Music and I

I learned an old song in my childhood years entitled “Music Alone Shall Live”. And it goes thus: “All things shall perish from under the sky, music alone shall live never to die………”. Simple and memorable! But it contains an often under-discussed subject matter which is the essence of music to our existence.

Music is powerful. Music is addictive. It makes us happy. It makes us sad. It evokes or encapsulates memories of life’s experiences. It is the soundtrack of life. It is impossible to envisage a birth and concomitant christening, birthday party, wedding, interment or any other miscellaneous event without some form of music at the background or foreground. At the mall, music is ubiquitous! While commuting, by air, road or sea- music is right there. Be it from the sound stereo, or mp3, or from the twittering birds, the fact remains that music is an integral part of our reality.

knowyourmeme.com

Personally, it has been a life line and companion. For many years, music was my sibling at a time I thought I was going to be an only child of my parents. There were vinyl records, radio cassettes and video tapes encompassing me. I watched music on television and listened to it on the transistor radio. Oh, and how could I forget the church!

My life was extremely sheltered and secluded. Given a chance, I might have fared pretty well in a convent. I spent more time indoors than outdoors, and music was right there. It was my tranquilizer. When I felt underwhelmed, I would lay down and sing a song in my mind. In retrospect, Earth Wind and Fire’s “Sing a Song” aptly describes this moment.

Music kept me preoccupied and offered solace. Music became the window to understanding the world. I learned therefrom, about subjects that were seldom explored. Parents rarely discussed life issues with their children. An uncannily blissful ignorance existed which was further compounded by the paucity of information.

Music was a shield from the throes of juvenile delinquency. Believe me when I say that my parents ought to owe music a depth of gratitude because I turned out nicely. I was unproblematic, if I say so! I was inquisitive (although, nobody cared about a child’s questions), pretty compliant and never complained about their absence (sometimes, absence isn’t always physical). Nonetheless, I had a zest for life with an inner knowing that life had more than solitary confinement to offer. And music provided the markers to look out for. It sharpened my self-awareness. In my own perception, the musician was the preacher and music, the sermon. And I listened!

When I ventured into the religious domain, my music experience assumed a new dimension. I had never been a music snob. I listened uninhibitedly to every form of music. However, my music perception underwent a temporary shift due to the splintering of reality into a binary opposition or duality.

When a child is born, everything just is! It has no understanding of separation, social stratification, fear or hatred. Every behavioural pattern absorbed, afterwards, are the impositions of socialization within the family and externally. Within the church, the machinery of fear was set into motion. Reality was presented as a sacred-secular dichotomy which pitted good vs evil, God vs Satan, and of course, sacred music (holy music) vs secular music (devil’s music/worldly or sinful music).

Khan (discogs.com )

Vandross (discogs.com)

This meant that to be considered worthy and heaven-bound, I needed to filter my music preference and prioritize those with religiously-charged undertones and rhetoric. This meant that I would be considered a backslider for listening to Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All” (emphasizes children and self-belief), Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror”(identifies self-examination and awareness as a catalyst for societal transformation and progression), Madonna’s“Where’s the Party” (expresses the yearning for liberation from society’s limitations and mental shackles), Prince’s “Gold” (the beautiful one warns us about the ephemerality of life’s pursuits), Aretha Franklin’s “Everyday People” ( which is what I am), Luther Vandross’ “Power of Love” ( the true essence of life and the default nature of humanity which has been significantly undermined and misconstrued), Chaka Khan’s “Everywhere” (a smooth jazz-dancehall infused love song), Silk “Freak Me” ( a song about sexuality). These artistes address the issues which permeate daily living and experiences. As such, it was unfathomable the contempt for life-mirroring songs.

Permit me to digress!

Dear reader, for a minute, let us be honest and exercise some candour in considering sexuality. You see, when I was a child, I frequently visited my paternal grandmother in the village. We shared a strong bond, especially as her first grandchild. While in the village, I was a keen observer of the natural environment that many hold in contempt today. We call it grassroot, backward, uncivilized, unrefined, etc. But, it was in that environment that I gleaned the configuration, simplicity, and purity of life itself.

