ROCK YOU!At a young age, I had a music teacher tell me that music shouldn’t be listened to while you are doing something else. He said that you should sit somewhere and listen if it was a recording you were wanting to experience, and pay attention if you were lucky enough to see music live. I think with some music, this is probably the correct thing to do. If you have never sat through and really listened to Mahler’s 3rd Symphony, or exposed yourself to more modern works like A Night in Tunisia (the Miles Davis/Charlie Parker collab album) for example, there is nothing quite like devoting yourself and some of your time to fully listening to those works and letting them get inside your head.

Some music isn’t like that though. Music can play a huge role in the way we socialize. Folk music is meant to be enjoyed by a group, sometimes where everyone listening takes turns performing, for example. Modern rock and roll? Much better when shared. When you go to a rock concert, it isn’t just to hear the music, it’s so you can BE there, man. You are both recipient and collaborator, and that unique fusion makes for some of the best memories you’ll ever have. How many people forget the first concert they ever went to, rock band or no? Mine was the hair metal band Helix, who had another hair-metal band called Kick-Axe open for them. My friend Pat lit a guy’s heavily moussed hair on fire, I got slammed in what passed for the mosh pit in those days (1986), and I saw a long-lost flame in leopard print pants and a bandana. I remember the music, but it acted more like the glue that held the experience together rather than something I appreciate for it’s majestic artistry.

I am trying to narrow down the exact point in time when it became ok for music to be strictly in the periphery. Do we need to go back to the era of the portable stereo? Or is it that seminal piece of 80′s technology, the Walkman, that was responsible for this shift? When I look at my collection, I have a lot of music that is completely disposable. It’s even organized by the type of activity I will use that music for. “Workout List”, “Music While I Work”, “Music To Do Housework By”. There isn’t a single solitary activity that doesn’t have it’s own soundtrack.  In some ways, this is as horrible as businesses that use classical music to ward off youths from the premises at night. But the reality is, there is a whole class of music created today to fill this perceived need.

I am not going to get into the argument about which music is art and which isn’t, but the fact is people are very comfortable these days in using music, which I think is very much a cultural thing here in 2011. Oprah asked, “What song is the soundtrack for your life?” I’ve participated in numerous message board discussions about “What is your walk-out song?” (HINT: “Woooaaahh! Yeeeaaaahh!”) I don’t know a single person who doesn’t use music at the gym to help get through their workout. There wouldn’t be dance clubs without un tiss un tiss un tiss. It’s a weird class of music, as it crosses over with popular music and becomes something else in the end. Functional music, whose only purpose is to underscore some other activity.

I know for some people this is yet more proof that society is culturally bankrupt. That art is being drowned out in favour of the manufactured. In my world, there is room for the art and the crap. I still take time to just listen to music, but I also embrace the crap, as it gets me through the day. It props me up in the gym when I don’t feel like being there. It integrates into an activity that I would normally find boring or routine and elevates it into something more awesome. I don’t view the dance music and the drum and bass and the j-pop inspired too cute for school stuff as being a detriment to other music, I view the stuff on my iPod as facets of a greater whole where there is room for all kinds of sound and music.

What do you guys think? How do you use your music, if at all? Do you listen to the highest forms of art while you’re cleaning the bathroom? Do you listen to Rafi while you are performing open-heart surgery?  Pipe up, either here or on Facebook.