NOTE TO THE READER: This is
the full version of the article submitted to New Age Retailer for
its July/Aug 2001 music issue. For those in the industry, or just having
a journalist interest in how the story, so tightly constructed, was blown
apart by their thoughtless actions, I have another page of the story with
annotations. Please inquire
about the url. Here is the story as I intended...but would liked to have
interviewed, as I mentioned, Bernice Reagon Johnson about music in the
black community. -- Carol Wright, July 16, 2001.
"The music business is a cruel and shallow
money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free,
and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." - Hunter
S. Thompson
A Simple Thought:
Music and Meaning
By Carol Wright
As a reviewer, I like to be swept into a dizzied bliss, led through
a cathartic upheaval, delighted by clever chord progressions, and thrown
through mysterious folds of the mind. The albums that totally hold me are
rare. What qualities propel an album to my "keepers" list? And why is some
music numbing? Have my music reviewer ears been jaded?
Considering the number of CDs released, few are
amateurish. But many albums just don't move me, in spite of high production
values. And popular styles? Screaming singers stab from the supermarket
speakers. A teen's car stereo blasts murderous rap rhythms. An office radio
dribbles innocuous instrumentals and skimpy melody. The precision singing
of the teen groups are polished, but the emotions artificial. To some fans,
these artists are very meaningful, and I'd be booed down at the challenge.
Music's meaning is subjective, no doubt about it.
What makes music Meaningful? I set to find the answer from veterans
of the music scene to help us understand where New
Age music may have slipped its track and why music should be cherished
as a powerful force in our lives. Where does their "meaning" come from?
Here, Paul Winter, Wendy Carlos, Constance Demby, Susan Osborn, Iasos,
and soundhealer Tom Kenyon take this subject deeply to heart.I planned
to interview Sweet Honey in the Rock's Bernice Reagon Johnson, but our
schedules didn't jive. She would have given an invaluable perspective on
the black community's rich cultural heritage. --Carol Wright
Plugging the meaning leaks
One might expect music to lack real substance
if it is poorly performed, unimaginative, or unfeeling. But some external
concerns may also erode meaning. Perhaps one can't nourish and fix an expressive
soul over night, but some of these everyday matters can be considered when
recording and packaging an album. You can also address your own personal
sound space and listening habits.
Use of samples, mixes upon mixes. Original samples
sources are uncredited. Every instrument and voice is now available as
a sampled soundwave with little nod toward the original intent. The didg
once meant only aboriginal Australia. Now it's drone du jour. Overused,
wrongly used, and fusioned, sounds have become more indistinct. The more
complex sampled sonic atmospheres leave less for the musician to create.
Over production and remixes. What goes IN does not
necessarily come OUT.
Multi-tracks, recorded separately. Recording one
track at a time at different times or even studios, then mixing later,
is cleaner, but we may lose the spontaneity of a live session. Solo electronic
composers such as Wendy Carlos and Iasos, however, often record and refine
their pieces track-by-track, so when the album "works," give credit for
a masterful job.
Grooveboxes and drum machines. Trance-inducing to
many, but synth pioneer Wendy Carlos comments, "They have not one whit
of human expression."
Lack of liner notes and credits. Preview albums often
arrive without liner notes and credits. With so many mixes and sampled
instruments, we need help sorting reality from technology. Compilation
disks often skip full musician credits as well.
Uniform pricing "says" all music is equal.
Most music is similarly priced, from the debut recording of a pianist to
an orchestra's Beethoven's ninth. Why not pay more for talent, quality,
and raw materials (Strads), and get a price break on amateurish efforts?
Piano album, $3.95; Beethoven, $49.98? And why can't I return an album
if it doesn't move me?
Napster mentality. Even those who didn't steal
music through the system got the message: "I'm entitled. Music should be
free."
Sonic pollution. You can confine and isolate space
for a painting, but it's impossible to isolate against sounds. This seepage
is stressful, and music is often played loudly to create a barrier to another's
sound, or people isolate themselves using headsets. Spacemusic composer
Constance Demby notes that "rap music competes out all stores in the mall,
and no one notices! Everyone's tuned out and in a daze." As vocalist Susan
Osborn adds, "Silence doesn't have a chance." Moderate your own sound contributions
at home and in the store, and respectfully request that sloppy sounds elsewhere
be handled.
