the fact that not every musician will have a brilliant solo career, accompanied by fame and fortune. I\u2019d had opportunities to play in a couple of small-town orchestras nearby, and I didn\u2019t like what I saw as a possibility for my future. The orchestras were not filled with joyful, exuberant, happy people. Many orchestras, in fact, are full of cynical burned-out musicians who are brimming with frustration.<\/p>\n

It was a rude awakening, and I went back to my dorm and thought, \u201cMy gosh, what am I doing? I want to make a difference <\/em>in this world. I don\u2019t want to be stuck playing for octogenarians in a rinky-dink orchestra!\u201d I didn\u2019t even have a choice of what music I could play, and I dreaded being stuck playing music that I didn\u2019t like.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never been a classical music aficionado. [Laughs] That\u2019s been a dark secret of mine. Don\u2019t tell anybody! Of course I\u2019m kidding, but I would go to orchestra concerts and feel, \u201cWell, it\u2019s okay. It\u2019s all right. It\u2019s a nice way to pass the time.\u201d But I never felt, \u201cOh! I have<\/em> to listen to this Mahler symphony because it will change my life!\u201d<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong, there are incredible pieces that can move me to tears and take me to a new level of consciousness. But they are few and far between, for the musicians playing in orchestras.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, there\u2019s an effort in the classical music world to get new music out in order to show the continuing vitality of orchestras, but a lot of the music isn\u2019t filled with inspiration. It\u2019s mostly written from the brain. Early in the twentieth century, there was a reaction against the Romantic period of the 1800s and early 1900s, and a tradition was set in place that when it came to composing music, the brain was the way to go. Composers were suddenly saying, \u201cOkay, we\u2019ve expressed as much as we can from the feeling of our hearts, and now it\u2019s time to tune into the brain.\u201d So they began composing all this twelve-tone music, and they thought it was the way of the future. But it charted an unfortunate course for classical music, so that if you were asked today what style you wrote in, and you said, \u201cOh, I write tonally,\u201d they would look at you and say, \u201cHmm \u2013 that\u2019s not music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Honestly, I was looked down on by other musicians for wanting something that wasn\u2019t all of the mind. At one point when I was in a new-music ensemble, we were playing all this really strange stuff, where you have to count like crazy and play these weird, obscure notes all over the place. And after a concert I remember saying to a friend, \u201cHow did you like it?\u201d She said, \u201cWell\u2026it was interesting.\u201d [Laughs] And it told me that she was a person who could tell things as they were.<\/p>\n

Intellectually, it was fine, but it wasn\u2019t something that moved me. So here I was in my junior year, thinking, \u201cMy gosh, what am I going to do?\u201d<\/p>\n

I confided to my teacher about my angst. I said, \u201cShould I join the Peace Corps? I want to make a difference in the world. I see that I\u2019m good, but there are lots of good players.\u201d In fact, the number of jobs for musicians is diminishing, because in tough economic times music is one of the first things to go. Also, musicians are getting better and better as the teaching improves. So there\u2019s an ironic situation where the demand for classical music is diminishing and the number of really excellent players is rising.<\/p>\n

My teacher said, \u201cWell, David, you have to look in your heart, and you have to do what your heart is telling you to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wondered, \u201cWhat?! What are you talking about? My heart? I don\u2019t want to go in there.\u201d<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re growing up, you have all these wonderful heart-opening experiences. And then somewhere along the line, usually in pre-pubescence, something happens that makes us lock up our feelings. And, well, I wanted to try to be at least approaching cool in some way, so I locked up that special part of me. It would come out once in a while, but it really wasn\u2019t until I came to Ananda that it opened up for me again.<\/p>\n

I said, \u201cOkay, I\u2019ll take a look inside my heart.\u201d And I had no idea what I would find there. But I opened up enough to see that, yes, music was a good thing to continue to follow, and that I should keep doing it.<\/p>\n

So I kept going, and I went to graduate school. [Laughs] And once again the nagging worries hit me, \u201cWhat am I really doing?\u201d Fortunately, at about this time I connected with a musical storytelling troupe in southern Indiana called Tales & Scales.<\/p>\n

