For our debut in Sonic Exchange, we have the profound, Chisom as our co-curator, offering insight on the power that sound has to offer us.
Sonic Exchange is my desire to learn and hopefully, a lesson to all those reading too. In fact, all of GNARLY is. And sometimes it just feels as though we as humans underestimate growth in ways that are so unimaginable. And i feel like that underestimation can be seen through our response to music as well.
Everything feels the same: safe, contained and a perfectly followed formula with no broken bounds whatsoever. There is no substance and there is no life bred into the very essense of music.
Chisom made me realise something in our conversation. When asked about what brought upon the desire to learn more about sound, this was the response:
“My desire to learn more about sound on the other hand, came from realizing how it’s everywhere, beyond just instruments, it’s in footsteps, birdsong, rainfall,conversations...just everywhere. I see music as both self-expression and shared experience, because we’re all mirrors reflecting each other.”
What i found particularly profound about this was the fact that it did breed some realisations to me that sound is ,indeed , the response to life. From the voices that come out of our mouths to the footsteps and the way the wind blows, music is a universal language explicitely heard by those who allow themselves to sit down and listen.
“My desire to learn more about music comes from a need to heal, music heals you the moment you put it on. There’s a song for every mood, and it amplifies what we already feel and that's a wonderful thing, i can't imagine what the world would be like without it.”
-Chisom
“Music comes from a need to heal…”
Historically sounds and frequencies have been used to heal. Whether spiritually or physically, the power held by a bunch of vibrations in synchronicity is bigger than a tune that enters through your head and scratches your brain in a good way.
They are a mirror to the hidden corners of yourself, as Chisom described. A way to see and to learn and to come to terms with stuff. A way to allow vulnerability to seep in and a way to tell a story sonically, sometimes even without the use of words. “Music comes from a need to heal and heals you the moment you put it on.”
That notion comes alive from Chisom’s top picks for our playlist, with Fela Kuti’s raw political and consciously unconscious, spirit mind and body rambling power in music and James Blake’s electronic stratosphere, where the introspection of R&B collides with the textures of UK electronic and house.
Check out the playlist:
CREDITS
Photograph: @sam_abstract
Chi, I was not famillair wiff your game x