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Each week, an author in the Joseph Campbell Foundation’s community contributes an original essay interpreting our theme of the Power of Myth in Music and a featured Campbell work. This little blast of mythology—a MythBlast—forms the centerpiece of our weekly newsletter, which also contains curated selections from our archives.
Subscribe today to receive a weekly email with this springboard into myth, storytelling, and the work of Joseph Campbell. As you read, listen along with our Spotify playlist.
FEATURED WORK
THE JOSEPH CAMPBELL
ESSENTIALS SERIES
Heroic journeys often begin with separation, whether literal or metaphorical. As we embark together on a quest to experience the power of myth in music, consider consulting Joseph Campbell's distilled wisdom in the new Joseph Campbell Essentials series. These pocket-sized books contain Campbell's most beloved and inspirational quotes in a beautiful format which makes excellent gifting and easy packing for adventures of all kinds. You can find ebook editions of these books in our online shop.
In the Wee Small Hours: Eros and the Initiatory Descent
We tend to imagine mythological initiation as an ancient and rather dramatic affair: a youth led into a subterranean chamber by torchlight, or a medieval knight entering a dark forest at its thickest, most impenetrable point. But in modern life, our introduction to the sharp edges of love rarely occurs in such places. More often, it happens alone in the dark in the wee small hours around 3:00 AM, illuminated only by the glow of a cell phone’s Spotify playlist.
Bradley Olson, PhD
6 days ago8 min read
King Kunta's Crown: Identity and Initiation in To Pimp a Butterfly
Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly delivers a distinct resolution to initiation. The album embodies Joseph Campbell's reading of Jung's individuation, told as a modern myth built on the oldest structure we know: the rite of passage. Separation, the liminal crossing, the return. The album fords that liminal space, track by track, until the caterpillar who begins the journey recognizes the butterfly it was carrying all along.
Jason Batt, PhD
Jul 56 min read
Singing in Love of the Self: A Musical Initiation into Apotheosis
Where does the power lie, and how is it extracted to take the plunge into the dark, the dangerous temptation of the unknown—for…love?
Revisiting the psyche’s Road of Trials for the soul and…
Let’s revisit something we all might know: the myth of Psyche and Cupid. Psyche undertook the quest, laden with challenging tasks set by Venus, the mother of Cupid, for love. Venus laid out the trials carefully, one after another, each task a challenge, each challenge a step in the
Priyanka Gupta
Jun 286 min read
“How Can I Keep from Singing?”
Holding a hymnal, standing in a pew, and singing with a congregation is often where I find myself in times of deep loss, uncertainty, or desolation. Not necessarily to change anything or feel comforted by those standing with me, but to sing collectively, to feel the music flow through me, to reach for something greater than myself for solace.
Stephanie Zajchowski, PhD
Jun 216 min read
Initiation on Bald Mountain
It’s no small miracle that the VHS copy of Disney’s Fantasia (1940) survived all of the times I rewound it to the Night on Bald Mountain sequence when I was three to four years old. The imagery of the grand demon Chernabog summoning skeletal wraiths from their graves and initiating a frenzied Walpurgisnacht upon an near-volcanic Bald Mountain utterly entranced my childhood psyche.
Teddy Hamstra, PhD
Jun 145 min read
Hamilton, My Mom, and Me
My mother liked to read history; I like to read myth. She listened to classic Johnny Cash; I prefer the American IV album. She loved college basketball; I love Stranger Things. But we did find one media experience we agreed upon: she and I watched the movie version of Hamilton together approximately eighty-seven times. How did Hamilton work this miracle? The show activated our imaginations, embodied Joseph Campbell’s functions of mythology, and enabled us to connect with each
Joanna Gardner, PhD
Jun 75 min read
The Monomyth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
How rarely can we tap into the well of inspiration and transcend universal ideas and emotions? How special it is to exit Plato's Cave of shadows and return with illumination. Two brilliant minds stand at the mouth of Plato’s Cave, blinking from an excess of ideas: Joseph Campbell, the cartographer of myth, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, its composer. One maps the journey; the other lends voice to it.
Lejla Panjeta
May 317 min read
The Sand and the Bow: Music, Chaos and the Initiated Soul
There’s an experiment first performed in the eighteenth century by the physicist Ernst Chladni that reveals something about the nature of transformation that no amount of psychological attribution or theological conjecture quite manages. Chladni would scatter fine sand across a circular, flat, metal plate then draw a violin bow slowly down its edge. The sand, disturbed by the vibration, would skitter and scatter—seemingly at random—and then within moments, the sand would gath
Kristina Dryža
May 248 min read
Birdsong, Thresholds, and the Infinite: Initiation Ascending with the Lark
Every year on my birthday, I listen to Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending.
I have for most of my life.
My birthday falls just after the spring equinox, and for as long as I can remember, The Lark Ascending has marked the beginning of the year for me far more than January ever has. January feels administrative. March feels initiatory: the air still carries winter inside it, but the world begins to open again.
