Never meant to imply that only poor or starving people can produce soulful
music. I was only trying to put a little light on (as i said in my first
post) "ONE of the MANY reasons why today's music is losing it's soul."
That said maybe you should tally up all the greatest Blues, Soul, Jazz and
Funk artists, look at the culture they grew up in and then listen to what
they're singing about.
You're right about one thing. Miles Davis wasn't the best person to use in
the analogy. As talented, awe inspiring and inovative as he is, he still
isn't the first person that comes to MY mind when referring to "soul" music.
jj
>From: "Steve Catanzaro" <stevencatanzaro@sprintmail.com>
>To: <acid-jazz@ucsd.edu>
>Subject: Re: what is soul? (was RE: what is jazz?)
>Date: Sun, 21 May 2000 19:21:58 -0700
>
>someone wrote;
>
> > The true juice behind real Blues, Soul, Jazz and Gutbucket Funk cannot
>be
> > explained away by meaningless musical terms that reduce music to math.
> >
> > The roots of the music that this list discusses lie in a culture made up
>of
> > (Black and White people) doing everything they could to survive. Not in
> > middle-class over-intellectualizers cutting and pasting away on samplers
> > thinking they're the next Miles Davis (myself included).
> >
> > P.S.
> > Living in the inner city and claiming that life is hard because you've
>only
> > got one pair of Micheal Jordan shoes doesn't count for surviving, the
>kind
> > of surviving I'm talking about is just trying to get enough food out of
>the
> > land to feed your family. If the crop fails, the family eats pine cones
>and
> > possums for the winter.
>
>
>I wasn't gonna comment on this one, even though it nags me. But, since it
>came up again, I can only say BULLSHIT!!! Poverty has NOTHING WHATEVER to
>do
>with musical creativity. In fact, since you mention Miles Davis as a
>paradigm of soulfulness, (I agree totally), listen to what he himself
>says...
>
>"She was up in front of the class saying that the reason black people
>played
>the blues was because they were poor and had to pick cotton. So they were
>sad and that's where the blues came from, their sadness. My hand went up in
>a flash and I stood up and said, "I'm from East St. Louis and my father is
>rich, he's a dentist, and I play the blues. My father didn't never pick no
>cotton and I didn't wake up this morning and start playing the blues.
>There's more to it than that." Well, the bitch turned green and didn't say
>nothing after that. Man, she was teaching that shit from out of a book
>written by someone who didn't know what the fuck he was talking about.
>That's the kind of shit that was happening at Juilliard and after a while I
>got tired of it."
>
>
>Miles Davis (the original one)
>
>Autobiography, page 59
>
>
>--Steve
>cutting and pasting my way to a better world...
>
>
>
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