The Whole Music Experience

  I t's been a long while since I shared a musical post with you. Today, I'm thinking about music that blew my mind or caused me to swoon. I have heard thousands of songs during my life time from various genres. And every song leaves an impression but not as big an impression as the following ten songs. 1). Prelude to the Afternoon of the Faune by Claude Debussy I heard this song the first time when I was on college break. I was bored and I rummaged through my mother's record collection. Since I had taken a music appreciation class I wanted to listen to classical music even though I was more into rock music. I found the record with Claude Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of the Faune. Not knowing what a faune was and what a prelude to the afternoon might entail, I placed the record on the old-fashion turntable. When the first strains of the harp came through the speakers I nearly fainted because the music was sheer beauty to my ears. Two decades later, I rediscovered ...

Wikipedia image (Here is another excerpt from my book Whole Music (Soul Food for the Mind Body Spirit ), the chapter on classical music). Date with Immortals: Western Classical Music European classical composers represent the stuff of legends.  These immortal musicians traipsed through the centuries landing in the digital age.  Would classical composers capture our imagination if movie makers had not recreated their lives?  Would we have fallen in love with the classics if Mozart had not landed on the big screen played by quirky Tom Hulse or if Gary Oldman had not rendered our beloved Beethoven and unraveled the German composer’s mysterious romantic life? We knew that the biographical pictures gazed mainly at the personalities behind the music, while tossing sound bites of the composers’ music at viewers.  Lush eye-candy grabbed our attention while we learned little about the actual music.  What is classical music? Why have we add...

Exploring Music for Early Child Development  When I grew up, we took music for granted.   The town where I grew up  provided a district-wide music program for K-12.   Prior to entering elementary school, my mother exposed my siblings and me to classical, jazz, Latin American music, and Broadway show tunes.   We also learned songs from popular children’s entertainment such as Disney movies.   In fact, I don’t recall music ever absent from our home.   We listened to, performed, and explored music. Fast forward to 1997 and the publication of Don Campbell’s book The Mozart Effect which brought a shift in consciousness to how we view classical music, in particular, as it relates to emotional, physical, and mental development.   Pregnant women introduced their fetuses to Mozart’s violin concertos and mothers played Mozart recordings to jump start their toddlers’ brains. However, the years that followed the book’s publication bro...

photo by Patricia Herlevi It happens to all of us.  Trying to stay in a good mood and beat the positive drum, and the blues comes seeping through the cracks.  Pretty soon, the funk gets deeper and the moods spiral downward.  Some people take pills, but for mild to moderate depression, try music instead. Obviously, turning to music with self-defeating lyrics or a vocalist lashing out venom to his or her listeners won't uplift any moods.  Sometimes when people feel a funk coming on, they choose music that will only take them deeper into depression. However, working in increments of positivity goes a long way in battling a bad mood. For moderate depression, you need to move to the next level which is anger.  For this you might need something along the lines of Beethoven's 5th Symphony or classic American blues (not the self-pitying blues).  But you don't want to wallow in anger to then you find music that will take you to the next level.  I r...