Why music?

Salomé Rateau

March 2019 

Memories

As far as I can remember I have been drawn to the world of sounds. Not just music - sounds. 

I grew up in the ‘countryside’, a foot in the sea, a foot on the land. On my mum’s side are what I refer as land farmers, on my dad's side are sea people - sea farmers. On one side we collect crops, on the other sea creatures. It seems bucolic and romantic to expose this as such. There is nothing romantic about growing in the countryside. There is the smells, the raw smell of animals (chicken, cows, donkeys, fish, shells…), the smell of the mud and the smell of the salt, the sea which is different when it goes to America (what I use to imagine), or when it comes back from its voyages around the globe. The Sea I should write, this enigmatic, powerful, picturesque and frightening element. Beautiful and lethal. Swallowing boats and people as one would drink their afternoon tea - with calm. 

The sound. It first came from the Sea. The waves, the crashes of water, the masts of the boats, the shackles and the thousand birds. The temper of the water had a phenomenal influence on people’s behaviour. It could create euphoria, happiness, joy, or drawn you in one of those gloomy, heavy, syrupy day. Very early, I understood that the sound was a seasonal cycle. The birds were my signals. Swallows would come for my birthday in April and depart  in August, Geese would pass by in mid August too, and we would wave at them and shout ‘Bon Voyage!’. And I would dream about Africa for the next few weeks, and I would dream about the lands across the seas… 

Mysterious, enigmatic, fantastic worlds of wonders. 

My mum was a village teacher, with her own methods - we could call them modern or groundbreaking, she was just adjusting to the pupils she had in front of her. I would often be at the back of her class when I was not feeling well, or when my daycare was not available. I remember that one day one of the pupil came with a cockerel he had found on the way to school and she spent the whole day studying birds, farm animals, their behaviours, what did they eat, how could we take care of him (the farmer it belonged to gave it to the school eventually!), drawing, painting. It became the mascot of the village...it was certainly the most educated cockerel! 

What I cannot remember is why I was obsessed with music and with violin in particular. My mum had a collection of percussive instrument in her class, xylophones, wood blocks, whistles and a guitar. Nothing that resembles a bowed instrument. I didn't even knew how it sounded like. And one day, we went to a music shop and there it was, a violin presented behind the counter and I said ‘I want that’ (Je veux ça). I was 4, and had absolutely no idea why and what I was putting myself into. To my eyes it was beautiful and could only sound as beautiful at it looked like. My mum then started to put Radio Classique on, to see how I would respond. I was very attentive. But there were no violin teachers in the village. She thought it was a phase. She bought me a plastic violin, one of those yellow Playschools with 4 melodies pre recorded. To play them, I had to press a button on the neck, and stroke the bow on the instrument. It was probably horrible, and the melodies very short. I played it obsessively for hours, and soon drove my parents mad with it! 

I was not a nonverbal child, but nearly non verbal. I thought words were imperfect. I thrived for physical contacts or I would read people’s expressions more than tried to understand what they were saying with their awkward language. And I had a disabled big brother, who communicated with me without words. We didn’t need much of them to understand each other. My brother, Allan, is probably one of the key to my path. I tried to teach him how to read when I started to read, because I thought teachers couldn’t understand him and I could. He made some effort for me that he would not do for a stranger. He still could not read a book, but at least he could read directions on the road, recognise the names of the villages. He was different, and so was I because of this special upbringing and probably because I was too, a little different. When I started the violin, I was about 6 or maybe a little less, I wanted to communicate concepts, abstracts, things that I had no words for. My family was not sentimentalist, we would not talk about feelings, positive or negative, relationships, anything related to the psyche. I wanted to express my emotions, my frustrations, my enthusiasms, my eloquence… but without words. What a programme. Because my world was surrounded by natural sounds (supernaturals even sometimes!) I embarked in the music journey. I always wondered why the sounds would strike me more than the visual arts. I was also surrounded by beautiful landscapes after all. 

Years later, one of my professors pointed out that one could not escape from music, the resonance, the physics of it would make our bones reverberate, so even if one would cover their ears, their body would still ‘listen’. 

So it started, the musical journey. My musical journey. A mixture of scientific datas and poetic parabolas. A physical experience as well as an experiment in physics. I spent all my school years being fascinated by mathematics and physics and their applications, and playing music as something not serious, just to get rid of my emotions. I did not take music seriously, because in my family music was not serious. It was a hobby, something on the side, not substantial, not necessary to survive. I would get out of it at some point. There were a few people who would support me, a very few in a large family, and they would not do it out loud. The out loud comments I had were negative (I was a clown, I was going to end up playing under the bridges in the street like a Gypsy, it was not worth my precious time). My Mum, my Grand-dad, and my Grand-uncle. They would just listen, and say nothing. Because there were no words to express what they were feeling. I could see in their eyes, the little sparkle, a mixture or pride and thankfulness. No words, no hugs, no kisses at the end of a concert. Just something in their eyes. When I needed a full size instrument, my Grand-dad bought it for me, because of that sparks, because he knew that I did not really choose to need this instrument so much. 

I wanted to please my mum by doing some serious studies, calm her worries down, so I did a scientific Baccalaureate and started to study classics. I had a breakdown when I arrived in Paris, the Classe Préparatoire aux Grandes-Écoles ate me alive. It was too big a step for a countryside girl, and I got bullied by some of my pairs but also by some of my teachers. They said I was different, I was probably mentally disabled or that I was just simply stupid and not worth their time. I stopped studying classics, I stopped writing, I stopped reading, I stopped thinking. All I had left was my violin, and I started playing again, that’s all I could do. I went to the conservatoire and they took me in, despite my old age (19 is far too old to start your musical studies in the French Conservatoires as I learnt later). I met some wonderful teachers, and learnt about compassion, passion, expression, history, sociology, physics, mathematics, analyses, discipline and practice. I learnt so much I did not want to leave that conservatoire. I did not want to stop learning. The more I discovered, the more I wanted to discover. There are centuries of music to play, decipher, share and they taught me about history, politics, their link to the human race and its turmoils. I went into historical practice for that reason, but I also wanted to discover Indian, Persian, Chinese, Jazz, Pop, Rock, experimental musics. So after my French Diplomas in my pocket, I went to the UK. 

How to share music has been an obsession along the way because I wanted the system to stop compartmentalising. I wanted pupils with disabilities to come inside the conservatoire and play, learn, I wanted pupils with difficult social backgrounds to come and share their feelings too. And I still think the systems are not open enough, in France and in the UK. Which is why I want to teach in Conservatoires, to be able to one day open their doors to a wider public. I want to share the resilience that is inside every single one of us. 

Sharing ideas with neuroscientists, physiotherapists, physicians or mathematicians has been what pushed me to explore the boundaries of my musical journey, and I am aware that this is not something very common in the musical world, and worth sharing.

So why music? Because it synthesises the human experience within every single of its beats. It links the intellectual and the sensual, the body and the mind. Because it makes people from different backgrounds communicate without words. Playing and listening can be accessible by anyone, because if their body cannot their mind can, and if the mind cannot the body feels. There is no escape to the musical experience.