Music and the Human Experience

It surprises me how often people never move past the music that they loved during high school. I'm sure that there is a certain comfort in hearing the same music that you were listening to during the formative moments in your teenage and young adult life. There is also the benefit of music allowing you to stir up and revisit memories from those times.

I recently tried listening to some of the music that I heard while in high school. I couldn't get far in any one song before I had to stop it.

My father regularly played jazz, ragtime, gospel, and classical music on the stereo when I was growing up. One of his favorite jazz albums was Dave Brubeck's Time Out. On one occasion, I remember walking into the den and finding my mother and father watching on TV a concert featuring Gary Burton on vibes. I had to sit down and watch it with them.

My reading reinforced this initial exposure to jazz. The excitement that Jack Kerouac found in jazz made me want to discover what jazz offered. While I never listened to George Shearing, one of the musicians described in On the Road, I went about discovering jazz in my own way. 

After I located those rock albums that contained jazz elements, my introduction to jazz began in earnest when I bought Miles Davis' Big Fun album. Within the next year or so, I found my own way to Gary Burton and his The New Quartet and Ring albums.

I don't think of my own introduction to and pursuit of jazz as being that special. I suppose it takes an early exposure to other kinds of music and an interest in pursuing one's own discoveries. 

Because there is so much music available, it is crippling, I think, to limit oneself to the music heard early in one's life. One purpose in life should be to discover more about such things as music, art, film, literature, etc., precisely those things that teach us about the human experience.