Thoughts on music in these times.

Being a recording musician, I often ask myself a simple but sometimes complex question:  Now, what’s music worth?  What’s the value for someone who’s listening?  It seems now that practically anybody can be in a band, releasing an album, have a myspace site, booking shows and so on… and anybody can listen to 10 000 songs in a week if he wants to.   Don’t get me wrong, I see this as a positive progress. I just have some concerns about the value (not in a financial term) of popular music in these “hyper-media” reality we live in. A reality sometimes of too much Hypes created by trendsetters. A reality where sometimes it seems like everybody is speaking at the same time (as I’m adding my voice here).

These are some aspects of the context in which I’m thinking about the value of music in the present time. About this context, I just want to add that it is from my point of view surely one of the best we’ve known, allowing so many great and diverses musics to emerge. Something like we probably had never seen until these days. But, we, artists, have to question ourselves (in this context) about what we can bring to this world.

Is the pure expression of our feelings and emotions is enough? I’m now thinking that we have to go further than that. In these troubled times, what I’m looking for in arts, is a way of elevating me, something that transcend the “here and now”. I want my heart and my mind fed by new visions, new perspectives of what it could be to be living in this world.

I want a song, a performance that reinvents in some way the reality. That’s how I feel when I’m in front of a great piece of art.

You surely know what I’m saying here. I’m not talking here about politic, religion or some kind of esoterism. I’m just talking about what people were reaching in churches through Bach, in the country fields through these old blues songs, in the clubs trough Coltrane, in their cd players through … (make your own list here). That’s where I find the greatest value in music.

At the end, maybe it’s something that make us feeling that the whole is greater than the sum of his parts. Humbly, I would say maybe that’s a way we can take. I hope that’s what we can give to the world. I still believe we can find such greatness in even a little melody floating in a whispering voice. All of this (mentionned above) makes me think that expressing the individuality is just the first condition for allowing creation, not an end. The end is in the eye of the other, the friend, the lover, the one who need a companion and maybe a guide on his road (as we all need one, at different times).  That’s what I think, what I’m looking for and what I try to do. 

And you, what are your thoughts on this? (highly interested in reading your comments)
All the best,

Etienne.

p.s: Please, forgive my grammar mistakes, english being my second language.