Sometimes I think the music industry I work in – or is it try to work in – is like a sinking ship.
It never gives back to those who help built it, sometimes honor a poor soul still clinging to the sails, but mostly it is hell-bent on its own destruction.
All caution to the wind, sails ahoy even when those on the side can see it is heading for a fall.
I work in a small part of a massive, worldwide musical web, but what is true in the small sense mostly is true in the bigger picture too.
No difference, the scale is just bigger.
The problem is attitude. We all want to get ahead of each other.
We are a squirming mass of albeit arty bodies that’s on top of each other hissing and spitting and scratching eyes out – to make music, to create art. The absolute irony. Maybe that is why we have created louder and louder music – lol.
The arts are symbolic of our global consciousness.
Don’t think it is only us doing that.
It is the barometer of the collective human soul.
A true artist lives for their art.
It is a passion like love that you cannot flee. You are smitten.
An artist colors in life, connect the dots others can just feel, but never see until the picture is paint, the song is sung, the movie screened.
How massive is the impact we can make!
How is that we still don’t understand that what is most important in life is to be in tune? In harmony.
Color my world is part of the theme of our presentation for a festival in Mossel Bay in February 2020.
It is part of the community building we do through the power of arts.
Many artists I know will gladly give their time to uplift and love and even then our efforts are not perfect nor always selfless.
Yet it still is the money-fame-fortune-power-hunger attitudes that take off the brakes and hurl the ship that so many careful hands helped built in the past, into the chaos.
No giving back to any of the art work we mishandle this truly human splendor into a money-making conscious raping weapon of destruction that leaves no room for the fine art of beauty we are here to celebrate.
No space, no time, no peace, no true joy just stress and exclusivity.
Life is chasing a wind the preacher said.
I think we miss the point of the essence of living and maintain that in South Africa we will find common ground in our arts.
Life is a fight to the death and sometimes we get a glimpse of another reality.
“Wat in hierdie lewe rakelings by my verby is”.
“Voluit Mens” from my album “Weergaloos”
Sometimes we get a glimpse of what could be in a painting, a song or a dance.
For some that is all they need to make a change.
Perhaps if we found our rhythm we could dance?
I am certainly doing all I can to make that happen.
