BMM - Black Music (really, really) Matters

I started listening properly to Black Music quite late - at about seventeen. “Hang on” I hear you say “that’s not late - still quite young actually.” Well yes it is, but I had already been listening to music seriously for most of my life. My mother tells me from the age of about two I used to climb into her bed (which she thought was for a cuddle), push her aside and say “I want to listen to the radio.” It’s quite possible Mum is being fanciful about this, but I do remember listening to music - any music - intently, from as far back as my memory takes me.

Anyway, I digress. I mentioned in a previous post that we had the radio on for most of the day and when I was six or seven I was given a second hand radio by my godmother. This was a pure and absolute joy. I remember literally hugging it to myself; here was going to be a space for my own personal world of uninterrupted listening. Having said all of that, we were a big household - I have six brothers and sisters - and I was clearly inspired by my older brothers’ tastes. So much of my early listening was of Queen, Thin Lizzy, Supertramp, The Police. Undoubtedly Black Music seeped into my consciousness; I have already mentioned ‘The Real Thing’ and of course of course Stevie Wonder. I learned the piano, recorder, clarinet and percussion and later when playing in youth bands and orchestras started to hear classical music in a different, more intense way. But I properly sat up and noticed one day when an advert for an ‘Earth Wind and Fire’ album came up on the telly. I had spent all of my baby sitting money, so managed to persuade my younger sister to buy it (heaven knows how) and practically wore it out. Thus my love affair with this incredible, important art form began.

Later on, at Music College I met like-minded individuals who wanted to share their listening and we could all geek out together. So apart from Earth Wind and Fire, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Bill Withers, I could start broadening my tastes to Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Al Jarreau, Ray Charles, Benny Green, Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Herbie Hancock, Dexter Gordon, Chaka Khan, Duke Ellington, Count Basie…. The list goes on and on. But why does this actually matter? On one level of course, there is no need to justify the importance of this great music - it speaks for itself. But to miss out the massive effect this has had on our culture is to misunderstand how seriously all composers from the turn of the twentieth century onwards have taken this - and used it.

I have heard more than one person say over the years say how often America has ‘borrowed’ musical ideas from Britain. This seems (putting it mildly) to be the wrong way round; just about all of American musical language has come from Black Music and the world has gleefully poached from this. Obvious, serious composers such as Gershwin and Bernstein were quite open and grateful to the spirituals that filtered down into their artistic worlds, but many composers before them also did so. Dvorak, Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Ravel, Debussy are to name just a tiny handful who were so inspired. Then of course there is the very foundation of twentieth century pop music; absolutely and unquestionably from that early American Folk music - The Blues. Black Music is the greatest cultural gift to humankind and has enhanced our lives in a million ways.

I could at this point start doing some academic analysis to prove all these connections, but you don’t want me to do that. You want to go and listen to some of this stuff. Please do.

Uplifting music of the day: ‘This Will Be’ - Natalie Cole. This piece has always made me feel happy to be alive. A great gospely, soulful thing which has the most tasty bass playing. Frustratingly, on the version I have I can’t find the name of this person.

Contemplative music of the day: ‘My Ship’ from the ‘Miles Ahead’ album. Almost any version of this tune practically kills me as it is insanely beautiful. But Miles - as ever - phrases it impeccably, supported by orchestrations from the great Gil Evans.