Concert List

Music, Culture, and Reality-A psychoactive is defined as that which has a profound or significant affect on the mental processes. Although typically used in the context of drugs and substances, this concept is often extended to anything evoking a seemingly ‘mystical experience.’ What people describe as mystical experiences are indistinguishable, neurologically and empirically, from deep and poignant religious experiences. Moments of oneness and insight are typical in both cases. In “The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902),” William James describes mystical experiences as ineffable, noetic, passive (rather, a sense of loss of control), and fleeting. From the remote mystics of Sufism and Kabbalah, to modern day ‘urban shamans,’ psychonauts have sought methods other than imbibement to investigate the cosmos within. Through meditation, breath control, lucid dreaming, sensory deprivation, and a host of other methods, music has stood among cultures in this service probably since early man first danced around campfires.

Ethnomusicolgist Gilbert Rouget explores the connection between music and trance throughout history. Perhaps music is more than simply a mortal construct, rather having cosmic significance. Playing music (and truly appreciating music) forces an individual to focus on the present moment, which in turn is the cornerstone of meaningful experience. This emphasis on the present moment is the consummation of all other psychonautical resources (mediation, entheogens, etc.). Subscribers of the shamanic and mystical often view the passage of time as an illusion of the human mind, and regard a ‘perpetual now’ as true reality. Interestingly this is where science begins to align with the esoteric.

Quantum Mechanics argues that particles move backwards as well as forwards in time and appear in all possible places at once. String theory proposes that the physical world is composed of little, tiny strings of vibrating energy (It seems appropriate to allude to chordophones). Terrence McKenna, recounting a DMT (Dimethyltryptamine) induced experience, asserts that the constant dance of ‘machine elves,’ (entities occupying a parallel world) creates reality as we perceive it. Are the rhythms of music akin to the language of reality? Is music a method of staying in contact with the underlying ‘Logos,’ being the true virtue in which all things exist? Whether it be Spring’s hymn of birds and bees or the elegant, geometrical dance of our physical world, music plays the universal tongue in a reality seemingly ripe with babbling discord.

76.Some Words on Soul Music
Soul is still a very popular music genre which grew out of fifties rhythm and blues. There were two very diffined record labels which dominated this era, Stax and Tamala Motown.

The record label Stax started life in Memphis in 1959, founded by Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton. Around the same time Berry Gordy was creating the two record labels, Tamla and Motown in Detroit. Stax and Tamla Motown became the biggest of rivals for record sales throughout the 1960’s and 70’s. Their music idiom was the same, with a focus on the Black music form soul, but marketing and style differed significantly.

Motown took the music market by storm at a time when white audiences were ignoring many black music forms. Their success was attributed to their light soul style with their image being aimed at the middle class market. Producing hits such as ‘Stop! In the name of love’ by the Supremes, released in 1965, and ‘Heard it through the grapevine’ by Marvin Gaye, released in 1968. Artists such as the Supremes, the Four Tops and Marvin Gaye developed a clean-cut image, appearing on record sleeves and in concerts wearing formal clothes such as tuxedos and evening dresses.

Stax records concentrated more on the original form of Black American Southern soul. For Stax records the original music form was more important than image and marketing. Artists and songs included ‘In the midnight hour’ by Wilson Pickett, released in 1965, and ‘Sittin’ on the dock of the bay’ by Otis Redding, released in 1968.

Soul music has stayed one of the most popular music styles right through into the 21st century mainly due to the very reason in the title, the music gets into your ‘soul’. A good choice for both young and old!