Music composed by non-musicians. "With the availability
of advanced keyboards in the 1990s," notes Demby, "we've been fed a steady
stream of music composed by non-musicians." Wendy Carlos adds that most
haven't been trained in compositional techniques, "They don't know how
to create a piece with both bones and soft flesh, where to go for contrast,
how to develop a theme. Is anyone even trying to make a musical masterpiece?"
Lack of authenticity. Who ME?
Authenticity, giva to me, relativity
"Speaks truly from her inspiration…crisp
rhymes and lyrics…very poetic…real…greatest artist of our time…a work of
art…sings from her heart…fascinating artist…grounded in an emotion…recognizes
both the personal and universal…haunting melodies, vivid imagery…edgy phrases
and limit pushing language…disgusting, humiliating, homophobic, and hypocritical."
Come again? Okay, tricked you. These glowing accolades
are drawn from the 900 Amazon reviews of Eminem's rap chartbuster The
Marshall Mathers LP.
One might assume that the key inspiration of a
New Age musician be of a spiritual source. Is the source of the rapper
then. . . ? So, I looked. Peering ever-so-briefly into the hip-hop world,
I found "authenticity" -- "true" and "real" and "quality" and "respect"
and "spiritual" -- to be desired as well, written right next to pictures
of glowering rap stars. In the April 2001 issue of XXL (excel, "hip
hop on a higher level"), the journalists often pressed the rap stars to
reveal their spiritual beliefs. Have a lot to learn about that world, a
topic for another article.
So even if authenticity is relative and subjective,
we can gain a lot by heading to the core. These artists share what they
have learned about making music that means something.
Facets of authentic
Iasos
I discovered Iasos's music in the late seventies. When I put on his
Wave One: Interdimensional Music, I thought I'd heard heaven nectar,
authentic. I was curious. How does someone whose music effervesces with
spirit relate to the loud music that fills 
the
malls?
"Oh, I hear all this music, and it makes me chuckle!" laughs Iasos.
Why? Nobody else I interviewed was laughing. "There is a difference between
'negative judgment' and preference. Negative judgment is invalidating what
you don't prefer. But preferences? Music is a conductor for emotion, therefore,
musical preference boils down to emotional preference. Each musician sells
not sound, but emotion. If a person has anger, they will gravitate to music
that generates that feeling. If a person has love in their heart, they
will be drawn to music that has love."
The most "high demand emotions," he says, drive sales of albums by a
Madonna or a rap star. Iasos is realistic, but not
bitter, about the current demand for his music: "Celestial music from the
heavenly realms? Now, only a minority can even resonate with those kinds
of emotions. My potential audience is not large now." But Iasos is encouraged
and sees an exponential growth in the spiritually minded, perhaps reaching
80 percent of the population by 2012.
Did originality count in "authenticity"? "Yes," shares Iasos, "each
person can share only who they are, but many try to copy another's style.
There are a lot of Jimi Hendricks imitators, but only he had that emotional
intensity. When you create, your music is a time stamp of where you are
emotionally and spiritually.
"For my own music, there was nothing else like it at the time. I heard
the music spontaneously in my head, but it didn't come from earth-based
sources. It was like listening to music on headphones, but without headphones.
Initially, I didn't know its source, but eventually, I became aware of
a being -- Vista -- who was intentionally transmitting these musical visions
into my mind. When I was first beginning my career, a synthesizer could
barely recreate what I was hearing in my head, but I still kept going after
those sounds." In this partnership, Iasos receives the music (hears it),
captures its essence, and then spends months recreating it in his studio
to get it out to the planet.
To what purpose? "Music is capable of inducing divine feelings. My purpose
is to create music to facilitate the vibrational upshift this planet is
going through, to help people go through this upshift more easily." To
do that, Iasos works exclusively in the realm of the "love" emotions, which
he likens to the vibrational structure of notes. "If you double the vibrations
of the note C, it's an octave higher but still C. Double again, even higher.
