LEITMOTIFS OF THE DAY 4 - GAINING THE FORCE

We can gain inspiration from music as we tackle a plethora of challenges each day. John Williams' Superman Theme is an old standby that rarely fails to help wither self-doubt and anxiety, enabling clarity of mind and a path forward.  But often the challenges are more complex as they mirror the duality within all  of us , similar to the moods of the Planets,  requiring a deeper dive into drives and instincts that enable friendly fury as well as awe. We can experiment by contrasting these styles, moving back and forth between Williams' and Holst's themes, and discovering others that bring  about the wide spectrum of enabling emotions.  

LEITMOTIF OF THE DAY3 - TRANSFORMING THROUGH MANHATTAN'S MUSICAL ERAS
​
There are several cities of music in the United States; New Orleans, Memphis, Chicago, Los Angeles, Nashville among others.  All urban centers have contributed to the development of music and a musical tour of any city can help us rejuvenate and transform.  I'll attempt here a musical tour of Manhattan since this is the urban center I know best.  It certainly has its intersections, both physical  and spiritual, where music continues to evolve and plays a pivotal role in urban life.  Listening to these musical signposts is a journey through points of time and contrasts in style that are made eternal by their rhythms, melodies, and pitches.  For those of use living within or close enough to this urban center, the transformation to our psyches can be greatly enhanced by walking the neighborhoods where these gems resonated, all within walking distance of a subway stop.   
Let's take a somewhat chronological approach,  although we have the freedom to take various paths in this journey and build these musical forms upon each other in any way we find conducive.  First, let's harness the power of the Jazz Age.  We start uptown in Harlem with Duke Ellington, stomping anywhere along 125th Street.  

Now it's down Broadway  to the blocks of theaters hovering about Times Square.   We contemplate 1928, the early period when vaudeville reviews began to mature  into what we now call integrated musicals.  Show Boat was an important milestone in this development.  By this time in his impresario career, Florenz Ziegfeld wanted more than just to present revues strung together with the thinnest of plots.   Emerging now on Broadway was drama driving the songs rather than the other way around.  The part of Joe in Showboat was designed for the actor Paul Robeson who transformed the role and this song  into a life-affirming anthem of perseverance.   

Latin jazz in many ways defines New York's soul.  Afro-Cuban jazz is considered the earliest form of Latin Jazz  and hit New York in the 1940s as the rhythmic styles of Cuban musicians penetrated into the world of New York jazz innovators, perhaps none more illustrative than this 1947 composition by Dizzy Gillespie, Chano Pozo and Gil Fuller.  Interestingly, Manteca was first performed at Carnegie Hall, one of the great lightning rods of New York's musical universe. 

The integrated musical achieved new heights in the 1940s, as Broadway veterans Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein teamed to create a string of hit musicals over two decades.  This transformation was boosted by competing media swirling around the theatre world; radio, sound cinema, groundbreaking straight plays, and the evolution of neon lights in Times Square.  This integration of drama, music, dance and character development, when done in the proper ratios, can transform the soul more effectively than any other art form.      

The Royal Roost, also known as the Metropolitan Bopera House, was considered the birthplace of Bebop, a mature form of jazz known  for artistic virtuosity rather than danceability.   The fried chicken restaurant turned hipster hangout was where Charlie Parker made his name.  In ways it speaks for all of 52nd Street as a state of mind, the center of swing in midtown that was its musical beating heart.  

Revivals of 1959's Gypsy, 'the mother of all musicals,' are performed all over world, and often the story of the faded vaudeville star struggling to extend her show business career through her children returns to New York stages.   A walk through Times Square accompanied by show anthems like these can be quite inspiring. 

In the 1960s, the Brill Building at 51st and Broadway, among other locations close by, was a pop music factory where songs were written, tested, performed and recorded under one roof.  Burt Bacharach, Carole King and other legends honed their composition skills here.   

Three weeks before his untimely death, Jimi Hendrix opened Electric Ladyland Studios on August 26, 1970 at 52 West Eighth Street in Greenwich Village.  The following is his last known studio recording, made at Electric Ladyland, which lives on to this day at the same location.     

On the Bowery in the mid-seventies, a club was launched to feature Country, Blue Grass, and Blues artists, but it didn't work out that way.  To counter the disco movement and the indulgences of progressive rock, a new wave of groups reverted to simple high energy street rock.  CBGB become the cultural lightning rod for the Ramones, Blondie, Joan Jett, Patti Smith and the Talking Heads, singing here about the good points and bad points of cities over piercing electric percussion.   

Latin Jazz transformed again in the 60s and 70s in Spanish Harlem, evolving into New York's unique brand of Salsa.  These two songs about a decade apart help to define this transformation from forceful street rhythms to mature harmonies evoking the Caribbean allure of these fascinating beats.   

