Let's talk music, no genre boundaries

@frogman 

I saw Les McCann in a small venue in the mid seventies. He was highly charismatic. I attribute this to his ability to embody both what could be called the sacred and the profane. Earthiness and soaring spirit. the body and the soul. 

Of course, one could say this about a host of Black artists who grew up in the church and then utilized their ability to channel a certain type of magnetism into songs that explored the dynamics of sexual relationships in a way that may cause us to question whether the spiritual and the physical are two sides of one coin rather than wildly divergent opposites, as they've been long portrayed by various religious traditions. 

@stuartk 

Before Western religion dominated the west, the Greeks and probably others used to have Dionysian rituals which included music and sex. And now that you mention it, I think that is one of the problems I have with the "classical" period of classical music. It is too purified. I don't think the sexual aspect of music only came from Black churces. Later, of course, it was part of the blues.

But if we look at the Scotch-Irish with their wild dancing, and I think they ifnluenced country music a lot. Klezmer music had some bawdy Groucho Marx type humor. And of course we can't forget Gypsy music with women throwing up their skirts as they danced Flamenco. A number of composers were influenced by Gypsy music, but after the 18th century. As we get into the 19th century with its romanticism, many folk traditions were drawn upon. Even a bit earlier, Haydn drew on folk traditions which included the sexual aspect.

Here's a guitar concerto written by Rodrigo and played by Julian Bream. You might have heard it before. The second movement (I think) has the theme used in a very popular Miles Davis piece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJwbxkVNz9I

Why playing the notes even perfectly well is not enough playing any composer but fell short in particular in Scriabin...

Understanding the motives behind the notes is fundamental, the musical time dimension of the piece is given birth by the way the musician understand the motives...

An example of good understanding by a Polish pianist :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-VgyjLS3ok&list=RDeHPFrCJP6c4&index=2

Here also Merzhanov genius shine in Scriabin :

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZbmTrEr7v0&list=OLAK5uy_kcBQlc_uGF33KC-Hx9PHSlh_visu4qmls

In this stunning  "Welte Mignon"  and "pianola recording" in spite of the limitations  of this kind of recording process we can even sense and feel the almost "jazzy" feeling of an improvised spontaneous irruption of another "time" than the physical one, a moment which is neither past nor future,not even momentaneous but more like an irruption of something out of time,a musical motive, in physical time itself...

Scriabin himself playing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsBoxTpk_dc&list=RDvsBoxTpk_dc&start_radio=1

sonata no3 :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bstDVo92Io&list=RD6bstDVo92Io&start_radio=1

@frogman 

“……….no genre boundaries”.

No matter the genre, sometimes a performance is so locked in and with such strong collective sense of purpose that it brings a different meaning to “spiritual”:

Perfect description of the vast majority of the performances of guitarist, Allan Holdsworth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcPbmPM7epY

As a good friend and a top LA studio musicians said about Holdsworth:

"For me, Allan Holdsworth was the most innovative improviser of all time on ANY instrument. The great jazz soloists (McCoy, Brecker, Freddie Hubbard, Trane, etc.), all had predecessors on their respective instruments that they copped licks from and modified with their own voice. There clearly was no guitar lineage leading up to Allan's approach. This freak landed ship with a completely new vocabulary not based on anything that was already established. No blues, pentatonics, bop, post-bop...NOTHING"