"There’s a plague of sameness that is killing human joy." Zita Cobb

I have been reading Marx recently, as you do, and I have found his ideas deeply interesting. Some aspects are deeply flawed but there are many ideas that we should be thankful for.

He was most definitely someone who lived what he believed and wrote about; spending most of his adult life in totally poverty and because of his writings he was exiled from Germany and France and ended up here.

He and Engels formulated a way of understanding capitalism and  proposed an answer to it which led us in many ways to the national health system, a shorter working day and all of the things that the unions fought for and won in the 60’s and 70’s and he should be applauded for this.

It is easy for commentators to ridicule Marxism but without his ideas many of the great musical ideas would not have happened. He was an important source of inspiration for artists here and America in the 50’s and 60’s and the Americans had to run the gauntlet of the McCarthy witch hunts for their beliefs.

I am always inspired by people who are passionate in what they believe, those who make their beliefs become their lives; something that sadly  the majority do not do anymore.

Marx was not cut from the same cloth as of those around him, he was truly different. The irony was that his ideas through Stalinism made people have to all become the same but that was not Marx’s intention, but the corrupting influence of Stalin and the Bolsheviks.

For us, both in art and the teaching of it, the worst thing is to be like everyone else, it is the kiss of death, you must be different, you must find something that you believe in and then live it. Maybe this is the lesson of someone like Karl Marx; make your life become what you believe. 

Vic

 

Enjoy life play in a rock band

 

Visit www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zen and the art of cheese making

I learn to make cheese the other day. It is like alchemy, you take these ingredients and they become something else; true magic.

I do these things because I am always exploring the nature of creativity; it gives me insights into the magic of music and the human spirit. This I have always believed has given me a different perspective to the other teachers around me and when I watch some of my past pupils play, whether it is with local bands or famous artists I can see that they have found the magic, the holy grail of their creativity.

I cannot however  teach that stuff, they have to find it for themselves but I can help them to find where to look and that is something that all the crazy things that I have done has helped me to understand.

All of the things that we do as humans expresses what we are as beings and the Zen masters understood this hence you can as a spiritual practice sweep the floor, prepare food, do the washing, play a musical instrument or make cheese. 

So let me suggest that the next time that you teach someone to play the guitar you are setting them on a road to liberation. No pressure then.

Vic

 www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money. Karl Marx

Maybe this could be said of musicians because great music and art often comes from those that are hungry, angry and driven by a passionate belief. Very rarely does great art come from one looking to make lots of money.
I have been preparing for a couple of projects that are coming up, one of these is the course making money from music and the other is a gig that I am doing with two good friends and great musicians which is mostly improvised.
In the first of these I am looking to help those musicians to get the balance between the money making and the creating and making the crossover, the twilight zone where both can happen. For me it is all about the attitude that you need to make money, get the attitude right and it functions as a successful business and that puts food on the table, BUT to make great art and music you need to be driven by desire and passion and not by money therefore you also need projects that are not focused on the money but on the creativity. That is not to say that these projects will not eventually lead to financial reward but that is not the driver and I do have a couple of interesting techniques to make things happen (you will need to come along for those).
The second of these is playing with musicians who can read one another and that is pure magic but of course you need to sell tickets to pay everyone. The focus then is on the experience of the crowd, the fact that they will see something very special, people who will take a song and create something different and because the musicians are on the very edge and pushing that edge the members of the audience if they are learning music get the chance to study this and bring that into their own experience of playing. However the players are doing it for the fun of the playing and the danger of it all going wrong and going right!
Vic

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

I often get my pupils to sit and listen to Mannish Boy by Muddy Waters, and as the riff repeats and the crowd get whipped up into a frenzy I ask them one simple question ‘Why does something so simple work like this?’ if they can answer this question they have an insight to what makes music tick.

I think this is one of the truths of art that it is an emotive power and not an intellectual one. Yet we chew the cud over the scales,  chords and structure and all of that stuff, but at the end of the day a piece of music has to comes out and either grab you by the throat, heart or somewhere lower to have you in its power.

Teaching is more like taking people on a journey that enables them to discover this for themselves, when discovered you then realise it has been staring you in the face all of the time and now it seems so obvious but before it eluded you.

So have a listen to the music that really grabs you that is simple and feel why it works then use that information in your playing.

 

Vic