The transformative musical Hamilton integrates nearly all of these musical styles, elevating us as we listen closely to the lyrics and harmonies, showing how ideas gain strength and clarity when set to music.

​LEITMOTIF OF THE DAY2 - My Favorite Things As a Musical Signpost 
Time is eternal, yet apparently all else is not.  As we age, our natural instincts of survival propel us to see time as a negative; it withers away our looks, rusts our circulatory, digestive and bronchial piping, and can make us seem obsolete in a world of head-spinning technology.  But there’s a tremendous regenerative superpower embedded in music that we can capture utilizing sign posts through time.  Great melodies have the inherent ability to transform and we can evolve with them if we listen closely.  We can drink from the reservoir of all those years and memories and gain enlightenment, helping us to rejuvenate.

Let’s experiment with Rogers & Hammerstein’s Favorite Things, born in the musical The Sound of Music in 1959.  The Julie Andrews version from the musical is uplifting, optimistic and perhaps bordering on saccharine, but powerful in the primal memories it conjures of childhood.

And the pattern of this melody, its shift from major to minor scale, serves as a springboard for innovation.  Within two years, the great Jazz saxophonist John Coltrane would transform this melodic blueprint into Sheets of Music. Utilizing the modal jazz framework and inspired by Indian Raga, Coltrane and the pianist McCoy Tyner are seeking all potentialities across the musical spectrum, enabling us to go far beyond the melody.  Comparing the Coltrane version to the original is how I came to understand syncopation, the bending of music away from a straight formal path to one that meanders horizontally and vertically.  Listening closely enables us to comprehend that there are waves of potentialities that remain fluid at any age.   

Next is the Luther Vandross version of the mid-nineties.  Nothing overly innovative here, just a comfortable smooth jazz interpretation that brings forth Christmas memories.  This plays somewhere within the standardization and conformity that is inevitable to life as we adjust to the social order.  Alas, we  cannot all be as innovative as Coltrane, but we can enjoy the comfort of family and holiday music when it's done inventively.       

And finally we savor the version created by Michelle Coltrane, John's daughter.  While closer to the expectations set by the musical’s original version, we can sense the innovation passed on between father and daughter in the inflections of chords and rhythm.  The inner child returns, and we are reminded that rebirth is possible and perhaps inevitable if we can sense the intelligence in these musical transformations.    

LEITMOTIFS OF THE DAY 1 - Surfing as Transition
Summer is ending, at least on the Atlantic Seaboard, and relaxing time in the sun is giving way to the pressures of intense work and study.  The easy sway of Busting Surfboards thematically transforms to the driving electricity of Dick Dale's Miserlou, elevated by the synthesis of rock and Dale's Lebanese influences.  I start my meal with a green smoothie and transition to a spicy bowl of chile.  Suddenly I'm in a better state of mind to surf the return to a demanding, cluttered schedule.

CONCEPT OF THE PERSONAL LEITMOTIF
Music is highly transformative and at a minimum fundamental to our mental health.   Composers, playwrights and filmmakers have used leitmotifs, signposts in music, to transform characters and drive ideas and emotions across narratives. Simply stated, it’s a musical idea that recurs and transforms. While this concept dates back to ancient times in Mesopotamian, Chinese and Greek Drama and  Philosophy, it gained traction in the 19th Century operas of German composer E.T.A. Hoffman who was a major influence on Richard Wagner. The operas of Wagner were milestones in the utilization of leitmotifs but he died just before the invention of cinema, where the integration of sight, sound and narrative enabled the leitmotif to soar. Below are just a few links to help us explore this in opera and cinema. 
​
But why leave this concept to the consumption of the arts? We can enrich our own transformations by incorporating leitmotifs into our daily lives. As we engage with the power of music throughout the day, we can use this concept to transform isolated building blocks into a cohesive whole, to create a soundtrack to the soul. It can help us integrate various aspects of our life, whether work, relationships, dining, exercising, even our dreams and goals, into a greater harmony.  It can also help us understand the duality of human nature, the acknowledgement of darker forces that contrast with and  serve to define our morality.  In the case of Wagner, these concepts have sometimes fostered extremism, and we must recognize when music's hypnotic effects delude us.

I propose establishing a “Leitmotif of the Day” or week or month or however often we can focus on a musical idea. These are musical signposts that set tone and mood. They train us to hear how rhythms, melodies, and pitches create a cultural and emotional resonance. They can rise up spontaneously from the environment like a song on the radio or be painstakingly selected through research, but the best approach may be establishing a healthy flow between random and pre-conceived influences. These musical cues may stir memories, dreams and emotions, joyous or painful. Contrasting a piece of music with others or transforming compositions from orderly melodies to jazz improvisations, perhaps accenting them with polyrhythms may achieve a greater meaning and depth.