“The collision of hail or rain with hard surfaces, or the song of cicadas in a summer field.  These sonic events are made out of thousands of isolated sounds; this multitude of sounds, seen as totality, is a new sonic event.”

— Iannis Xenakis

What is it about the sound of falling rain that makes it appealing?  A single drop of rain may go unnoticed; but let thousands begin to fall at the same time, and we are treated to a symphony that excites our senses and creates an emotional response of one sort or another.  The same is true of cicadas.  One cicada has a tiny voice, but hundreds of cicadas in a summer field create a song that can be heard for a country mile.  When we hear the rain or the cicadas we think of them as one sound, not as a collection of a multitude of almost insignificant, tiny voices joining to create a sonic event.  We hear the harmonious result of the combined sounds as one voice that says, “rain” or “cicadas.”

As I have shared before, I am a drummer — not the kind who sits behind a drum kit at the back of a band and sets a beat for the rest of the performers.  I am a hand-drummer; and one of my favorite activities is joining with other drummers in a circle where our individual voices combine to create a common rhythm.  When we first begin, our rhythms sometimes collide.  One person may play with a voice based on six beats while another plays in four.  Their musical voices might argue and clash in the beginning until each discovers that in twelve beats they have the ability to weave their sounds together and build on one another rather than colliding and destroying what each contributes.  Once we find the common threads that link our voices, the sounds that each of us bring to the circle augment and strengthen the sounds of each other drummer.  It is exciting when we reach the point where we speak as one.

We read in the news about disharmony and struggle in Egypt.  In so many places, people are rising up and seeking the right to be heard — to add their own voices to the sound of humanity.  We must not close our eyes to what we see.  We must not close our ears to their voices.  We must not sit complacently in a place that values our own beat over other contributions to our collective voice.  Truth, like the many rhythms of the drum circle, speaks in many different ways.  We must take the seemingly discordant rhythms we speak and find the places where they resonate.  We must weave together the common truths of humanity.  It is time for a planet-wide sonic event that expresses our unity and our awareness of the truth that we are one.  When the extraneous noise falls away, only the things that are real and true will remain.  Then, and only then, will we know the true meaning of peace.