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pieteregriega · 6 years ago

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It is my contention that music needs context in order to attract an audience.

If you are a good looking singer, girl or boy, the context may be no more than your attractiveness, and may require other concepts to differentiate from your contemporaries.

The rise of tribute bands, saves some musicians from having to think beyond the context of the original musicians to whom they are recreating...Lez Zeppelin, Bjorn Again, Foo Fakers, ColdPlace, Burley Chassis etc etc,

If your music is informed by a dark guitar sound, heavily distorted, your context is that you sit somewhere in the family of heavy metal. Groups sit inside similar musical forms, Folk, Jazz, Rockabilly, Singer Songwriter, Americana, Pro-Rock etc.

Back in the late 70′s and 80′s I was involved with the Manchester music scene. In those days, I played the guitar, so I would play the tune to the bassist, the drummer and singer...and the sound that came out became original music.There was very little thought beyond that.

We had musical heroes, who we wanted to be, but our output had very little connection to our aspiration. In fact the originality came because we were naive and musically unsophisticated. Following the punk explosion we were encouraged to just play and see what comes out. The context was that anyone could create, you just needed the desire...whether it was any good was decided by whether the audience liked it...which after all is what it should be.

These days, aside from the tribute bands, music is decided by other specifiers, genre, by beat, created usually by a drum machine, then honed and refined by digitial machinery. Quite rightly you can make music in your bedroom with a few loops and a bit of bass synth and do not need to spend thousands of pounds creating your sound provided you have a catchy vocal repitition...but mainstream pop records are now more so than ever before created by tin pan alley esque songwriters and producers who know the latest trends, the millenial whoop the correct bass drum pulse, the appropriate latin-esque syncopation which is then the tuned ‘screech’ that is the hallmark of american Whilst the music manager/owners put up a well honed young things to be the face and then a dance routine is paraded around to help sell to the audience.

So where does that leave an older music creative....screwed. Because I have no wish to be a musician writer mining older forms there is not really any obvious way to go.

I have created a number of shows in recent years at a fringe festivas in Buxton. It is probably the third largest and prestigious after Edinburgh and Brighton. I have been niominated every year for an award and have won the small music group award twice. In every case I started with a concept and then wrote and performed music.

I now realise that although audiences have not been sell outs, (compared to other shows which have more easily found audiences, such as an re-interpretation of Edith Piaf, or a History of Rock Guitar) my shows are slowly getting a reputation for being creative events.

This year, I am creating two shows.

First “When a Piano and a story ran into a song” which is me and the wonderful Charles Ormrod on piano doing songs and stories with each piece with its own unique introduction.

Secondly “Xuxu’s Revolt” the story of a forgotten Fado singer who joined the 1974 Carnation Revolution in Portugal but also rebelled against the prevailing conservative machismo. The project being an opportunity to bring Fado music to an English speaking audience but featuring a very large degree of original music based on Fado music.

For those interested in this journey, please follow my blog or feel free to subscribe to my Patreon channel https://www.patreon.com/preview/a95dae9d01014582b48e4f5ed9b8f9c2

#music createmusic contextinmusic

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