Music to me is like great art wherever you encounter it, the soul and spirit of the universe
when I came to Canada for example I knew I had to stay away from Ice hockey because no black people played that game. they were kept out of it.
yet from the corner of my eye I saw a figure skating who drew me more and more to the game. that figure was Bobby Orr and as I saw him Garfield Sobers and Rohan Kanhai came to mind.
everytime!
that is who Booby Orr was in hockey..a great, great, great artist who captured your attention regardless of who you were, where you came from.
I did not know a thing about the game of hockey and would have ignored it completely otherwise. yet there was Orr skating like an angel, doing things on the ice that should not have been possible.. and doing them with a flow and a charm that was irresistible. you had to watch...Orr's style commanded you to watch him lionize the ice, control the game and set up his team mates to score and score and score
that is exactly the way it was with west indian great cricketers. with the great soccer players too, with tennis players like John McEnroe, the great left hander, who literally flowed into his game and never stopped 'till the game was over.
that is the universal flow of human physicality, born in one place and like dance and mime, was first associated with human survival and contemporaneous with the development of human security, flowed into artistic expression as necessity.
that is why when we see it, and hear it, we are attracted even if whatever the action is, is not part of the culture in which we grew. the movement is basic, fundamental and we all know it, it is in our soul, the basic memory of the human species and how we survived. and when we see the movement of survival in expression, in excelsis, we are drawn like moths to light.
it is the same with music, a universal medium, language, form. its like the 'Word Up'! anywhere you say it you know it will be heard.
anywhere real music is played it will be heard by all, even those who have never heard that music before.
'if its music we can use it we are free to dance' and when the music is real,natural, basic, driving, touching the soul of humans through our collective original experience from the same source, like language all of which can be translated only because language originated in one place, the same place, in one location. music too
when we hear real music we know it and we respond no matter who plays it, and where it came from..know it is from the source, the base
black people are like the original people, still with all we came from, and so whatever we do artistically attracts everyone, touches all souls. why..because that is where we all come from that's why. we know in our souls the basic sounds and movement of survival, and when see it it perfectly expressed we respond with our bodies, even if our conscious mind says something different.
check your body not you mind this time.