Same with emotions: I work only in the sphere of harmonious emotions."
By resonating at higher octaves of happiness, says Iasos, the music can
take the listener from contentment, higher and higher, past ecstasy and
rapture.
What about his new album? "Almost done! This album
starts where Elixir left off," he explains. Listening on headphones,
eyes closed, can "generate a three-dimensional hologram in your mind. By
being in that space, the listener can actually slip in to a vibrational
gateway to celestial realms or other dimensions. It's the most celestial
music I've ever heard, that's for sure."
Constance Demby
I've been a Demby fan since I heard her music 20 years ago. I
first experienced Novus Magnificat as my "time's up" music in a
float tank. Time's up? No way! Though much of Demby's music inevitably
transports me to spiritual heights, her music also engages both body and
emotions, cathartically. Bowed roars from her sonic steel instruments stir
primordial urges. And when MIDI and samples became available, Demby embraced
the romantic colors of the orchestra. Though compositions are often recorded
one track at a time, Demby can create a volcanic solo concert as well.
A 1999 live performance
for Attunement linked her three Kurzweils together with foot pedals.
All tracks were recorded live, without an engineer,
who abandoned his post to "go with the flow."By 2001, Demby followed
her own flow by relocating to Spain, where there is a long history of appreciation
of the arts, classical and otherwise.
First, I ask "Senorita Consuela Dembolina" about
her impressions of society. She replies that the nineties were an
especially disturbing decade where society began to "process its shadow,
uncomfortable perhaps, but necessary." She senses an "underlying force,
seen and unseen, driving the ethics and intelligence level down, pushing
the kids toward violence, death, and fear. Music has the power to direct
consciousness, in this case, downward to lower levels on the emotional
tone scale. Not only does this serve certain ends, but also it helps sell
cigarettes, liquor, drugs, rap music, and rock.
"Then there are the 'service to others' folks who want the best for
everyone. This seems to be the eternal struggle, right? But people are
opening up, and so many of them! So, let's look on the brighter side: People
are searching."
How would Demby suggest searchers find more meaning in their music?
Education. "Expose yourself to the great music, teach yourself how to discern
and listen, even if only to feel the dynamics between major-and-minor keys'
fulfillment and longing. Live in the silence and let it speak to you. The
public's been fed junk music, in the market, in the elevators, in the mall.
Much of the music is artifice. They make it 'sound like' and 'look like'
emotion, and the listener thinks they are hearing real feelings. But it's
glitter and gloss, and nobody notices: It's not real. The cumulative effect
is numbness. And this is the desired effect: Keep the population in SleepWalker,
not SkyWalker mode; easier to control them that way. Our ability
to discern has become jaded from a crass carnival overload assault on our
senses of too much, too fast, too loud. Something has happened to our innocence."
Demby notes the irony of being "numb" to music, "Music is energy, music
is emotion, one of the most powerful things we have on this planet to direct
and affect states of mind. The vibrational tones enter the physical body.
Your bones are rattling, the blood is boiling, the breathing rate changes,
your brainwaves change. Your ears are in thrill mode. Your heart leaps
or weeps, opens or dances for joy. And the mind process, activating
god-knows-what -- past life images, memories. When someone is so moved
they can't even move, look how many processes are accessed.
"And your soul is singing, 'God, give it to me!' Music is its food.
Music makes love. Music can actually create more Love. One's being can
be bathed in beauty. Beauty! Music creates harmony. It can rearrange
your atoms. I've received many so letters from people who have been healed
listening to my music."
However, Demby is also aware that her music, especially, has been used
as an emotional processing tool. "During the difficult decade of the '90s,
many found themselves processing suppressed emotional issues. This translated
to my musical process as well, in particular Aeterna. When I started
composing it, I did not have that purpose in mind, but the melodies in
Aeterna tugged at my skirts. It was in the mystery of these melodies
as they told their story, stories of the heart, that the depth of the emotions
arose. It was not until the album was completed that the entire picture
revealed itself: a deeply emotional piece of music that penetrates the
veil of tears held in the human heart.
