Squonk wrote:
I battle with all this suugestion that music can have some influence on your emotions.
Oh but it can.
No doubt about it. I have experienced massive joy and wonderment listening to great music and musicians.
Last year in London I saw Norma Waterson perform and it was a huge thrill for me. Not, actually, because I was seeing somebody I'd been reading about for years (I knew she was on the bill for that show months before hand), somebody who I had a couple of records by, but because of the sheer magic of her performance, a magic that I hadn't and couldn't have anticipated (and which the CDs had not prepared me for).
Her husband, Martin Carthy, had knocked my socks right off a couple of years earlier. There was this storm of emotion coming off of that stage and it was impossible to resist.
What I'm less sure about is if it changes your world view.
I thrilled to Norma Waterson singing Ewan MacColl's "The Moving On Song", a truly superb performance - sincere and joyous and technically excellent all at the same time. For weeks that particular performance kept on popping into my head, so much so that when I organised a show for TJ's a couple of months later I asked one of the performers (Tom Howden) to sing some Ewan MacColl songs, knowing full well that he loved to sing that very song.
But I didn't feel my political views shifting any closer to MacColl's (or to where I imagine Norma Waterson's to be).
That same holiday I went to see Martin Simpson. Now let me tell you, he may be a "folkie" but there was some pretty violent stuff going on in those songs. He did "Stagolee" which is a true story about a man killing another man for laughing at his hat.
He did "Duncan & Brady" which is another true story about a crooked cop trying to shake down a club owner one time too many and getting shot for his troubles (he lies bleeding to death on the floor with people laughing at him, though at the the start of the song, and as you will know, "He got a mean look in his eye, he's going to shoot somebody just to see them die").
He did "Andrew Lammie" which is an old Scottish song that describes an honour killing (girl sees boy, girl falls in love, boy meets girl, parents object, they try to get him killed for being a witch and when that doesn't work they take her down to the church and break her back across the church steps).
He opened up with "Lakes of Champlain" - OK no murder, but a nasty death and plenty of broken-hearted family members. "The Grangemore Hare" is about hare hunting, from the POV of the hare (who gets caught).
Some night's entertainment, but it didn't turn me into a thug or a psychopath.