There were seven of us, and we would tell stories with our instruments while we acted out various parts. I would have a cello strapped to me, and we would do The Pied Piper<\/em>, where I was the mayor of Hamlin, walking around playing my cello while we were moving and dancing. We performed in lots of school gyms and libraries and museums, and it really took care of my need to help save the world through music. Because I\u2019ve always seen music, and my musical career, as a way that I wanted to serve.<\/p>\n

I remember a conversation I had with the group\u2019s artistic director. I said, \u201cI think we should do something that has a really good moral, and that can really speak to the kids.\u201d The director looked at me strangely. She said, \u201cDavid, what we\u2019re doing is art for art\u2019s sake. We don\u2019t need a moral.\u201d And at that point I knew, okay, this is the beginning of the end. And before long I decided to call it quits.<\/p>\n

I had grown up with the Suzuki method, which is a fabulous ideal. Shinichi Suzuki did a great service for humanity, and especially for his country, by developing the Suzuki method. One of the things I love about it is that he said, \u201cWe are not out to create professional musicians. We are out to create beautiful people with beautiful hearts through music.\u201d And that ideal spoke to me deeply.<\/p>\n

So I got some training, and I made the transition to doing lots of teaching. In fact, I got to teach at some Suzuki institutes, but I was very disheartened to find that not everyone was on the same page. There were a number of music teachers who called themselves Suzuki teachers because they used the method, but they weren\u2019t living a life of inspiration.<\/p>\n

\"Cellist<\/a>
David conducts a large choir in the amphitheater at Ananda Village.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So I felt like the protagonist in a story that Swami loved to tell. There was a man in the Army who was behaving strangely. He would walk around the post all day, picking up pieces of paper and saying \u201cThis isn\u2019t it.\u201d The camp psychiatrist finally recommended him for a medical discharge, and when he got the paper he said, \u201cAh, this is it!\u201d<\/p>\n

When I got to Ananda and I walked into a Sunday service one morning, I just cracked wide open. From the instant I walked in the door, I knew I was home. During the chanting my eyes were streaming with tears. And then I heard Swami\u2019s music. There were six or eight people in the choir, and I thought, \u201cOh, how nice that this man Swami Kriyananda wrote some nice music.\u201d And, \u201cOh, it\u2019s really sweet.\u201d But, you know, I didn\u2019t think much of it.<\/p>\n

Then I thought, \u201cWell, maybe I could join the choir and give them some help.\u201d Little did I know that I would be the one who needed help. Poor Mari Baughman had to put up with my endless musical nitpicking. \u201cExcuse me, but this is a dotted eighth and sixteenth<\/em>, whereas we seem to be singing it in kind of a triplety way\u2026\u201d You know, just really technical, and she didn\u2019t know what to do with me, because I was still so much in my head.<\/p>\n

But we would give concerts, and I would notice that the people standing next to me might not even be singing in key, but they were in joy, and here I was thinking, \u201cI\u2019m trying to sing all the right notes, and they\u2019re just kind of singing away and feeling joy, but they aren\u2019t even singing very well. What am I supposed to do?\u201d<\/p>\n

I knew that I needed to open my heart, and the real change came when I was driving home one night after a horrible rehearsal. I was playing with the Portland Opera at the time, and the orchestra had been down in the pit, suffering for hours under this horrible conductor who didn\u2019t know how to inspire us, and everybody was just in a deep funk.<\/p>\n

As I was driving home, I thought, \u201cWell, I\u2019d better practice my solo for the concert.\u201d It was Swami\u2019s song \u201cThis Is My Son.\u201d And I sang it, and it\u2019s maybe no more than a minute long. It uses eighth notes in the diatonic scale, and it could have been written by an elementary school kid, given the notes and the rhythms as building blocks. So it\u2019s just a very simple melody, but by the end of the song I nearly had to pull off the road because my consciousness had changed so dramatically and I felt my energy rise up with an incredible vibration of awareness, energy, and consciousness. My consciousness had changed so dramatically, and here I\u2019d been playing for thirty years and nothing had changed me so dramatically and instantaneously as that simple song.<\/p>\n

I thought, \u201cOh-kay. I really need to find out what<\/em> is going on here!\u201d<\/p>\n

So I went home and dove in, singing the songs and playing them on my cello, and diving as deeply as I could, and I discovered an incredible wealth of consciousness. I really knew then that I wanted to commit my life to discovering why music can change our consciousness, and how it changes our consciousness, because it can\u2019t just be this specific set of notes \u2013 there has to be something else.<\/p>\n

