A Madeleine Becomes a Monkey Chant

Ritual is More than Metaphor

The isolation that Robert D. Putnam’s “Bowling Alone” explored 25 years ago is accelerating as we become increasingly locked into our devices and isolated in our self-selected islands of political biases. We are abandoning interpersonal exchanges for experience by proxy.

A sad adjunct of this is the abandonment of meaningful ritual. Not ritual as in repetition-looking at one’s phone 200 times a day is not a ritual. At best it’s a habit or more accurately, an addiction.

Yes, people get married, have quinceaneras; still gather for Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July.

There is some measure of community feeling generated there and at, say, tailgate parties. But these rituals, as the academics would say, are heavily mediated. The average American wedding costs $33,000. Most web sites say the average quincianera costs between $8-30,000. The professional athletes that play for your team owe you no fealty and will move to whichever team’s money talks the loudest.

And the proliferation of betting-on sports, on everything; millions of people do it, but it’s a solitary process. You against the house.

I offer no panaceas, just a still, small voice expressing a personal longing. A longing that has long smouldered and was rekindled when, after many years, I happened to hear this music, the Ketjak or Monkey Chant.

In the early 1970’s, my bosom pal Steve Cummings and I knew the Ketjak and would burst into spontaneous versions of the chant sitting in the kitchen or walking down the street. What did we know about the Ramayana, the Hindu epic the chant is based on? Very little. We were simply adding our voices and gestures to a foundational story of exile and return; plucking a ritual out of the air that was germinated halfway around the world and was powerful enough to reach us in Cambridge.

There are videos of people performing the Ketjak, but I offer this audio version and ask that you let it be a gateway to your imagination. Please give it a minute to get cooking. And if you see me on the street, don’t kill me. Join me in the chant: