Each of these blogposts is generally crammed with information. Most of what I hope will be contemplated is the stuff mentioned in passing, usually just a hyperlink (highlighted in red) indicates the material that probably inspired whatever brief commentary is made during the post.
I mentioned recently Jacob Collier’s I harm U series which launched his international notoriety, from having a few online enthusiasts on youtube to being signed with Quincy Jones, introduced to Herbie Hancock et al, winning multiple grammies, and being considered by many in the world’s top music academies as one of the world’s most prodigious contemporary musical talents.
Strongly Inspired initially by Take 6 harmonies, his first musical project to promote the ‘harmonizing’ of people rather than the ‘harming’ of people, reflects the direct intuition that harmonic skills are the perfect antithesis to the provocation that leads to violence. It would take several posts to flesh that out on the level of credible correlations between sound and soul, vibration and mental state, the chemistry of emotion (hormonal foundation of mood) and the physics of sound; but I’ve gone into some of that elsewhere such as the 3rd chapter of Running Over and the second section of Creating High Morale in the Public School.
Musical students and aficionados have volumes to glean from Jacob’s sound experiments and techniques. His ability to elicit complex harmonies from stadium crowds, to incorporate the complexities of the musical traditions of multiple cultures, and to project the spirit of uninhibited joy and creativity seem to reflect to us the possibility and opportunity, even in the worst of times, to experience the best in human response and spirit.
My coupling musical harmony and spiritual vision (prophecy) in Harmony Part 1 is also very intentional. In music and in life: timing is everything. And hopefully, one will recognize what is inferred: the huge limitations of the standard western approach to time and timing (mechanical, linear, chrono-logical ) and the largely unexplored approach which Western thought systems struggle now to integrate – and the struggle is understood since Imagination is necessarily subordinate to Intellect in Western epistemology – a philosophical error once made hardly possible to correct, given the fact that worldview shapes more than just perception, but also possibility. Even if you can experience what you cant comprehend, the experience itself is wasted on you – like a soon forgotten dream.
So in future posts, we will explore timing in greater depth, and the implications of rhythm, biologically, theologically and politically. In the meantime, think on this: Why did 1/3rd of angels fall? What’s the meaning of the metaphor?
YeKengalé 