\"David<\/a>
David and Madhavi Eby with daughter Caitlin<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Soon after that experience, I attended a class given by one of the more experienced Ananda musicians, and I remember sitting in the front row and listening to him sing a broad variety of songs by Swamiji. He would sing a song and then he would say, \u201cOkay, now feel for the energy. Feel for the inspiration behind the song.\u201d And I could feel<\/em> different resonances for each song, whether it was a dynamic sense of opening in my heart, or maybe in my throat chakra, or just a beaming stream of energy in my spiritual eye. For each song it was slightly different, but I was thrilled to find that there were literally all these hundreds of songs that had genuine inspiration in them.<\/p>\n

If we believe that inspiration is like a waterfall, and that its highest source is at the top, and we are listening at the bottom, our goal must be to tap into that inspiration as performers, and to climb higher and higher to bring ourselves consciously to the place of inspiration where Swamiji first felt the songs.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve worked with the choirs, I\u2019ve come to understand that the notes are simply a means to an end. If the goal were to be doing something else besides singing, we would be doing that, if it would bring us to the same place of inspiration and help us feel a change in our consciousness.<\/p>\n

Of course, the music is important, and of course it\u2019s important to present it as best we can, and to bring out the meaning of the words and shape the notes and the phrases. But underlying all of that is the inspiration. And it\u2019s truly the inspiration that gives us this direction, and that gives the music its intelligence.<\/p>\n

Chaitanya has spoken of this as well. I was amazed to hear him say things like, \u201cIt\u2019s the inspiration that can show you how to do things.\u201d But I\u2019ve learned that it is entirely true, because the music increases our intuition.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019m conducting, it would be possible to say \u201cWell, let\u2019s see, in this part you go up, then maybe we\u2019ll go down, and oh, it would be really interesting if we were soft here\u2026\u201d But I no longer approach the music that way, because I\u2019m trying to listen intuitively for the inspiration and see how it will speak to me and through me, and how it\u2019s asking the choir to sound.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s always the guiding force. After we sing a song, we make it a practice to sit and feel the energy, because we need not only to practice singing the notes, we need to practice increasing our receptivity so that we can dive deeper. And if we were to spend the whole evening just practicing the notes, we would be developing only one part of the music.<\/p>\n

For someone who\u2019s learning to sing this music, I would suggest doing that as one of the highest priorities \u2013 just take time to feel. One of the things I love is to practice a song, then sit for a minute and feel the vibration of energy start to awaken.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s similar to a musical phenomenon called \u201csympathetic resonance.\u201d Sympathetic resonance is where a string will vibrate in sympathy when you play a note on another instrument. If I sing into a piano with the sustain pedal down, I\u2019ll hear my voice resonate in the piano, because the string says, \u201cOooh, I know how to vibrate like that note.\u201d And as vibratory beings, we can vibrate with the inspiration of this music. I like to think that as we begin to vibrate, and as we start to feel our chakras vibrate, we can dive deeper into the inspiration.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll sing a melody, and I\u2019ll stop and feel, and I\u2019ll sing it again and it will go deeper. The more I tune into that inspiration, the easier it is to hear the direction and to know intuitively \u201cNo, don\u2019t do so much on this note; go a little less on that note, and a little more on this one.\u201d The more I sing or play, the more my intuition and receptivity open to receive the ability to channel the inspiration clearly.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I\u2019ll forget to work with the choir this way, and it won\u2019t go nearly as well. But then we\u2019ll sing through a song, and we\u2019ll start to feel it, and we\u2019ll sing it again, or take a phrase and dive deeper in the phrase. And then I don\u2019t have to be saying, \u201cOkay, get louder\u2026get softer\u2026slow down\u2026speed up.\u201d And it\u2019s an incredible timesaver.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had rehearsals where I\u2019ve forgotten to do that, and we\u2019ll just dive into a piece from the technical side, and the inspiration isn\u2019t nearly as deep. I\u2019ve seen in working with these Ananda choirs that the technical roughness tends to be self-correcting when we do these things to attune ourselves<\/em> ever more deeply. It\u2019s an incredible new approach for me, and it\u2019s amazing to see the results.<\/p>\n