"How this occurred, for it was not intended, is the mystery of the creative
process. It was simply time for me to enter this arena, an advance guard
so to speak, to explore and experience those emotional tones myself, translate
them into musical tones, and bring it forth for others to then have their
experiences. So, there it is: Meaning."
Essentially, says Demby, artists must first authentically experience,
deeply feel, what they then give to others. "You gotta 'earn your tones.'
You can't pretend to feel it, or you will not translate it accurately.
The artist is like a reflective surface for their audience. If the artist
authentically strikes the universal chord, then the listeners will actually
hear themselves reflected back in the music. And that's when everyone started
crying with Aeterna."
Wendy Carlos
As fascinating as it is to talk to electronic music legend Wendy Carlos
about synthesizers (i.e., Switched-On Bach, A Clockwork Orange, The
Shining, Digital Moonscape, Beauty in the Beast, Tales of Heaven and Hell,
Sonic Seasonings, 
etc.),
I've stalked the answer to this question ever since our first interview
in the fall of 1999. Finally, with this article I had the chance to ask
her -- a card carrying Realist/Humanist/Physicist -- about her source of
meaning. What inspires someone who does not believe in God?
"It doesn't really matter what you think your motive is," Wendy explains.
"Obviously, to me, the motives are going to come from my human nature.
But maybe you want to believe it comes from some invisible pink elephant
guardian. If you think that is what it is, and it inspires you do something
good, fine."
But, she wonders, isn’t there "a natural human desire to communicate
and to explore our inner voices and inner humanity? And I don't mean voices
like I sometimes joke about Joan of Arc wannabes. Even if we've been brainwashed
not to be especially creative in our lives, don't we still have the 'muse'
inside of us a little bit? Why must the motivation I have or feel be metaphored
as these stock clipart kind of spiritual existence 'things'? I think this
motivation to create is really based just on our humanity -- and the best
side of humanity -- that human need to express for one's own sake and so
others can recognize it. Express so that we see that what is true for me
is true for others as well.
"We are trying to reach something within our humanity, since we are
aware (being human beings) of our short span of life here. We'd want to
touch something of greater significance than just ourselves while we are
still capable of doing it. I don't think thoughts like that require any
of the other external spiritual scaffolding. I think they are noble and
beautiful -- and quite enough -- all on their own. That's what art's about."
Where does her inspiration come from, if not from spirit? Carlos, admits
she's a "hardened Realist" in the mode of Carl Sagan.
"As an ex-physicist," she explains, "physics offers me a way to
appreciate the cosmos in ways that don't require these 'shabby' old stories.
Most of my motivation, however, probably comes from vaguely remembered
experiences in the past that I then rechannel. What they say about wisdom:
what remains when you've forgotten everything you've ever learned. Like
Brahms standing on the shoulders of Beethoven, Mozart on Bach's, and back
through history. I think that's the way art works."
Carlos remembers to throw a parting word for curiosity. "If you are
curious person, you will have things that you'll want to know. What would
it sound like 'if'? I ask 'if' when trying alternative tunings and new
timbers and synthesized hybrid instruments. Perhaps a masterpiece can come
just from asking an insouciant question. It's a nuts and bolts approach,
but it's a very real one for people like me. It is very often the real
motivation when really going through the actual work that art requires.
But where are the curious? Don't you notice that people just seem to wallow
in what they already know? Jeepers!"
"These are matters we should think about all the
time, but do you know how seldom you get to talk about this stuff? Your
humanity and your curiosity, a lovely combination. I'm old enough now that
I can look back on a lot of my years and say a lot of other stuff was bullshit.
But this was not. This was true. It's not on air clouds, this stands on
granite. And I will live by this."
Seeing if I could get Wendy riled up for a parting
rant, I ask her about the state of today's music scene. "The bells and
whistles on today's new sequencers can be a smokescreen, produce an illusion
that real music is being made, when all it may be is a string of sounds,
usually very much cliche-driven.
"Music is a human endeavor. It's our great loss
that a couple of generations of listeners have been raised with nothing
better than mechanical grooves and thoughtless looping. My distinction
about the human element of music has been forgotten, lost, to the present.
A dulled-down ear no longer is 'put off' by quick, cheap, and dirty loops,
too regular rhythmic patterns, or the elimination of real performance values.
"Lately I've heard complaints by younger audiences
that when they hear a real performance, it's not "enough" for them. They
have lost the taste for this dimension of expression and are content in
a lifeless musical environment. Those of us who were not initiated into
this 'society of the numb and dumb' are forced to suffer through the thin
gruel of musical possibilities that get served like fast food, the minimum
effort to get a task done, the task of making music in this case. Wonderful
new tools are applied not to Art, but to Commerce. (See, I told you I'm
becoming an old curmudgeon!)
[Note:
The entire interview was so potent that we've restored/expanded it and
posted to Wendy Carlos's own website, retitled "Only Human." Read
it here.]
Paul Winter
Soprano sax player Paul Winter has broken so many musical sound barriers,
he should have sprouted wings. He fused world music with jazz on the 1971
Icarus, was the first to play music with animals on Common Ground,
and he modeled the practice of using 
his
music career for the good of the Earth. His Consort colleagues include
some of the world's top artists -- guitarist Ralph Towner, oboists Paul
McCandless and Nancy Rumbel, cellist Eugene Friesen, organist Paul Halley,
percussionist Glen Velez, and vocalist Susan Osborn. Recently, Winter and
his "Earth Band" welcomed Armenian percussionist and vocalist Arto Tuncboyaciyan,
and their Journey with the Sun was honored with a Grammy nomination.
Here, Winter talks about how the music industry impacts the meaning of
music, and how he keeps tapped in to his core.
Winter's thoughts on the music industry were still reeling in his head,
as he's just returned from the Grammy ceremonies. He was honored that Journey
with the Sun was nominated for Best World Album, but he was not impressed
with the scene. "The decibel level in the auditorium was frightening, anything
they could do to captivate that young audience. I was in sound shock for
three days.
"However, that afternoon's ceremony, when 90 of the awards were presented,
celebrated diversity and was like a get-together of colleagues. Because
our album was not a comparatively huge seller, it was gratifying to know
that a sizeable number of members of the recording academy had listened
to it and appreciated it."
Winter has been recording since 1961. Is music less meaningful now?
"Being 'numbed-out' by the industry is not new," he surmises, "but it's
on a different level now. It's louder, the common denominator is lower.
Values are predicated by high earnings in a short time. Everything has
become more extreme. The mad race toward giantism is now spiraling at a
logarithmic rate. The 'disease' of the music industry is the same that
has become chronic through the media and politics: power addiction."
What does Winter do to have a fulfilling musical experience in this
environment? "When I play live, and close my eyes, I soon forget the size
of the audience. You don't need the feedback from huge numbers to consummate
your goal as a musicmaker.
"As far as sales go, I am much more interested reaching the people who
visit bookstores than I am those who go to record stores. Record stores
have not been very alluring to people who resonate with our music and our
values. Book shoppers more often tend to be seekers and they may listen
on a deeper level."
Winter, who has championed environmental causes for decades and has
seen much of the world first hand, keeps focusing on the larger picture.
"We are living in a world filled with both miracles and absurdities. A
cultural historian might say these are the worst of times, for the destruction
of the natural environment and the species of life on Earth is cataclysmic
and unprecedented in the history of humanity. However, people privileged
to be living in the United States might say these are the best of times,
because of the affluence and the vast range of opportunities we have. We
are living, however, in an Ivory Tower, and it may be that it will take
major calamity to wake us up to the reality of what we are doing to the
Earth."
How to respond? "I'll mention two things: First, embrace the challenge,"
advised Winter. "Only through challenge do we grow. We are being given
the opportunity to listen and look more deeply for our soul-nourishment,
whether in music or literature or whatever. And we'll find those offerings
that stir our souls, and awaken a spirit of glatitude (yes, I mean to spell
it this way) for this miracle of being alive. Secondly, I encourage everyone
to make their own music: Expression is the chief reward of human existence."
