Music has a lot of power. It can make you laugh, it can make you cry, it can bring back memories long forgotten and it can help you create new ones. I love music and my tastes are about as eclectic as they come. Music of any type or genre can be enjoyed if it speaks to you in just the right way. My parents brought me up to give any and all music a try, if I liked it: great, if not: that's fine too. I played a few instruments as a kid, primarily the flute and piccolo and I played in a variety of styles and ensembles from chamber orchestras to marching bands. As an adult, I'm more of a listener than a player. I listen to all sorts of music, everything from classical to rock to hip-hop and jazz with a few detours into Bhangra and world music. I listen to music while doing just about everything in my life; I listen when I run, when I drive, when I work and when I do yoga. But one aspect of my life has continued to be completely music-free, in a word: meditation. Before learning to meditate formally, I think I did use music as a kind of "proto-meditation" during which I'd use a cleverly crafted playlist to help cheer me up (or, as a teenager, to stay pissed off at just about everybody). But, once I became a regular meditator, I learned to turn the mp3 player off and just sit with my thoughts and whatever sounds just happen to waft in. Lately, I've been listening to a series of podcasts on Music and the Brain and it got me wondering about meditation with music. If you do a google or itunes search, a variety of sites come up offering music for everything from relaxation and sleep to yoga and meditation. To be honest, I'd never taken these types of things seriously. As I see it, if you want to meditate, all you really need is your own breath and your mind. Why bother buying these "meditation" CDs? Do they work? Or, do they just provide a distraction to help you space out instead of facing the tough thoughts that can churn up in meditation? On Monday, I decided to find out. So, I downloaded a few tracks of meditation music and sat down for my evening zazen with my headphones on. I listened to music for the first 10min or so of my usual daily sit for the rest of the week. This is what I found: I started out the week listening to tracks from the "Enhanced Healing" podcast (music for relaxation, meditation and stress relief) but by mid-week I'd switched to a quickmix of some of my more "chill" Pandora stations. Throughout the week, I meditated with a variety of musical styles. Some of the tracks I meditated with were instrumental while others had lyrics both in English and in other languages that I did not understand. My little experiment was very interesting and (dare I say it?) enlightening. My going in position was that music would basically become a distraction and that meditating with music wasn't really meditation at all. However, as I reflect on my experience over the past week, I think the answer is more complicated than that. I think most of us have had some experience of how music can affect our minds and our mood. I remember driving home from work one day and Kanye West's "Family Business" came up on my playlist; I'd heard the song probably thirty times but for some reason, that day it brought me to tears. I was just driving along and something in that song connected with a little part of me that was missing home and family and I found myself crying quite unexpectedly. Scientific research has shown that music can and does affect how the brain functions. Music theapy has been prescribed for a variety of conditions from depression and anxiety to Parkinson's and Alzheimers. At the same time, I'd suspect that the majority of people reading this blog have also had some experience of how meditation also affects our minds and our mood. I know I can tell multiple stories of sitting in me

Delta blues music was first recorded in the late 1920s. The earliest recordings were by the major labels and consist mostly of one person singing and playing an instrument, though the use of a band was more common during live performances. Some of these recordings were made on field trips to the South by record company talent scouts, but some Delta blues performers were invited to travel to northern cities to record. According to Dixon & Godrich [media] , Tommy Johnson and Ishman Bracey were recorded by Victor on that company's second field trip to Memphis, in 1928. Robert Wilkins was first recorded by Victor in Memphis in 1928, and Big Joe Williams and Garfield Akers also in Memphis (1929) by Brunswick/Vocalion. Son House first recorded in Grafton, Wisconsin (1930) by Paramount. Charley Patton also recorded for Paramount in Grafton, in June 1929 (and again, at the same location in May 1930). In January and February 1934 Patton visited New York City for further recording sessions. Robert Johnson travelled to San Antonio (1936) and Dallas (1937) for his ARC, and only, sessions. Subsequently, the early Delta blues (as well