Music sound of human experience

“There is geometry in the humming of the strings. There is music in the spacing of the spheres.”

— Pythagoras

Between the impeachment in D.C., and the debacle in Iowa and the gun-toting protesters in Santa Fe, politics is on overkill. I don’t know about you but I could use a break — so let us escape from the tones of our discontent to the tunes of our better selves.

Several years ago on a visit to El Paso, I decided to cross the border into Mexico, back when it could be done without a passport or papers and was an easy stroll across the Rio Grande from downtown El Paso.

On the U.S. side, as I started walking across the bridge spanning the river, the sounds of Latin music filled the air, quietly fading into the background as I made my way across the border.

Then, as I approached Ciudad Juárez, what did I hear playing on the other side? Rock and roll.

Music is like that. It crosses boundaries with the greatest of ease. No passport required.

Musicologists tell us that music is found in every culture on Earth, even in isolated tribal societies. Some suggest its origins are from the sounds and rhythms in nature, with the first humans mimicking and expanding upon those sounds. Music is one of the first and most natural forms of human expression.

For centuries, musical styles were specific to regions, cultures and peoples, but that’s not so true anymore. Sure, there are musical forms that remain close to their origins — check out a powwow sometime — but more often nowadays, music is international in its scope, sound and influence.

And the song becomes part of our lives, our identity, as my own life attests.

As a child, my introduction to music was in church, singing hymns along with an old pipe organ, and on road trips when my family would sing silly songs like “My Old Dog” to pass the time in our station wagon.

Then came that fateful night in 1964, when the Beatles performed on The Ed Sullivan Show. My hair grew long as the British invaded. Pretty soon, rock fused with folk and even the twang of country music could be heard in an “outlaw” country-rock sound — all of which expanded my tastes in music.

Like so many of us, as I grew into adulthood I was deeply influenced by music. As a teenager I listened to Black Sabbath and felt a darkness that surrounded their sound, while my innocence embraced John Denver’s softer sound. Then, in my 20s, Kris Kristofferson’s lyrics spoke to me, and for me, with lyrics like, “He’s a walking contradiction, / partly truth and partly fiction, / takin’ every wrong direction on his lonely way back home.” That was me, I declared back in the day.

Music is an inclusive experience; seldom will you find one genre that didn’t grow out of another. Blues, soul, rap, rock, country and techno are inextricably linked to one another, as are mariachi, salsa, tango and reggae — and their influences are worldwide.

Here in New Mexico, one of the most diverse states in the union, rooted music reflects our identity. No one culture has shaped us, nor are we all the same. That’s at the heart of good music, where the sounds of the human experience speak their own truths.

More truths, I would add, than the politics of our time.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

[email protected]