David Crosby - The Us Below

Musical events and the patterns they reveal ought to present few problems to the historian, once informed about them, he can treat them more or less as he does any other historical data. However, when it comes to dealing with music itself the historian may find himself growing uncomfortable. Even if he likes music, listens to it regularly, perhaps even sings or plays, he may have difficulty finding the language to interpret it with anything near the sophistication that he applies to other historical data. Yet the ultimate value of music is found not in the historical information it generates but in its intrinsic nature, in the special kind of experience that it can create. Precisely because music differs from other kinds of activity, an understanding and consideration of pieces of music could help to provide the historian with access to sectors of past experience otherwise lost. Few historians have undertaken such inquiries, perhaps chiefly because they have felt themselves insufficiently schooled in the technical bases of music making. Is a thorough knowledge of musical technique necessary for such an inquiry? Or is a significant amount of knowledge about pieces of music and how they work and what they tell us available even to people who lack a full understanding of its technical workings?

Perhaps the most obvious property of music is its power to create its own framework for experience, to set it off in a separate sphere. Just as poetry, to a certain degree, heightens a thought and creates a new context for it, so singing a poem stylizes it even further, transforming the way the words are structured and related to each other. Singing a poem slows it down and intensifies its accents, stressing certain words at the expense of others... One needs no technical grasp of music at all to recognize the formidable social bond generated when a group of people focuses its energy and attention on singing... Rather it is to recognize that singing is so commonplace and fundamental a human act that it is natural to overlook it unless it happens to occur in the service of an artistic masterwork. In pausing to comment upon it here, we are doing no more than noticing that one of life's simplest and most available pleasures, one obviously very much a part of eighteenth century American life, can also be a social force of some power.
Source: A Historians Introduction to Early American Music by Richard Crawford

David Crosby - The Us Below

• Released: October 21, 2016
• Album: Lighthouse
• Written by: Michael Kelly, Rea League, David Crosby, and Marcus Quinn Eaton

"The folk rock pioneer, who was inducted into the prestigious Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2009, has also served as our social conscience, not only eloquently writing about societal issues but continuously donating concert proceeds to like minded causes."

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