W.E.S.: The Universe is Vast

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

The Universe is Vast

I remember when I was living in my apartment in VA I had a poster on the wall that I got from the Smithsonian store at National Airport. It was a poster entitled “The Known Universe.” This poster had an image of the solar system with the sun and the nine planets in orbit. This image had a box around it and then a line connected to the box that went to a dot in the Milky Way Galaxy. That dot was where our solar system was in relation to the rest of the star groups in the Milky Way Galaxy. In the vastness of the Milky Way our solar system is just a dot in the swirling mass of stars and gas. Then there was a box around the Milky Way and a line that brought this box into a dot inside an area known as a star system. This system had a box around it and a line that brought it into another dot in an area at the top of the poster that stretched the whole length of the poster underneath the title, “The Known Universe.” This was all that “we” know because these stars and galaxies are all that the Hubble Telescope can see and detect.

When I think about this poster I am supremely humbled. I remember thinking that how could we give so much importance to our problems and issues and even to ourselves when this universe is so vast. We are such a minute part of this gargantuan universe that whatever we do on this planet, in our country, in our community, in our home is in the grand scheme of things so insignificant. I am reminded of the Buddhist saying that 100 years from now everyone will be gone. Well it takes more than 70,000 years to get to the next star Proxima Centauri, let alone the next galaxy. How can we measure time when we are not even there to look at the watch?

When we realize our own minuteness we come to the understanding that it is our collective selves and our unity with the cosmos that gives us significance. Only when we align with The All, the source of all things, we can have an identity with the universe. It is our connection to the universal that gives us significance.
So let go, and let God, surrender your ego to the universal Spirit. Let the Cosmos think, feel, speak, act, love and breathe through you. Be at one with the divinity within you and you will have all the power of this vast universe behind everything you undertake.

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W.E.S. Bio

William E. Smith, Ph.D.

William E. Smith holds a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of Maryland, a MM in jazz composition and a BM in jazz studies from Howard University. With education and performance as his focal points, Smith is the Music Industry Coordinator at North Carolina Central University where he teaches courses on music industry, management and hip hop history. He was also an assistant professor of music at American University where he taught courses in jazz history, rock history, music appreciation and conducted the American University Jazz Ensemble.

He is a frequent lecturer and clinician in jazz, hip hop, and the music industry. His dissertation on hip hop and its relationship with performance and ritual was completed with fellowship assistance from the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the African Diaspora. He published this ethnographic text in his new book, "Hip Hop as Performance and Ritual: Biography and Ethnography in Underground Hip Hop."

As a performer, he has performed and recorded with many ensembles in a variety of genres, and has led his own traditional jazz group, the W.E.S. Group, for thirteen years. The group has recorded four albums including “A Jazz Mass,” an original composition of the Episcopal and Catholic liturgy in a lush jazz arrangement. Their latest recording, “Ancestors” was released November 2006 and they just recently went on a Caribbean tour performing at the St. Lucia, Bonaire, and Anguilla Jazz Festivals.

Some of the individuals he has performed or recorded with include: James Moody, Donald Byrd, Kenny Burrell, Wynton Marsalis, Jon Hendricks, Larry Ridley, David Baker, Fred Hammond, Hezekiah Walker, Cynda Williams and Malcolm Jamal-Warner. Dr. Smith also composes music for documentaries and film. He composed music for a PBS documentary entitled “Across the River” (a documentary on the community in Anacostia, southeast Washington, DC) and for several independent films: “The Green Line,” “Search for Osun,” “Finally Sayin’ What I Really Mean…”

In 2007 Dr. Smith was elected DC Chapter president of the IAJE (International Association for Jazz Education) and he was also elected as a board member to the DC Chapter of NARAS (National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences – Grammy Foundation).

Dr. Smith is also president and founder of the IAHHE (International Association for Hip Hop Education) and the BE Community Foundation. Through the IAHHE he has held teacher-training workshops at the National Music Center in Washington, DC and successfully integrated a hip hop curriculum into the Friendship Public Charter School’s summer and after school program. Through the BE Community Foundation he is directing a summer music camp in Anguilla, West Indies and in Asheboro and Randleman, NC.

Through performance and education Dr. William E. Smith endeavors to inspire as well as enlighten audiences with an awareness and enjoyment of music and the arts, that brings people together and can last for generations.