Genetically modified music
In today's current climate of manufactured bands and genetically modified music I find myself constantly disgruntled and wondering "Whatever happened to the SOUL?” Whatever happened to the goose bumps, the prickles on the back of your neck and the urge to shout out loud "sing it sister/brother…I feel you", when that certain song would play? When you would close your eyes with arms extended outright into the air absorbing the sensations emitted by soulful vibrations. Remember soul?

I do.

Nowadays it seems that music lacks a certain depth, substance and longevity... The essence that touches your energy and makes you want to soar… fly without wings and transcend earthly strains. Now that's what I call music… anything that moves you (not just in the physical sense).

If you look back upon on all the artists that are remembered today and still continuously listened to globally, they were all artists that did more than just please the ears; they pleased the senses. They spoke to your heart and whispered to your soul, moved your spirit in some way and even changed your life or way of thinking. Marvin Gaye, Bob Marley, Al Green, John Lennon, Rolling Stones, Queen, Bob Dylan; they were ALL evolutional revolutionaries of their time regardless of the difference in genre. Pushing the boundaries and providing food for thought.

I remember being in my early teens sat next to the record player with my mum playing Marvin Gaye’s album “what’s going on”. I can recall listening to the words of the songs and being overwhelmed with a combination of empathy, anger, sadness and love... they made me aware of my emotions and I felt alive because of it. I can listen to the same album 10 years later and it is still relevant today. Even now, inner city blues still makes me want to holler and Shape of my Heart still makes me want to shed a tear! The words have the same effect as they did the day I first heard them and that, to me, is great music and music with Soul. Don’t get me wrong, I know that there are artists like Jill Scott, Zero 7 and David Gray… all artists that scratch beyond the surface and explore life, yet they still seem far and few between in contrast to the vast choice of refuse which currently flows through the veins of the industry.

Does it matter?
Great music is dormant in so many people nowadays, in the lives of the youth especially, and it is easy to buy into the bleak society of music that currently dominates the industry, never asking for anything more. Personally speaking, it is hollow and echoes an emptiness that only serves to satisfy the superficial and I firmly believe that there is an ever growing army of soul starved people that want their spirit fed in terms of musical content now more than ever.

In a world that grows ever colder and darker by the day, music which holds the light is indeed a necessity. But as days grow more sinister, sinister music also grows stronger because in the same way that there is a demand for light the demand for darkness is just as strong.

I was born in the 70’s… the golden era. It was all about flower power, building bridges and drawing closer to your fellow neighbours. It was in the 70’s that important steps and political changes had begun to really manifest and would lead nations to take on a collective responsibility to say NO to racial hatred, prejudice and injustice. People all over the world began to understand that they did have a voice that could be heard and used to change the path of history and the 70’s was a time of transition and turmoil.

There were changes in Women’s liberation and the first female Episcopal priest was ordained in 1976, the first black admiral was recruited to the Navy in 1971 and apartheid and segregation laws were shifting and changing when Steve Biko died in Police Custody in 77, the surrender of Biafra in 1970 ended a 30 month succession of war that wiped out thousands of children in Nigeria, China launched their first satellite, Vietnam was in full swing with President Nixon at the reigns, India tested its first nuclear bomb in 74 and Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister!!! It was an eventful decade with major advances also taking place in technology and software. The first test tube baby was made in 1978, the floppy disk was invented in 1971, the VHS tape and recorder were introduced in 76, Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates in 75 and Sony Walkmans hit the streets in 1979…the year of my birth!

While all of this was unfolding the soundtrack to our lives was that of ground-breaking artists like Led Zeplin, Sly Johnson, Diana Ross, Elvis, Al Green, The Temptations, Earth Wind and Fire, Stevie Wonder, Jimmy Cliff, the Carpenters, Isaac Hayes and the Staple Singers to name but a few. Whether the music was inspired by events or whether the changes in events were inspired by music is an interesting enigma, but one thing I can say for sure is that the music back then did have the power to move mountains.

It was during the 1970’s that the Temptations went to meet the Arch Bishop of Canterbury in London to discuss race relations because even then seniors of the church realised the potential in spreading a message through music. John Lennon held a Peace festival in Toronto giving a percentage of the gross earnings to charity to promote world unity and this was attended by thousands. It was also in 1978 that Bob Marley and The Wailers performed at the One Love Peace concert in Kingston's National Arena in an attempt to link Jamaica's feuding political parties; Marley symbolically joined the hands of bitter rivals Michael Manley and Edward Seaga on stage and an almighty clap of thunder and flash of lightening could be heard and seen overhead…coincidence or divine intervention, whatever it was it was powerful stuff.

It seemed that performers back then had a sense of social responsibility to use their talents for the greater good. There was more of a concerted effort to bring about whatever change they could through the power of song and dance and it was because they wanted to; not because a PR Company told them it would be “good for their image”. Artists today who have the clout to affect history and a way of thinking seem reluctant to step up to the plate; favouring influential gain opposed to the reparation of humanity. 50 Cent’s song and new film “Get Rich or Die Trying”, sums this ideology up in one. I recently asked my 5 year old niece who she liked to listen to and she answered “The Pussy Cat Dolls Aunty”. I tried to hide the cringe from my face. What sort of role models do they provide? Women that cavort around half naked in front of the camera singing “don’t you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?” Needless to say, whenever my niece is at my house I try to inflict upon her a balanced diet of good aural food in an attempt to undo the damage the fickle music industry has already done.

