Pan - Pipe Down: Spirituality on Mute
Performing Spirituality & Responsibility
Every time you create something vapid and empty, you stop the world from growing a little bit, if only by a hair. To prove this, I’m going to talk about a 90s phenomenon and blow it out of proportion. But I do believe in the point I am making.
Pan Pipe Albums and Spiritual Appropriation
Somewhere in the 90s, the world was invaded by a trend of pan pipe covers of famous hit songs.
Pan pipes promised a haunting connection to ancestors, wrapped in the familiar ease of Western pop sounds. It became every mother’s gateway to spirituality, while every teenager found themselves positioned against it. The songs were stripped down to a karaoke-level production—no big drops, no exciting rhythms, just a lone pan pipe mimicking the lead singer’s melody. This trend spanned various levels, from street vendors across different countries to TV ads. Yet, I’m still unsure how this bizarre market even came about.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, congratulations—you’re young. Here’s a link to a full album. Pay special attention to the flimsy, breathy flute in the moment of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You,” where the song is supposed to explode. Instead, we get an implosion where life loses all meaning.
Pan Pipes: You have hurt me in the following ways
My mother fell victim to this effective brainwashing machine. For a while, pan pipes were the soundtrack to every occasion in our home. I can still picture her on the sofa, eyes closed, nodding her head from side to side, deep in the cult of pan pipe with no way out until she finally realised her ways.But she eventually recovered and hasn’t touched those CDs in nearly 20 years—she’s been rehabilitated.
I remember when she first bought one of those CDs. I found them ridiculous and mocked them endlessly with my friends. What I didn’t realise at the time was that our mocking only pushed us further away from the culture it caricatured—and from genuine spiritual practice.
Those who consumed it seemed to be signalling a superficial marker of spirituality. Meanwhile, those who mocked it distanced themselves not just from the product, but from spirituality itself. The pan pipes didn’t just trivialise Native American culture; they also had the power to alienate people from genuine spirituality or reduce it to mere performance.
A whole generation of millennials suffered this type of cultural abuse. The fake whistles of spirit made us so self-aware that we could never have an honest spiritual moment without breaking the fourth wall with a self-aware joke. Some of us pushed it down and compensated with avocado toast, but others, like me, still remember. And I’m sure there’s a special place in hell for Pan Pipe Pushers who drove two generations further apart.
Let’s bring it back to a sane level
But in all seriousness, while pan pipes didn’t ruin the world, they serve as a poignant example of how even seemingly trivial cultural moments can have significant consequences. Every cultural moment has an impact, and the consequences of that impact matter. It’s my belief that a grift, a cash grab, can have bigger consequences than just a few people getting duped. Especially those who prey on spirituality should bear greater responsibility. It’s our right to live in a world that moves forward, and our duty to help push it.
It’s our right to live in a world that moves forward, and our duty to help push it.
Share the Pan Pipe if you know it:
Ah, but, Antonio, Pan pipe is innocent on its own, it can be considered just like all other musical instruments. It is somewhat strange to me that you associate it with Native Americans. In my mind, its contemporary version is basically Romanian. I remember Gheorghe Zamphir playing it as accompanied by a classical chamber orchestra under Agnieszka Duczmal. These were, very simply, excellent concerts. A virtuoso plus very good strings with an outstanding conductor. Delight to listen.
Your post has reminded me some sort of cult associated with a Polish poet and songwriter Edward Stachura, particularly visible in the eighties and beginning of nineties. Stachura (let me quote just two line from his prose - "we stood (sic) on our knees watching the rise of the Sunlet who is the only one to rival Death the Unrivalled"; "I will fight and defeat Death even though I may die at that") was a self-taught yogin and quasi-buddhist meditator. He died by suicide because "poisoned indeed is the fruit of shallow enlightenment". The cult associated with "guru Stachuru" has soon become sick, and that played some role in repelling many young people from spirituality as such. Of course, there came much more important, earth-shattering political and economical changes of 1989 which brought about the renaissance of the formal and primitive Polish "people's catholicism". But, in any case, it is the cult that was guilty, not Stachura himself. Similarly, please absolve the Pan pipe. :-)
I am, my friend, respectfully yours,
JKiii
There was a time in my life when it seemed impossible to escape the sound of pan pipes. They were everywhere! I can only imagine the amount of repressed trauma this has produced.