ListenI Am Curious (Ever) by Adam Stolfi
Hear Ever Curious every Sunday morning at 9 A.M. ET here on Deeper Into Music.
The world of music is gargantuan enough that even a small section of it - that which has been recorded - is too vast for a person to investigate fully in a lifetime. While any rewarding music supports repeated listening, an ever-burgeoning understanding of music supports regularly hearing out music one has never heard before. With the sheer variety of musical recordings that have been made since Mr. Edison started cranking his favorite invention - more of which always become readily available in the everyday commercial marketplace - opportunities for new music listening abound.
"We have untold stacks of recorded music from every age and culture, and the most superb means of playing it. But who actually listens?"
- Alan Watts
I recall another quote: "Music Is Your Best Entertainment Value" - as was seen on stickers slapped onto LP covers in record stores of yore. I'm a participant in US commercial culture as much as anyone else and apparently I saw the truth in that notion, as over the past two decades I've spent a hefty proportion of my discretionary income on records and CDs. While many of these are recordings of music of my own time and culture - pop music is great! - I couldn't help but also be drawn to what I'd call the periphery (often literally, when it came to the bins in record stores) of the recorded music marketplace: simply put, recordings of music never played on the radio or at dance clubs - or wherever recorded music was the order of entertainment. I would wonder: What does it sound like?
Often, it sounded like nothing else I had heard before - not surprisingly, as these were usually documents of music from cultures and eras in which I have never lived. (Right from the start I had to acknowledge that in my listening to some music from other cultures - the music I call foreign folk and traditional music - my understanding of it is perforce very limited: I know little of the circumstances under which the music was made [all I know is what I read in the liner notes], and I don't understand the languages in which they are sung. My analyses of those musics are slight compared to those of listeners versed in the cultures and societies of their creation; but the same sound waves that entered the ears of the original musicians can enter mine - and yours - and each person can take from them what they are able. Music is a human creation that can fairly evoke human interest and response, no matter how limited the familiarity. And, is it not always enlightening to learn more of the variety of what human cultures take to be music? We can rightly hear whatever music humans - in all their cultural variety - put forth to be heard.) Apart from being educational, I found the music to be always intriguing and - more often than I would have suspected - moving as well.
Can't it be refreshing to hear something different?
Music-making is likely as old and widespread as humanity itself, and I won't limit my notions of "music" to that with which I am already culturally familiar. Could anyone be well served by doing so? A person who does that could thereby be missing out on getting to know some music that that they would find as enjoyable - even as moving - as any music they love.
By way of bemoaning deficiencies of the popular imagination, Alan Watts immediately answered his own question about who actually listens to music in an adventuresome way: "Maybe a few pot smokers." He had a good point, but maybe it won't always be that way!
Ever Curious is my joyful effort seed a better interest. It's a varied and fun ride! I hope you give a listen as I share morsels from my own small slice of the world of recorded music. Maybe you'll find them as ear-opening as I do - and maybe some them will stick with you.
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