What’s the deal behind Google’s latest music Doodle?

A few days ago, Google gave its homepage a temporary logo that blew me away: This one had an earth-toned drawing of an ancient musical instrument called the mbira.  

Not your basic “thumb piano”: mbira photo by Alex Weeks, Wikimedia Commons.

Outside of Africa, few people have heard of the mbira (“em-BEE-ra”). Those do often get hooked.

Last year, the American duo Pomplamoose featured a giant mbira in a breathtaking cover of the Billie Eilish song “Bury a Friend.”

I’ve been learning to play this meditative instrument for a few years now. It has a tinkling sound, like falling rain.

The mbira is made from metal keys, longer than spoon handles, fastened to a wooden slab the size of an iPad. Bottle caps give it a buzzing sound.

Caution Shonhai: mbira player and healer, February, 2019.

You need sturdy thumbs and solid rhythm to learn the intricate patterns of a traditional mbira song. The Shona people of Zimbabwe have been playing interlocking melodies on this instrument for more than 1,000 years.

Google’s Doodle nod to the mbira has Zimbabweans rejoicing worldwide. (Not all, though: some Zimbabwean scholars are calling Google’s project a form of “cultural vampirism.”)

Nevertheless, I’m glad to see people in high-tech places paying attention to other kinds of ingenuity.

I got to know the mbira better last year on a family trip to Zimbabwe. We landed in the capital city, Harare, and then made our way to the rural village of Ubuntu, named for the African philosophy that translates as “I am, because we are.”

We spent a few days hanging out with children bathed in mbira music since before they were born, along with musicians who filled us in on its fundamental role in Shona communities.

The Shona regard the mbira as a sacred instrument—a way to connect with ancestors long past. Several musicians described it to me as a “cell phone to the spirit world.”

Mbira party at Ubuntu village, 2019. From left: Joyce Warikandwa, Dzekwa Samaita, Chiedza Mutamba.

Google’s mbira Doodle barely touched on Shona spirituality (a respectful choice for a topic far too complex to cover in a brief video).

Art by Google “doodler” Helene Leroux.

Instead, the “doodlers” did a nice job of capturing the joy the mbira brings to those who hear and play it. The Google animations tell the story of a girl who learns to play the mbira at a young age and later inspires the next generation.

“We’ve tried to give people around the world a taste of a broad and deep cultural tradition that isn’t very well known outside its homeland,” said Jonathan Schneier, the Google software engineer who pitched the idea.

Schneier knew of similar instruments through his family in South Africa. Lots of people have heard of African “thumb pianos,” he said, but “I was curious, what are the origins, where did this come from?” He and his Google teammates followed the trail all the way to Zimbabwe.

They definitely did their homework. When I clicked on the “behind the scenes” video (at the bottom of this post), I recognized many names in their list of Zimbabwean consultants:

Fradreck Mujuru (centre) teaching in Berkeley, California. (I’m on the right, in red.)

There was Fradreck Mujuru, descendant of a long line of mbira players (and maker of the sweet-toned mbira I play). He has traveled to America multiple times to perform and teach in cities such as Berkeley.

Other familiar faces included Musekiwa Chingodza, a top mbira player, and Caution Shonhai, a musician and teacher I met in Zimbabwe.

Shonhai doubles as a healer in his village. Listening to the mbira calms the brain, he told me. This line of thinking is consistent with medical research on music as a treatment for acute anxiety. (I’ll be exploring the connection between music and health in my book.)

But the best reason to get into mbira music, of course, is pleasure.

“I think anyone who has had more than five minutes with the Zimbabwean mbira cannot forget the sound,” said Albert Chimedza, founder of the Mbira Centre in Harare, speaking on the Google video.

“To me, it’s a cross between water and air.”

learn more:

The non-profit MBIRA organization supports traditional Shona music through the sale of musical recordings, instructional media, and mbira instruments made by master craftspeople in Zimbabwe. MBIRA was founded by Erica Azim, who in 1974 became one of the first non-Zimbabweans to study the instrument with traditional mbira masters. She has taught mbira players worldwide. (I have taken several workshops with Erica, and can vouch for her gifts.)

One of the masterminds behind the Italian Renaissance was a mystical musician dubbed the “second Orpheus”

Household names like Leonardo da Vinci get all the credit for sparking the 15th-century explosion of art and science. But there’s more to the story.

One of the masterminds behind the Italian Renaissance was neither a painter, nor a wealthy Medici, but a depressive priest who self-medicated with music.

Without this enigmatic figure, named Marsilio Ficino, we might not have Botticelli’s “Primavera” or “The Birth of Venus.”

Sandro Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus,” painted in 1483-1483, explores classical themes championed by Marsilio Ficino. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), shown in a fresco painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio in the Tornabuoni Chapel, church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence

I stumbled across Ficino while doing research for my book.

Born in 1433, Ficino was a frail man with pensive eyes and a humped back. But Florentine intellectuals learned not to judge him by his looks, for he had the mind of a genius and the voice of a demigod. They called him the second Orpheus.

Ficino had a gift for reading Greek, at a time when ancient philosophy was making a comeback. He was the first to translate Plato’s entire works into Latin, making them available to a wide audience through Gutenberg’s new printing press.

Ficino coined the term “Platonic love”—bosom buddies without benefits—and revived core ideas from the ancient world. Before his death in 1499, Ficino became one of the most influential scholars in all of Europe.

It helped to have friends in high places. Ficino had the ear and financial backing of Cosimo de’ Medici, titan of the powerful Medici dynasty. Later, Ficino became chief tutor to Cosimo’s grandson, Lorenzo de’ Medici.

Trained by Ficino to appreciate the arts, Lorenzo supported master painters such as Sandro Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci. He even invited the young Michelangelo to live with his family at the Palazzo Medici.

