The Big Band Theory

The Big Band Theory

Long ago there was the past, ere that the beginning.
A time when wasn’t was and nothing was a being.
Before the void was brought to be, nothing brought from no thing,
from naught was wrought a symphony and Music, she did ring!

Most who played we know today as deities sublime.
The Muslim, Hindu, Christian Gods that transcend space and time.
And not yet born, in a previous life was Siddhartha Gautama,
a pre-reincarnated bonus to the diorama.

The Buddha played a bamboo flute, the bonsuri it’s called,
before he knew the plant bamboo, before his head was bald.
He swung and swayed his beaded braids and on his pipe he blew
a formative, creative tune. The essence of the new.

Yahweh, they say, was hot that day. He blasted the shofar
He’d made by hand from the horn of a ram. He’d made no rams so far.
With flurry and flourish the song was nourished by the Great Jehovah.
A signature shift, a solo riff, and the song went super-nova!

Brahman can play double reed shehnai. He can charm any snake from its jar.
He brought Vishnu and Shiva too – lead and rhythm avatar.
His shehnai tones they chilled the bones and cut the air like a knife,
and don’t look now but, holy cow, the music came to life!

Allah was there though He does not care so much for music and dance.
He played His ney like a French horn way before there was French or France.
Every note took its place in the vastness of space no longer in the abstract.
The first jam session in music’s progression was a highly creative act!

The Supreme Ultimate of Taoist renown breathed into a dizi while he sat down
and things started being as he looked around.
The planets, the air, the water the ground.
Then as fast as they started, they ended the sound.

The talent was fine, right down the line, but something seemed to lack.
They hung their instruments to dry upon the same spit rack.
The rack was abandoned, it might have been random, horns and pipes were forlorn.
The ooze primordial on the floor did comingle, behold, an amoeba was born!