Yeah, I know that’s a heavy title. I only styled it that way because I took the song very seriously when I wrote it earlier this century. I wanted something mythic and epic, something that captured the intensely tragic nature of the relationship of two people tied together by slavery, in the sense of Booker T. Washington (who grew up within a mile of where I grew up in West Virginia) when he said, “You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.” Continue reading
Tag Archives: Music
Just to let you know that I’m still not dead, here’s a little original Halloween music for your fright night delight!
Studying Islám at university, it struck me how saturated American popular culture is with imagery from various religions, Western, Eastern, Pagan, whatever. And, I don’t mean religious imagery used for its original sense, but used to illustrate some sentiment in everyday life. It shows the way these images get into our hearts and minds when we talk about feeling like we’re wandering in the desert, or turned away from the inn, or rolling the stone up the hill.
But, I could not think of a single example of American popular culture that included imagery from Islám this way. Being a songwriter, I wondered what such an example might sound like, not a Muslim song but a song that employed some imagery from Islám to illustrate some sense of feeling lost or trapped like the Hebrews in the desert, or Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem, or Sysiphus in Hell.
At that time, I was fasting in solidarity with my Muslim classmates. In fact, several of us Christians were doing this after spending the first day of Ramadán gently teasing our Muslim friends by bringing colas and potato chips to class. If you’ve never done this, you should, even if you don’t personally know any Muslims. It’s a lot harder than Lent, let me tell you. A real learning experience.
And, from that experience came Forever Ramadán, a song of a fast that seemingly will never end. I don’t mean for this song to reduce the holy month practiced by the global Ummah to the existential suffering of an individual, but to show how imagery from Islám can stand alongside imagery from other religions in popular culture, deepening our understanding of how the great resonates in the small.
I want to restart my Music Monday series with a cover tune I took on as a challenge. I’m not a stellar guitarist, and I felt the chord structure of this Elton John tune would be a good test of my meager talents. If you’re a musician or an astute music fan, you’ll notice the flub in the second refrain that I powered through as best as I could.
I also find the storytelling of Bernie Taupin’s lyrics compelling: someone of humble beginnings who rejects being used as a social circle showpiece.
This was recorded about a half decade ago, when I was going through a particularly shaggy phase. Continue reading
I wouldn’t normally link from here to an explicitly political site like Dros or Kudge (or whatever), but Huffpost has an interesting piece about publishing’s approach to product digitalization.
Most intriguing to me was with the following not-so-flattering description of the development approach publishing firms take, which could spell trouble in the digital age:
The “somebody do something that works so we can copy it” mentality duplicates the … attitude espoused by long-time executives in music who simply could not or would not question the viability of the professional cocoons they’d built for themselves …
What offed the music business — and what the publishing industry is facing — is a corporate structure built to churn out hits to subsidize an entire product line. Rather than developing artists, exploiting regional marketplaces, and building financial models that can easily support a mid-range list, both industries focus on entertainment at the expense of art and expression.
(Difference between selling entertainment vs art? Entertainment starts with the customer and works back to the product. Art begins with the product and works forward to find/create an audience.)
Thoughts? Agree? Disagree?