while around here

Photo by Ilya Plakhuta.

This article will be a continuation of the article series I started on Mixed Tape, where I will again make album recommendations. Besides that, I hope to tell a little bit about something.

We can classify listeners in different ways; the classification I’ll address is about people who are open to new music and discovery, or those who are not. I have examples of both types around me; some of my friends listen only to their favorite artists and albums for a year, while others prefer to find other artists belonging to genres they like, or even listen to new genres. I wonder about the mindset of those who are content with what they have and don’t want to dare to spend time.

What I will mention here will only be the views and thoughts of someone in the second group. I don’t have the infrastructure to provide data and statistics about why people do such things.

As Heraclitus said, “The only thing that does not change is change itself.” No matter how much it is postponed, there will be no escape from this; it is an event that will happen without being aware of it. However, if we cannot discover the limits of our desires in this search, or if we cross our limits and become greedy, we will lose the peace and happiness we have, which is an undeniable fact. So both sides have their own negativities.

This situation we describe through music actually shows itself everywhere in life. Epicurus attributes the reason we try to be happy in the existing situation to the fear of death and explains that death is something that cannot be experienced. By saying “It is meaningless to fear death, because as long as we live, death does not exist, and when death comes, we no longer exist,” he expresses that we should not fear something we do not experience and that does not have a phenomenon. If we overcome our fears, we can reach pleasure, and while reaching it, we need to put our expectations aside. Pleasure is not something to be pursued, but can be seen as the result of a life free from fear and anxiety.

In the listener group I divided into two, the situation of those who are content with what they find seems worse than those who pursue pleasure. Because while one side has overcome their fears and only exhausts themselves by pursuing, the other side continues their lives in this situation because they avoid facing their fears. Although it is difficult to find the middle ground between the two, it is an action worth making an effort.

If I continue with the recommendations I started in the first article of the series, this time I will limit myself to three albums, which I think will give me a chance to explain in more detail.

Silk Degrees — Boz Scaggs

Better late than never, one of my discoveries was Boz Scaggs’ Silk Degrees, which has received five platinum album certifications. This album, which includes the hits Lido Shuffle and Lowdown, can be said to be in the soft rock and blues genre, and I must say it also has a soul-like atmosphere.

Apart from the songs that have been featured on radios and music lists for a long time, I cannot help but add that Lowdown has been used as a sample in approximately 39 different tracks and is a track that has been quite adopted by the hip-hop community. I strongly recommend listening to this beautiful album.

A Fireside Chat with Lucifer — Sun Ra

Herman Poole Blount, also known as Sun Ra, is one of the names that went down in history as one of the ancestors of experimental jazz music. Sun Ra, who has his signature on more than a thousand tracks and countless albums, once performed live in the back of a van on Istiklal Street. I think it would make more sense to talk about the musical genius rather than the album, because it is a name that should be judged not by a single album but interpreted according to all the work he has done.

The achievements he achieved during his 37-year musical career from 1953 to 1990 and the Afrofuturist movement he created explain why he should be considered so important. I would very much like to tell this as a separate article, for now I leave you alone with the album.

Maggot Brain — Funkadelic

Starting with an echoing voice saying “Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time. For y’all have knocked her up,” the track with the same name as the album talks about how people managed to ruin the world and then leaves us alone with Eddie Hazel’s approximately 10-minute guitar solo. You can listen to this album just for this solo alone.

We owe the melancholy in the Hendrix-like solo to George Clinton telling Hazel to “play like your mother died.” They really do an A-class job and summarize to us how rock music should be. In the rest of the album, they also show their political stance with another long track, Wars of Armageddon. For pure rock music, one of the albums I would recommend would definitely be this 54-minute feast.

I hope your week goes well and we put our fears and anxieties aside, even a little bit.

January 25, 2021