humanity
Humanity topics include pieces on the real lives of music professionals, amateurs, inspiring students, celebrities, lifestyle influencers, and general feel good human stories in the music sphere.
Performing Music Across The World
As a well known prolific writer across various platforms, Vocal Media being my current favourite, people could be forgiven for not knowing what else I get up to when I am not writing. At this point I should point out that I am also an author and writer of short stories and poetry with about eleven books out on Amazon. After that I turn my attention to music.
By Liam Ireland5 years ago in Beat
Graveyard Sounds & Sam Shepard: Explosions in the Sky's "Take Care, Take Care, Take Care" at 10
Want to know when my next personal essay is going to drop? Want to get weekly, curated recommendations? Want exclusive short fiction? Want to do other cool things like writing exercises and just have fun?
By Andrew Martin Dodson5 years ago in Beat
A Design for Life*
I collect music. I perfectly realise that in this era of a modern digital world everyone can potentially fulfil his or her desires in moments downloading the stuff from the Internet. But not me. I COLLECT music. You can SEE my collection in real, it’s visible. There are not only digital copies (I have them all in my laptop of too), but you can see the physical CDs, vinyls and music DVDs. Here are first few photos:
By Moon Desert5 years ago in Beat
It's Okay to Feel a Little Unwell
That's the message singer/songwriter Rob Thomas set out to convey when he penned the 2003 hit song, Unwell. Almost 20 years later, producer Steve Aoki and vocalists Kiiara and Wiz Khalifa have teamed up to reiterate that message with a reimagined version of the song entitled, Used to Be. The catchy rewrite incorporates Thomas’ original chorus with new unforgettable verses performed by Kiiara. It forcefully moves the all-important meaning of the lyrics back into the spotlight and emphasizes the fact, as stated by Thomas in the 2004 live Show: A Night in the Life of Matchbox Twenty, “We all feel a little messed up sometimes… you’re not alone.”
By Heather Holland5 years ago in Beat
If life was your musical
Lately, I’ve been quite curious to know, okay scratch that … it’s been more of an interest than a curiosity. As a young lad growing up, music always was an integral piece in our house. It sprouted my interests and passions. I was raised with wonderfully old Italian values and traditions, making our fruit and vegetable preserves, finely manufacturing our cured meats, sourcing, and producing our tomato sauces, to finally making a brand of wine that could literally have the potential to drop you where you stood if you decided to overindulge, sipping more than enough.
By CR. Phoenix 5 years ago in Beat
Music is make me alive
My music :) Martina Motwani <[email protected]> 7:13 AM (0 minutes ago) to nhasit Hey Folks music is the world to me. I don't know who says that. I can't beat without music. People say music is my madness but a healthy mindset needs really good music. I start with Chanting Om Bhu Bhuvarsawah Gayatri mantra in the morning half an hour 108 times. Then I heard Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa music basics. This motivates me to level up with the new songs. Basically i hear and watch Shreya Ghoshal, Lata Mangeshkar, Ed Sheren , Lady Gaga, Adele, Justin bieber, Billie Ellish ,Taylor swift, John Legend, Selena Gomez, Atif Aslam, AR Rahman, Shankar Mahadevan, Salim suliaman, Pritam , Arijit Singh, B Praak,Yo Yo Honey Singh, Jubin Nautiyal, Vishal Mishra, Vishal shekhar, KK, Kumar Sanu, Alka Yagnik, Hasit Nanda , Dhvani Bhanushali, Neha Kakkar, Badshah, Akhil, Guru Randhawa, Hardy Sandhu, Maninder Buttar, Darshan Raval and Milind Gaba. These are bollywood punjabi true artist singers. I love to hear them every morning. This is my first hobby singing. Singing a song is like breath.