Leigh Melander, PhD
May 176 min read
“Pink Pony Club” Goes Zero-G
“Pink Pony Club” tells the story of a heroic journey strikingly similar to that of the Artemis II astronauts. In both cases, protagonists hear a call to venture far from home, be it Earth or Tennessee. “Pink Pony Club” defies the gravitational pull of societal norms and family, while Artemis II defied historical norms as well as literal gravity to take flight and then enter a space of levity, their bodies and spirits floating within the spacecraft.
Joanna Gardner, PhD
May 105 min read
At-One-Ment with the Demon: How KPop Demon Hunters Completes the Heroine's Journey
Last year's KPop Demon Hunters on Netflix was an industry-shaking surprise: a high-energy animated film that mixed K-pop with Korean mythology and generated a soundtrack that spent two weeks at number one on the Billboard 200. That soundtrack also became the first ever to have four simultaneous songs in the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100.
Jason Batt, PhD
May 37 min read
Ritual of Survival
Some holidays are celebrated; others are survived. Đurđevdan belongs to the latter. May 6th in the Balkans celebrates the victory of summer over the winter, return of warmth, and the renewal of life. This holy-day is embedded in folk rituals and songs, such as the famous “Đurđevdan” (English pronunciation “JOOR-jev-dahn”) by Bijelo Dugme, taken from the folk Romani song “Ederlezi.” It literally translates to English as St. George’s Day.
Lejla Panjeta
Apr 267 min read
A Quieter Music For Louder Times
In ancient times, cultures looked to their myths to preserve the harmony of their communities, or to restore it when things went awry. Often, the myths were sung aloud or accompanied by instruments to enrich the medium the narratives rode on. Music provided a tangible element for the listeners to be touched and moved by. After all, music communicates directly to our emotions. In modern times, however, we’ve turned to abstraction, conceptual language and logical deductions, to
Craig Deininger
Apr 197 min read
Music is Muse-ical
The Mythblast series is looking into myth-and-music this year but, if you want the mythic in music, we need to reflect first of all on the bedrock of music—and to our hearts when they open to the call of music: the call of the Muses. So before we rush off to analyze our Spotify playlists, let’s take a moment to relocate the Muses in music, how music is Muse-ical, and how the Muse-ical is mythical.
Now, depending on the Muse, this can go a couple of different ways: there ar
Mark C.E. Peterson
Apr 126 min read
Noodle in Charon’s Boat: Separation as Beginning and End in Gorillaz’ The Mountain
The Hero’s Journey is often represented as a wheel, with the protagonist moving clockwise through the points. The imagery forces a presumption of motion and order, each point as constant as the clock, always in sequence. Yet, in an era where the Hero’s Journey is being explored from other perspectives, criticized, and reimagined, I offer that it should be deconstructed—and the first aspect worth deconstructing is its scaffolding.
Jason Batt, PhD
Apr 56 min read
“Musafir Hoon Yaaron”: Kishore Kumar's Musical Legacy
On the wings of melody, music breathes life into silence, the silence of the darkness that is lit with the musician’s pursuit of quiet longing. Each note, each tone, each stir of the magic spell of the song invites a wandering—a hero-dive, promising an adventure of an ever-renewing lifetime. The music of the legendary Indian singer Kishore Kumar speaks to the orders of our own life, our travels of the soul—as a herald, essential for our adventure’s mystical realizations.
Priyanka Gupta
Mar 296 min read
“While the Music Plays the Band”
Joseph Campbell had met the members of the Grateful Dead not long before, over dinner at Weir’s home. Weir, percussionist Mickey Hart, and band patriarch Jerry Garcia—all familiar with his work—were as charmed by the mythologist as he was by them. They invited the 82-year-old scholar to that show at Kaiser, where he was struck by the resonance he perceived with ancient Dionysian rituals of transformation. Campbell acknowledged the musicians as “consummate artists,”
Stephen Gerringer
Mar 228 min read
The Song That Remembers Us
Her little egocentric mind whispers, Look at all this love. It must be because of me. I must be precious. And she's right. Not just because she's special, but because everyone is. That’s what the village knows: preciousness isn't something you earn; it's something you're born with. And the village's most important job is to never let you forget it.
In Kai's village, this sense of preciousness isn't reserved for fellow clan. It extends to all of it—every living thing.
Carl R. Nassar
Mar 157 min read
The Hope We Hear in Harmony: Mythology and the Break-Up Song
Now that Valentine’s Day is behind us, let’s talk about … breaking up.
The break-up song is universal. Billboard dedicates an entire page to it, and after asking my friends for their favorites, I now have a Spotify Playlist spanning four hours—an emotional marathon. Joseph Campbell rightly calls artists “magical helpers.” On our Hero’s Journey navigating love, the singer croons us through the fires of a relationship’s end, catapults us into new territory, and gives us the
R.A. Noble
Mar 85 min read
Songs from the Moon: The Mythic Howl of the Mississippi Delta Blues
Three voices from the late nineteenth century miraculously reach out to us through crackling, hissing, scratchy recordings: Charley Patton, Henry Thomas, and Blind Willie Johnson. Blues musicians from the Mississippi Delta and scattered towns of Texas, the recordings of these African-American troubadours strike the modern ear like dispatches from a distant moon.
Teddy Hamstra, PhD
Mar 16 min read
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