By: Andrew Olson
http://www.thefountainheads.com
Every year the President gets up in front of Congress and tells how the country is doing.. This is what he might say about music?
When Little Richard released his hit single Tutti Fruity no one could have known that almost 50 years later his music would still be alive. Music forms have often long outlived many of the great artists that created it. The more that profiteers try to figure out what people want to hear, the more originality appears. To those out there that never fell in love with music there is a lack of understanding. To those who do love music there is a dream and a faith.
Much like the debate among biblical scholars about faith, music has it's own. Depending on what type of "bread" and "wine" you take with music determines which one you might choose. If someone has a Doors T-Shirt on, or George Clinton, we might assume their "bread" is Mary Jane. If someone has a Garth Brooks, Man in black, or Stevie Ray Vaughn T-Shirt we can assume their "wine" is wine or beer.. If someone has a Vanilla Ice T-Shirt on we can assume they just climbed out of a time machine. Maybe it is not the things we ingest with music, but who we are?
 When John Lennon wrote Imagine on the back of a napkin he never could have dreamed he was speaking for a generation. A few chords on the piano have more effect on a soul than 500,000 Human Be-In's at Woodstock. Love doesn't stop a war, but well placed lyrics and music can.
Where did it start is a common question Johnson and the Blues, Elvis, Fats Domino, who? Let us look for a moment back a few hundred years to Austria and Beethoven. Deaf and a bit nuts he followed the frenzy of Mozart and created a heart in music. The first with the piano, Beethoven wrote music that has never been toppled. His Moonlight Sonata can touch the soul of even the harshest of beings. He took the newest instrument of the time and made it sing to the heavens. He was also the first Rockstar
pushing through the upper-class and making them non-exsistant. In his time if you were rich you could walk down the streets and commoners would bow to show courtesy and get out of your way... Not Beethoven, he moved for no one.. Slept with scores of women, and died poor.. TOTAL ROCKSTAR!!
When John Lennon sat down at the piano and wrote Imagine no one dreamed he was penning what we all think. John had a way of writing music that was so introspective that it might have killed him? He was a voice that unfortunately was extinguished much too soon. We sit today wondering what to do like children whose parents have gone away. Much of the world today has a similar opinion about all matters.
Long ago in Beethoven's day it was a time of King's, sitting on their thrones, and being a father figure to us all. There were revolutions and we decided to let each other run our lives instead of a king. Democracy has it's good times and it's bad times. Today people complain about leaders and there is no one in music to answer us. When those who have stepped forward become martyrs who is left? Lennon and Beethoven opened their hearts to us and showed us the way. There is no one like that today.
So what is the state of music? It does what we ask it to right now, but there is a voice in the wind. Someday, someone will come along again, beyond all odds, and play us a song. He or she will sit at the piano and give us all a voice.
First people need to learn to play the piano again though! |
