Category Archives: African Music

African Music

if something is not going to pay…

the THOUHT of the day is:

person-1218190_1280

it better be worth your effort in awesomeness.

if it’s not… even if it IS, to someone else…

don’t do it.

life’s too short.

when something is for fun…
it needs to ACTUALLY
BE
FUN.

FOR YOU.

be precise. be perfect. in the good way.

very often people do things in a manner MOST imprecise, imperfect.
when it comes to Artistic manners this is UNACCEPTABLE.

HAHAHAHA!!!
Yes, I really did just say that.

please don’t be half-assed.
don’t not care enough to figure out HOW to not be half-assed, to actually not BE half-assed.

please be awesome.
please try hard..
please be patient with thyself.
please be awesomer.
please try harder.

“perfection of the bad kind” (when you are too hard on yourself, hate yourself, and are generally negative and destructive to yourself,) never do this ever.

However-
“Perfection of the Good Kind”
is NOT OPTIONAL!!
GO FORTH!bulls-eye-1044725_1920

the four challenges, in short

not feeling worthy of something is one thing,

not knowing how to go about it, (due in part to years spent not feeling worthy of it)
is quite another.

whereas not WANTING something, unless it’s done YOUR WAY, versus “everyone else’s”, is QUITE another yet, and of course-

simply not getting around to it, or anything,
is indeed another.

These are THE FOUR CHALLENGES. 3, 2, 1, and 0, in that order.chess-1215079_1920

missed chances for high-grade high stimulation

1.  (omitted cause it’s a long story)
2. not taking the chance to do something that’s High Stimulation, because you are too dehydrated/exhausted/hungry.

really mars what should be a  wonderful time and memory.

hate missed opportunities.

but here’s the challenge in “just moving on.”

they aren’t all equal.

not in any sense.

the next chance to feel THAT good THAT way won’t be for a year, if that, if ever.

moving on to the next thing won’t feel anywhere near as good as that.

really rare super fun things.

never miss them.
ever.

Wo, didn’t realize I was kinda a drill-sergeant

wo… weird…
thought I just had:

when it comes to MY teaching, I just thought almost instantly of many examples where, when “I” teach, the following notion is true:

“It’s not my job to make you feel good.
It Is my job to make you do what you DO good (being play music in my case.)”

(you can argue that there is nothing too wrong about making students feel good, indeed.)   just saying.

presenting one kind of thing as another

an attempt, not the first,
to create not a theory of everything, but of “some things”
involving analyzing
presenting one kind of thing as another, in the context of the former, or the latter, and which one is best…

is suddenly expanding, hopefully not unnecessarily into a discussion, within my brains,

of classical music,
ethnocentrism, white privilege, how in touch with the moment one or one’s culture is, and whether or not or one’s culture is alienated from the moment, from joy, and how important, if at all,
TELEOLOGY (goal-orientedness), LINEAR DEVELOPMENT in the western (music (and other things) sense is…, if at all…

why?
an attempt for
my extreme-left-brain (as always) pre-pre-pre planning to:

take something, a cultural (musical expression) which happens to be popular, but it most often lacks aspects of music that I really like…
and turn it into
1. something I like better
also
2. an attempt to take something I like and make it popular….

no small fuckin order….

I’ve only got “the rest of my life” to try to do it. :):):)
speaking of which:

(most everything in this post was cryptic for “very specific things.” ask me if you want.)

speaking of which:

I’m diggin the tune at 16:34, down the backstreets, in this:

sometimes I like the raw material…

sometimes I happen to like the raw materials of something (jazz, funk, my favorite harmonies of choice, etc.)

so in those cases, I don’t “mind” if what is “done with” them, FORM-wise, is TYPICAL, cause I like the material that is actually being used. (think of a guy who likes meatloaf (not me) who doesn’t care in what form meatloaf is presented in, nor how much, for it’s meatloaf and meatloaf is his thing.)

I’m trying to say two different things here… something tells me this is going to come across as rather incoherent… here goes.

other times,
I dislike very much the FORM, the way something is PRESENTED… it’s IMAGE, too.
I dislike it as ARBITRARY, and “kinda uncool and uninteresting.”

yes, raw materials liked by me could help this situation, but here’s another idea:

*I typed the end of this, anticipating what I’d say…. then came back and- can’t get my thoughts organized, and now they involve using “lower” (what’s lower?) art forms IN “higher ones” (what are “higher” ones, and could there BE a more “white/western-centric approach to ANYTHING…?

to be continued after I think about it

the end:

thus I agree with Beethoven from the end, which if I remember correctly (I do, and Thanks DR. RUBIO)
“CONTENT DETERMINES FORM.” (at least more so than it once did.

to do otherwise, is to agree with “no child left behind” and any other one-size-fits-all JIVE ASS CONFORMIST approach, which
IS.
NOT.
FUCKING.
OK.

it’s getting late.
we really need to do what the hell we want.
when we’re gone…. we won’t want anything no more, nor be able to do it.

let’s GO! let’s GO!!!!!

many different (and similar) musics

THAT’s me,

1. driving down to WAGNER, (made that up actually, today it was driving down to a phone conversation)
2. listening to JAMES BROWN
3. reading a book about harmony by SCHOENBERG, and
4. going to AFRICAN DRUM class soon.
likely coming home to
5. JAZZ tonight.

energy usage-

as far as my “not liking being part of things that are average or normal or otherwise less-than-interesting”

it’s not true when my senses DO deem them stimulating, interesting, etc.

like that vid there. funfun. notes. endorphins.

ENERGY USAGE.

I WANT THIS.

so if my life WASN’T about coping with feeling unhappy

so if my life WASN’T about coping with feeling unhappy, because I WASN’T unhappy…

would I do something different?

wonder what…

 

 

I got ideas, yo