Jazz for aficionados
Interesting and important topic! Question for both of you: is soulfulness the sole measure of "something worthwhile to say" as opposed to cold displays of technique? Can there also be music that, for example, is not overtly emotional but delights the mind/ear? Could this still be described as "saying something about being human"? Seems to me, the fact that poetry utilizes musical elements is what allows it to rise above mere words. |
For sure you are right, we can experience musical meaning through our own soul in contact with vibrating sound sources or instrument which are not mean to convey first pure soul emotion but instead to modify the world and Nature itself : gong, gamelan,Moog synthetiser, African drums or throat singing or harmonic chanting etc...Or any instrument also played just for fun... Anyway it will provoke a reaction in our soul... But the way some "vibrating sound source" be it a singer body or a violin for example inform us about the soul state of the player or singer may touch us way deeper than some other more easy to enjoy musical sound (music for escalator)... In the two cases of these vibrating sound source, the timbre of the instrument vibrating or the timbre of the singing voice will touch us... But in one case we are more informed by our own soul state through our evaluation/perception of one vibrating sound source( escalator music favorise a soul state proper to elicit purchase in the consumers). In the other case (Billie Holiday or Marian Anderson or Bill Evans) we are also informed by the soul state of the player here or of the singer and not just informed about the timbre state of an instrument (virtuoso).. Classical music is as visceral as Jazz in his own ways and jazz is as soulful as Classical but in his own ways...it is true also of Eastern music not just western one. Musical time is not metronomical time nor acoustical time and in classical as in Jazz, the interpretation of what is written by the musicians or their improvisation together, together with or without a director, must create a time dimension of its own, out of physical time (Einstein time) where our soul/body meet rythmically. Music experience of any cultures is rooted in "timbre" experience and is universal. Our body participation as players or as listeners to the vibrating sound source resonate as a new timing and time dimensions... Rythms are the root and timbre is the tree whose branchs are many new time dimensions or fruits. Concentration/attention are born in our body, as real or virtual response gestures to the music perceived and/or created by other men or/and by nature. Attention focus is itself a rythm and a gesture... The substance of attention is not a void, a waiting time, but a music, a dedicated gesture... |
You are right again... Language lives in multidimensional time scales... (micro-seconds/ years/centuries). A "word" life extent reveal an inside life (phonems motivated meaningful sounds) the poetic/mimetic dimension and at the higher more conscious scale the syntactical/logical dimension an external life where the meaning evolution is easier to trace (in an etymological dictionary). At the origin of mankind there is not music on one side and speech on the other side, but one body set of gestures at two scale, the members dance and the throat response which are a direct answer to nature speaking musical gesture. Music is not art at origin but a social survival tool in direct dialogue with Nature. Before any artist was born, the shaman and magician created sound to affect Nature voice and soul ... Even today great artist has not forgot that... |
@mahgister, @stuartk, IMHO, art delights the mind and the soul to varying degrees. Critics and Historians can view historical periods through the lens of art. In the eighteenth century, I think writing and music were more geared toward delighting the mind. If we take a look at the great Haydn, he had a lot of wit in his music meant for the mind. Bach, who preceeded him, was much more soulful. In music, writing, and the visual arts, the beginning of the nineteenth century is the beginning of the Romantic period. Beethoven writes music extremely soulfully and Romantic composers who followed were writing for the soul more than the head. The visual arts were no longer about Christianity or lords and ladies. We begin to see paintings of peasants and landscape art. That led into the Impressionists and post-Impressionists like Van Gogh who were extremely soulful. In the 20th century artists begin breaking all the rules. Painters no longer have to paint representationally. Classical music turns from symphonies to tone poems and wild ballets by Stravinsky. Bartok studies folk music to find the soul for his music. Abstract expressionists found ways of expressing deep emotion without any recognizable forms. Jazz music begins and gets deeper and deeper into the soul. I think artists in the mid-20th century became so deep that people wanted a relief. In the visual arts we find "Pop-Art" which is whmisical and appeals to the mind. Classical music is no longer appealing on a visceral body level. It's pretty much all for the mind. Poetry loses rhyme and meter which move sentiments. It is more aimed at the mind. I think the best artists in any of the arts are the ones who find a perfect balance, and they are few and far between. Shakespeare is both heart and head. Beethoven is perfectly balanced. Louis Armstrong finds a way to bring blues (which by definition is for the soul) into a structured music. Art critics name Picasso and Matisse as the greatest of the 20th century artists, but I'm not sure. I think some people prefer the head over the heart and others heart over head. As people understand art more, I think they see the genius in perfect balance--yin and yang. |
I concur with Audio-b-dog post about the necessary polarity balance between heart and mind... The last century has seen the decline of the West precisely because we had lost this balance key between polarities.. Polarities as heart and mind or yin and yang are not mere dualities or opposition, they interpenetrate into one another ...Coleridge and Owen Barfield wrote about this... The human body is a third factor embodying the heart and mind this is the key : embodiment... Our culture with A.I. actually has lost any link between heart and mind because we are virtual ego flying over our own body in a virtual digitalized trance... Our music industrialized is a merchandise... We had forgotten our roots and the root of music too...( generally speaking for sure because musical geniuses exist today but not in the collective front part of the theater they are an unrecognized marginalised exploited minority)
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