Scene of Ficino’s entourage celebrating neo-Platonic wisdom around a bust of Plato. Oil on canvas entitled, “The Parental of Plato,” by Antonio Puccinelli (1822-1897). Here, “parental” means “influence.” Photo: https://villegiardinimedicei.it/villa-di-careggi/

Scholars have argued that Ficino, more than anyone else, summoned the return to beauty in the Italian Renaissance

Together, they mingled in a circle of poets and intellectuals led by Ficino. Themes from Greek and Roman mythology, championed by Ficino, appeared in the masterpieces of Michelangelo and Botticelli.

Did Ficino have a direct hand in their work? No one knows for sure. But Ficino tended to rhapsodize about Venus, describing her as a transformative force for the human soul. The voluptuous goddess became the central figure in Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus,” as well as “Primavera.”

That’s not all.

Ficino was the New Age guru of his day. A trained physician, vegetarian and ordained priest, he melded Catholicism and Greek philosophy with a dash of pagan ritual.

His mystical teachings drew artists and scientists from miles around to a sprawling estate in the hills outside Florence. In a castle-like villa that still stands at Careggi, Ficino headed a centre of learning modelled after Plato’s ancient Academy.

Set in a garden of orange and olive trees, this Medici villa doubled as a healing retreat, specializing in Ficino’s esoteric music therapy. (Today, we’d call it “woo-woo.”)

Villa Medici at Careggi, Florence. Site of the neo-Platonic Academy headed by Marsilio Ficino, who died here in 1499. Photo credit: I, Sailko, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7430861

An enchanting male voice beckoned visitors to an inner chamber perfumed with frankincense.

There, seated near a bust of Plato, Ficino would strum a lyre (a U-shaped harp) while singing the Orphic Hymns—sacred texts uncovered in Constantinople (Istanbul).

Modern historians have dated these texts to around the start of Common Era. But Ficino believed them to be magical incantations penned by the demigod Orpheus himself.

In the famous Greek myth, Orpheus poured his anguish into his lyre after losing his bride, Eurydice, to a fatal snake bite. Hades, King of the Underworld, was so touched by the grief-stricken songs that he allowed Orpheus to return his wife to the world of the living, on one condition: he must walk in front of her and not look back. But Orpheus snuck a peek and lost Eurydice forever.

Ficino, taking cues from the Greeks, regarded illness as a form of discord between the soul and the heavens. Like Plato before him, he saw music as the ticket to inner harmony. 

For patients with low moods, Ficino recommended melodies that evoked the mellow or upbeat planets: Venus was soft and yielding. Mercury vigorous and gay. With practice, Ficino said, music could open one’s spirit to the gifts freely offered by the heavens.

“We play the lyre,” Ficino wrote, “precisely to avoid becoming unstrung.”

Bust of Marsilio Ficino by Andrea Ferrucci, in the Cathedral of Florence, Santa Maria del Fiore. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Ficino himself suffered bouts of depression. “We play the lyre,” he wrote, “precisely to avoid becoming unstrung.”

(Numerous studies have shown that music really does improve depressive symptoms. But astrology has nothing to do with it.)

Ficino’s unique blend of music, mysticism and medicine captivated Italy’s brightest minds

Ficino’s unique blend of music, mysticism and medicine captivated Italy’s brightest minds for decades. After centuries of dogma about inescapable sin, Ficino offered something fresh: a sensuous Catholicism in which art, music, fragrances and original thought ignited love in the human soul, amplifying love for God.

Scholars have argued that Ficino, more than anyone else, summoned the return to beauty in the Italian Renaissance.

But the tides turned.

At age 64, Ficino saw Dominican friar Savonarola’s “bonfire of the vanities” destroy thousands of exquisite costumes, books, artworks and musical instruments.

In this assault on beauty, wrote Ficino scholar Angela Voss, “the brilliant vision of Florentine Platonism itself was hurled into the depths of Hades by the forces of ignorance and fear.”

Ficino died two years later. His fascination for the mythical past fell out of fashion. And his heavenly voice—unlike Botticelli’s paintings—was forever lost.

Sources

Biographical details and scholarly achievements:

Celenza, Christopher S., "Marsilio Ficino", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/ficino/>.

Description of Ficino’s physique and inner sanctum at Careggi:

Walker, D.P. Spiritual and Demonic Magic: From Ficino to Campanella. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000.

Ficino’s influence on Renaissance art and philosophy:

Michael J. B. Allen and Valery Rees, eds., with Martin Davies. Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy. Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002. 

Snow-Smith, J. The Primavera of Sandro Botticelli: A Neoplatonic Interpretation. New York: Peter Lang Inc., 1993.

Kristeller, P. The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino. New York: Columbia University Press, 1943.

Also see writings of the late Clement Salaman, editor of a 7-volume translation of the letters of Marsilio Ficino (previously unpublished in English).

Ficino’s Renaissance music therapy and Orpheus nickname:

Voss, Angela. “Marsilio Ficino, the Second Orpheus.” In Music as Medicine: The History of Music Therapy Since Antiquity, edited by Peregrine Horden, 154-172. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000.

Ammann, Peter. “Music and Melancholy: Marsilio Ficino’s Archetypal Music Therapy.” In Florence 98, Destruction and Creation: Personal and Cultural Transformations: Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Congress for Analytical Psychology, edited by Mary Ann Mattoon, 118-129. Daimon, 1999.

Source of “Florentine Platonism hurled into the depths of Hades” quote:

Voss, Angela. “Orpheus Redivivus: The Musical Magic of Marsilio Ficino.” In Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, edited by Michael J. B. Allen and Valery Rees, with Martin Davies, 227-241. Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002.