Here's my latest motley collection for subscribers to The Honest Broker—an assortment of links, images, opinions, and amusements, mostly related to music.
Hi Ted, I thought musings might be an invitation to share mine. I listened to your "Music" book on Audible. When I got to the part where you were maligning the 'song catchers' manipulating the oral tradition for their own selfish motives, I got angry. While I was fuming and trying to find words for my displeasure I kept going back to "that's what the oral tradition is for!" The ones that sing and the ones that catalogue are both manipulating what they received from the past. The lonesome singer in Appalachia isn't trying to preserve something, only trying to derive strength, or comfort, or pleasure from a shared heritage. Then the penny dropped. I suddenly felt an understanding that music (at least for me) is the sinew that binds me to humanity. It is the shared blood that nourishes and cleanses us all. And as you suggest in your book, directs and motivates a communal will.
I don't do research, but I like to ponder whatever direction my mind wanders. Lately I have been thinking about how 'humanity' is not 'the individual.' Humanity seems to be pursuing a path of self destruction which seems inevitable. If you want to know why we are so determined to make the earth uninhabitable, I have a guess, but since knowing won't change anything, I won't bother you with the details unless you ask.
Regarding "music pledges," I'm reminded of the line "I pledge allegiance to the hip hop" by Method Man on the GZA song "Shadowboxin'." A quick history lesson: Method Man and GZA are part of the Wu-Tang Clan, a seminal rap group based out of Staten Island, NYC. Easily the most important rap group of the 1990s, a cultural touchstone for that period. Method Man was the group's first star (he's now a successful tv/movie actor); the song is featured on GZA's album "Liquid Swords," considered by many to be the best solo album by a Wu-Tang member. If you were listening to rap in the '90s, then you heard every hip hop DJ cut and scratch that line in their sets.
Bill never played the stock market but he was very good at picking the winning horses.
Hi Ted, I thought musings might be an invitation to share mine. I listened to your "Music" book on Audible. When I got to the part where you were maligning the 'song catchers' manipulating the oral tradition for their own selfish motives, I got angry. While I was fuming and trying to find words for my displeasure I kept going back to "that's what the oral tradition is for!" The ones that sing and the ones that catalogue are both manipulating what they received from the past. The lonesome singer in Appalachia isn't trying to preserve something, only trying to derive strength, or comfort, or pleasure from a shared heritage. Then the penny dropped. I suddenly felt an understanding that music (at least for me) is the sinew that binds me to humanity. It is the shared blood that nourishes and cleanses us all. And as you suggest in your book, directs and motivates a communal will.
I don't do research, but I like to ponder whatever direction my mind wanders. Lately I have been thinking about how 'humanity' is not 'the individual.' Humanity seems to be pursuing a path of self destruction which seems inevitable. If you want to know why we are so determined to make the earth uninhabitable, I have a guess, but since knowing won't change anything, I won't bother you with the details unless you ask.
Regarding "music pledges," I'm reminded of the line "I pledge allegiance to the hip hop" by Method Man on the GZA song "Shadowboxin'." A quick history lesson: Method Man and GZA are part of the Wu-Tang Clan, a seminal rap group based out of Staten Island, NYC. Easily the most important rap group of the 1990s, a cultural touchstone for that period. Method Man was the group's first star (he's now a successful tv/movie actor); the song is featured on GZA's album "Liquid Swords," considered by many to be the best solo album by a Wu-Tang member. If you were listening to rap in the '90s, then you heard every hip hop DJ cut and scratch that line in their sets.
This is phenomenal and truly brings to light the musings hiding in the music that I’ve grown to expect from The Honest Broker.