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Kenny Dorham - Just Friends

Music is a unique, powerful, and special human phenomenon. It’s universal in that, as far as we know, all human cultures everywhere have ever had some form of expression we would call music. Music is deeply embedded in our everyday lives, and it features in every major social and personal event in our culture, parties, birthdays, weddings, sporting events, political rallies, religious ceremonies, social functions, graduations, funerals, etc.

All music is fundamentally social. We use musical sounds to express ideas and emotions and to communicate with others. We use music to explore our notions of group and individual identity. We use music to document and disseminate our shared cultural history and common human experiences. We use music to make sense of the world and of being human, and we use it to communicate things that are impossible, or at least difficult, to say using verbal language.

With any music, we can always ask, what does it mean for these people to make these sounds in this specific time and place? In other words, what’s music all about?

Like a spoken language, musical styles develop rules and vocabulary. Though the precise definitions of words constantly shift and change, and words can fall in and out of fashion, some generally agreed upon linguistic meanings exist. Within a given social/musical/cultural context, certain sounds, linguistic and musical, come to mean certain things, even if the precise meanings are debated, and everyone’s individual experiences of shared phenomena differ.


Kenny Dorham - Just Friends
  • Release on: October 4, 1961
  • Genre: Jazz
  • Recording at: Peter Ind Studio, New York, NY

"Kenny Dorham was one of the most talented, bop oriented players, and an excellent composer who played in some very significant bands and penned the timeless jazz standard Blue Bossa.”

See previous Song of the Day

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Location: United States

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