OUR "POPULAR" MUSIC...LET'S GET TO THE VERY HEART OF IT.

For today's Post, I'm going to use a letter of mine which was recently published in The Syracuse Post Standard. It says much which relates to our love OF and concern FOR the music in our lives. Here goes:

To the editor:

For over six decades, I've had the pleasure of performing what is known as "popular music." In that time, my repertoire has grown to several thousand songs. Along the way, I learned many of the songs' lyrics, and stories about their origins. This wide spectrum of years has also made it possible for me to witness -firsthand - the many changes to this type of music, culminating with its virtual disappearance. The great popular songs known as "standards" were written 95% of the time with their melodies (or "tunes") being made up first, after which talented lyricists created words which related, for the most part, to human love and it many permutations.

In my life as a musician, I observed the gradual demise of the element of melody, leading to its virtual disappearance in today's music. It stands to reason that without good tunes, songs per se would rarely be written. This has resulted in some startling consequences! Case in point:
The Motion Picture Academy recently decided to make the "best song" category of the Academy Awards optional. The awards have simply become too embarrassing in that category!

The decades which produced the most "standards" are acknowledged to have been the 20's
thru the 50's. The era of rock and its many spin-offs started in the later 50's. Many of subsequent rock groups wrote beautiful songs (although old-timers didn't think much of the genre.)

So what happened? The unhappy truth is that greed and money made deep inroads into the music business. "Payola," which once seemed scandalous is now an unhappy fact of life. Personally, I don't think that there is any hope that melodious popular music will ever return, for the reasons stated above. This is a shame, because songs are deliciously effective vehicles for conveying genuine human emotions, such as love, happiness, sadness and every shade of human feeling.

Recently, I have been presenting entertainment (in a classroom setting) comprising the standards of the four decades mentioned. I was addressing a large group of older adults; most of them in their 60's, 70's, 80's and yes...90's! My principal reason for writing this letter is to express the profound sentiment I have experienced as I, from a vantage-point of a presenter, observed the deep-seated emotions that were emerging from this group. It was touching to encounter these feelings as they flowed from people who lived through the periods when these songs were an integral part of the ups and downs of their lives.

It was also quite sad, because I have come to realize that today's young people will never be afforded a chance to have their own lives affected in this very special musical way. This could only happen with beautiful melodies and lyrics, and I fear that combination will never occur again.