The Enemy that Music has Become

First and foremost I am a musician.  My father was a musician and an educator.  Unbeknownst to me being a musician marked me for life.  Like other archetypal American vocations, I was cast a failure before I began.  Because I was not aware of this discrimination, I ignored it and pursued the profession of music with gusto.  This resulted in a Bachelor of Music Education degree from UNC-Chapel Hill, a Master of Music in Composition from USC-Columbia, and finished coursework for a D.M.A. in Composition at OSU-Columbus.  During this journey of higher education, I held two Graduate Teachings Associateships and an adjunct faculty professorship in Jazz Studies.  I never stopped to smell the stale beer and cigarette smoke, because academic music has nothing to do with playing in bars.  While jazz music needed a place to proliferate, and clubs were convenient, the reality of "dying in the bottom of an empty liquor bottle" never was an option.  It only when I was separated from academic study that the moniker of musician sat in.  Now I was expected to be a rock star and curry favor from everyman.  I wasn't interested in every man, because the musical sensibility of average Americans is limited.  Certainly they do not favor African-American based jazz music, Black Church, Reggae, or Hip Hop.  It was Beach music and country, so I played shag music to get by.  Racial boundaries or discrimination mostly were absent in my musical education.  Personally I was influenced by the laid back vibe of the west coast music of Los Angeles.  In a nutshell what musicians play in bars and at jam sessions does not interest me.  This repertoire and culture falls outside the lineage of most American popular music.  It is its own tart, terse, protected thing.  It is local.  Without the hustle and bustle of a college music program, music drops back to the archetypal American stereotype.  The challenge is continuing to recognize America's rich history of popular music.  It nearly is impossible, because of the extinction of radio.  The industry of radio was the foundation for the dissemination of American popular music.  Not only did radio connect America, it provided a vehicle for the production of and consuming of music.  Music was a part of our fabric.  Now that is gone.  Why?  I have tasked myself with the acknowledgement and appreciation of this music, and to a small extent a meager attempt to rekindle it.  This task is daunting, because the catalog of American music is so vast and diverse.  In certain ways it may be more substantial than European orchestral and chamber music.  It is at least equal.  America seems to think this lineage and cultural heritage is not important, but it is crucial.  It is our identity over the decades.  If as a population we were privy to this American music from the past, we better would understand ourselves now.  The internet has created a large vacuum, and it is ironic.  Music was not meant to thrive in the digital realm, because it is too isolated.  Solidarity is what music can create if allowed to live and breath in real life.  Radio did that.  Television dropped the ball, and film is a pale shadow of its once former musical glory.  It is stark and unpleasant to me living in this reality, a reality where common Americans know little about music of any kind.  Society today does not want you to affect change.  It is burying American history, American identity, and American opportunity.  It is digging a hole in the ground and trying to hide its money.  The Trump Administration is a staid, oppressive, suffocating vacuum of existence, and it seeks to annihilate any relevant  human tendency.  I never wanted to be a rock star.  Some appreciation for you music is welcomed, because music is meant for humanity.  It is universal, but we have lost sight of this.  All God's children have music, and it is and should be a natural part of human behavior.  It is a language more far reaching, complex, and rewarding than the spoken word, because it organizes both rhythm and time.  Understanding these relationships gives us models for living.  Works, forms, and songs provide patterns for healthy living.  Often and sometimes quintessentially these models parallel intimate sexual expression.  As I continue to rekindle my interest in music and express my feelings in musical performance, I am met with the abyss.  I feel no plural synaptic chain event.  I feel obvious, vulnerable, and silly. Was music really supposed to feel this difficult?