The beat has changed. I know this because of my vantage point on Carrie Rose at the mouth of Montrose Harbor. All summer I listen to powerboats full of partygoers coming and going. The pace quickens as the summer moves on. It does not take much to discourage this reverie, and restore peace and quiet: a few clouds, a temperature below 85 and they disappear. But while it is warm and sunny their presence is hard to ignore.
I have been sitting here on one boat or another for 15 years, and only just this year—2010—do I notice that the primal rhythm has changed, become simpler. It is as if the more complex our society becomes, the simpler its rhythm.
This is not universally true. Anyone who listens, or tries to listen to modern classical music can attest to this. I am speaking here of popular culture, or at fifty-seven, what I perceive it to be.
I cannot say I like the new beat any better than the old, but I can say that my foot starts to automatically fall in with it, as do my hips. Not a pretty sight I know, the latter moving somewhat reluctantly these days unlike the gyrating twenty-something’s passing by.
Over the years from my perch I have listened to Sinatra, folk, rock, heavy metal, grunge, a lot of Jimmy Buffet, and now, I am not sure what to call it without sounding foolish, maybe hip-hop or rap. For all I know these terms are passé.
It is an unadorned beat felt in your gut. The beat appears to be the focal point despite the lugubrious voices that accompany the music. Change the words and keep the beat, and I doubt it will alter much on the boats that parade by on any warm summer afternoon.
Prior to the sun reaching it's zenith the boats quietly depart, only to exuberantly return around happy hour. I can set my clock by the regularity of it. As I see them return I often treat myself to a glass of wine, and sit back to watch the show. The beat may or may not continue on into the night, the only requisite being a Monday off.
I am not singling out power boaters here. After all I am one, but it is only powerboats that exhibit these traits. Sail boaters are too busy husbanding their electrons to spare the watts needed for such sonic displays. And display it is. No different than a peacock, though it seems to be the women of our species that are most involved. Though we are an equal opportunity harbor and there are plenty of boats with rainbow colored flags strutting their stuff.
Is the beat universal, I think yes. Is the beat drowning out ethnic beats, I think yes to that to. Despite the popularity of world music, my impression is that ethnic music may be more popular in the west than in the countries of origin. But then again I am no expert, just an observer with an opinion.
Several years ago the Japanese consulate helped sponsor traditional art forms. The one that sticks with me, because of the beat and the tayu (the voice), as unfathomable as it was, is bunraku. I cannot begin to describe the impact the music made on me, and how utterly different it was from what I am accustomed to.
The tayu performed with such vigor, such intensity and with such feeling that only an operatic soprano or tenor can compare. It left me speechless and in tears even though I had only a vague sense of the words. This has happened before: Puccini’s operas Turandot and Tosca, Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending and Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, to mention a few.
All these grab at my soul. I can understand Puccini’s affect on me. He was after all from Lucca, my father’s ancestral home in Italy. But bunraku, where does that come from. It does not matter. Culture transcends borders, and that is why I do not try to suppress my foot tapping and my hips swaying with the beat of music I will never relish.
The visuals and sounds fade as the boats move back into the harbor but the beat remains. It is as if they are deserting the beat. Leaving it to mingle with the other sounds in the harbor and to linger in my mind.
Volume 5816 (4), 7/23/2010
