music, culture and passion

i recently read a non-fictional work by jay rubin entitled haruki murakami and the music of words. this work includes not only rubin's interpretation of all of murakami's works in the past 2 decades or so, but also interviews with murakami himself as well as other translators of murakami's works such as alfred birnbaum.

one thing that hit me in this book is murakami's view on "a writer's societal responsibility". this was something lacking in his earlier works such as hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world, pinball and 1973. as he grew older and matured as a writer, however, he slowly grew out of his detached and "cool" self and focused more on many nagging societal issues usually shunned by the masses.

as a musician and writer (if you would call me one) myself, i have always neglected (deliberately or subconsciously) this "responsibility" i have on the masses at large (not that i have a large readership or any readership to speak of at all). apologies for sounding like i'm imposing a certain standard on people. so here's a disclaimer before i really start on my topic - i'm not trying to be an authoritative figure on the topics i am going to write about; they are purely my opinions and anyone is welcome to critic or comment on them. so here goes... music, culture and passion.

most of my friends would identify me 1st as a musician, then as something else (student, general working population or whatever). but as an enthusiastic and active musician in the past 8 years, i have never really taken the initiative to (or never recognised the need to) express my views in my writing about music and have never posted any writing (other than my special tribute to "khalid") on music.

over the years as a growing young musician, my tastes and my style in music have changed drastically. from a wide-eyed young boy introduced to a world of wind band music to an intermediate commercial performer, the things i listen to and play slowly shifted towards what most classical musicians would frown at, but these are also stuff that the masses could identify with - top 40s, evergreen, pop. slowly, i began to get labelled by certain people here and there (not that i really mind) to be one of those who "strayed". it's odd how the local scene is but that's the way people are over here.

once again, i'm not trying to dictate who or which is superior; my belief stands strong that every piece of music comes from sheer hard work of talented composers and deserve equal treatment by musicians. non-musicians may not be able to appreciate certain genres. but as musicians, to discriminate or segregate stylistically different music just comes to show one's narrow and immature views.

i suddenly recalled something that jeff conner, trumpeter of boston brass said when they were touring locally in 2008. conner was posted the question "how do you approach contrasting genres of music such as jazz and classical music?"

his reply left a deep impression on me, "personally, i feel that music is actually labelled for convenience sake. as a player, rather than labelling THIS as JAZZ and THAT as CLASSICAL, shouldn't we approach every piece of music individually according to how the style demands us to play? so if you ask me, i approach every piece of music the same way, playing to its stylistic demands."

as much as i have distanced myself from wind band and orchestral music, i still do enjoy listening to all of those. my constant reluctance to attend a local wind band concert, however, does not stem from the genre of the music itself, but from the culture of the growing local band scene. the easy access and high availability to musical instruments and music "education" today definitely shows a quantum leap in the growth of our local music scene. however, such an improvement seems to have far more adverse effects on our youths.

in the tokyo gas attack incident in 1996, some 5000 people on 5 different tokyo subway lines inhaled this poisonous sarin gas which left many of them crippled for life and killed 11 people. this disastrous crime was allegedly commited by this group of people known as the aum shinrikyo cult. the cult is led by their leader - shoko asahara - a self-declared messiah who outlines a doomsday prophecy where an armageddon will wipe out all of human race other than aum followers. offering "valuable advice" in life, the cult attracted many graduates of japan's elite universities and thus dubbed as "religion for the elite".

so why did i bring up this seemingly unrelated incident into the picture? we can see a parallel between the aum cult and our band scene today, albeit with some exaggeration. today there are too many educators of music whose ultimate objective is fame and recognition. not only did they neglect the noble job of an educator, but also they're trying to fulfill their hunger and greed at the expense of our young musicians; most of these people do not actually know what they're doing. these poor children thus grow up to become photocopies of their instructors - claiming knowledge in many aspects that they themselves had been misguided in.

with a growing scene, our internal "pool" of musicians actually starts to fill like an overflowing pond, so much so that we can barely see the banks of this already gigantic lake. "empty" and arrogant instructors start to focus on reaching the top locally, introducing "cultures" and "concepts". more importantly, the yearn and desire to learn from even better musicians overseas die out; the significance of humility in learning has been outshone by the greed for fame and money.

the local band scene has thus turned into nothing more than a rat race and a game of politics.

it irks me nowadays to take public transport with secondary school students with gig bags engaging in a session of criticism about **** person or **** band. this display of ignorance sets me wondering about the direction of our music scene and the kind of musicians we are producing locally. it is indeed disheartening to learn that this culture is producing musicians who want to "win". win what? beats me.

our system has taken the music out of musicians.

recently i back to my junior college to take look at their preparations for their upcoming concert. i was extremely encouraged to learn that the theme for the concert is actually jazz. finally there is some hope to open up narrow minds in our scene. my visit however, has only left me with even lower spirits.

when i stepped in, the band was rehearsing this compilation of standard glenn miller swing tunes.

"cool, swing's pretty challenging," i thought to myself.

in most circumstances, i would never speak up when observing rehearsals. but that day, this guy up on the podium was getting it ALL WRONG. anyone would ask "why are they sounding like this? it ain't swingin'!" what really disheartened me was not that the band couldn't swing ( as a matter of fact, i can't swing too) but the fact that their "leader" (the conductor on the podium) was so stubborn to listen to comments and the kids down there chose to listen to their misguided leader. sounds like the aum shinrikyo eh? elite youths, misguided leader (no gassing though, thank God).

now i'm just praying that people attending the concert don't know jazz (or should i be hoping the people actually know jazz, so they don't get a wrong idea of what jazz is?) whatever the case is, the incident left me fuming mad at first, and later just utter disappointment.

how is it that the culture can change so much over such a short time? (i'm not that old by the way) youths used to jump at the chance to learn new things, to actually LISTEN to new genres of music. now people are just comfortable where they are, looking for the shortest route to "success".

culture. that's one thing that made me never look back at the local band scene, never want to attend school concerts, never want have anything to do with it ever again. maybe this is a phase. for murakami's case, he fled japan for the states because of the culture of japan's literary scene; how writers are supposed to conform to publishers' whims and fancies, to write in a certain fixed style to gain official recognition as "pure literature". on a larger scale, japanese individuals are treated no more than just expendables. under the very skin of "civil rights" and "individual freedom" lies a bloody flesh of japanese imperialism, left behind since the times of the war. murakami's departure, however, does not equate to escapism. it was during his time overseas that he was able to look at his homeland in greater detail, which in turn made him realise his responsibility as a public figure, as a writer, as a japanese to daringly and openly discuss issues that hinders his homeland's development as a civilisation. again, murakami does not regard (and dislikes people to regard him as) an authoritative figure in the issues he brings up. he prefers for people to realise the problem and speak from their hearts too, about these issues that are so close to them.

like murakami, my passion has made music something that's so close to me, but i have not enough courage, ability or societal standing like him to embrace and inject change into this thing that matters so much to me. all i can do is to pen down my views here in this little space on the worldwideweb and pray that fellow musicians actually do recognise the devastating culture that is taking away something so dear to us as music.

credits: haruki and yoko murakami, jay rubin, jeff conner, glenn miller