I believe in music.
Maybe it was the eurythmics. During my early years, my mom took my brother, my sister, and me to a weekly class where we danced, sang, and played rhythm instruments. We went to those classes once a week for about three years.
Maybe it was my father. My dad had a huge collection of jazz records and a console stereo hi-fi. He used to put stacks of records on the changer: Dinah Washington, Frank Sinatra, Stan Getz, and more.
Maybe it was the times. My early awareness of music on the radio coincided with the era of folk songs, protest songs, and the civil rights movement. Pete Seeger sang “We Shall Overcome,” and Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” Over the next few years protest singing started to rock, and attacked the Vietnam war: “Fortunate Son,” “Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag,” and Woody Guthrie’s son Arlo’s anti-war epic “Alice’s Restaurant.”
Maybe it was the Beatles. The Beatles seemed to make pop music an even bigger cultural phenomenon than it already was. The British Invasion followed. The Rolling Stones were singing “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” the Kinks “All Day and All of the Night.” More importantly, kids like my next-door neighbors went out in the garage and bashed away at those songs, along with “Louie, Louie,” and Van Morrison’s “Gloria.”
But what is this power? What does music do?
Music expresses beliefs in concise ways. The Beatles sang, “Love, love me do. You know I love you. I’ll always be true. So please love me do.” Later they broadcast live worldwide, “All you need is love.” Still later John Lennon wrote on his own, “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.”
Music carries memories. When I hear Van Morrison singing “Gloria” I go to my next-door neighbor’s garage in 1966. Van’s “Into the Mystic” takes me to 1974. On Thanksgiving, “Alice’s Restaurant” takes me to many past Thanksgivings, many people, many places, much to be thankful for.
Music captures emotions. Van Morrison sometimes abandons words altogether in his singing. He’s written a song called “Listen to the Lion” which includes growling. Another, “Inarticulate Speech of the Heart,” is about exactly what I’m talking about.
Music brings us together. Not long ago I went to a Bruce Springsteen concert at Gillette Stadium. Springsteen writes songs that move you emotionally, give you something to think about, and get you singing along. When people asked me about the concert afterward, I told them it was a musical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual experience. I don’t know how many tens of thousands of people Gillette holds, but when that many people sing, “I believe in a promised land,” you feel the power of music.
Pete Seeger put it on his banjo: “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.” I believe he’s right.
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