as other genres) were extensively recorded by Alan Lomax, who criss-crossed the Southern US recording music played and sung by ordinary people. His recordings number in the thousands, and now reside in the Smithsonian Institution. According to Dixon & Godrich (1981) and Leadbitter & Slaven (1968), Alan Lomax and the Library of Congress researchers did not record any Delta bluesmen (or women) prior to 1941, when he recorded Son House & Willie Brown near Lake Cormorant, Mississippi, and Muddy Waters at Stovall, Mississippi. "Delta blues" is a style as much as a geographical appellation: Skip James and Elmore James, who were not born in the Delta, were considered Delta blues musicians. Performers traveled throughout the Mississippi Delta, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, and Tennessee. Eventually, Delta blues spread out across the country, giving rise to a host of regional variations, including Chicago and Detroit blues. Scholars disagree as to whether there is a substantial, musicological difference between blues that originated in this region and in other parts of the country. The defining characteristic of Delta blues is instrumentation and an emphasis on rhythm and "bottleneck" slide; the basic harmonic structure is not substantially different from that of blues performed elsewhere. The Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman Farm was an important influence on several blues musicians who were imprisoned there, and was referenced in songs such as Bukka White's 'Parchman Farm Blues' and the folk song 'Midnight Special'. Thus Delta blues can refer to one of the first pop-music subcultures as well as to a performing style. This style of blues heavily influenced British Blues which led to the birth of early hard rock and heavy metal. By some, the term "Delta Blues" itself is seen as an invented "authenticity" mainly constructed by white folk revivalists in post-war times. Their "perception of the music’s authentic contours is rural, male, non-commercial, and permeated by sorrow." By this, they erase a large part of a supposedly 'inauthentic' history of the blues, especially sexual song.

Along with it's Jazz counterpart, is the only true American music form. Blues has it's deepest roots in the work songs of the West African slaves in the South. During their back-breaking work in the fields of the Southern plantation owners, black slaves developed a "call and response" way of singing to give rhythm to the drudgery of their servitude. These "field hollers" served as a basis of all blues music that was to follow. Following the end of the Civil war, black men had few options other than back-breaking manual field labor or becoming a traveling minstrel. Many chose the occupation of traveling minstrel playing raucous, all-night country dances, fish-frys, and jukejoints. These musicians relied on their physical stamina and mental repertoire of many blues songs. Although the lyrics of many blues songs are soulful and melancholy, the music as a whole is a powerful, emotive and rhythmic music celebrating the life of black Americans. The lyrics of the songs reflected daily themes of their lives including: sex, drinking, railroads, jail, murder, poverty, hard labor and love lost. Although it is difficult to pin down, one of the first documented blues to be written is W.C. Handy's " Memphis Blues" written in 1909. The popularity of country blues grew among Southern black folks during the teens and 1920's. During the late 1920's, with the advent of the 78 RPM phonograph, some of the more popular country blues artists were recorded by Paramount , Aristocrat and other record labels. During 1941-1943 the famous blues folklorist Alan Lomax made field recordings of bluesmen in their surroundings. This important body of work served to expose white folks to the blues, as well as give the fledgling artists exposure to national, yet segregated record labels. During the Great depression, blacks migrated north along the route of the Illinois Central Railroad toward Chicago. They brought with them blues music, and soon the sound of it filled rowdy urban nightclubs. To compensate for the loud crowds and bigger venues, some of the more inventive performers such as Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, made the switch to electric guitars and added drum sets to their bands. This new electric Chicago blues was more powerful than its predecessor. Blues fell somewhat out of popular favor until the late 1950's. In 1958 The Kingston Trio recorded the number 1 hit, Tom Dooley ,and gave birth to the folk revival. For seven years, from 1959-1966, the Newport Folk Festival reintroduced folk and blues music to a mainstream white American audience. After this time, blues was increasingly merged with rock music to form the rock blues bands of the 1960's and 70's. The Rolling Stones, John Mayall, Led Zeppelin and others carried on the noble tradition of their forefathers, the blues minstrels.

