Extract from Musique & Guérison, Traditions Amérindiennes, Aigle Bleu, a film by Debowska Production

The pentatonic scale (C D E G L) is used in most Native American music, and also in music from China, from India, and a lot of music therapy traditions, and it has profound effects.

As the word ‘pentatonic’ indicates, the pentatonic scale has five sounds, which represent the five organ systems that are common to Native American and Hindu cultures; these sounds also relate to the elements, which in Native culture were fire, air, water, earth and sacred sounds or ether, the space in which the elements play. Those five sounds also correspond to the Cherokee elements system that describes the five rivers of light that penetrate the second energy center behind the navel. These streams of colored energy create the five organ systems in the body and provide, throughout life, the health force that sustains them.

We find the same system in Chinese music therapy. They have the five elements system in their medical teachings and philosophy. The Chinese also use the pentatonic scale extensively. If you have access to a keyboard or piano, you can easily play a pentatonic scale by playing on the black keys only. You will notice that the music happening sometimes sounds like Chinese music as Chinese traditional medicine has a music therapy tradition and uses this scale extensively.
So, by using these five sounds in music, we obtain a definite spiralling effect, which will clear and harmonise the different organs and meridians of energy that flow through the body. It is spiralling music, creating spirals of moving light energy that will gradually liberate the energy channels in our body, and it does not have as many dissonances as would a seven note scale, which will definitely have a few dissonant intervals.

You can actually tune the zither or the autoharp for example to pentatonic scales, and you can play just about anything on it, it will always be beautiful, because the sounds naturally harmonise with each other, and produce a spiralling effect which is always very beneficial to one’s health. It makes it easier for one to feel at home wherever they go, because it allows one to reunite or re-kindle, re-knot the relationship with nature; that is not a music that we hear very often, but as people live in very artificial environments today, it is very helpful to have those sounds resonating in one’s environment and to harmonise with that, so that one can feel more at home with himself and with nature.

Spirit songs, Sky songs and Serenity are all CDs based on the pentatonic scale, and they all have that harmonising effect. The most relaxing one is Sky songs, Spirit Songs gives inspiration and Serenity is there to give vital energy.