Hear the latter part of this
interview:
[Please be patient because this interview was conducted outside with many
distractive noises, but it is worth hearing.]
Boundless Gratitude:
-An Extensive Interview-
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Boundless Gratitude:
-An
Extensive Interview-
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This interview with Hassaun Ali Jones-Bey, also known
as "Boundless Gratitude," (a storyteller, a musician, a writer and
poet) took place
July 10, 2007, in Alameda, CA. Mr. Jones-Bey is trained as an Electrical and
Biomedical Engineer and a Journalist. As Boundless Gratitude, he explores
his creative side as a musician, a poet, and storyteller. Our conversation
focuses on his creative side and how he came to his present musical self.
Some of this written interview is comprised of some material not in the
first sit-down but as further responses to questions posed by the
interviewer.
_____________________________________
Gibbs:
Boundless, your academic training is very impressive—two Bachelors
degrees in Math and Electrical Engineering, two Masters degrees--one in
Biomedical Engineering and the other in Journalism. But these have nothing
or very little to do with your music. So how did you get into music and
storytelling?
Boundless:
When I was in graduate school, a friend got me interested in guitar and I
started playing it slowly—I took a course at night adult school and later I
started playing the guitar for my children until they got older. After that
I became more serious both about writing songs and playing.
At that point my playing and writing became almost spiritual; it seemed as if the songs and music were coming out of me so naturally that I had arrived at my native, ancestral tongue. It just seemed as if this was what I was really supposed to do. I had been almost pushed into engineering and mathematics by circumstances that transpired when I was in the 5th grade, and the push made sense to me also. For one thing, I was not a musical prodigy as a child. And also it seemed to me growing up that Black folks needed to make our mark in the sciences, rather than being confined to achievement in fields such as sports and entertainment. But what I wanted to do was always on the creative side. I guess that repressed creative finally began to vent itself seven or eight years ago, and it felt good; it felt like what I was to do.
Gibbs:
Tell me about your name.
Boundless:
It is the result of storytelling and song writing that I was doing four or
five years ago. I was writing a song and sensed a sort of
spirituality—seemingly, I was sitting next to a singing ancestral river, and
out of that river, a beautiful woman rose up next to me, singing and dancing
also. Then she sat down, and that mighty flowing river jumped into her lap
and curled up like a kitten. She stroked the kitten and looked at me as if
to say, “Who are you?” Because I recognized that my ancestors came to this
land through much affliction and pain—terrible slavery, etc., yet many of
them wanted to give thanks for having made it here alive, I said to her, “I
am a descendant of these people; I am thanksgiving without borders; I am
Boundless Gratitude.”
Also, I have a friend that died, and one night I had a dream about him. In that dream he asked me, “Now that you are more than 50 years old, what are you passing on to your children and others?” I woke up and all I could think about to answer that question was “Boundless Gratitude.” That is when I started using that name as a pseudonym.
With this name, I find that I have been getting further into my African roots and spirituality. But I am really a heretic—I believe in love!
Gibbs:
Are you doing Music full time?
Boundless:
I have just taken the first step toward doing so. Even though I have been
intensifying my musical focus since 1998/99, I have also been working full
time for a high tech trade magazine. I have had children in school and have
had to work. In the past few months, however, I realized that I could no
long do what I was being paid for but had to follow my heart. So I have
taken the step: I resigned this month [July 2007] from the high tech
magazine and I am now doing my music full time.
I have great children; they are now grown; being a father was my real job description in life—parenting is the bottom line of spiritual development. I raised them, but they raised me at the same time. As a father, I made many mistakes, and I am thankful that those mistakes did not work. So when people tell me I was a good father, I respond quite honestly that whatever good outcome they see is entirely due to the Grace of God.
Gibbs:
You are performing around the Bay at various locations and you
mentioned CDs. Have you CDs for sell?
Boundless:
Yes, I have a number of CD’s that can be purchased on
www.CDBaby.com through my website at
www.peacejungle.net I also sell them when I perform, and one of them,
“Homeland Security,” is available through Rasputin Music.
My singing and storytelling is a ministry and my overall focus in the ministry is to empower people to listen to themselves, to think for themselves; I also want to have others open up and create their own stories. So much of the music we listen to is recorded—you know; the Motown sound, for instance, is perfect sound, everything is carefully choreographed down to the letter; it’s perfect. I want others to realize that they can make beautiful songs and delightful sounds as well, even if those sounds are not “perfect” they are still valuable. That is an important part of life that is missing for many of us.
Gibbs:
Is music medicinal?
Boundless:
I think it is healing rather than medicinal. Medicine is something that
cures, but healing is where one’s lifestyle changes and it is almost self
curing. My music is relaxing; I got my training in music by putting my
children to sleep. It is also something that people can listen to and
recognize that they can do as well. So it empowers listeners to heal
themselves; it removes stress—even for me—and when that stress is removed,
we can hear and heal ourselves.
In her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, Billie Holliday wrote that people would come to her and praise her arrangements of various songs. But she didn’t actually do arrangements. She just sang her songs as she felt them. Reading her description seemed to give me insight into what happens to me when I sing; I get into an almost meditative space.
