I love it when an album perfectly matches my mood and the music allows me to enjoy or wallow in whatever the state I am in.
There are, however, many albums in Jazz that breaks up my mood and disrupt the activities I’m engaged in. Totally schizophrenic. I have to stop reading or driving (rather, paying attention to the road) or crying or reminiscing so that I can fast forward to where music and I are back in sync. It’s annoying. I get why some cats would do that. You want your album to have a range and you want to show the world what you are capable of. I just wish that you would do that over multiple albums and not in one disc. And I don’t mean for any album to be mono-tone but I like it when an album has a certain vibe and it manages to let me soak in it from beginning to end.
Me’Shell N’degeocello is a master of that. Her albums are totally different from one to the other and each one has a very distinct feel. I know which one to listen to when I’m happy and which one to listen to when I’m depressed.
People like myself who work in the music do listen to music for the sake of it. We love it. We have to. We can somehow muster the focus to just listen. But I would imagine for the general public it is not that way. Particularly now. Sitting down just to listen to music used to be an activity in itself. Outside our industry, I really don’t think people do that any more. It’s like the term “background music” became redundant. People listen to music while reading, eating, drinking, working out, dancing, and other activities that music can enhance.
It is beautiful when an album and you make the connection and the music becomes part of your memory. I’m sure you have had the experience where you’d hear the first few bars of a song and you are immediately brought back to where you were. You can smell, taste, and feel that moments in your life like it is happening to you right now. That album became your time machine and something that would accompany you for the rest of your life. Your own soundtrack.
And you would want to make an album like that, no? Not about the cleverness or being different or your capacity for complexity but to be someone’s life partner. I mean, ultimately, whatever you want to do is valid because you believe in it but if you don’t make that connection with another human being, whatever effort you put into just drift away into the void of the Universe. And you know, without air, nobody can hear nothing.