Blog 4
Music is food for the soul
music is food for the soul
I came up with this saying about five years ago, when I started to learn the guitar — though I'm sure others have arrived at the same words. Synchronicity! Anyway, I truly believe it, and I see it in life every day.
Music is phenomenal. It can change our moods. It creates events, and events are recalled through it. Memories are wrapped in music. It can make you fall in love. It can make your day. We turn to it when we have a broken heart, or when we're just sad, to drown our sorrows — or to lift us up. So much of our lives revolves around music. People will fly for miles to see their favourite band or artist play, sometimes for a single song. It brings us sanity, joy, tears, melancholy and happiness, and it makes us dance. Where would our souls be without music? How dull would this Earth be without the concerts to go to, or the music we hear watching TV, or a singer with a guitar or piano in a bar downtown? The title song can sometimes make or break a movie, and a good example was ‘Jaws’ with that scary tune that build up the excitement.
For me, I grew up listening to music of all kinds, though I had my preferences. My early influences were Bread, Uriah Heep, Black Sabbath, Ritchie Blackmore, Donna Summer, Rod Stewart and The Beatles. I bought their LPs with money I saved working on the streets, opening car doors at a famous local eating spot on Orchard Road, Singapore. Then came the next wave: Earth, Wind & Fire, The Eagles, Manhattan Transfer, The Chi-Lites, Elton John. Through the '80s I followed every hit song and spent hours dancing — and then came the golden days when disco hit the world, which really started with Saturday Night Fever and the Bee Gees. Did you know the Bee Gees never sang with their original voices?
Incredibly, the '80s and '90s saw a wave of Broadway stage hits come alive on the movie screen: Jesus Christ Superstar, Grease, Flashdance, Fame, Footloose and many more — and Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber, now a “Sir,” like Elton John and Paul McCartney. And of course, a special mention to the King of Pop across the decades — Michael Jackson. Coincidentally, he was born just three months before me, so I literally grew up during his era and related so much to his music as he broke records and created so many new things in music, dance and video. RIP, King MJ.
All of this fed my soul and kept me alive. It kept my sanity and gave me a way to escape my daily life and feel happy. If my school subjects were taught as a song, I think I would have got distinctions. I'm sure that when you hear a particular song from years ago, you remember where you were, who you were with, the life you had then — and you get a silent smile. Ah, the memories. Ha ha.