Gibbs:
Is there some dramatic experience that brought you to the awakening of
your inner creative self?
Boundless:
There was such an event, so to speak, and describing it is key to explaining
my motivation for doing what I do, the manner in which I go
about it, and what I hope to achieve. I’ll summarize the basics here.
“Shatter your ideals on the rock of truth” is a Sufi saying that
refers to
the fact that as we mature, we often discover the “clay feet” on even our
highest ideals, and come to realize that we were actually worshipping
idols. This is something that started happening to me in a very big way
about seven years ago. Several episodes of a magazine column that I was
writing at the time were devoted to the theme, which also led me to
ultimately resign from writing the column. When I say in a big way,
I’m
referring to all of the ideals of “church and state” or of “God and
Country” that I had been raised with.
There are numerous examples that I could give, but I’ll refrain from doing
that to keep from making this too long. I’ll just say that my ideals were
thoroughly shattered by world events and the responses of religious and
government leaders to those events, particularly from the late 1990s through
the
present time. Sometime in 2005, I wrote a couple of poems entitled God
and
Country I and God and Country II. Both of those poems asked and
set about
answering the question, “What happens when your God gets crucified by your
country?” That metaphor, perhaps illustrates my state of mind at the time
most clearly and succinctly.
I was a U.S. Navy pilot from 1976 to 1982. I was stationed on one of the
ships from which the failed hostage rescue attempt was launched during the
“Iranian hostage crisis.” That was my introduction to geo-politics of that
area of the world, and I have watched those politics unfold during the last
couple of decades and clearly seen them for the coldly calculated, brutal
charade that they are, with full complicity at the highest levels of
religion. Even before
September 11, 2001, I had begun to distance myself from religious
gatherings of all kinds. The hypocrisy was more than I could stomach. I
started spending a lot of time in nature instead. As a matter of fact that
is how I would spend my Sundays. I would go out and find God in nature.
And I would usually go alone.
The hypocrisy was not just at the highest levels of society. Part of my
realization was that as easy as it is to blame things on others, nothing
would ever get solved unless we each owned our own part in it. For instance,
I wrote a song called “Walk for Peace” and recorded it on the Homeland
Security CD. The point was that the price of petroleum, no matter how cheap
at the pump, is not worth the slaughter of so many men women and children,
which is what we actually pay for it. If the folks demonstrating against the
war in Iraq really wanted to stop it, all we would have to do is drastically
cut our fuel consumption, say 50%, which is probably possible for most
folks: and not just for a weekend demonstration, but as a way of life. The
big shots would get the message, and we would have alternative energy
tomorrow. But “we the people” are not willing to make those kinds of
sacrifices, even to keep our own young
people out of the madness. So the slaughter goes on. I actually published
a column on this a while back, which can be found online at this address:
http://www.forusa.org/fellowship/july-aug_05/hajbmadpoet.html .(Hajb the
Mad Poet is the pseudonym I was using when that piece was written, but I
stopped using it, because I don’t believe it is productive in the long run
to define oneself in terms of a problem.) I referred to this problem more
succinctly in one of my God and Country poems with the words, “You
sacrifice the peace and love within for the pleasures and comforts you
feel without and blame it on the devil.” The point of this digression is
that the indictment of hypocrisy was not reserved for the high and mighty,
but was pointed at all involved, including myself.
In early January of 2003, I woke up one morning about
3 a.m., thinking of
the Sufi saying mentioned above. I had been through many religious
traditions in my life. Every time that my ideals had shattered on a rock
of truth in the past, I had found new ideals to turn to. But that was no
longer the case, I was feeling terribly insecure and afraid. How could I
survive the madness of this world without ideals? Somehow the rock of
truth had gotten too big for any ideals to conceivably cover. And the rock
was inside of me.
Around this time, I felt as if I was hearing the voices of the West Indian
elders in my grandmother’s Nazarene Church: The church in which I was
christened at birth and later married. They were singing: “I am the rock.
I am the rock of truth.” I felt as if I could actually hear their voices,
not coming from outside, but coming from within me. I wrote the song down
that morning and worked out the music on my guitar. It was the first song
I ever wrote using a blues progression (12-bar blues), and it’s recorded
on my Homeland Security CD. Toward the end of 2006, I wrote a revised
version, recorded on the Storming the Castle CD, that reflects my growth
in understanding the underlying concept. That song is called Nothing
Stands but Love.
There’s much more that I could and would love to say here, but the focus
is on keeping this as short as possible. So the bottom line is that the
result of shattering my ideals on the rock of truth to ultimately realize
that I am my rock of truth (and that “I am” is in the Biblical sense as
well as the conversational sense), is that my “faith” has transitioned
from a pious belief in a remote concept of God to a conscious experience
of the immediate reality of God. Or, as I said already, I’m a
heretic who believes only in the principal heresy, which is Love. All
the various religious belief systems are just different languages, in my
view, that convey an extremely limited perspective of the universal,
because that limited perspective is all that the mortal human mind can
understand.