My grandmother like most, owned a vast number of domestic animals which roamed freely and unperturbed. They lived life to the max. I would watch the goats copulate with reckless abandon in their pen, the chickens and roosters bumped and grinded in the backyard. And the dogs? Oh, my goodness! Pure shamelessness! I wondered if they judged each other. And if they too will burn in hell for their fornication. I mean these animals had not solemnized any holy matrimony. They were literally single and living in sin, and were the creation of the Almighty.

The animals enjoyed their simple lives to the hilt, but when I compared them to us humans, I was flabbergasted by the human judgement, prejudice and hypocrisy that surround sex. It goes without saying that an anti-sex sentiment pervades the human ecosystem and is often championed by hypocritical individuals who publicly deny the very act they gleefully relish in private.

As of February 2022, the world population estimate stood at 7.9 billion. Correct me, if I’m wrong, but sexual relations engendered this exponentiality in numbers. Or, maybe the population probably dropped from the sky like rain? I have often wondered how a biologically determined primal need (similar to hunger, thirst, defecation, etc) came to be categorized as sinful, thereby triggering emotions of fear, shame, denial and guilt in humanity?

Does this even make sense, at all?

Anyway!

The sacred and secular perception of reality was an element of modernism. Modernism signified the displacement of traditionally held beliefs with modernistic ideology. Such ideas reinvented religion and perception of reality, education, health and medicine, beauty, language, etc. It began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In recent years, the concept “Great Reset” has been bandied about. But modernism could also be viewed as a tool employed in resetting society. In the pre-modernist era, sacredness undergirded the collective world-view. Everything was everything!

Charles (swingmusic.net)

Musically, it was Ray Charles who reunified the sacred and secular, when he invented the soul sound in the late 1950s. It was a matrimony of early rhythm and blues elements (blues and big band swing), and Black gospel music elements (the piano, call and response structure, and girl-chorus). His sanctification of the hitherto ‘devilish and iniquitous’ landscape of rhythm and blues opened the floodgate for gospel’s best voices to navigate the innovative terrain.

According to music critic, Nelson George, “By breaking down the division between the pulpit and bandstand, recharging blues concerns with transcendental fervor, unashamedly linking the spiritual and the sexual, Charles made pleasure (physical satisfaction) and joy (divine enlightenment) seem the same thing. By doing so he brought the realities of the Saturday night sinner and Sunday-morning worshipper- so often one and the same-into a raucous harmony” (70).

Franklin (mojo4music.com)

Cooke (theguardian.com)

Gospel singers like Aretha Franklin and Sam Cooke would switch musical borders through their transition from gospel to soul. Such shifts came with vilification and singers often devised a strategy to avert communal shaming, as was the case of music virtuoso, Eunice Kathleen Waymon, who became Nina Simone, for self-preservation from the shaming that accompanied the abandonment of ‘holy’ music for the ‘devil’s music.

Simone (taz.de)

Her musical ingenuity was discovered and nurtured in the church. After she was denied admission to study at Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, she began playing piano at a nightclub. Thereafter, the sky became the limit. Simone’s music tremendously impacted the combustible sociopolitical terrain in 1960s United States. Songs like “Mississippi Goddam” and “To be Young, Gifted and Black” were considered Black Nationalist anthems. Her music repertoire propagated themes of political consciousness,self-love and acceptance, sisterhood, romantic love, etc.

So, what became of my music preference? Well, for a while, I was perfunctorily selective. I was a temporary subscriber to that thought process. But one day, I had an epiphany which inspired the decision to be an unapologetic “backslider” like Simone. Nothing would ever again deter my enjoyment and appreciation of great music.

Great music is a composite of life. It reflects the sum total of the human experience. Great music is a tapestry of hidden jewels, beauty, life’s simultaneously simple and complex texture, hope and victory. Great music is complete and unsanitized. It is multi-dimensional and not one-dimensional.

As such, I chose balance and wholesomeness over self-righteousness and inner-conflict. I refused to prioritize ‘holy music’ above the ‘sinful’ one. I chose the secular and sacred, positioned them side-by-side without discrimination, judgement or prejudice because both are part of a whole. Since then, music and I have continued to fare pretty well, thank you very much!

REFERENCE:

George, Nelson. The Death of Rhythm and Blues. New York: Pantheon Books. 1988.