Listen to What the
Music is Telling Us
It's
astonishing how American rock can spread a positive message on foreign shores.
And distressing that music is now being used by political lowlifes to divide
us.
Executive director, Ed Kaplan
Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute
of Technology
Music
has been an important part of almost everyone's life from our earliest days.
From soothing parental lullabies and sing-song nursery school rhymes, to
painful music lessons and suffering the strains of the high school band;
through graduations, weddings and funerals, music has provided the "soundtrack"
of our lives and accompanied virtually every important and memorable passage
and touchpoint as we've grown up.
For me, music has not only been a constant
social companion and an important emotional support, it has also provided a
series of exciting and challenging business experiences as well. From my early
days as an owner of Rainbow Records, the neighborhood record store, to building
and launching some of the most important music content sites, including RollingStone.com and TheSource.com, and
then on to The Concert of the Century at the White House, I've
had a chance to be a small part of every aspect of the music business.
And believe me when I say it's been mainly a business, one that's all about
making money, which just incidentally happens to create a little great music in
the process. Or, as one old timer used to remind me, "we sell records, not
music".
But whatever you want to say about how
awful and exploitive the music business has been, (and no one ever said it
better than Hunter S. Thompson), the music that eventually
does get made has a consistent power and a seductive sway over our minds and
our hearts that no other form of media can claim. You may vaguely remember a
classic movie scene or two or an old episode of some TV show; but deeply embedded
in your brain are the melodies and lyrical phrases to hundreds of songs, which
leap from your subconscious memory the
moment that you hear a familiar riff or a certain chord. We can't help it even
if we were so inclined. You can't start it with a switch, and you can't kill it
with a gun. And we also can't predict it, duplicate it, or determine what piece
of magic will do the trick. There's a world of difference between a jingle and
a hit single, but nobody (since the days of the Brill
Building and the Beatles) has been able to figure out what exactly
it is or how to recreate it on a consistent basis.
But I think that music doesn't really get
anywhere near the credit that it should for a much greater and more important
contribution to all of our lives. The truth is that music (and not Coca-Cola)
is how we taught the entire world to sing and, more importantly, to sing in
English. And, even in an increasingly globalized world (and with the possible
recent exception of the K-Pop kids), it's been almost exclusively a one-way
street. Sure, we had Danke Schoen, which wasn't really a U.S.
hit until it was recorded with English lyrics by Wayne Newton (and then reborn
20+ years later in Ferris Bueller's Day Off). But basically - much like the
Internet and computer coding - music has mainly been about English.
One of the most interesting things about
attending a Springsteen or Eagles concert in a place where English isn't the
first language is watching what happens during the audience participation
parts. Tens of thousands of, say, Swedish fans sing whole choruses verbatim and
never miss a beat, a key line or a special phrase. Not only are they singing in
unison and singing about things they've typically never seen or imagined,
they're bound together in a very interesting and almost spiritual way as a
single organism composed of thousands of individual and highly diverse parts.
Everyone is a part of the same and special moment. And they're all connected at
the same time to worlds far away from them and yet made by the music a part of
their shared experience as well.
And, in these moments, there's a common
feeling and warmth among the participants that is palpable and also reflected
back to the performers on stage. If you haven't been in the crowd or, better
yet, stood on one of those stages as the whole structure pulses and shakes with
the soaring sounds and the pounding feet of the crowd, the feeling is
impossible to describe and unlike any other experience except maybe those at a
few major sporting events-- although the singular sense of unity is usually
missing there. And in that crush of hot, sweaty and often drunk bodies,
everyone is also remarkably forgiving and patient because no one really wants
to kill the good vibrations or the buzz. It's hard to be angry when you've
gotta "peaceful, easy feeling" or a "hungry heart."
But not all crowds or moments are the same.
I guess you could call it different strokes for different folks. I was struck
by this distinction when I witnessed a recent political rally where the noise
levels and the size of the crowd may have been similar to a small arena show,
but the ambient feelings were painfully different. The music was cranked up,
the crowd screamed and chanted from time to time, and there was a certain
frenzy, but there was no soul at the heart of the event.
It wasn't a single, united crowd -- it
wasn't a celebration of anything good and right - it was a bunch of angry
individuals being egged on by an asshole who wasn't focused on bringing anyone
together for even a brief respite. Instead, the speaker worked to highlight the
differences (even among those present) as well as the real and imagined
grievances that they all brought with them to the rally. It was heartless and
ugly, and mostly, it was sad for them and especially sad for all of us.
Too many rallies today may try to play the
same music, but they lose all the meaning if the ultimate message is one of
hate. We can do better, and the whole world is listening.
PUBLISHED ON: JUN 18, 2019