Jazz is the art of expression set to music! Jazz is said to be the fundamental rhythms of human life and man’s contemporary reassessment of his traditional values. Volumes have been written on the origins of jazz based on black American life-styles. The early influences of tribal drums and the development of gospel, blues and field hollers seems to point out that jazz has to do with human survival and the expression of life. The origin of the word "jazz" is most often traced back to a vulgar term used for sexual acts. Some of the early sounds of jazz where associated with whore houses and "ladies of ill repute." However, the meaning of jazz soon became a musical art form, whether under composition guidelines or improvisation, jazz reflected spontaneous melodic phrasing. Those who play jazz have often expressed the feelings that jazz should remain undefined, jazz should be felt. "If you gotta ask, you’ll never know" ---Louis Armstrong. The standard legend about jazz is that it was conceived in New Orleans and moved up the Mississippi River to Memphis, St. Louis and finally Chicago. Of course that seems to be the history of what we now refer to as jazz, however, the influences of what led to those early New Orleans sounds goes back to tribal African drum beats and European musical structures. "Jazz, like any artistic phenomenon, represents the sum of an addition. The factors of this addition are, to my mind, African music, French and American music and folklore." ---Robert Goffin, 1934. In reviewing the background of jazz one can not overlook the evaluation over the decades and the fact that jazz spanned many musical forms such as spirituals, cakewalks, ragtime and the blues. Around 1891 a New Orleans barber named Buddy Bolden reputedly pitcked up his cornet and blew the first stammering notes of jazz, thereby unconsciously breaking with several centuries of musical tradition. A half-century later, jazz, America’s great contribution to music, crossed the threshold of the universities and became seriously, even religiously considered. Jazz functions as popular art and has enjoyed periods of fairly widespread public response, in the "jazz age" of the 1920s, in the swing era of the late 1930s and in the peak popularity of modern jazz in the late 1950s. Beginning in the 20s and continuing well into the 30s, it was common to apply the word "jazz" rather indiscriminately, melodically or tonally. Thus George Gershwin was called a jazz composer. For Gershwin’s concert work he was acclaimed to have made a respectable art form out of jazz. Somewhat similarly, Paul Whiteman, playing jazz-influenced dance music, was billed as the King of Jazz. Perhaps the broader definition of jazz, such as the one that would include the blues influence as well as those who shared our understanding of the art form, even if they did not perform it, would be the most useful historical approach. "It has always intrigued me, that people like Ma Rainey, Al Jolson and Guy Lombardo are considered a part of jazz history, but they are!" ---Les Paul, 1994. The influence and development of the blues can not be over looked when discussing the early years of jazz. "The blues as such are synonymous with low spirits. Blues music is not. With all its so called blue notes and overtones of sadness, blues music of its very nature and function is nothing if not a form of diversion." ---Albert Murray. Those feelings as expression of blues music fits very comfortably with the strains and phrases of jazz. Today, Bessie Smith is considered primarily a blues singers, however in the 1920s, she was most often referred to as a jazz singer. An ability to play the blues has been a requisite of all jazz musicians, who on first meeting one another or when taking part in a jam session, will often use the blues framework for improving. Blues, stemming fro

The Beach Boys are an American rock band. Formed in 1961, the group gained popularity for its close vocal harmonies and lyrics reflecting a Southern California youth culture of cars and surfing. Brian Wilson's growing creative ambitions later transformed them into a more artistically innovative group that earned critical praise and influenced many later musicians. [media] The group was initially composed of singer-musician-composer Brian Wilson, his brothers, Carl and Dennis, their cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine. This core quintet, along with early member David Marks and later bandmate Bruce Johnston, were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Class of 1988. The Beach Boys have often been called "America's Band" [media] [media] [media] , and Allmusic.com has stated that "the band's unerring ability... made them America's first, best rock band." [media] The group has had thirty-six U.S. Top 40 hits (the most of any U.S. rock band) and fifty-six Hot 100 hits, including four number one singles. [media] Rolling Stone magazine listed The Beach Boys as one of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. [media] According to Billboard, in terms of singles and album sales, The Beach Boys are the No. 1-selling American band of all time. [media]