Inspiration is everywhere.
Most recently, I’ve been re-inspired by
two vastly different music documentaries: Lost Songs: The Basement Tapes Continued
and Presenting
Princess Shaw. These documentaries show a totally cool range of just how music can
come to life. Whether created side-by-side with a note pad, pen, string instruments and painstakingly stacked
vocals or culled from YouTube video edits bridging the gaps created by oceans,
socio-economic demographics, language, and prior consent. Music demands life like a long buried seed exposed to sunlight.
Tasked with the gift of uniting the
lyrical drafts of Nobel Prize winner Bob
Dylan with new music, Mumford &
Sons’ Marcus Mumford
collaborated with fellow Grammy winner producer T-Bone Burnett. Doing
so led to a range of collaborations to make the best
music possible from one of the best writers of our time. To do so, Mumford relied on other geniuses like Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens, Taylor
Goldsmith, and Jim James. The gift created by the documentary is an awesome peek inside the
humility, intention to be heard and musicality required to create a song. Check out the gritty, quietly
determined battle to craft “Lost On The River,” waged between the collaborators
from which Giddens emerged the victorious and sonorous gladiatrix.
Yet, for all of the instrumentation and
intimate collaboration style exhibited in The Basement Tapes, Princess
Shaw shows another side of the spectrum. This is music that is created in mutual vacuums by two
people; one a New Orleans nursing assistant and singer-songwriter Samantha Montgomery, the other Israeli musician and cutting edge
YouTube producer Kutiman. These are individuals who need to
create because they need to create. Two who believe that when you chop down a
musical tree, it always makes a sound even if it is just heard by its creator ... or the creators legion of online fans.
What may be most applicable to why
music must come to life, could have been best analogized by Montgomery in a
recent Salon.com
interview as she talked about the tough motivational forces in her
life, “I don’t want to give up on
life. I just keep going. I don’t
want to live like a caged bird. I want to be free. I’ll fly even if my wings
are broken.” But no matter what,
states Montgomery, “ Self-love and self-worth are worth more than any
check. If [her success in music]
ends tomorrow, I’m OK with my life.”
And so should it be that no matter how and why you create your
music, do it because you have to let it soar. Make music and your art with unencumbered creativity. Keep creating because you have to.
