I've never fully understood why I like some music. Nor why some forms of music don't do it for me. I tend to be eclectic, open and adaptable to what comes at me as new, different, in another discourse, idiom or sound. Some of my first experiences of music are quite vivid memories which may help explain those eclectic tastes, laced with likes and dislikes. I remember 1960, aged 9, listening to the radio and Elvis crooning "Wooden heart", not long after came Cliff and his nostalgic "The Young Ones". I can still sing them near word perfect.
Up till then my diet included the old 78 records played on our gramophone; Kenneth McKellar, Nat King Cole, Vera Lynn, Harry Belafonte, Shotts and Dykehead Pipe Band, Cavaleria Rusticana, Connie Francis and Mahalia Jackson.
Some years later throughout the 1960's an avalanche of new sounds, and for that decade a sense of music being all pervasive and increasingly available on transistor radio, 45 singles and 33 LP Albums. Beatles, Hollies, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, The Who, The Kinks – these are predictable. Less so was my enthusiasm for female performers, Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark, Marianne Faithful, Joan Baez, though at that age I never quite got Bob Dylan – which outraged one of my pals who had far more cultural discernment than I had, and believed, rightly as it turned out, that Dylan would endure and would rearrange the entire furniture shop of popular music.
By my late teens I had discovered Country music. Johnny Cash was and remains a giant in my own musical enjoyment and enrichment. But over the years since I confess to listening to Hank Williams, Hank Snow, Kenny Rogers, George Jones, Buck Owens, Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette,and a pick and mix medley of many others who came and went, some now forgotten. Early 70's I came across John Denver live on a BBC programme and recognised a voice that spoke my emotional language. I still have a dozen of his vinyl albums, and regularly play his best songs – he went through a New Age stage when I think much of his music became like over-diluted fruit juice! But his best music remains one of the richer strands in my musical history
Classical music floored me when I first heard the choral finale of Beethoven's 9th symphony on the television. It was played as part of a programme celebrating the achievements of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders' leader, Jimmy Reid. He chose it as a musical version of his socialist vision, of brotherhood, shared joy and shared resources, and an end to poverty and hunger amongst the poor whether on Glasgow's doorstep or anywhere else. The combination of Reid's passion, his political energy, the story of his early years of hunger, hard work and the early death of his father, all combined to make the Ode to Joy an aural celebration of what it means to be human, and in solidarity with humanity.It came with the force of a revelation of what music can be, and do.
Then came my first hearing of Yehudi Menuhin's definitive performance of Brahm's Violin Concerto which I still can't listen to without sitting down and allowing that music to re-order my dishevelled spirits. It was one of my first birthday presents from Sheila. Beethoven's symphonies and piano concertos and Mozart's concertos, the violin concertos of Brahms, Bruch, Barber and Tchaikovsky, and then some Dvorak, Sibelius, Handel and Baroque followed, and more lately still Renaissance choral music, discovered one evening listening to Spem in Alium in a friend's house. By now my musical back catalogue, like a juke box in my head (much more tangible than a playlist) included 60's pop, 70's Country, and a varied ad hoc but growing list of favourite classical composers.
Sometime in the 1990's I came across a little known female folk and country singer, Carrie Newcomer. There was a review article in Sojourner's Magazine and it raved about the social conscience and ethical edge of her songs. I listened a lot to her over the years, and her songwriting has become stronger, more mature, and still has that edge of ethical care for the world and its people.
I mention that long backlist of music I have loved for a reason! And the reason is the question I started with – I still don't don't know why I like some music and not others.
But here's the thing. Some music doesn't wait for our opinion, analysis, approval or attention. I think it's the distinctive voice and the fit of words to where we are when we hear it. Some music opens us up to new understandings of the world, ourselves, and the complex perplexities of trying to make this life of ours work. Carrie Newcomer does this for me, which is why I go back and replay her music, even when there are intervals of months in between. A new Carrie Newcomer album isn't only an obvious purchase, it's like deciding to take in another night class on compassionate self awareness and humane other awareness.
Newcomer is an important voice crying in the wilderness of a distracted and often heartless world. I am growing older and I'm looking for songs that nurture memories and hopes, that touch into those deep regrets, remembered joys, sounds of past laughter and silences of past pain. In a world of noise and speed, obsession with newness, and hooked on the false security of having and possession, the music I want to carry within me has to have the capacity to sustain who it is I have now become, but also to pull me forward to what is ahead. And just as in my most important reading I look for life wisdom, stories of hopeful newness, and celebration of human resilience and compassion in the face of all that diminishes hope and constrains goodness, so also in music. Carrie Newcomer is a consistent source of such qualities of insight and attentiveness to the human, the spiritual and the hopeful. She is also someone who embodies in her own life commitments the best of the songs she writes and sings.
In the next post I'll write about how Geography of Light, one of her best albums, achieves some of this.
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