People can feel divided by a lot of things, possibly Race, Religion, Sexuality, Ethnicity, Politics, Allegiance, Wage, Education, Experience, etc. but I personally do not mind what categories you fit into. Because what I know for certain at least is that everyone, including you who is reading this, has a beat that will make them move physically or emotionally and that can bring you to sing.
That is the power of music. It doesn’t matter who you are, if you do so in public or only in the comfort of your own home, you have a collection of music that makes you seemingly lose control. It’s inevitable. You have something that makes you feel like you are the puppet in some weirdly wonderful menagerie. Where the lack of control isn’t scary, it just makes you feel alive.
It’s also why I gravitate towards musicians (among the many kinds of creative I am guilty of asking far too many questions), because I don’t mind at all if they introduce me to a set of new notes, lyrics and melodies to experiment with. To play then in moments of life to add that bit of drama, because what is a good story without a great soundtrack?
I can actually tell you stories from my life that are forever attached to songs I have heard. ‘Waves’ by Mr. Probz, I remember hearing that in a cramped van on the way to Barcelona with a bunch of my mates, tipping water over us as the engine was overheating and our air-conditioning had shut off. ‘One’ by Metallica, I heard that live at Reading Festival in 2015 but this time freezing my arse off with hail and gusts of wind in a mosh pit, still amongst the huge smiles on the faces of every fan. ‘Mambo No.5’, I sung that in a bar in Kyoto drinking something called a ‘Kamikaze’. ‘In Too Deep’ played at my school prom. ‘Learn to Lose’ (by Bakermat, one of my favourite DJs) got shuffled though my playlist on a train back home from one of my first Acting classes; realising how much I was willing to sacrifice to chase acting. How often I’d be willing ‘to lose’.
I can’t escape it, and I suspect neither can you. Which is why I call bullshit on anyone who says they aren’t that much of a music fan. You mean to tell me there is no song on this earth that once you hear about 10 seconds of its beat it doesn’t make you grin like a big kid? Yes, indeed, I call bullshit.
People go through phases in their development with music too, speaking at least for myself. Heavy Metal head bangers who later in life learned to sway to the blues, Rap artists who started to learn the basics of pop and disco from the 80s, hell I’ve known one gentleman from school who went from a punk kid with wavy black hair and guy-liner who somehow became a DJ. No seriously, he’s great at it!
As you change so do your tastes, and your appetite to sample outside of your menu of music grows with you. There are of course some ‘purists’ who continue to stay with what they know but they are very rare, probably more so now than ever. Even if they say they are a big fan of one genre of music, the individual musicians they stand by sneak in influences from elsewhere that if you pointed it out to they’d be dumbfounded. But that’s another thing about music, it’s all connected.
When you look at blues music you realise that a musician took it and then bred Rock N Roll. That was taken by someone else who gave us Metal, which then gave us Punk, which gave us Pop, which then led to experiments with electronics that birthed synth-pop, which gave us Disco and much later EDM. If you take a few steps back to Punk you’ll also find it gave us Grunge, and Nu-Metal when mixed with the aforementioned synth-pop and Metal. That’s not scratching the surface in the slightest!
So when I say the power of music, I do have to clarify how inclusive it can be but also how beneficial it can be to bringing people together that you otherwise wouldn’t imagine in each other’s company. I’ve seen again first-hand men who stand over 6 foot tall, about 250lbs of muscle, beer and beard, tattooed with skulls and hell demons, linking arms with the suburban Dad with a sweater on, and in the other arm then a black girl with an afro and heels, and then in her arm a hippie women in her 60s, in crowds full of the same diversity. It’s bloody brilliant to be a part of that. When prejudice is taken out of the equation at a music concert, or on a night out, festival, anywhere it is played, it’s truly the most wonderful thing to be a part of. I’ve met some of my best friends and been told some of my best stories when I’ve been lucky enough to be in situations like that!
Prejudice is still sadly involved in music, racists and bigots exist almost everywhere unfortunately, but you’re much more likely to find allies where music is involved than enemies. You do still have who I have alluded to and call ‘Pushy Purists’, those that are partially aggressive to newcomers who know little about ‘their bands’, but they’re no harm. They just idolise ‘their bands’ to sometimes the point of worship and claim ownership, but they are always outweighed by the kind purists who actually want to see you learn more about what sounds they can’t get enough of. I know because I’ve been a purist who has loved sharing with a newcomer, and a newcomer who has had plenty of taste-breaking moments thanks to a kind purist.
The point of me writing this was to serve at first as expressing how much I am impacted by music, but it has somehow evolved into my wishing to say how I want more people to shared it with each other. How I wish it was used in some way to open up dialogues between divides that don’t need to be there. Or at least that can be a bit muddied. You can do it with a lot of things that don’t have to be music, possibly food, language, culture, but I thought that since music had a universal appeal that it was the easiest way to connect. Which is also why I’ll be reviewing quite a lot of music in the coming weeks and months of this blog (that I had to take some time from as I’m moving out and starting a new job soon!), but I’ll also be taking on something else when it comes to music.
With that being said, by chance, do you know anyone who could teach me to sing like Freddie Mercury (that’s ‘like’ and not ‘as good as’ because it’s Freddie)? Oh, and play the saxophone, or the drums, or something like that…
Dan Abides 