This is a rule that applies to music as much as it does for politics and business.
For a moment cast all of one’s ideas of music to one side and think back to a past that had no Christian Church and no written notation of music, but had the story tellers and music makers, some of whom roamed and others who held sacred positions within the social group such as a village.
Music might have been learnt as sacred songs that expressed something ceremonial within the time of year and the society that it was set. This music may have been learnt from others who held the songs or direct from the source itself as in the South American shamans who would have learn ‘from the plant’ the sacred song.
With the advent of Christianity this all changed and over the years, music become more and more formalised with the idea of improvisation banned in preference of something that had been censored by the church; hence writing music and replaying the music of the masters note for note.
This in turn becomes the bench mark of being a real musician; that you can read and that you can play as a regurgitation of the music written thus taking away a musician’s ability to express their creativity.
We know this is the case because it has been documented again and again, most recently with the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australia (the latter not even being regarded as ‘citizens’ of the country that was originally theirs). The music and the instruments of the indigenous people were ridiculed or banned from use and the Western instruments brought in to replace them.
In a short period of time something that is instigated as a change in the way that music is produced or performed becomes the norm in a society where we forget the past so easily.
A light in the tunnel is the possibility of crowd funding music and arts projects through the likes of Kickstarter and Pledge. May this be the way of change to something more rooted in human experience, long forgotten in a distant past but like all true music is still echoing in the deepest recesses of our consciousness.
Vic
www.bluescampuk.co.uk
For a moment cast all of one’s ideas of music to one side and think back to a past that had no Christian Church and no written notation of music, but had the story tellers and music makers, some of whom roamed and others who held sacred positions within the social group such as a village.
Music might have been learnt as sacred songs that expressed something ceremonial within the time of year and the society that it was set. This music may have been learnt from others who held the songs or direct from the source itself as in the South American shamans who would have learn ‘from the plant’ the sacred song.
With the advent of Christianity this all changed and over the years, music become more and more formalised with the idea of improvisation banned in preference of something that had been censored by the church; hence writing music and replaying the music of the masters note for note.
This in turn becomes the bench mark of being a real musician; that you can read and that you can play as a regurgitation of the music written thus taking away a musician’s ability to express their creativity.
We know this is the case because it has been documented again and again, most recently with the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australia (the latter not even being regarded as ‘citizens’ of the country that was originally theirs). The music and the instruments of the indigenous people were ridiculed or banned from use and the Western instruments brought in to replace them.
In a short period of time something that is instigated as a change in the way that music is produced or performed becomes the norm in a society where we forget the past so easily.
A light in the tunnel is the possibility of crowd funding music and arts projects through the likes of Kickstarter and Pledge. May this be the way of change to something more rooted in human experience, long forgotten in a distant past but like all true music is still echoing in the deepest recesses of our consciousness.
Vic
www.bluescampuk.co.uk
