What makes Millennium Blues different?
30 09 2016One World, Worlds of Music
It has been said that if you are not sure of what makes the Blues the Blues, you will never know. To then base a description of a new style of music or millennium rhythm from what has been called indescribable seems, well, natural. Blues already breaks many of the rules of classical music theory, yet as we know, compels feelings outside of the range of structured symphonic resonance. I’ve mentioned in some conversations about music that classical music is about the notes while the Blues is about the space between the notes.
As a sound wave, classical music may be more about the peaks in the wave, while Blues is the journey from peak to depth and back again, providing a more intimate touch of creation and self. Millennium Blues and Millennium Rhythm then, may be about ripples and ebbing and flowing and riptides in the swirling ocean of emotional reality.
As the traditional structure of thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis is a foundation for many well known compositions, a similar triangular approach may be used to sound out the distinction between Blues and Millennium Blues. Since the Blues has some roots in being undefinable, or antithetical, the relation of root and tonic, and the cyclic nature of song and season being one of the foundations of folk music, the thesis for Millennium Blues becomes the rhythmic patterns and progressions found throughout the world.
These geographical rhythms, when blended harmonically with the je ne sais quoi of the crossroads, become a nexus of thought, sensation and emotion, or simply, Music. Art. Creation. The fact that these diverging rhythms can be used within the 4/4 framework by musicians suggests the inherent vibration known to all who have swam in the womb: heart. The sonic invocations becoming invitations to identify, clarify and unify amongst those with ears to hear and feet that move to the beat.
As the jesters were allowed to critique the royalty, through humor to provide alternate points of view, so too, do Millennium Blues critique the capitalistic dynasty to unite local and global citizenry with the one theme found in all people’s music – ‘We Who Believe in Freedom.’
