Music - it will always come back to music

At Blk Sonshine concert in Kirstenbosch with Vuyo (Kedi's cousin), Minicia, and some of Vuyo's family and friends. (ironically if you read the next blog, on of their songs is "Born in a Taxi.")




You see I only have one Christmas CD on my computer. Charlie Brown’s Christmas to be exact- and it’s a pretty good one if you only have on I guess for the background type music. So in order not to wear it out I tried to think of other music I could listen to while doing chores. A Nat King Cole song over- it led me to Ella and Louis (too bad I don’t have the Cole Christmas CD or the Harry Connick Jr one…)

So I am standing doing the dishes and Moonlight in Vermont is playing. And Vermont seemed fitting to think about and made me miss the Wilson family tradition of watching White Christmas. And I started thinking, who were these songs really written for and what are the social and status implications of all of this. And if music has an ability to touch everyone does it matter…

Of course I am one to think everything matters to some extent.

But as performers were they just working for an upper class to perform these beautiful songs. And performing for people that wanted to forget their own lives in the music, but also helped them forget the struggle music and performing comes from. And when is it okay to forget? But what if you just use it to promote your ignorance?

And so I am thinking about New Orleans, Cuba, South African townships and other places where music has come from. And where art and music have told a story that the world wasn’t able to see without touching a different part of a person’s soul. So as disappointed as I am at people using music to cloud over who is really performing and what is really happening- don’t the performers have a right to use it in the same way. And on the flip side it is so important to me that music and art have permeated differences and misunderstandings. I think hip-hop and rap is easier to use in some ways, because it can call out the social problems so clearly.

Anyway this is just me getting out some thoughts, especially in dealing with some of the social tensions in South Africa more poignantly this week.

Music crosses time and place and lets us share our emotions. In terms of church I know if I go into a United Methodist Church and sing certain songs I know my grandmother would have sung those same songs and feel connected. Or our first week at church here singing songs I learned in youth group or being a camp counselor. The connections through music are endless- but I think I was more worried about the exploitation that can come. I guess I feel like music is stronger than a lot of other places exploitation happens, and all the tricks that have been used to truly express things in music.