Writings about Music

Jaded Juggernauts

With a conversation about Language and Image in music, comparisons between contemporaries Johannes Brahms and Richard Wagner come to mind. Paradoxically, music focusing on Language may create an Image, and music focusing on Image may develop a Language too.

Those “electroacoustic” juggernauts - I prefer “rock” because its more colorful, authentic, and expressive rather than academic - Led Zeppelin, were spawned by the innovations of Cream. However, Led Zeppelin’s Language moved in a different direction from the beginning, developing a different vision of Image, too, on the way to creating their masterpieces.

One of many extraordinary aspects of Indian ragas is how they commence with Image and gradually turn towards labyrinthine explorations of Language.

If it sounds good, do it, and let it be.

Gangadhara is closer to Image:

 

Hummingbird Canyon presents Language happening to paint Image, too.

 

Natabhairavi straddles both worlds simultaneously.

 

- Michael Robinson, July 2016, Los Angeles

 

© 2016 Michael Robinson All rights reserved

 

Michael Robinson is a Los Angeles-based composer, programmer, pianist and musicologist. His 199 albums include 152 albums for meruvina and 47 albums of piano improvisations. Robinson has been a lecturer at UCLA, Bard College and California State University Long Beach and Dominguez Hills.