By Ken Walker
Music is art, not image
I want people to see us a group making an art, not as a template of “Oh, they’re cool to like.'”
?uestlove, drummer of the Roots and perhaps one of the hardest-working people in music, made this declaration in a recent interview. The Roots are pioneers in many ways. Listen around; even turn on the radio. Many new pop songs, aside from the patented bass drum sound used by the Neptunes, are using live instruments. The sound is expanding into the mainstream: natural drums. Some critics and fans say the Roots popularized this.
?uestlove made his comment in a recent edition of URB, a hip-hop/electronic publication. How many times do consumers scoop up an album at a local store and never truly listen to it? I live music, or I’d like to think I do. Friends and family know me for my vast collection of CDs and knowledge of music. But what can I truly know if I have never experienced an album, but played it for its level of “cool?”
What can I have an understanding of if I have never listened to a group for the art they are presenting? ?uestlove changed me; not with his upper-class musical skills and mind, but with one statement. Since reading his quote in URB, I have experienced albums that I would place on a personal top-five list in vast new ways.
There is no other way to say it; we must stop seeing the groups and musical artists we love, like, or desire as templates. We have to start seeing them in the same way we might look at a painting. If you stare long enough, something comes out, and looking at it again is a different experience each and every time.
Music is perhaps the only consumed art that is marketed as a commodity. It is sculpted and written for everyone. Everyone can listen to the cries of John Coltrane or the emotions of DJ Shadow. Everyone can ride on the political wings of Rage Against the Machine, Bob Marley or Black Flag. Everyone can float with the original tones of solo Hendrix. Everyone can twirl through the soothing melodies of Sade vocals. Every person in the world can listen to guitar solos, drum riffs, a programmed beat, a mix, a rap, a scat, or a verse, and love what they hear. But are those experiences the same as looking at a Dali painting?
Think about the beauty of one song, no matter the name or title. A group of people, or in some instances, one person, wrote lyrics, which were then molded with a drumbeat, a mixed beat, and in most cases, a guitar, piano, sitar, harmonica, etc. The instrument is largely matter, but the basis is a noise, melded with words, and somehow, if the ears agree with what they hear, the head begins to nod or the feet begin to move.
However, the mind must override the ears. Music must be experienced. It must be mentally heard. The words must be analyzed for their placement and quality. Mostly though, because something is independent, does not mean it’s cool. After all, Creed is still on their own independent label six years since their beginning. More independent labels are making it a necessity to be bought by larger labels for money schemes and vice versa. The label matters not. The group is of no consequence. It just has to do with the art presented!
