When faced with all of the blather that goes on about music on the internet I’m often left wondering if the people who spend so much of their valuable time tearing artists and other music “fans” down for various reasons on blogs and message boards even like music all that much. I’m forced to wonder this because I love music. I have since I was a little kid. Before things like comic books, movies, religion, philosophy, anthropology, history, computers and the internet came into the picture music and dance were my first real “interests,” and they’ve remained so as I’ve grown up and officially begun to grow “old.” I love music regardless of genre-labels or scene-affiliation. Music is what gets me through the day when my bank account is empty, my rent is late, my bills are due, and some woman just broke my heart. I don’t care if it’s “cool,” “uncool,” popular, obscure, part of some new hyphenated sub-genre, associated with some sub-cultural “movement,” too “Black,” too “white,” too “Gay,” too ignorant, too intellectual, or if it’s some “hipster shit.” All I care about is if the music affects me in some way. All that matters is if it makes me smile, laugh, cry, want to dance, nod my head, or anything other than turn it off.
The most powerful reaction I can have to music though is to want to share it with other people. My first experience with such a desire was hearing Hip-Hop disc jockeys cutting, scratching and mixing different records, and even totally different styles of music, together. I wanted to do that. And by the time I reached the age of 11 I had taught myself how. Not too long after that I discovered college radio, where I heard everything from X-Clan to K.D. Lang, Cannonball Adderly to Masters at Work, Suicidal Tendencies to The Cure, often in the span of a couple of hours. I wanted to do that too. And after a number of false-starts and half-hearted attempts I eventually put that plan into action as well, volunteering six-plus hours a week of my time to community broadcasting so I could play Cannibal Ox right after Björk if I wanted to, and give the music I love the chance to reach more real listeners. In the interim I bought a lot of records, I made a lot of mixtapes, and I found the internet, discovering a technology that made it possible not only to discover new music, but to share the music I love (among other things) with a diverse group of strangers using text, images and the music itself like some futuristic mixed-media version of a mixtape. And every month for the last seven years I’ve sunk my own money into internet access and web hosting so I had a platform of my own to do just that.
Through it all my passion for music has been my only motivation. I don’t think I’m the best DJ, radio show host, or writer on the planet. I don’t think I’m particularly cool or hip. I’m just a guy who is unusually passionate about music. That’s all. And I can only assume it’s that passion that prompted the people here at Okayplayer to give me an even wider platform on which to share my passion for music with people. I’m grateful that they did. And I know that the artists who have sent me thank you messages because they saw a spike in visitors to their website, an increase in interest in their work, or better yet, a marked increase in sales of their music after receiving exposure on Blogarhythms are grateful too. Because real artists don’t care if people think they’re “hip” or “cool” or part of a “scene,” they only care that people are actually listening and hopefully sharing their passion for art enough to support them, with praise, or even better, a purchase of the fruit of their passion, their art. I’ve listened. I’ve shared their passion. I’ve been passionate about sharing their art. And I believe every artist I’ve covered on Blogarhythms has deserved to have someone who is truly passionate about their art present them to a wider audience in a passionate way.
I want the bands I like to be successful. I want them to sell records, concert tickets and merch. I want to see their songs on the iPods of people I’d never expect knew they existed. I want to hear their songs on what’s left of the radio. I want to be surprised when I hear, or even see, them in a television commercial. Better that than force them to toil in obscurity because internet douchebags are more concerned with things like labels, genres, coolness, exclusivity, authenticity and whether or not tolerating something outside of their sphere of reference will irrevocably alter their own self-image or their preconceived notions about others.
-El Keter
