What's up, ya'll, back in NY from some travels and WWALTN recruitment. Was in Spain traveling from Barcelona to Oviedo with my man Antonio, who is a fellow music-head and I'm hoping he starts posting here. We road-tripped for about a week and it was a great time and really musical, two guitars and lots of time in the car to listen to music. I was playing lots of stuff for him off my iphone but at one point in Rioja we had the radio going and found this great channel with cool Brasiliero and lots of 70s jazz and soul, good stuff. I also have a new respect for the Beatles after living with a few of their songs day and night for the last couple of months in order to play them at my friend Carlos' wedding, I always did like them but never went through a full-blown Beatles phase, but now "In My Life" in particular has taken on a certain meaning for me.Been reading this book by Oliver Sacks called Musicophilia. Sacks is a neurologist and writer and he wrote "Awakenings", which was made into a movie. Musicophilia is about music and brain and has tons of incredible stories about how music affects us and the difference it can make in our lives. Sacks and the people he writes about are particularly interested in classical music and it has spurred me to check some of the names he wrote about on this Sunday morning as I'm dealing with jet-lag. I'm checking out the Czech composer Leos Janecek right now, some string quartets, because Sacks wrote about how he used to sit in cafes and listen to people speak and try to compose based on the cadence of the conversations, how the people around him were feeling; some say you can get a sense of the Czech language in his music, not so sure about that (I speak some Czech), but it's cool stuff, reminds me of Shostakovich. What came first, music or language? Those are the kind of things he is writing about, check it out, might make you think of music in your life a little differently, it has for me.
4 comments:
Sounds like a good trip.
Love Oliver Sacks, does he by chance talk about synthasia(sp) in that book, where peoples senses get mixed up and they taste color or see music? Can't remember which one of his books it was in but it was fascinating.
Yep, he does, all sorts of things get mixed up with music, people seeing tones as colors, etc. He also talks a lot about musical hallucinations.
I love shit like that, like Hendrix wanting his guitar to sound like blue water, or Lennon like oranges.
I read this book last year about the Master Musicians of Jajouka, Their family /tribe name is Attar, which means "perfume maker". Allegedly when they really got jamming they reach a state where the music actually turns into a scent that you can smell in the room. How fucking cool is that?
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