Tom Kenyon
Tom Kenyon, M.A., brings many perspectives to this discussion of music
and meaning. Through his company Acoustic Brain Research, Kenyon combined
his knowledge of 
psychology
to scientifically investigate the effects of sound and music on human consciousness.
(See his book Brain States, U.S. Publishing.) Kenyon later found
that his four-octave voice and drumming were effective tools, and he now
trains sound healers all over the world. Kenyon recordings can be found
with The Relaxation Company, and on his own ABR and ORB labels. Recent
releases include three vocal albums: City of Hymns, Forbidden
Songs: Songs of Desperation, Obsession, and Enlightenment'),
and Sound Transformations (toning work).
Kenyon and I had a cyber-interview between Washington and the rustic island
of Malta.
Aside from the spectacular tour de force of his tone healing voice,
Kenyon is an intense performer. I asked if he used specific techniques
to make his music more meaningful. He replies that he uses "essentic
forms, musical expressions of emotion discovered by Manfred Clynes, a classical
pianist and researcher. He discovered that he could create emotional responses
in his listeners using various pressures on the keyboard. He measured listener
responses and discovered that certain human emotions are universal in their
essentic wave forms, apparently programmed
into our nervous system. So when a musician uses pressure in a masterful
way -- be it through voice, drum, piano, or other instrument -- this creates
emotional responses.
"Of course, as an artist I have no control over a person's specific
reaction. However, since we are all share the same physiology, there are
emotional meeting grounds, including the experience of beauty and spirit.
When I am transported by a musical passage I experience a spiritual passion
and try to communicate this passion so the listener comes into resonance
with what I am feeling. I can gauge this connection when I perform, but
when recording, I have to imagine it."
After years of using tone generators to create brainwave entrainment,
Kenyon read about shamanic drumming to create theta wave activity. "This
set me off," he explains, "on an exploration of indigenous sonic methods
for altering consciousness. Now I prefer these indigenous instruments to
tone generators. By going 'live,' I can alter the pressure waves (essentic
forms) and create a greater array of inner experiences for my listeners."
However, states Kenyon, sound waves and calming, relaxing music cannot
do it all, "intention and context are very, very important. Without them
there is no healing from a sound healing perspective. In psychology we
call this context the placebo effect. The placebo effect is not imaginary;
it is the power of consciousness in action, an active process based upon
the expectations and beliefs of the listener."
Art, says Kenyon, "has the power to transform consciousness in powerful
ways. The ancient Greeks understood the nature of art, but in our culture,
we rarely experience a true aesthetic since so much is tied up in 'sound
bytes' and advertising. My work as an 'art form' is simply the act of using
ritual and sound together to create a space of possible meaning, and each
person fills in that space with their own content. I fell blessed to use
my music to create spaces for people to explore themselves.
"I feel that one of the greatest tragedies of the modern music scene
is that it is robbing us, collectively, of our birthright to make music.
To sing, to play, to dance, these are innate expressions of our humaness.
To not use them is to deny ourselves a rich and vibrant way of making
contact with our deeper natures. As an artist I strive to use my own music
in this way. I see it as a kind of inner compass for finding emotional
expression and direction. It is both a release and an exploration.
"I love listening to other artists on a similar journey, but as a performer
I love it when my audience and I create spontaneous 'sound sculptures.'
This is a truly amazing event to experience. A group of people, some of
whom have never met before, begin to tone with their voices as I lead them
into some sacred chant. Exquisitely beautiful and complex harmonies arise
from the make-shift choir. We soar on wings of sound. We are touched by
the muse. None of us will never be the same and we know it. After these
'harmonic choirs' the room is hushed for the longest time. It's as if every
person wishes to hold onto the experience for as long as possible. For
a moment there is silence, but a silence filled with the resonance
of an exquisite sonic event. Art? Absolutely. In its truest form. For me,
this is one of the powers of music, not canned, not sophisticated layers
of synthesized sound, but the raw, heartfelt expression of the human spirit."
