Skip to main content

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."

See previous Song of the Day

Labels:
Location: United States

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Psychotic Reactions - Skip To My Lou

It expresses the emotions of angst, anger, and lust in some of the only ways that are accepted by society. The history of this edgy music genre dates back to the 1950s. It was formed by a combination of the blues, gospel music, and country. Throughout the decades, rock ‘n roll has evolved and become famous for being the genre that’s continued to push the boundaries of music, and, sometimes, the cultural boundaries of society itself. In the 1950s rock ‘n roll could be defined as rhythm and blues. In the 1960s it was partial to new musical styles such as folk rock and soul. And in the 1970s hard rock was born. From the 1980s to the present, technology has had an enormous impact on the music industry. Good taste is the enemy of the revolution. This remark epitomizes the spirit of rock ‘n roll. You’re not expected to conform, you’re expected to be yourself… no matter what anyone thinks. You are admired deeply for expressing emotions such as anger, heartbreak, and sadness through music in a...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Pat Moran Quartet - Come Rain Or Come Shine

The very institutional acceptance that many musicians sought in the mid to late 20th century has hitched jazz to a broken and still segregated education system. Partly as a result, the music has become inaccessible to, and disconnected from, many of the very people who created it, young Black Americans, poorer people and others at the societal margins. Of the more than 500 students who graduate from American universities with jazz degrees each year, less than 10 percent are Black, according to Department of Education statistics compiled by DataUSA. In 2017, the last year with data available, precisely 1 percent of jazz degree grads were Black women. The education is the anchor... We should be questioning our education system. Is it working? Is there a pipeline into the university for indigenous Black Americans to play their music, and learn their music? I don’t think that exists. Source: Jazz Has Always Been Protest Music. Can It Meet This Moment? by Giovanni Russonello The Pat Moran Q...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kenny Dorham - Like Someone In Love Take 2

In the early 20th century, the blues was considered disreputable as white audiences began listening to blues. Blues came into its own as an important part of the country’s relatively new popular culture in the 1920s with the recording, first, of great female classic blues singers and, then, of the country folk blues singers of the Mississippi Delta, the Piedmont of the Carolinas, and Texas. The first copyrighted song was in 1912, the Dallas Blues. As huge numbers of African Americans left the South at this time due to failed Reconstruction, dismal economic conditions, oppression in the South and the hope of better treatment in the North between 1915 and 1940s, the blues went with them, and settled in the urban centers of the North, especially Chicago. A more urban, electric blues developed as a result, which eclipsed the rural blues of the South and eventually became both rock and roll and what would become known as rhythm and blues. Blues fell somewhat out of popular favor until the l...
Post a Comment
Read more