The Importance Of Music – Adam McGrath (The Eastern)
“To me, music has been the shaping force in my life for better or worse. I’m so deep I can’t get out. Buying records and singing songs. It’s been this way for as long as I can remember. These things called songs that, echo our world, shape our understanding and signpost our experience are so powerful. They carry so much weight yet are weightless on the air. I write songs for a living but still can’t tell you where they come from. They drop into the world as they’re needed, hoping and ready. They matter and the folks that hear them or need them matter also. I like living in a world that Bob Dylan or Barry Saunders or Kathleen Hanna live in. It makes me feel less alone that there are folks out there who with a flick of a pen and a cut of a chord can make it all seem ok again. I feel lucky. The idea that Chuck Berry, Shostakovich, and Django Reinhardt have all existed on this earth allows me, from moment to moment, to think we’re not all bad. That from time to time, humans can add a little grace into the world. If they can do it maybe the rest of us shouldn’t be afraid to either. In the face of the destroyers, tearer downers and money grabbers, that’s important to know.?Music is affirming. When you have nothing it can give you purpose, hope, inspiration and courage. It gives moments to discover yourself and your place in the world. I am empowered to know that outside the radio, the industry and the money there are kids discovering The Clash, Peter Tosh, Otis Redding, Hazel Dickens and Public Enemy and through that, they are finding room for their own hearts to grow. To think outside whatever channels that have been prebuilt for them.?Music matters in the guts and in the heart is where it counts. We are better for it and we are stronger because of it. “