A few weeks ago, I popped a question to Twitter while "Stenven Rheinsberg" and I were plunking away at
Dotdotdotmusic:
What is different about songwriting as compared/contrasted with composing?
Blam, blam, blam, blam! The @ replies came pouring in. By the end of the conversation, I'd received around 60 responses. Almost all addressed matters of form: songs are shorter, the importance is more likely to be placed on the text/lyrics rather than on the development of the music. And, from what I could tell, everyone believed the two have a square-rectangle relationship: all songwriters are composers but not all composers are songwriters. OK. But there was something else that I was getting at that wasn't being answered.
So I asked a second question:
What do you, as a listener/fan, want and expect from a song or singer-songwriter versus a composition or a composer? And a third question:
Your favorite songwriter is who and why?
The line went dead. What had been 30 minutes of rapid fire tweeting came to a sudden halt. A colleague dropped out of the conversation, noting that the topic was "weirdly incendiary" (great way to put it) and he didn't want to be attacked (again) for his musical tastes. After a bit of nudging, a small handful of folks did respond (and thank you to those who did) but I'm going to pause right here for a moment.
Take a walk with me. I was raised in a religious sect that believes instrumental music in worship is wrong. God only likes a cappella. Dancing is a sin because it might cause your brother to lust after your body. The same goes for wearing shorts or skirts above the knee, tank tops, tight or low-cut clothing. Not only is it a sin to drink alcohol, it is also (to some) shaky ground to go to a restaurant that
serves alcohol because what if your brother sees you there and thinks you're drinking and it causes him to stumble. My grandparents didn't come to my wedding and, though the reason I was given had something to do with a bad back, I am fairly certain it was because my wedding reception had both drinking and dancing (neither compulsory, by the way, but nevermind). I heard sermons on the sin of anger and, once, on the sin of depression. So it is not only a sin to do certain acts, it is a sin to even
think about doing them or to cause
someone else to think about doing them,
and it is a sin to have certain emotional responses. All of this is to say: I am familiar with the use of dogma and shame in order to force and protect community (groupthink). The hours and hours of four-part a cappella shape-note singing were positively heavenly, but at some point my heart could not rejoice in the music-making for all the endless red-foreheaded frothy-mouthed dogmatic hair-splitting arguments among the men. (
Women do not have the authority to speak publicly on such matters.)
Cut back to scene. I left this religiously dogmatic community with its rules about acceptable and unacceptable music, and while, for the most part, I have found the professional music community to be omnivorous, I am fascinated and disappointed when I see the use of of dogma and shame regarding musical output or taste. Depending on the decade and source, I've observed that it is/has been wrong/shameful to write or to like: expressive music, modernist music, mainstream music, beautiful music, atonal music, sincere music, ugly music, pop music, new music, catchy music, old music, music that doesn't take itself seriously enough, music that takes itself too seriously, it goes on.
And the shaming! The snubbing! The snark! A famous example is when Ned Rorem wrote that "nobody really likes the music of Elliott Carter: his many admirers only pretend to like it." But I also see it on blogs that tell me what bands I ought to be embarrassed by and which artists I should feel guilty listening to. Then, of course, there's the ritual one-upping and slamming amongst commenters who pronounce things to be "overrated" and "underrated" (for lack of any better vocabulary?).
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? NO. I LEFT THAT CHURCH.
Whenever I read a tweet, comment, blog post, or review that claims someone else's music or musical taste is Wrong/Shameful, I wonder by what dogma this is being measured. But more than that, I just don't care.You'll forgive me if I maxed out on dogmatic arguments and shame many many years ago. This house is clean.
That is not to say that I do not value critical listening or rigorous discussion. I learned what that looks like early in my days at Boosey & Hawkes. I once made a dismissive comment regarding a certain composer's music and I was swiftly and kindly corrected. "Nope. That's not what we do here." The staff, led by Jenny Bilfield, was a group of people with extraordinary listening talent. People who loved a broad range of music, supported creativity, and who had the uncommon ability to
hear music thoroughly and deeply for what it is, rather than for what it is not. In our listening sessions, music was never dismissed. The question was never "Is this music good or bad?" The questions were: "What do you hear in these sounds? What did the composer set out to do/say? Did s/he achieve that end effectively? What is interesting/special/significant about this? Who would find this interesting and why?"
With so much else to talk about, there's not much room left for shaming.
So I will answer my own questions about songwriting. I love songs and songwriters because they provide a soundtrack to my life and put words on experiences that I had not considered. I love singing along. I love
Patty Griffin's story-telling, her raw illustrations and elaborate articulations of American life from the eyes of clearly defined characters. I love
Paul Simon's poetry, his unpredictable phrasing that dangles, the worlds he captures via instrumentation and meter in
Graceland and
Rhythm of the Saints. I love
Rufus Wainwright's sloppy drunk voice, the theatrics, his careless way of progressing through remote chords. But most of all, I love the songwriters I do because of their honesty, their vulnerability, their intimacy.
Still,
the time came for me a few years ago when other songwriters' words were no longer saying for me what I wanted to say for myself
. And so I've picked up my pen in hopes of putting my own words and songs on my life, voicing my own truths, telling my own stories. As I write and record homemade demos I am trying to keep only the good questions in mind. Questions that bring me forward rather than stopping me in my tracks. What am I hearing? Am I being honest?
Am I allowing myself to be vulnerable? What am I trying to say/do here? What do I need to do to say it most effectively?
But most importantly, I am shamelessly enjoying doing it and sharing it. Because
this woman has given herself the authority to sing honestly — and publicly — on such matters.
