In the last 60 years music has strained and roared
It has disowned us, empowered us, released us, defined us
And it drives us all home
Music has given us a soundtrack to live in
The symphony for love
A score for both pregnancy and suicide
And a soundscape for happiness and longing
It provokes prejudice, anarchy, freedom, justice
Music can make your skin shiver, your tempo shift
And your love organs come to life
It is no better to a rich mans ears than for that of the poor
Music is the choreographer of dance
Yet music evokes all of this without being touched or fully understood
It is airborne, it is ephemeral,
It is dream theory and then it is gone.
But I am scared by the banality of modern music and its reason to be
They've stolen its honesty, rendered it superficial,
A commodity worthless
A gameshow, empty gesture, a competition, an advertising tool
Money makes you God or irrelevant
But what of music's utter sublimity
It's profound tragedy, its hedonistic glory
The treasures that come not immediately
But brew upon your soul with time and love
The music that forces you to pull over and cry unashamedly
To fill you with the full force of life
And in time music shall return you to a moment of intense accuracy
Our musical collective of this world is enormous
Life affirming, varied, vibrant, grinding, intelligent, sad and wild
So filled with dreams and instinct
That it burns with the self same energy
That once lit mankind's greatest journeys
But if music is anything, then it is defiant
It is stitched into the lub-dub of every heart
Music is quite simply our greatest gift to the world
And I hear it alive and inventive in cafes
In clubs, on street corners on rooftops, online and offshore
Deep inside your head, on your lips
In the harmony and disharmony of the lives and our loves
Our musical presence
Is emanating through the walls of motel rooms
On bad speakers, on the low end beats teenage cars,
Handed around on headphones
It lives on the curves of her rhythm
The gravel of her voice and on the bass of his words
Let it be invented in bedrooms, in prison yards
With attitude and reason, make it without time signatures
Play off the notes, dream it, live it, bend it, break it, offend God
Don't apologize, turn it up, record the cries and the agonies of love
Bang buckets, spit bars, scream, sing, slam, damn your soul
Condemn your body, let your music be free
All children can sing, make new music
Let it lift you, make you better
Turn it up, shout back at thunder, move your body and soul
Lose the company
Find the rebel, lose the pretence and the genre
Be proud, not instructed, be creative
Its only music, learn how to hear it all over again
And throw the whole fucking world
At this beautiful thing we do to the silence