I feel blessed to be able to offer my musical experience in this vein. Having done just about everything in the \u201cother\u201d music world, I value so much what we are doing, because I feel it\u2019s one of the most important things going on in the world today.<\/p>\n

We gave a concert in Seattle several years ago where Swami was present, and after the concert we were applauding him, and he was taking a bow, and in an instant I had a realization of how empty my life would be without this music. That instant of revelation brought me to tears, because I was so thankful that we have these tools.<\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> If someone wants to start singing this music, do they need to have any special qualifications? Who can sing the Ananda music?<\/p>\n

David:<\/strong> Everybody. Swamiji said, \u201cIf you want to get to know me, listen to my music.\u201d In other words, if you want to know his consciousness, sing this music. He also said that he would like everyone at Ananda to sing the music, because it would be very helpful for their inner attunement.<\/p>\n

The choir is a microcosm of the community. Someone said, \u201cWhat if I don\u2019t want to blend my voice? What if I don\u2019t want to blend my energies?\u201d I said, \u201cWell, that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing.\u201d Because there are lots of venues for singing solos where you don\u2019t have to worry about blending. But we\u2019ve had incredible experiences through blending our voices, and feeling how it expands our awareness. And then it begins to happen when we start listening to the voices around us \u2013 \u201cOh, there\u2019s somebody standing next to me, perhaps I could blend my voice with them.\u201d \u201cOh, there\u2019s somebody over here, too.\u201d \u201cOh, it\u2019s a whole choir!\u201d<\/p>\n

In choir practice we\u2019ll pair up and one person will start singing while the other person sings and tries to blend with their voice. Then we\u2019ll switch so the other person is leading. Then they\u2019ll both lead and co-create at the same time. Then two pairs will get together, and you go around, and one person leads each time. Then one pair leads and another pair blends, and then all four create a blend at the same time, and then eight, and then sixteen, and then the whole choir until we feel that we\u2019re all creating this music together. Our voices are individual, but the inspiration is the same for us all.<\/p>\n

To be part of a huge orchestra is one of the greatest joys, because you can feel that inner sense of expansion, and anytime we\u2019re expanded we feel much better, and it\u2019s more enjoyable. So I absolutely recommend choir highly for anybody who can sing.<\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> How can they get started? If they\u2019re a person, say, with an adequate voice, but they might not have sung formally.<\/p>\n

David:<\/strong> At the Village, the first thing would be to talk with the music director, Krishna Dewey, about hooking up with the training choir. In Palo Alto or any of the other communities they can talk with the music director.<\/p>\n

I strongly recommend Ramesha\u2019s online voice lessons. It\u2019s a wonderful resource for learning to sing well. Also, we\u2019re creating a CD of the parts for all of the songs, with sheet music binders. We\u2019ll have separate binders and CDs for sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses.<\/p>\n

As an easy way to start, I would also recommend that people buy two Ananda music CDs, Windows on the World<\/em> and An Evening in Italy<\/em>, and just start singing along with Swamiji. If you aren\u2019t an experienced singer, it\u2019s easier to start singing melodies than parts. But it\u2019s also a wonderful way to tune in to his inspiration and get in tune with the music.<\/p>\n

Years ago, Swamiji asked me to write a book about music and consciousness. Another book that I would love to write is tentatively titled The Spiritual Path of Music for Classical Musicians<\/em>. There\u2019s so much that meditation has to offer to the musician. What are we really doing as musicians? Are we just playing notes for the notes\u2019 sake? Or can music change us in beneficial ways? The keys are easier to discover within the framework of a meditation practice.<\/p>\n

When I was new to the path, I was on fire for Swamiji\u2019s music. When I told a friend about it, she looked at me in silence for a moment, and then she said, \u201cBut David, all great music does that. All great music leads us to higher consciousness.\u201d<\/p>\n

I could tell that Divine Mother was trying to speak to me through her. I love to urge people to explore this music because I love it so much. But people need bridges to help them understand where inspiration comes from, and how to get greater joy out of performing, as well as how to develop and use their intuition, and how to get beyond the ego.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David served for many years as Ananda\u2019s music director. He now lives and teaches in Portland. Q: You\u2019ve had a long career as a cellist and music teacher. Did your involvement with music start at an early age? 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