[Dixielandjazz] Re: taps

[Charlie Hooks]

on 7/16/02 7:38 PM, Dixie Teel at dixiecup34@earthlink.net wrote:

> The
> sight and sound in that cemetery of the bugler blowing TAPS with an
> answering bugler blowing TAPS as an echo is a sight and sound you will never
> forget.

You got it, Dixie!

Let's face it: we're musicians--that is, people who simply must, somehow,
turn emotion into sounds; who, when we feel strongly, must say something, in
music, in speech: silence is not a real option.  We yell, we gesture, we go
onstage and capture an audience (at least, we try.)

So if there's something that really pisses us off or delights us, something
even sort-of musically related (like a bugler playing taps, which to my mind
is BASICALLY musical, is ESSENTIALLY musical), then we are going to respond.
Anyone annoyed by this: one step forward and--delete!

Anything--any idea, any subject--is first an emotion, a sentiment, and only
afterward a reasoned-about object: if you don't like it first, you won't
spend time reasoning about it.  But in music, the technique and the
cerebration (or maybe the technique IS the cerebration?) bridle the emotion,
like a skillful rider on a spirited horse, taming wild emotion into the
celebratory dance that is beautiful, harmonious, and civil.  The untamed
Dervish "music"--screaming electric guitars, distortion switches at peak--
is the parody, the centrifugal separator of anti-music, anti-matter, from
the Real.  

No:  

All noise is not music.  All music is not equal.

A bugler playing Taps at the final interment of a brave man who died for his
country is, to me, the Essence of Music: it is what music is FOR.  To
celbrate the admirable!  To comfort the downhearted!  To enclose in a circle
of friends the things we, at cost, have learned to value most about living.

charliehooks@earthlink.net