There's a reason
Call me a spiritualist if you like but I believe people are put on this earth for a reason. They have a purpose to fulfil, whether they know this or not, for good or evil. If they didn’t then we would not have an existence of polarization. You can’t have one without the other i.e. ying and yang, sun and moon, good and evil, right and wrong, left and right…you get the picture! Life is just a balance and right now it seems that the weight of good music on the scales of harmony has drastically shifted, but how do we bring it back?

Some people have faith in religious deities or faith in magic, some have faith in fate yet I have more faith in music and its spiritual power to change human nature for the better. We have an innate responsiveness to music that defies belief and it has even been noted in scientific studies that as human beings we remember 10% of what we are told, 40% of what we read but a staggering 90% of what we hear. Now what does that tell you? Sound has the ability to carry meaning that can heal our scars or scar our minds and it is one of the first senses that we, as human beings learnt to use whilst still in our mothers wombs.

Maybe it is this sound; the smooth comforting, muted low frequency of the amniotic sack, coupled with the steady pulse of a mother’s life force that inspires in us the need to listen to music. Just as food nourishes a baby's growing body, the elements of music; melody, tone and harmony, nourish a baby's rapidly developing brain. Even before children are born, research shows that music has a beneficial effect on the network of neurons that will be the foundation of their later learning, language development and musical ability.

A plethora of studies over the last decade has revealed that children who listen to classical music have increased mathematical and verbal skills as well as greater emotional maturity than those children who miss out on such music. The benefits are thought to be even greater for children who learn to play an instrument. Classical music is quite mathematical in its structure, which has an effect on the way the brain functions and interprets audio information. I would imagine that this same theory would apply to music with soul.

In a logical world one would imagine that the essence of soulful music would encourage the area of the brain which deals with emotion and empathy to become more active as would be the case for spiritual music. For instance, I am not a religious person passé but I do know that when I listen to Kirk Franklin or Sounds of Blackness I feel uplifted and I know that when I hear an African drumming group I feel within my very being a nostalgia that speaks to me. What then could be said about the effects of Pop music or “urban” grime/eskibeat on the younger generation?!?! Let’s just say that the vital elements of respect, empathy and general positivity are missing from most young people’s domain of music and these are all important factors that make up a responsible, functional human being.

A profound need for music
My mum once told me that whilst we (me and my twin brother) were maturing within her body she would put her stomach near to the speaker so we could hear the rumbling bass of roots dub reggae…maybe this is the reason why me and my brother both went on to become musicians specialising in the drums, steel drums and percussion. Could it be that subconsciously we tried to reproduce that feeling of being safe and protected in a cushion of sound? Whatever the celestial reason, there is no doubt that we have a profound need for music, just like the profound need to find closeness with another human being or entity.

In the same way that priests stand up in holy structures all over the world and have the power to sway the masses, taking them to a spiritual level of euphoria is the same way that people gather together in night clubs and look adoringly to the DJ or performer for a higher level of consciousness. Wanting to be taken on a journey…wanting to believe and to belong to something greater than themselves.

Unraveling the tapestry of the cosmos
I’ve often stood on a crowded dance floor and looked around me at the hundreds and sometimes thousands of people all with their hands in the air, faces transformed into various expressions of joy and contentment, all as though they are awaiting the arrival of something…a spaceship to spirit them away maybe? There is something ancestral, and almost tribal about the ritual of it all. I try to imagine what we might have been wearing or listening to had we been on the planet thousands of years beforehand. Were there such things as “raves” or “parties” in the Stone Age and if there were, did they know the reason they had gathered in such a way or was there a cave man looking around thinking the same thing that I do now? After all, we are all threads in the fabric of the universe, intertwined and interrelated. If, as threads, we all stood alone, then the tapestry of the cosmos would become unraveled and what then?

Reach out and touch
I think once we can realise that we are all connected by an invisible force, all compelled to reach out and touch someone or something, all wanting to experience that one single emotion….LOVE, then the veil of illusion shall be lifted from eyes and peace would eventually prevail. Love is what we are all are looking for whether we believe it or not and is the driving force behind life itself. It’s the search for this elusive and misunderstood ideology that brings people together and also tears people apart…a strange paradox.

It takes people down different paths in life.

Some paths lead to religion, some to food, some to self destruction, some to distrust, some to obsession and some to fear. There are many other places that the quest for love can take us but I am happy that my pursuit of love has taken me down a path of music. I continually look for it in the music that I listen to, and for those who are like me, you know when you’ve felt that spark of something in a chord, when a note in the diatonical scale resonates with your very being…you smile and know you have found it.

So where was I?…yes that’s it…the power to sway the masses whether it is done by a Vicar, Victor Duplaix or Vivian Green. The ability to control a mood or way of thinking through the manipulation of the senses, promoting a positive or a negative outcome depending on the listener and their mental susceptibility. If only more artists and performers would realise that they do have the key to a brighter day and harness that potential within themselves.

As a DJ, musician and songwriter I try to make a conscious effort to bring out the best in people, to relate to that I go through what you go through and that when it rains it does not rain on one mans head alone. I hope that more DJ’s, writers, performers, producers and anyone in a position to have someone listen will spread the word….the word is LOVE!!!