Beat Your
Tambourines
By: Song River
The arts
certainly are a reflection of our thoughts and dreams. Metaphorically
speaking, art is the artist nailed to a cross and left out in the
open for all to view. At times music really strips bare all the
pretenses we have hidden behind and reveals them in a stark naked
tell all way. This vast array of truth can be stinging at times in an
overabundance of diversity. Our interpretations of art are so varied
as it can be presented in a convoluted fashion, or as a message
relayed, garbled and only understandable by those involved, or it
could be open for interpretation by the listener to take in several
directions. At times it is so in your face and makes you laugh or
feel uncomfortable but really for all intents and purposes speaking
for music's sake as a whole her credentials can be summed up in
emotive. Music will make you feel something... after all even dead is
a feeling.
A quasar of
interesting music is currently firing at a rapid rate as the
Pandora’s box has been permanently notched open and as the society
of our times are taking on a 21st Century shape and form the melodic
measures and stanzas are busily sorting out groups and individuals.
We are all getting this chance to bloom. It is an exciting period of
time for music in truth. We are free to be as individual or as
collective as we seek to be.
There was quite
an expanse of time where music had become rather boring and mundane.
It felt a bit like a repetitive morning where you grab the same
uncleaned brown plastic cereal bowl, scrape off the former bits of
food matter, mundanely open the crisp wrapper from a box of generic
brand corn flakes, dump them into your brown bowl and pour on whitish
blue watery powdered milk substance over the beige flakes... splash?
Sound tempting? No. More like lifeless, tasteless, blah. A
never-ending 'Ground Hogs Day...'
Here and now
though set in this current ever-changing passages of time we have
global unrest. Nothing new except for the fact of how we approach
what is taking place, along with our instant coffee, instant food,
and instant knowledge. The insanity of it all is almost a deluge that
has taken the awe and created a latent period of apathetic numbness.
The afflictions of humankind have begun stirring the souls of the
majority. We are beginning to witness societies need to commit to
something that is at the edifice of courage- we are almost there, we
just haven't quite figured out what we are ready to be committed to
yet. But the masses more often than not, historically speaking, have
been moved by the music of their time. This is what we are
witnessing. After all, it is really only the artists who seem to
'see' deeper and into the shadows as they pulsate this dire need to
extricate themselves from whatever moment they are in as they shake
off the dust from their tambourines and begin clearing out their
minds, hearts, and souls to write.
The state of
being is shanking on the heel of unrest, or is it restlessness? Not
so much restlessness as more of a concern and worry which brings on
unrest. These are tumultuous times, no nothing new, but in a way they
are different. We have never been so driven by instantaneous
information. Many times the person being beaten on the street may not
even realize they are being beaten until someone video tapes them and
posts it on Twitter. It is almost absurd that we have become this
driven to set aside the humanity for the bastardizing of our own
compassion. And our music at times reflects this. Whether it is by
our own admittance, or by rejection, or by embracing the
surroundings, it is music that keeps the pulse in check with the
turning of this blue marble on an axis thrust through her soul. She
is a complicated, salacious, dissonant princess who mutters to
herself. It is only through music that this self-expression can heal
itself to enlighten the knockers and hail the spin.
Nevertheless,
music is based upon how we perceive our current state of affairs.
Undeniably to our mortal soul's music at times is the leader, the
savior, and sometimes the follower. At times this mysterious
harmonious rattling of sound is our own reflection. Quondam efforts
consort at other times to form rejection of status or societal
issues, sometimes it is the catalyst for modifications and
sometimes... she is nothing more than a hot red-haired girl spread
eagle on the hood of a hot midnight blue GTO... "My hand's wet
on the wheel/There's a voice in my head/That drives my heel..."-
Golden Earring.
What it all
comes down to is this, music is one hella “long cool woman in a
black dress...” The Hollies