Susan
Osborn
Vocalist Susan Osborn was "the" voice of the New Age years ago when
she was featured vocalist with the Paul Winter Consort. (Hear her on Common
Ground and Missa Gaia.) Osborn moved to Orcas Island, Washington,
years ago, but her career catapulted her to Japan, where she released several
albums. Recently, Osborn has re-released several albums and recorded two
new ones, ReUnion and (coming in summer) Still Life with
pianist Paul Halley. Since Osborn started her own performance venue, The
Living Room, in 1999, I've had the opportunity to hear her perform live
dozens of times. It's not uncommon for her to move her audience so much
they couldn't. Nobody wants to break the spell, the silence. She calls
her vocal workshops "Silence and Song."
"Silence. We live in a rarified atmosphere here," Osborn tells me. "On
Orcas Island, we are soaked in silence relative to the rest of the world.
We don't have that steady hum of freeway sounds, car stereos, and the buzzing
of streetlights." What Osborn notices most when she travels is "the speed
of things. People are moving fast, the music is fast, the traffic is fast.
And the music in the malls has a mechanical rhythm, mostly electrically
generated.
"What brings meaning to me is slowing down. My breathing slows down.
The slower I sing, the slower I enter the music and contact myself on a
deeper level. When I am singing a beautiful melody, I want to taste each
note and each relationship between the notes so I can enter them more fully."
I wondered if Osborn "disappeared" when performing, as I often
do as an audience member. "Definitely. My experience is that music, particularly
singing, has the power to easily and directly take you to a place beyond
thought. Certainly, that is quite intentional, and my work is to stay focused
on each note and lyric as it's there. I suppose it operates as a mantra,
to focus the mind"
What about lyrics? Most say they are left brained, and they distract
from the right brain's affinity for imagery. "I think about something that
a teacher of mine, Gangaji, just said, which is that the mind is going
to be busy: That's its job. So why not give the mind something true and
beautiful to focus on, then that which is beyond the mind can experience
itself. As a lyric writer, I look for language that is evocative of nature,
because those images contain real truth and beauty.
Osborn recently finished her new album, Still Life, with pianist
Paul Halley. "My Japanese label presented the idea to record the most
beautiful classical masterpieces, and my husband David and I were to write
lyrics for them. We listened to many melodies, and narrowed it down to
about a dozen, pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Ravel, Fauré, Sibelius,
Dvorak, Rachmaninoff.
The first one we did was Bach's Sinfonia. We had to get a soft
focus, listening to the music over and over, and then the images came.
'Find a tender road, a winding way, to walk, to follow on, in peace.' So
it was the joy of following the language and finding beautiful images."
I comment that we didn't have very many words
for beauty. "Again, I don't think people take the time for it.I
rarely hear a beautiful melody on the radio these days, and the mega radio
stations feed us all the same tunes just as the news programs tell us the
bad news. But you can find that beauty, especially in the indie music scene,
riches of music from all over the world. Lately I've been listening to
these wonderful songwriters who have come through our performance space,
performers like Libby Kirkpatrick from Boulder. Great lyrics and guitarist,
doing wonderful things with her voice. Sniff out a living room concert
to attend, or catch a program at some venue.
"The truth is: There is a lot of good news out there. And there is a
lot of gorgeous music, too."
For the fun of it!
These six artists represent just a tiny slice
of our musical pie, a fraction of the styles you stock in your music section.
Most serious musicians do tap into some core to create their music, but
the depth expressed often goes untouched, the meaning unappreciated. Musicians
-- who often assume that it is "enough" to just put their music out there
-- are usually reluctant to explain what their music "means," almost embarrassed
to state in words, "I mean something here: Listen up!" That these musicians
opened up for what Constance Demby called this "noble mission," is a great
gift.
In parting, let's not forget: Music can be fun.
In the process of writing this article, I attended live local performances
of chamber music, a barbershop quartet, a community singalong, singer/songwriters,
jazz singer/pianist, and a sizzling hot blues/r&b/rock jam session.
As singer/songwriter/producer Danielle Egnew wrote me: "I, too, feel that
music is a WHOLE lot more that just a-shakin' yer booty, although that
can be fun at times!" Yes, let's not forget: Music, from booty to booteeful,
can share the highest vibes of all.