When I am fully present in making music, I (in ways that I have no way of
comprehending) connect with the universal more directly and more fully
than in any other way. When I share the music making with others I also
share
the connection. We overflow the limitations that allow us to be
divided and conquered. We heal. When we heal like this, even if just for
the length of a song or a concert or just one inspired moment in an
otherwise unremarkable performance, we each realize what we are capable of
and become a bit more aware of what it would or does feel like when we do
this for ourselves and for others. That is essentially why I do what I do,
why I do it the way that I do it, and what I am trying to accomplish.
There’s a ton more that could be said, particularly in relating this to
everything that we have talked about, but this answer is already too
long. So I’ll close with this. Not only are the religions simply languages
or stories for me, but so are the sciences and all other human ways of
knowing. This does not say anything negative about our ways of knowing.
They are just adapted, as they should be, to the inherent limitations of
the human form. Encountering those limitations in my own being is what has
ultimately led me to step out of corporate employment and pursue my music
ministry full time.
It has literally grown too stressful for me to spend 40 to 60 hours per
week ignoring the massive “rock of truth” within me (so to speak), while I
set about the mundane tasks of making a living, and then to try and fit my
truth in on the side. I am in no way denigrating the hard work and
sacrifice that goes into making a prosperous living and meeting all of
one’s responsibilities. I’ve done that all of my life and wouldn’t have it
any other way, particularly in light of the people I’ve been able to help
through doing so. I just reached a point in my life where my “calling”, so
to speak, had gotten so strong that ignoring it was producing life
threatening symptoms, and everyone I spoke with -- from Western doctors to
Eastern doctors to psychiatrists, psychologists and spiritual teachers --
essentially told me that it was time to either follow my heart or lose it.
So I’ve essentially had to just step out there. Not because I want to be a
rock star, or because crowds are clamoring for my talent and wisdom, but
simply because a voice within that cannot be denied is telling me quite
clearly, “It’s time.” Although I’ve framed the discussion above in terms
of current issues of war and peace, I find it equally apropos to many
other pressing concerns, particularly the current state of “African
Americans” as we have discussed. *
_________________________
*An additional Boundless note on this response
There is another point that I realize is essential to answering your
question about a pivotal event in my life, and that I did not include in my
previous attempts to provide a succinct response.
I talked about shattering my ideals on the rock of truth to the point of
abandoning organized religion (as well as political and economic ideology
and ideology in general) to find God in nature and to communicate with God
through music and stories. That's not the end of the story though, because
what I found was that without knowing it, I was returning to the
indigenous spirituality of the native peoples of the African and American
continents, the lands of my ancestors and the lands of my birth. And in
doing so, I found not only a healing spirituality, but a healing
psychology as well. I hesitate to call it religion, because a major part
of it is cultural and has less to do with belief than experience, as I
mentioned earlier. From a scientific perspective, I think of it as
matching up with the ancestral memories in my own DNA.
It's essentially the source of my music and stories. Who needs a rock of
truth when you're standing on the earth? And what ideal could be higher
than the sky that we walk beneath and breath within? I was reaching for
something like this in the late 90s, in particular with a song, entitled
"A Black Man's Prayer" recorded at that time on my first CD "Musical
Storytelling". Songs such as Thank You God and Life is a Game
on the most recent CD, "Storming the Castle," touch on it. But I'm still
barely
scratching the surface. It's essentially the same as what I said about the
music. I feel as if I'm finally encountering my native tongue, well past
middle age. And as satisfying as it is to me and to others when I speak
it, I still speak like a baby, without any appreciable vocabulary,
unconscious of grammar, or even of alphabet.
Perhaps this is why I find it so difficult to describe something that I am
barely coming into awareness of much less learning how to do. Come back to
me in 10, 20 or maybe 100 years, and I might have something worth telling
you. Of course, American culture demands descriptions and categories if we
want to establish the networks that we need to share who and what we are.
And the African tradition is not to complain but to step up to the plate and
meet the challenge, no matter how great. So in summary, let me offer this:
As I charge excitedly into the inner and outer landscapes of nature,
music, stories, culture, spirituality and humanity that reconnect me to
the life giving roots of my ancestry, I reach out to grab a hand hold and
firmly affix myself, at long last, in my long-sought African blackness,
only to find there are no handholds. The West African in me finally
emerges from a hiding place so deep inside that I didn't know he was
there. I admire him in the mirror, marvel at everything from his attire to
the joyous confidence in his smile. I attempt to babble at him about
Africa and blackness, but no words come out. He just laughs heartily and
with the best of good humor and no trace of condescension or derision,
because he is before the time of self-hatred. His laughter reminds me that
he is from a time before other people labeled us as African or Black or
even African-American. He is from a time when we simply knew ourselves as
human beings. I realize that I am looking in a mirror. The laughter I
hear is my own. It feels good. Man does it feel good!
7/23/07
Next week, the final aspect of the sit-down interview with Boundless
Gratitude, as well as an audio of the sit-down.
