Music Feeds the Muse: When Two Worlds Collide

reprinted from Mildly Creative

I‘ve always found it sad when people say things like, "I only read the classics," or "I only read mysteries."

What a shame.

Every classic entered the world as just another book, and every story contains its own elements of mystery. It’s perfectly fine to have your favorite genre, but being so exclusive is like reading with blinders on, and you’ll miss a lot of great stuff along the way.

But I don’t think I’ve ever encountered this kind of snobbery as often as I do when I hear people talk about music. Music is a powerful and emotional art form that people identify with, sometimes so much that they latch onto a genre and won’t listen to anything else.

They talk about what they’re into.

“I’m into two kinds of music,” some say, “Country and Western.” Others will have nothing to do with “either”. I hear it all the time. I’m into Southern Rock. I’m into Opera. I’m into Death Metal. And they scoff at anything outside their CD collection.

A Joyous Collision

But music, like all art, grows and evolves through the joyous collision of different worlds.

A musical style like jazz has its roots in earlier forms developed around the world in Europe and Africa and America, and continues to be influenced by everything it can get its hands on. To me, to love music, to love anything really, is to love it enough to let it expand and evolve.

And that’s why I particularly love the following video, a recording of two icons from different musical backgrounds, Luciano Pavarotti, the world famous opera singer, and James Brown, the godfather of soul, allowing their two worlds to collide.