To make clear from the beginning… I’m totally ignorant of all kinds of music, and this deliberately!
I do not know anything about musical bands.
I have no idea, I don’t care, what is the name of the songwriter and the members of the band, who wrote the lyrics and melodies of the song.
I’m indifferent to the history of music and singing, their deeper meaning, their political, social, and cultural backgrounds.
Generally speaking, I don’t care about all those things that the “specialists” care for but also for those who are fans of a certain kind of music.
In simple words, I will never be a collector …
The reason;
The music industry – even the independent – has imposed its “ideology” on all musical genres and ways of expression.
Whether we want it or not, every music category, call it Rock, Metal, Classical, Jazz, Punk, Gospel, and so on, has its own stereotypes, its own “values”, its own “beliefs”.
Musical “communities” are being created, dependent on each one of its own rhythm of life, entrenched at one and the other…
Some music categories are communicating containers, lending to each other elements, sometimes apparent and sometimes not, and allowing easy transition from one genre to another.
For example, it is easier for someone who listens to rock to hear metal than to hear… traditional folk music, if there are no deeper infiltrations in his subconscious.
However, every kind of music wants you for itself.
It does not tolerate independence, the variations in style, the style, the composition. Exceptions simply confirm the rule…
The worst of all is that it imposes a set of rules, behaviors, and beliefs to a point where you do not understand that you don’t only adopt them but you are already embracing them and you think it expresses you totally.
And here’s the catch … It ceases to be a way of your expression and you become the way of its expression!
It is drawing you away, it gets you addicted, it manipulates you, like the mythical Sirens that with their beautiful song attracted the sailors of the ships to enter their area and then causing their destruction.
Music is not about logic but about feeling and the soul.
It is not perceived by the recipient with technocratic calculations, it is not categorized by mathematical models and natural laws.
Music works like mythical Sirens, either enchanting you or closing your “ears” so that you are not affected and leads you to the opposite result: it often causes you indifference which reaches up to the aversion…
Many, if not almost all of us, are enchanted by one music genre, maybe two – usually belonging to the same family group – and then we start a collecting mania.
We look for its peculiarities, its story, its artists, the names of the bands that represent this genre.
We’re looking to find everything that’s relevant, the performer, the composer, the lyricist, and every other detail that will bring us even further into the region.
We have the urgent need to gain knowledge of everything and stick on it like the “leeches”, absorbing every detail that concerns it.
We become “professionals” of the kind …
If you decide to follow the footsteps of Odysseus, then things are reversed … you are no longer part of the “musical community“, you become even more selective, are qualitative, or if you want it uniquely, personalized, to the superlative degree.
You become an amateur!
- You are not only interested in who interprets singing but how well it interprets it.
- You do not care about all of his songs, but only those that “touch” you.
- It does not please you to know but to feel.
In a few words you aren’t satisfied by the “authority” of knowledge, but the glow of emotions.
And as Jimi Hendrix said: “Music is a safe kind of high” and not to dime-store philosophize, as we might add…