This Is The Only Pure Music.

This Is The Only Pure Music.

A celebration of non-classical absolute music.

Music has united people for millennia, but nowadays it’s been weaponized to divide us. I’ve personally experienced its uniting effects, though, so I know what’s possible.

You see, I was born and raised in apartheid South Africa. I lived there until 1999, leaving a few months after Mandela’s presidency ended. I loved Mandela, and he probably did everything in his power to unite the country. However, the story you don’t often hear is that musicians were more successful in bringing the people together. Two of these musical heroes were Lucky Dube and Johnny Clegg. Their crossover appeal resulted in audiences that consisted of fans who would never have come together under any other circumstances. It was magical! That’s the power of music.

But it wasn’t only their music that united the previously divided nation, it was their lyrics too. While they didn’t sugarcoat the situation, they did choose to focus on a positive future vision where South Africans were united. As a result, their songs created that more united country they had envisioned.

Now, when I listen to the new releases on Spotify every Friday, I don’t hear much in the way of positive lyrics that were written to unite people. In fact, it’s rather obvious that most lyrics were written with the exact opposite intention. But as Thumper said: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.” The legendary rabbit uttered that wisdom over 80 years ago. It’s time we start living by this rabbit wisdom, which is why I’m sharing my musical method for doing this.

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In the celebrity culture we live in, most music has vocals because popular music tends to be all about the vocalists. They’re the stars. They’re the main attractions. It’s not about the song, it’s about the celebrity singing it. That is wrong for so many reasons, but that’s a topic for another essay.

What concerns us here is something I called “pure music” in the title, but the formal term is “absolute music”. What is absolute music? It’s instrumental music, but at its purest. What do I mean by purest? Music that is presented without any preconceived concepts. In other words, music without a conceptual title.

Arguably the best example of this is Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor. Beethoven composed this as absolute music. The listener could enjoy it with no preconceived ideas about what the music represented. Their imagination could conjure up whatever images it wanted. However, after Beethoven’s death, this sonata was given a nickname by a music critic. And for almost 200 years now, this breathtakingly beautiful piano piece has been painting pictures of moonlight in its listeners’ minds. How could it not? It is after all the Moonlight Sonata.

But, what did listeners imagine before it was given that nickname? We’ll never know. We only know what one man imagined. This piece perfectly highlights the power of words. Even one word. And with that one word, every listener ever since has been primed to imagine moonlight when the piece is played. Words are powerful. Words shape our reality.

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And that brings me to my main point. Songs convey their songwriters’ worldviews, but it’s precisely our differing worldviews that divide us nowadays. Up until a few years ago, it was perfectly normal to be friends with people who had different worldviews. In fact, that’s what used to make friendships interesting. Who wants to hang out with another version of themself? No thank you! I want open-minded friends who are totally different from me, with totally different worldviews from mine. That makes for fascinating conversations.

Thanks to social media, though, the masses have been programmed into thinking that we need to surround ourselves with people who believe exactly the same things we believe. These online echo chambers fuel narrow-m