This topic is very serious for me, a big part of my life. I never did get married or have children and playing guitar full time, travelling across Canada, living in big cities, kept me playing guitar and it's music that opens me for the doors to new travels or personal success. While I tried these forums a year ago when other Harmony Central musicians recommended Mark Wein, the recent collapse of Harmony Central has made this domain more viable for finding diverse, and global commentary. It's more than nice to see some of my favorite characters putting it out here.
jaxn slim! You're questioning my statement that prostitution, despite the cliche, is not the oldest profession on earth. I base my understanding on reading the historic, religious and spiritual books of countries around the world. I'll focus on the Bagavad-Gita from India, over 4,500 years old, and the writings of Moses, over 3,500 years old.
When people started evolving as social creatures, it was families, clans, tribes, living and travelling together. When you were living and meeting other humans as families, each with your own territory, you were dealing with each other as families. When times were tough people would use family members as trade, to give them to others who had more food and work, but that was indentured labour or slavery, even if it was a more gracious social custom than the militant attitudes about it today. It took more evolution to big city life to make people start dealing with commodities like alcohol, drugs and sexual services.
Moses says that after mankind was disenfranchised from The Garden of Eden, God gave use three talents to help us cope with life on Earth, the ability to recognize and grow food, carpentry, and named Jubal as our musical host. When you consider the descriptions of human activity in The Bagavad-Gita, these written histories, the few books on Earth that go back that far, these are the oldest professions. And while my mind right away thinks of Jimi and symphonies and all the surrounding digitals, the first musician on Earth probably specialized with drums, not only for the trance and dance, but for long distance communication. I'm sure that as God's musical missionary Jubal had it all, but drumming had to happen first, just thinking technology and the lack of it.
As much as music move through our hearts, as much as music can inspire us to act in every way, it takes every kind of science and element to make the instruments and outlets we hear today. But it's still the music we hear as humans. Archaeologists in Europe recently discovered a musical pipe made of antler that's been carbon dated as older than 40,000 years, just seven notes to the octave. What surprised everyone was the fact these notes are in tune to what we used today, and the instrument was efficient enough to be very playable.
Knowing this, knowing music to be the rhythm of our lives, and hearing how much of it is being put out there all the time, only saddens me to think we have lost the social aspect that used to exist, people making music themselves or not having any at all. So for you jaxn slim, would you now think prostitution is the oldest profession, or someone being the drummer, or a group of musicians playing while others listen?
You can consider this a spiritual look at music, humans beating out energies when survival existence didn't let them express themselves in other productive ways, even if card-playing, for example, is described as a lazy and open to temptation activity, while writing and art isn't even mentioned.
jelloman and DNW are talking about domestic life using up their personal energies, making it difficult to find the time and inspiration to keep the guitars going. At the turn of the century most North American homes had a piano, one out of four in Ontario, when families still gathered to sing. Now most musical activities are aimed at producing a product for media use. But that takes a lot of production and more of a solo effort as the tech spreads, and that's not getting better as a musician. Jelloman and DNW might be better off than they think, working to keep their households together, and when the time is right to sit and work it out musically, you have the soul to put into it. How many times did I drift out of a band because I was bored with my own playing? Even if it was me being the lead guitarist-vocalist on the road full time, sometimes the music was the lowest consideration.
GoofyDawg looks like he's into that played out headspace, talking about putting out an album and needing a lot of time to turn around and come back with something new to inspire another record. I've never made the effort to record that way, but getting bored in bands has to be almost the same. And typing yourself out online about it is a modern version of that.
normH; Thanks for your interest, and if you like those words enough to work with them, please, let's see what you come up with. You got me looking at them again and I can see some lines... but I'm more of a strummer and hummer, singing to it to see what words come out, so I won't be writing them again for myself.
DRPool; This global internet, this web, often doesn't get me to stick or inspire output, not knowing what people from other cultures and countries are referring to. I can imagine your reference, but you typing about "coming down off your 4/20 smoke out" doesn't come through for me.
It's still a surprise when a musical encounter can invigorate you anew, opening the musical realm a little deeper, letting you reach out more, reaching into more listeners.
as always, John Watt
