Creativity Now

Creativity Is An You would think the music industry would have learned by now. Art cannot be commodified. Oh, of course, you can sell Van Gogh prints in the check out aisles of Walmart as quickly as you can churn out a Muzak version of Led Zepplins "Stairway to Heaven". But great music can't be sanitized, sterilized or serialized. There are some things you don't learn in a classroom: Things you can only learn on a stage in front of an audience. All great music is born on the stage. It is a product of the chemistry that happens when a performer and an audience meet headlong on the edge of sanity. As much as we take inspiration and are certainly entertained by great music, there is something called a collective conscious that takes over when the music and the artist meet. A magical, mystical synergy takes place. It is what audiences expect and all musical artists live for. There is always an open stage for the artist who can make an audience love him. If he gives them what they want or at least what they expect, the union is complete and the audience will remain faithful seemingly forever or at least until the next craze begins. Juke joints - now known as dance clubs - were filled with couples jitterbugging to Swing music, a big band style emerging out of Kansas City. These joints were jumpin' with the sounds of Count Basie and Duke Ellington. By the mid-forties, Fifty-second Street in Manhattan was lined with them. The mainstream music establishment had no trouble accepting Swing. It wasn't a significant break from musical tradition. Swing relied on standard European forms similar to that of the classic concert band. The difference between the two styles was that classical European music created tension by contrasting movements of a piece. Swing, on the other hand, created tension within each piece rhythmically emphasizing off beats. Be Bop emerged during the despair of World War II. Hitler was fighting for a 'New Order' in Europe. It was a time when African Americans were creating a growing list of firsts. Jackie Robinson was the first black baseball player. Althea Gibson played at Wimbledon. Gwendolyn Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was founded in Chicago. Suddenly, bebop groups came from nowhere. Swing had been welcomed by the American mainstream but the mainstream didn't support bebop. Bop musicians were black outcasts who grew up poor. The black Be Bop world offered a place for expression and experimentation. It was hip to know everything, see everything and be mentally unflappable. Be Boppers created a double-talk language which made no sense to anyone else. What began as a revolt against the confining nature of the harmony, melody, and rhythm of swing reached fruition in the mid-forties. The flatted fifth, elaborate rhythm, and harmonic focus of "be bop"music emerged. Rhythm and blues came right alongside combining rock with earlier Black music. A few decades later, Lennon-McCartney's "Yesterday" took a backward glance at lost if not misguided youth. It's a constant reminder to those of us who were of that era. Music brings back memories. It is braided into the fabric of our being. We love to remember the past, good and bad, and music helps us to do that. But, today, as effortless as that may seem, remembering the past is an exercise in futility unless, of course, it is renewing acquaintances over a coffee once or twice a year. Remembering is all good and well; that was then and this is now. We should be spending our time in the present, not the future or the past. If you want to be creative, this is the time, the moment is now. Dennis Walsh progressofmusic@hotmail.com