One of the things that I fear people asking, that I imagine to be the greatest torture in the world to which I can attest with personal experience in the matter, is “What kind of music do you play?”
Ok, so maybe that’s a first world problem. Could be that most people even in the most obscure, bizarre and strangely unusual circumstances would not find themselves needing to consider it. And I’m ok with that if you are. I mean, what I’m not able to communicate will be more than offset by what you’re not able to understand, right? And visa versa.
It wouldn’t be so bad if there really were specific types or genres of music that folks use to clearly define the sounds they hear, imagine they’re hearing, or wish they could hear, when their lives, like a Broadway or Hollywood musical, need some music or a song to get through a particularly thorny plot point or epiphany. But the truth is, those common shared definitions don’t exist. Ask any two people on the street to define jazz. Or punk. Or country. Or classical. Now ask any two musicians. Of the four answers you have, do any agree with your own descriptions?
When I was at Berklee, one of my professors told us that when Duke Ellington was asked that question, he replied, “Why, beautiful music, of course.” I’ve used that answer since myself, but I always feel both a little guilty – and also a bit skeptical. After all, beauty is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder. There are more ways to divide the spectrum of beauty than almost any other abstract notion in human history. As my dad used to say about working at the Detroit Department of Sanitation, “It may be shit to you, but it’s our bread and butter.”
The beauty you see, absorb, and reflect in the world, and the music you hear, internalize, and echo back to the cosmos, are in that respect very much the same. In many ways, you find the beauty or song you need at the precise moment you need it. That’s why it makes such an indelible impression. Just like you are not the same person from one set of space-time coordinates to the next, but are constantly if unconsciously evolving into something never before quite finished, you’re never really done with beauty and music because once they’ve touched you, they’re never really quite done with you either.
That’s what makes the question so difficult to answer. Not just because the answer changes, but because it doesn’t. It’s the etudes you first learned to play before you knew the names of the strings on your violin. It’s the first piece you practiced for hours preparing for that piano recital. The song you wrote after coming home from your grandfather’s funeral. The tune on the radio when you stormed out of the house and broke up with your first girlfriend. The last of music you hear before you die, when you don’t know you’ll never hear anything else.
In a brief bio of Sandy Denny, I read, “The mark of a great singer is that he or she always tells a personal truth regardless of the given material.”
So you sing your song or somebody else’s, regardless of who actually wrote it. And that’s the kind of music you play. Because nobody else can.
People will keep asking, because they don’t recognize their own life’s soundtrack. And your answer will never be their moon or its light, or even a reflection in a dewdrop of water. But it may be useful as a finger pointing the way.
20 Apr 2025
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