Phenomenology of Music

I had the pleasure of studying with Dr. David Haney during my M.A. program. He was the head of the English Department when I was there. Dave Haney's office made me certain that I was in the right place because his bookshelf looked a lot like mine. When I was introduced I saw Gadamer's Truth and Method and Heidegger's Being and Time and I'm sure there were volumes of Levinas that I didn't see at the time. And what was really great, and I didn't understand the full scope of this until later, Dr. Haney played music.

See as a musician you hear a lot of people talking about playing music and you don't really know what they mean by it. But Dave Haney was a serious - well is a serious - bluegrass player.

And so one day I wondered into his office and asked him if anybody had ever written a Phenomenology of Music. He said that somebody probably had but he thought I could do it better. He liked me, but he was also being nice.

But somebody, and hell why not me, must do this. There are a couple poets that have approached music from the direction I'd like to. Specifically, Rilke's poem On Music is a great place to start.

Okay, so what would this look like. What does it mean to talk about the way one experiences music. I think a place to start would be the way music makes the body move. Music makes dance. Ever see someone dance or spasm or move funny without music? Ridiculous. With music? Acceptable at worst. At best it's another art form.

Music also related to the divine. Almost all cultures - I think (I'm unqualified to make this statement) call out to their deities through music. Something about music calls man to experience that which is beyond him. I like this a lot, even though I'm not religious in any classical sense.

Music is also like smell in the sense that smell was explained to me in this Psychology class I took in college. Smell, according to what I learned, bypasses certain neurological stuff and transports one quickly to a time when that smell was smelled, back to a place of familiarity. Now I don't really know anything about the sense of smell, but I do know that when I hear songs I haven't heard in a while, I become nostalgic. I immediately get transported - like Quantum Leap Style- back to when I was listening. That's the phenomenon of music. That's the experience.

Studying music in college, I can attest that you learn about everything but the experience. You talk about modes and harmonies and history and all the "guts" of music, but you never talk about how it makes you feel in your guts.

I think this is for a logical reason - they are training you as a player, not as an appreciator of music. The latter is taken for granted. But the most interesting thing about music is how it takes one up - owns one. But even though it's "logical" it's a mistake. The two relate. Certainly as a player you'd want to think about what draws an audience in - that thing that transcends the notes you play.

A lot of my friends give hip hop a hard time. And I get it. But what they don't seem to get is that a lot (I'm being general, obviously) of hip hop isn't meant for your radio. It's meant for that ubiquitously mentioned "club." See in "the club" a hard, low rolling bassline grabs you and forces you to move. I mean I have spent very few hours of my life in anything approaching "the club" but in the few experiences I've had, I really got it. I remember being in college in the early 2000's and hearing things like Nelly's first album or even, forgive this, DMX and being totally pumped, grabbed, made to move. The music just needed its context.

In the same sense, when I first went to Boone I wasn't a Bluegrass fan. But then I started hearing it live, in the right place, at the right time. Now, I love Bluegrass, but I prefer it live. I don't think Bluegrass records well. For some reason Jazz can. That would be interesting to think about.

To go on needlessly, Heavy Metal - which my last Heavy Metal album purchase was Pantera's Far Beyond Driven, so maybe I'm not a good spokesperson here - can't be played quietly. The music must be too loud and it must make you want to jump aimlessly around. That's what it does.

So Music is related to Kairos. It needs to be heard at "the right time." Everything can't be appreciated everywhere. Music is related to place. There of course is the exception of a certain kind of pop music that doesn't seem to come from anywhere. Perhaps I'll take that up later. But, again, in general, I like music that feels like it comes out of the dirt - that's built up from the souls of the dead that have played it before. Blues does this really well.

Anyhow, this is all over the place as I'm just sort of thinking "out loud." Perhaps tomorrow or the next day I'll try to keep this going. As usual, I have more questions than answers.

Happy New Years.