Josh Marshall over at TPM writes of American music.
On July 4th we celebrate America. The most obvious thing is our civic tradition, our history of democratic government. But since it's so rightly and well celebrated, I thought I'd focus on something else for today: American music, or more specifically America's distinct and world-transforming musical idioms. Most of them originating or coming into view of recorded sound between about 1910 and 1930 from an interplay of upcountry white and low country black sounds. If you listen to the amazing British single Adele today she's still working through basic Blues and Jazz musical idioms from going on a century ago.
One of America's greatest cultural exports has been its music. We of course have to thank the rich culture of African Americans for forming and giving us the many genres of music we have in America. Spirituals, gospel, jazz, blues, rock & roll, hip hop, R&B, doo-wop, (among others) obviously have their direct lineage to African American artistry.
It is my opinion that groups who have been historically oppressed will often find creative venues to express themselves in response to a society that seeks to deny and limit them with outright hostility and repression.
Much of the music of African Americans is that of deep pain, yet even in the pain there is beauty and even joy, that the creative spirit and its source is bigger and deeper than any human institution...
Music is liberating, it can communicate to the deeper parts of one's being. I can be swept away when listening to Miles Davis or Coltrane. Listening to Coltrane for the first time to me was a religious experience. I experienced beauty, the beauty that goes beyond words. The music of Coltrane was an experience that went beyond reason and it communicated something intangible and left its imprint upon my psyche. I carry this music in me, it is part of me and I am glad to let it carry me wherever it might.
Beethoven once said "music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend." There is possibly something transcendent in music, in which there is a pattern and freedom that can't be fully restrained by societal repression. And music can make society better or at least transform it. It can make people connect to something beyond themselves and truly take them beyond their narrowness and pettiness, even just for a moment.
The music is also immanent (and despite the possibility of music to open one to possibility of love, communion or connection) music is a record of history that can not be transcended. August Wilson wrote "take jazz or blues; you can't disregard that part of the African-American experience, or even try to transcend it. They are affirmations and celebrations of the value and worth of the African-American spirit." The African American spirit is part of the American experience, and what they contributed to this country is beyond measure.