But if I had approached them I would have liked the conversation to go something like this:
"Hi."
"Hey."
"What are you guys doing here?"
"Just playing the drums."
"Those look African. So you guys are out here hitting some African beats?"
"Yep."
"You know, I love African music. In fact, I am hopelessly in love with African music. Because I see coursing through it something essential and vital, something that should be inseparable from living itself. Something sorely missing from today's Western music, or at least mainstream Western music in general. Of course you have the underground punk and metal and garage/psych and other indie stuff where the musicians are trying to punch through that corporate-pop...crystal or what have you, but most of those guys are marginalized. Some make it, but a very small number. Just try listening to the radio. No, popular Western music in general is of course highly refined (and I don't mean the positive meaning of that) and manufactured; it is highly calcified and almost authoritarian in nature, which of course reflects the greater culture. Well OK it IS authoritarian in nature. I guess that's what happens when something becomes so formalized and automated and a small group of very wealthy people own most of the producing apparatus: your pop stars have to clamor toward this incredible standard: a necessity to sell the maximum amount of units to the maximum amount of the population, since that's what these guys want above all is a high return. They have to contort themselves as individuals into these grotesque, manufactured personalities and project this carefully constructed (and foreignly groomed) expression. I'd note that they do seem to retain some personality and creativity; that's how they sell. But it is all encased in this corporate conceived machinery. It is as if their essence is extracted and packaged and sold. And these poor souls are blowing like gaskets. Each one has to be bigger and greater and more loved and richer than the last and each one has to conform to more and more irrelevant modes of expression and no wonder the poor dears are blowing up. Take Michael Jackson or Britney Spears. Look at the production and the choreography. They had scores of dancers and musicians moving to their every calculated command. There was a cult surrounding them. Especially Michael Jackson. He had this fascination with militaristic uniforms and everything was so carefully, hierarchically conceived. It had to be perfect. And all the pressure and heat on these stars. It pushes and deforms them until they literally pop outside of the bounds of society, and then they are viciously attacked as alien until they are all but destroyed. Sure the music is good in a sense that fast food is good. It is pleasurable. But at what cost? What cost to society as well? Celebrities tend to inspire harmonic vibrations so to speak. People revere them and look to emulate them and their orbit re-aligns in sympathy. And everyone wants to be a star. Everyone wants to be this great being, loved over everyone else. And this trickles down into everyone's private lives. Look at the pop stars. Everyone who makes them shine, everyone who makes them happen is obliterated in their blinding light. And so everyone else wants this power. It arises in our daily relations. But if everyone wants to be the greatest and the most loved, who does the loving and revering? And at what cost to their person? Now I'm not saying the pop stars or even the music industry causes this. No the causes are far more profound. They permeate the entire civilization. But I'm trying to illustrate these deeper realities under the music. I know I'm digressing horribly, but I'm getting to my point. Bear with me."
"Alright."
"So compare these miserable, flaring magnesium stars with these African musicians. You watch old footage of African music, or even watch Funk artists or Hip Hop artists (real Hip Hop, not the pop shit) and you see these guys are having the time of their lives. They are in constant bliss, completely in tune with themselves and lost in their creative expression. You see these guys jam and they communicate with each other. They speak with each other and everyone is important and everyone has something crucial to offer. The power is much more diffuse and the expression is spontaneous and collectively conceived. And oh when they solo, when they solo these guys are experiencing the sublime. You can see it in their faces and in their body language and you can hear it in the music. They are glimpsing and reaching what some call "God." I don't like to use that idea because of its associations, but it points to something essential for sure. But the culture. There's something vibrant and alive in that sort of African culture that could really...I think help to heal Western culture. We are going insane over here. But African culture, African American culture, they are in touch with their emotions and they can live even as these modern, mechanistic, higher-thought heuristics are strangling us and by golly you can hear it in their music. We can learn from the East as well, but that's for another time. African music though. Yeah. You guys keep doing that. We need to do more of that. We need to incorporate it. We need to understand what it means, what the social implications of those musical arrangements are. Of course, everyone's cultures are always changing, and they are all developing their own issues. But then, we need to take the good right? We need to understand what works and what doesn't. That's the way out. Don't you agree?"
"Yeah."
