You’re sitting, in 1926, in the back of a little church in Dallas. It’s hot and the windows are open. This woman, who’s been at the piano since you walked in, begins to play.
Part of the job of a musician is that of a messenger. If you ain’t ready to be a messenger, forget it. You need to get a job in the post office or somewhere. If you ain’t ready to travel, pack up your family, or pack up yourself and hit the road, you’re in the wrong business. Because that’s what music is about. It’s about spreading knowledge and education, and re-education. It’s about spreading. You have got to travel with it to spread the word. Like all the people in the past that have had to travel to spread the music.
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It’s life itself that this [music] is about.
—Lester Bowie (in George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music[2008])
I’ve posted other clips that were subsequently removed by YouTube. But this is the first time where I’ve posted something that was removed the very same day.
Oh, well—more tomorrow.
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When the tempo is perfect, the music unfolds in what seems to be the only way it could. “Fast” and “slow” lose their meaning. Time disappears.
Frederic Chopin, 24 Preludes for Solo Piano, Op. 28/Friedrich Gulda, piano