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Home::Music
Music Is The Language Of Freedom
Author : Dennis Walsh
Great music like great works of art will last forever. Great
music satisfies the artist as much as the audience. Great music
is in the ear of the creator as much as the hearer. Why is it
then that some great artists become wealthy some do not? Why do
some great artists have regular jobs and careers that have
little or nothing to do with music? Is it perhaps that music has
very little to do business and much more to do with art?
If you're an educator or a student of the arts, you might
consider this comment trivial. There's a community of artists
and patrons of the arts the world over who know the music
industry has very little to do with music and much more to do
with culture and political reform. Yet, the music industry
itself - and their fans in majority - do not know that. Society
has always found it easy to squander energy on distractions that
keep them from doing what they could achieve with focused
effort. Giving ourselves to a lifetime of performing, song
writing and producing music is a worthwhile pursuit whether or
not it's profitable.
Fame and fortune is ultimately not a worthwhile ambition. Fame
passes quickly as a candles flame. Fortune is unforgiving. It
owes no one loyalty. What lasts is enduring faith in the people
you love, the expression of true artistic gifts and the creation
of the artistic work that is produced from the heart. It's a
dark night for music when the media and technology conspire to
promote image above technique and creativity.
I don't like much of what I hear on the radio these days. It
plays to balance sheets more than to the heart in a deliberate,
desperate act designed to keep great music off the charts. A
century ago, European modernist painters - growing weary of the
status quo - embraced African art for its lack of pretension.
Parisians had a romantic attachment to the American Negro. Swept
away by jazz and the exotic Josephine Baker, the French seemed
to regard blackness as something of value, an attitude absent in
the United States. Going against the arts establishment, artists
gave themselves permission to take new risks, to envision art in
a new kind of way.
The avant-garde movement of Cubism was influenced by African
tribal art. The circle of inspiration remained unbroken. Thirty
years later, the avant-garde movement in Europe returned the
favor in turn helped usher in the "Harlem Renaissance" and the
days of Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway at the Cotton Club,
flappers in beads and scarves and Bessie Smith singing the
blues. During the 1920s, during the Harlem Renaissance -
inspired by jazz and Euro-Modernism - there was more material
published by African Americans than any time in American
history. The Harlem Renaissance affected American political
culture well into the sixties. It was one of the first instances
white elites and social reformers collaborated with black
intellectuals, social activists and artists. The Harlem
Renaissance attacked the superstructure of White supremacy and
the practice of racism. Black became beautiful. Jazz became the
language of freedom.
Dennis Walsh progressofmusic@hotmail.com
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