By Martina Motwani 5 years ago in Beat
Musical Catharsis
Pain sunk its teeth into me like a rabid dog. It leaked out of me like crude oil, marring everything. Corrosive and excoriating. Napalm on virgin forest. A thousand incendiary bombs. Roaring unhappiness metastasizing like a malignant tumour. A haemorrhaging blood vessel. It was an anguish against which I had not been inoculated, and one that I was feebly trying to understand. I was 19, addled and aching. This was one of those contemptibly soppy adolescent moments, in which everything feels grand and towering and electrifying and consequential; every syllable of conversation imbued with cosmic importance. At some ungodly hour of the night, assailed by adolescent melancholia and emotional aches, my friend Joe tenderly pulled me into his chest. Scruffy puffs of jet black hair tumbled artfully over his face. Strawberry blushes shyly crept onto my cheeks as he held me. Two souls tethered for a moment. Two humble terrestrial creatures unified against the fickle and capricious world. His embrace mellowed me. Hot tears rippled down my plump porcelain cheeks like the tributaries of a river. He held me. The inky harbour sighed below us. We were stationary in his car at a charming Sydney spot. His soulful bambi eyes looked wistfully into the inky jet black of the night, and the sticky, salty wind licked my cheeks like a giddy Labrador. Joe was singularly kind, wide-grinned and supremely gentle. It was at this moment of emotional weariness and emotional maelstrom – the apogee of my stress – that I first listened to Go Farther in Lightness. The music that complimented this moment could not have more apt if it had been curated for a soppy Richard Linklater film. Go Farther in Lightness is an achingly beautiful and affecting album by Gang of Youths. It is an album punctuated by moments of bleeding sadness, roaring excitement and unfettered glee. It is a masterful rendering of the vicissitudes of life, in all its turbulence and swooning pleasures. The prevailing themes of love, lust, estrangement, intimacy and tumult are artfully and deftly weaved into this album. Cascading, thumping, dizzying emotion prevails. It is musical alchemy, a stirring album that is indelibly impressed into my mind. Go Farther in Lightness still hits me like a freight train, even though I am not a blubbering nineteen year-old anymore. It conveys me back to the intimate moment I shared with my friend. It reminds me of the fiery love I felt for him, and of music’s capacity to ameliorate pain, to mellow and to illuminate. It’s enrapturing, and continues to buoy me at times of head-spinning stress. The lurid cameo I presented was intended to elucidate why this album is meaningful to me, and how music can connect us to our emotions and transmute them into something beautiful and artful. Go Farther in Lightness is not mellow or especially sunny and cheerful. In fact, much of the album howls with sadness. In my humble view, its therapeutic value is in its sobering and, ultimately, life-affirming rendering of raw human experience. Elegiac and wistful moments of fiery emotion are bookended by crescendos of sublime and soaring pleasure and enchanting beauty. It provides a sort of musical catharsis by connecting the listener to his suffering, and then transmuting it into something supremely beautiful. For the hot-blooded, brooding twenty-something person, this album is a deliverance from the pacey, wearying and cluttered world. For the jaded and dispirited – for waning spirits - it is a not-so-gentle but frank and firm reminder that life is messy and turbulent, and an injunction to live it more wholeheartedly. It is energising and soulful, and the perfect companion for musing.
By Rory Parker5 years ago in Beat
Back to Center
When the intrusive thoughts enter, whether they're sad or anxious, a knee-jerk reaction is to want to get rid of them immediately. But just like our body needs time to heal, so does our mind. I think that's where music comes in. Instead of running from the thoughts, we can recognize they are there, slowly replace them with new ones and coax our mind back to center.
By Alexis Pulmano5 years ago in Beat
On Repeat
You ever hear that perfect song that you to have hear over and over and over? No matter what other songs that follow, they just don’t measure up. Something about that certain melody. Their voice. Beat or bass. Harmony. Maybe you can’t figure it out, you just know that you want to hear it on repeat. Releasing something in you. Cleanses a part of your inner war, creating peace. Eases a storm within. It simply soothes you.
By Tabatha Ann/ Tee Mee5 years ago in Beat
The soft sadness
There’s a soft sort of sadness that I grew up with. It can be hard to describe to people who haven’t personally been acquainted with such sensations. It’s quiet and gentle. It wrapps it’s soft arms around you and welcomes you to cry when you need to, or just to be. Whatever you need it gladly offers without judgment. This sadness isn’t like its relatives, it won’t stand in the way of your happiness, it won’t hold onto you any longer than you need it to, its embrace is calming and warm. It is like a warm bath on aching joints and muscles.
By Guillermo Jatzek5 years ago in Beat
