Tuesday, September 08, 2009

What I'm Listening To #61

Allow me a few thoughts to preface this post. I am 48, and they've been amazing years. I have friends all along the spectrum of my life who have for one reason or another ceased to be curious when it comes to music. Some are even musicians, and I don't have many musical bones in my body! Yet, music permeates my life. I just can't imagine a moment without it...it's almost a manic sort of thing for me.

And so while I appreciate the music of my youth (Motown), and my high school years (Bob Seeger to Cat Stevens), I just can't stop wanting more. Ergo, you can find in my collection of CDs everything from the complete Goldberg Variations performed by Glenn Gould to all the CD's that the Indigo Girls have recorded. There are CD's by Garth Brooks, Annie Lenox, Ella Fitzgerald, and the Blind Boys of Alabama. CD's recorded in Spanish, English, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, Moldovian, Romanian, Finnish and Latin. Music spanning the spectrum of genres from Opera and Baroque Chamber ensembles, to Hip Hop, Reggae, and Boricua; from Country and Folk, to Jazz, Zydeco, and Alternative Rock. I've even got a couple of things that defy the genre mentality! It's all good.

Enter Pitbull's CD "Rebel- ution". This is such a quint- essential act of fusion creativity. The music is Rap-Hip Hop-Pop-Techno, packaged like a James Bond movie. The lyrics are relavent, creative, dynamic. The rythyms pound with a vital power. To fully appreciate this CD, you have to forget that some words are labeled "profanity," especially with songs like, "You're so Full of Shit" (and that's on the mild side of some of the lyrics). To focus on these things is to utterly miss out on the genius of this music.

Life is a fucking flood of ideas and experiences; and too many people spend their meager energies trying to control the current, trying to stem the flow; when the most courageous and rewarding thing you can do is rest in the presence of the torrents with your eyes and ears atune to the unlimited generative powers of the waters all around you.

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