Melanated Glow is a local spoken word artist and business owner. Born and raised in South Florida, she has a strong desire for her people to become Whole: Mind, Body, and Spirit. As a writer, she can introduce perspectives that have the potential of bringing awareness to the mental change in a person so they will be able to analyze their situation wholistically. As a Florida A&M University alumna with majors in Computer and Electrical Engineering, she is dedicated to assisting to create a system that, as a people and culture, we can thrive in.
By Melanated Glow
It is the hands in the air when certain songs come on. It is the sound of the chorus of voices that fill in the words when the DJ temporarily lowers the music. It is the joy felt deep within our souls when familiar lyrics enter our ears. It is the sound of music.
Regardless of the age, everyone is noticing the differences in the music of today versus that of the “classics”. From the instrumentation to the lyrics, to the mechanism used to hear the music, there are notable differences between “Old School” music and the music of “today”.
Over time we have replaced the analog vibration of the music with its digital counterpart. Instead of creating music authentically with instruments played by musical geniuses, anyone is able to make a synthetic beat on a computer or phone given the right software. Instead of a group of masters playing each instrument, one person has become the entire band. This synthetic process has taken away the collaboration that made those hits that we still play today and will most likely continue to play forever. The root of the creation of the music of the past was so collective and unified that it only takes a piece of a track from those days to make a whole song today after being sampled.
All of this musical energy is felt whether consciously or unconsciously. Analog music aligns the mind, body, and spirit. The music generated from records, cassettes, and live bands does something to the soul and spirit, especially to melanated people. I was speaking with a brother and he told me about the concerts back in the day where the energy was so high that the people that attended couldn’t go to work the next day. That situation represents the power of music in its natural form! Over time we have gotten rid of our record players and replaced them with mp3s and digital or online streaming. We traded good for bad.
The frequency in the digital music today throws our bodies off. We may not recognize it instantly, but over time we are seeing an increase in lower vibrational characteristics of anger, de-pression, sadness, violence, unforgiveness, etc. that is also present in the musical lyrics. As our classics with titles such as We Are One, Black and Proud, and If This World Were Mine made us unified, proud, optimistic, loyal, and loving, current titles of Trackstar, WAP, and Cry Baby make us spiteful, vengeful, materialistic, promiscuous, and angry.
In the recent past we created music with purpose and a healing intent to represent our people as a whole. Music is a reflection of who we are and one of the reasons we are so drawn to it. Children dance to music they are hearing for the first time based upon how the instrumentation makes them feel. They may not have been alive when Michael Jackson created songs, but they feel his rhythm and move accordingly once one of his songs play. They start dancing to it without being prompted. Their reaction is natural.
When was the last time you heard a record play on a record player? Do you recall how you felt almost instantly? There is a healing in the wax that is made for our minds, bodies, and souls!
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