NO, THIS IS NOT some clever way to condescend. Rather it’s a commentary on music and elements of style.
Taste and style are not some things any nouveau riche awash with cash can just buy at Marks and Spencer. It’s how you were brought up, the school you went to, books you read, the films you watch, the music you listen to and the clothes you wear, and it has nothing to do with money.
Let me put it this way, if your parents and grandparents don’t have it, then neither will you. It’s basically your heritage and pedigree. Here’s a graphic example: no matter how many boxes of whitening soaps and lotions you use if your parents are not Caucasians or have Hispanic roots, then the mestiza in you will never come out as there never was a mestiza in the first place.
At best, all you’ll achieve is a pug nose midget with a “whiter shade of pale” complexion.
Not many people have a “sense of style”. It’s either you have it or you don’t. Pretending you have “taste and style” will just leave a bad taste in the mouth.
You just end up as your classic trendy social climber who is almost always also your classic fashion victim.
“Music is a language that doesn’t speak in particular words. It speaks in emotions, and if it’s in the bones, it’s in the bones.” – Keith Richards
As Rolling Stones lead guitarist Keith Richards says, if you got it, then you got it; if not, then you don’t have it.
Musical awareness and progression usually started in the mid 1960s with the band that broke the barriers of popular music. You can say they started it all, the very first “boy band”…the Beatles.
But we’re not going to talk about them; it’s another column. We’ll talk about progression of musical genres and improvisation in music.
It was in the late ‘60s till the mid-‘70s and we were hippies, the “Woodstock generation” and the soundtrack of our generation was rock. But what is rock as a musical genre?
From that free online encyclopedia a.k.a. the internet:
Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as “rock and roll” in the United States in the early 1950s and developed into a range of different styles in the 1960s and later, particularly in the United Kingdom and in the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, a style which drew heavily on the genres of blues, rhythm and blues, and from country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical and other musical styles.
By the late 1960s “classic rock” period, a number of distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock, folk rock, country rock, raga rock, and jazz-rock, many of which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock, which was influenced by the countercultural psychedelic and hippie scene.
The most popular and influential artists/bands during that era were Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, Doors, Rolling Stones, and Pink Floyd.
It was the heady days of “sex, drugs and rock and roll” and we made “love not war”.
And the music progression continued. By the late ‘70s till the ‘80s your “hippie” mellowed down and segued to Jazz.
Jazz is difficult to define because it encompasses a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years, from ragtime to the rock-infused fusion. Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, such as European music history or African music.
Jazz involves “a spontaneity and vitality of musical production in which improvisation plays and contains a “sonority and manner of phrasing which mirror the individuality of the performing jazz musician”. In the opinion of Robert Christgau, “most of us would say that inventing meaning while letting loose is the essence and promise of jazz”.
We’re not really into mainstream jazz but rather into jazz fusion i.e. Miles Davis, Gato Barbieri, Pat Metheny, Flora Purim, and Weather Report.
Alongside rock and jazz, we have the blues and as a genre in music. It is perhaps the most unpopular and almost obscure but highly progressive and heavily into improvisation.
Blues is a music genre and musical form originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1870s. The genre developed from roots, and spirituals. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The blues form, ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll, is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale and specific chord progressions, of which the 12-bar blues is the most common.
In the 1960s and 1970s, a hybrid form called blues rock developed, which blended blues styles with rock music.
In this genre we have artists/bands i.e. Eric Clapton, B.B. King, and Allman Brothers Band to name a few.
Moi’s music is eclectic and has no barriers although I lean towards these three musical genres. I keep an open mind and ears and appreciate good music performed by real artists and not garbage played by some DJ in a turntable. (brotherlouie16@gmail.com/PN)
