February 7, 2013

The Soul of Music – a common link across oceans

I love soul music, you know what I mean – Al Green, Aretha, Stevie, Stax, Booker T & The MGs, Otis, Isleys, Donnie Hathaway and on and on and on. I also love punk rock, jazz, blues, heavy metal, classical, pop, dance, hip hop, world, folk, latin, reggae, Celtic, dub step, etc etc etc…
As a musician I think about music all the time – how it feels, how it’s made and what it means. I ask myself the question “Is there a common link that connects all the various music I really like?” I find it hard to put into words the quality that permeates the records I listen to over and over. Why do I love Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ AND Zeppelin’s ‘What Is and What Should Never Be’? Beethoven’s Piano Variations AND Stevie’s ‘Joy Inside My Tears’? I really love these seemingly unrelated pieces equally and somehow I get the sense there is something consistent that runs through all of them. But what? I say it’s SOUL. Put another way: from the heart, honesty, passion, purity, .