Music runs deep
My mother died in 2006. Ever since, I can easily conjure memories of her singing in my ear when I was an infant. I can still feel how the mole on her upper lip would brush against my ear lobe. As my father adjusted to widowerhood, I watched him play their favorite tunes like, “Chances Are” by Johnny Mathis, and I could remember how they would dance together in our childhood kitchen. Years later, in the days prior to my father’s death, my sister and I developed a bedside ritual for him in the ICU. We made a playlist of more of those tunes and as she cued them up, I sang them to him. We wanted to reach him as he came and went and let him know we were there. Music and memory have a way of doing that. They reach deep inside to reconnect us to ourselves and others.
The layering of melody and harmony over a rhythm while structuring movements and experimenting with textures, dynamics, tempo, pitch, time, and timbre transforms mind into embodied spirits. There is no stock formula for that works for everyone. Not all music moves us the same, but when it does, it’s a whole body experience, involving all of our senses. When making the music videos, “Everybody Sing Freedom” and “Recitatif Remix/Lookin Back”, I was inspired by memories of hearing Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches and reading Toni Morrison’s novels. They both had a way of reminding us that we are all human and that freedom to be human is what real freedom is all about. Of course, we can’t see that on the surface of their work. We have to let it sink in and work on us.
Just like with music, our brain works with layering. Layering and timing. So many things happen in parallel as well as sequentially in the brain. Layers come together over time. When music moves us there is no way to extract any one sequence to be the cause. On the surface a good song is just a catchy melody and a meaningful experience is just neural activity. Look a bit deeper and memories begin to float up from deep inside as the harmony and melody work it. Soak it in a little more and messages flash before our eyes. Some are old and out dated and others come together in real time like an airplane banner trying to get our attention. What does Martin mean by, “living a committed life?” Why would Toni write a story about racism with two characters whose race isn’t revealed throughout the entire story?” If you read or listen to their work with a sense of rhythm you’ll move through the layers in time and pick up what they are laying down.
There is no music without rhythm and its the driving force that takes us below the surface of our busy minds. Eurythmics isn’t just relevant to music but to how our body and mind get in sync to move us. The first time my older cousin played an AC/DC album for me the songs all sounded the same. I couldn’t hear the words Brian Johnson was singing and I felt I had to pretend to like it. Only after lots of air guitar sessions and head banging with my cousins did I get it. Today whether I’m waking up with 16th century pavane or a modal jazz piece I like to let it work on me. My Malcolm Young t-shirt has become my uniform that inspires me to stick to my routine and keep moving forward with my work. I’m always surprised at how below the surface of every genre these fundamental components of music work on me.
We need music more than ever today. Like all of the arts it has a longstanding tradition of helping us reach each other. People have said, “Music will save the world”. That hasn’t come to pass and I’m not convinced it will. However, maybe that’s not its function. The world has to save the world, but the music can help us dig deeper when we lose ourselves. It can take us all the way back to where the problems started and remix it to improvise something better. I think Martin and Toni knew that race matters to all of us. Like Tina Turner and Mick Jagger or B.B. King and Bono, music can move us to connect to ourselves and others no matter the apparent distance who have to overcome.
