Are you getting enough fiber in your music? Is the music you listen to and/or make have enough roughage–those undigestable elements that give the music its grit and the sounds their edge?

My tough, zany Russian grandmother, Bertha Smilowitz, was obsessed with healthy bowel movements. She would ask complete strangers if they were getting enough roughage in their diet.

I always winced when she would bring up this unpleasant topic, but her dietary wisdom must have rubbed off. Years after her passing, I find myself musing on the importance of healthy musical movement and the central role that fiber plays in keeping the creative juices flowing.

In my experience, when music goes down too easily–when it doesn’t offer any challenges to the listener (or the music maker)–it fails to nourish, inspire, or touch the audience in any meaningful way. We seem to need unfamiliar sonic aspects that keep the music from lulling the listener into unconsciousness. If the music does not have these rougher qualities, the music can become an opiate, or a form of artistic propaganda.

Musical fiber can appear in any number of forms. It can be a lyric layered with multiple meanings, a complex set of overtones, fret buzzes, rhythmic tension or anything that keeps our ears pricked and our mind and heart actively involved.

Listen to this humorous podcast as the under-explored subjects of musical nutrition and roughage are exposed and examined from a Whole Musician perspective.

 

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