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Musician Heroes
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Hi Jurgen, yeah a great song by Sting, and an inspiring one too with the one phrase “Russians love their children too..” really says it all. Life is not so easy to simplify. Things aren’t always so black and white in reality, we often only get presented facts through a tainted lens. Thanks for posting it.
I do believe artists/musicians are in a unique position of influencing the masses through their art, and have been given a gift and have a responsibility for what they do with it. In my opinion artists through their art inspire, and sometimes that inspiration is in the form of a revelation of some profound truth or knowledge they learned about life and the world around them that is expressed through their art.
Art has even been called the avenue to the highest knowledge available to humans and to a kind of knowledge impossible of attainment by any other means.
It can be beauty, emotions, experiences, perspective, a morality they believe in and stand for, or an injustice they see in the world expressed in their art to make a positive change in the world. Artists who do this I think are heroes. If you strip away that inspirational aspect of music, you are just left with entertainment, and while there is nothing wrong with entertainment, it just isn’t as compelling, moving, and meaningful as inspired art.
Beethoven is quoted to having said:
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I’ve posted this one here before, but I think belongs in this thread.
This song has always inspired me about peace since I sang it in elementary school. It’s lyrics permanently engraved in my mind all my life, the song has been a lesson in peace and futility of greed and hate. What an impact this song by Caste has had on me. A true inspired artistic masterpiece for all time.
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Midnight Oil:
Hi Jung, Musician Heroes or musically courageous. In the end, just puns. I think we both mean the same thing. I agree with you that arts are an inexhaustible source of inspiration and accompany people on the way to new insights and knowledge. Having access to these arts, as well as education and cultural achievements, are a luxury we should enjoy every day. And it’s true that artists can reach the masses and inspire the masses, but each of us has the opportunity to make a difference in our own small social environment. You don’t have to be a musician or a man of letters to do this. Often it is the small gestures and things in everyday life that move other people, touch them and if you are lucky, make them think.
And to continue the quote from Beethoven: Music and the arts open a gateway to a place of our soul and experience that our mind cannot access.
I’m impressed by bands that stand up for ethnic minorities or social grievances in their country. The band Midnight Oil is one of them. Singer Peter Garrett was first president of an Australian environmental group and then devoted himself to a political career. In 2007, he was appointed Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts.
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Hi Jurgen. Midnight Oil is one of the few bands in the early 90s I went to see perform live. A friend of mine at the time really liked their song “Beds Are Burning” so when they came to town, we bought tickets and went to see them. Nice memories. Nice video, thanks.
What you said reminded me of a few years ago when I use to work for the telecom/phone company I worked at for decades. Being in sales, helping to sell telecom services providing technical support to the sales team as a sales engineer, I always felt my contribution to society was quite limited compared to the more glamorous jobs like doctors, police, or firemen. The company would every few years come up with some new corny Vision and Mission statement about providing super duper service and making customers happy, but one year they came out with a new Mission statement, that really stood out to me and made me think, and that really resonated with me. It was:
Accelerate our customers’ capabilities to bring freedom and prosperity to the world by providing enormous high-quality bandwidth.
The part about bringing freedom and prosperity to me was about making life a little better for people made me feel good. It is true, our contribution to society, in some way indirectly can work towards making a positive difference to peoples lives.
I still hope to do it through my piano playing one day though! A work in progress. ????
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Hi Jung, a nice story. I think if you make just one person laugh or make one person happy, that’s something to be proud of. One more happy person in the world. Who can change the whole world and who wants to? I personally think it is important to do something that gives you personal pleasure and satisfaction. How that looks like, everyone has to decide for himself. It doesn’t matter what others think is meaningful to you. What is important is what you yourself find meaningful. Playing the piano? That sounds good to me. You will be the first person to be happy about it and this spark will also spread to other people.
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Eddy Grant:
The British pop singer Eddy Grant committed himself against apartheid politics and published a song in 1988 that has a catchy melody and comes across as light-footed. However, this first impression is deceptive. Due to its political content, the song was banned in South Africa.
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