My Recent Interview

 I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Aleah Fitzwater who is a musician, writer, artist and blogger from the midwest. She runs a blog called Blog: Fusion so, when she happened upon me while surfing the internet she thought I would be a great fit since I happen to be a classical pop fusion music composer. She is also a fusion artist, arranging pop-punk songs for flute choir. Flute is one of her main instruments and she says that most people find arranging pop-punk songs for flute choir a little strange. Obviously I don't, although I admit how surprised I was when she contacted me and I found out how many similarities we have as artists.

Working in the fusion of classical and pop music elements, you often feel you are alone on a wide-open frontier.The nice thing about it, of course, is it tends to hit across many musical genres, as far as listeners are concerned.

I was also surprised to hear how similar our formative experiences in this were, that is to say we were both immersed in a highly traditional classical music environment which caused us to crave an expansion of musical genres that we listen to and work with. I even learned that she will be recording a flute work by a friend of hers that was inspired by Aleister Crowley.

Anyway I enjoyed the interview, I got to talk about the stories behind particular music tracks and some of my experiences in music school. Her blog is very worthwhile to check out as she does art and photography as well so there are many interesting articles and images there. 

Be sure to check out this interesting musical artist’s blog (the link is above) and, of course, please check out my interview which can be found here; Interview With Dizzy O'Brian

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Music As Culture

 Music As Culture

Music As Culture

There can be no doubt that music parallels culture. One only has to look back through time to find the connection between music and the society of that time to see the connection, so it is certain that we have always had music as culture.

One can find a connection not only in the dancing of the time but also the fashion and even the very language used. Idioms and slang began noticeably appearing in the United States way back with the Beat Movement with words like ‘cool,’ ‘square,’ and ‘DaddyO.’

The fashion was very distinctive and identifying with black turtleneck sweaters and bangs. It was an artistic culture and people hung out in coffee shops, painting and composing poetry on the fly.

We follow it into the sixties with tie dye, bell bottoms, sex and drugs.

The real question, I suppose, is which came first; the chicken or the egg? Does music culture reflect changes already going on in society or is it a catalyst? An interesting question, since many musical artists in the sixties could actually read and did. There certainly seemed to be something going on, what with all the talk of revolution and such.

This brings up the connection of music and politics. We can certainly find music being used on both sides of the fence historically. Hitler tried to use music to serve his own ends, largely by twisting its interpretation and Stalin ran the media so that, if you got a bad review as a composer, you would likely be taken away during the night.

So the question is, if music as culture is just a reflection of what’s happening in society, why do we see such a ferocious effort historically to control it and censor it?

Why did record companies like Capitol Records close down all their divisions that handled different kinds of music and begin to just concentrate  on one type of music? What is the outcome, if music as culture is under other control.

Oh well, at least we can go to a concert whenever we feel like….oh shit. 

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