The Soul of Popular Music

Close your eyes and listen to the strains of a popular melody, this generation's music tells the story of the human experience of music, from the first note of a song, that takes us by the hand and leads us to places unknown, places in the heart and in the mind that we have not dared yet, to fully explore. The beats echo in the rhythm of daily life.

Music has been defined as "feeling with the mind and thinking with the heart." The human soul speaks in the heart of it. It is us and yet it is beyond us. It is us but in a different light, a revealing light. In the moment that it moves us to where it resides is the defining moment. A single note may haunt us, take us to face our deepest fears in an instant and in the next, take us to a place of our wildest dreams, and the next produce a tear, that trickles down, like healing waters. It seems that at the end of a song, is a sense of resolution, as if the heart and mind have been on a journey, that resolves to bring some understanding of what it means to be human, all the stretched emotions and thoughts across the whole gamut come together and form a new understanding, with the last note of the song confirming it.

Popular music is so prevalent and so relative to culture, that entire ethnic groups in past human history would beat on pots and pans, the beating of drums is the rhythm of the heartbeat. They created a rhythm that would hide the fact that they were expressing their discontent with the oppression that they were under. It gave people a voice and bound them together, in the most challenging times. The partial origins of today's popular music, especially the blues, began with "field holler," which was in fact, one black slave, shouting to another, communicating across the field, in rhythmic tones. Today's music is originated from a blend of country, folk and blues, rock in fact, is mostly these three combined, played a little faster, creating a more aggressive edge to the sound. Field holler created the direction that popular music was primarily to take, and today it still illustrates the soul's desire to be free, released from every and any oppressive influence.

Can popular music actually change the times? Or is this just an observation that Bob Dylan saw and related when he wrote, "The Times They Are A' Changing." The conscious efforts through some of the world's biggest music stars have unfortunately had very little real effect on changing poverty in developing nations. The latest figures have proven that poverty is more prevalent than ever, in Africa and other poor countries, because they are so burdened with debt. When positive change does come though, music can and does act like a cheerleader on the sidelines, encouraging society to keep changing with the changing times.

Keep listening to the heart within the pounding drums and the echoing rhythms of popular music because they are the essence of the soul's journey and it is possible that the most beautiful melody is likely to be the one that has not yet been heard.