The Archetype of the Troubadour ... is Alive and Well ... all Over the World

... which is more than can be said for some 'archeypes' treated in modern movies and television shows.

Barry McGuire and John York

A few evenings ago I was watching PBS and caught Barry McGuire (with John York of the storied career, includig The Byrds) singing Eve of Destruction. And I thought to myself, since I wasn't thinking to anyone else at that moment, that the archetype of the 'troubadour' is alive and well. Which is a good thing. There are tens of thousands of troubadours singing all over the world, it just happened to be Barry McGuire that pulled at my reflective mind.

The health of our archetypes - i.e. how we treat and dress and give voice to archetypes in our cultural media consumables - is imortant to our health. Degrade our archetypes and we degrade our culture. Which in turn makes us less than what we could be. Since it is our archetypes that inspire and instruct (both of these) us that we are and can be 'bigger' than any of our 'ordinary' moments.

Boy, he has sung that song across a lot of Time, relative to how lasting, across Time, human beings can be.

A Bit of Recent History on the Medieval European Troubadours

"Astonishing in their diversity and grace, the circa four thousand poems of the Occitanian and Catalan troubadours survive by the foresight of a few enlightened patrons who, sensing the end of an epoch, began amassing these precious works in large manuscript codices. Yet the medieval hour was late; poems that had been sung for generations were collected and transcribed at the very end of their general currency in society. And only two hundred or so melodies (preserved in what degree of exactitude?) were ever written down at all."

Joel Cohen's liner notes to Lo Gai Saber: Troubadours et Jongleurs 1100 - 1300, 1991.

You can read more about this recording here.

New Archetypes are not Created

Of course, there were troubadours all over the world before the term was invented in the Middle Ages in Occitania. Then it was largely about 'love' - Divine and of this human plane. I include songs of activism in the troubadour archetype. The 60s and 70s were a rich time for troubadours. The 80s and 90s not so much. But ... the archetype is alive and well today. Hooray! Just as they love love, so we do, and must, love them.

There are no new archetypes created. (Just as there are no new spiritual teachings.) Yes, we can dress and disguise our archetypes, and so empower or disempower them, in the guises of our time and place and the persons around us. To degrade them for entertainment's purposes only is to lose them. To lose them is to lose part of what we are and part of what we can be.

Namaste! I bow to and honor the light within you!