OK, I was planning on writing my year end VENT but decided against it. Why? Just not in the mood. I've been too busy listening to the ghosts of the past.
Now before you start thinking that I'm a schizophrenic in dire need of his meds, allow me to clarify. I love music of all kinds. A friend put music in a different perspective to me last night. As a non musician, she perceives it thusly: Music is what makes all of us move. To the song writer, its what we create. To the musician, its what we learn. To the dancer, its what we listen to and then translate into physical movement. If we're depressed, music lifts us up. If we're feeling good, music takes us to an even higher ground. Music is all around us and it runs through us...at all times.
That said, I've been indulging my love of old 1920s-30s blues lately. Damn there's some great stuff out there. These are the ghosts of today's 'popular' music. Without these geniuses, caught somewhere, somehow on tape, would music really be what it is today?
I'm listening to long dead musicians. Men and women from a different place and time. No frills, just thrills. These weren't intensely schooled musicians...they didn't spent hours alone in a room practicing scales and modes. They learned to play what those around them shared with them. The music was passed on person to person. You weren't likely to turn on a radio and hear Robert Wilkins singing "I'll Go With Her" but if you were in the right place at the right time, you might hear the man himself singing it. If you were a musician, you listened intently and watched his fingers and caught his idea...and then you would recreate it yourself. Or if you were truly lucky, he would sit you down and teach you.
I'm pretty sure that these cats had no idea that what they were laying down would last so long. They were living in the moment. They were making their own music. Most of them got ripped off financially but they weren't in it for the big money. They were in it for the music. These musicians, if they made a living from it at all, made their money doing live performances. Juke joints, house parties, fish fries, dances, street corners...where ever they could. For the real musicians out there...not much has changed.
These cats were playing mostly cheap instruments...whatever they could afford. And yet, here I am, 80-90 years later, listening as intently as those early audiences did...maybe more so. To hear Blind Willie McTell playing on an old 12-string Stella, decades upon decades after his demise, there's a magical quality to it. I get to hear the ghosts of the past. If Blind Willie's ghost appeared right now in this very room, I would expect to hear exactly what I hear on this ancient old recordings. Luckily, there were a handful of people who knew how special this music was...and they found ways to record it.
Take for example, Blind Willie McTell's "last session". He was old, sick and drunk and playing for loose change on a street corner. A shop owner recognized him, gave him some money and brought him in to play for him. Thankfully, he had the foresight to record it...on whatever big old bulky recorder he had. He recorded not only the man's musical genius but he also recorded the conversation with him. More ghosts! We are treated to a long forgotten conversation between 2 men about the one thing they loved...music.
As this year ends and we head into the New Year, I'll be listening to the ghosts. We have a lot to learn from them. The man who refuses to learn from history is doomed to repeat it.
Happy New Year y'all!
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