Why do we love music?

By Christophe Gervot, December 9, 2019.

Why do we love music ?

I ask myself this question, first of all, as a music lover : CD buyer, spectator of concerts and music shows, dance, streaming lover, downloads, listeners of some radio stations and even spectator of some music tv channels.

The forms of our "consumption" of music are evolving. For my part, they started at the time of the 45 tours and 33 vinyl tours and the k7, times also of what we all called « walkman », in my teens, that of some radio shows in France, and a Saturday evening TV program, which presented to us various musical movements gathered around the signifier " rock ". They were "The children of rock".

Even though my first personal tastes, earlier in my history, while I was still listening to a French commercial radio, went from Pink Floyd to David Bowie and Bob Dylan, for international musicians, not to mention Rod Stewart and from Serge Gainsbourg to alain Bashung, Alain Chamfort and charlélie couture and Yves Simon, for the French, satisfied me when the radio gave us, I didn't really buy music. From time to time I was offered albums (The dark side of the moon, The wall, by Pink Floyd...) and I also offered myself : almost all the Pink Floyd albums I could find at the supermarket in vinyl, U2 ( War), Jean-Michel Jarre (The magnetic fields), Kate Bush (The dreaming)...

Later on, thanks to a public radio show, when I had enough of the advertising, I discovered less-known musicians in France. And I also discovered a store in town, a record store that sold everything that music had of independent musicians in their way of making music : from Cocteau Twins to Everything But The Girl, from Martin Stephenson to the Waterboys, from Carmel to Tom Waits.

While I was studying the applied arts in this city, I had a friend who made me discover his favorite musicians, who became mine, most of them: Japan and David Sylvian, Ryuichi Sakamoto, but also soon, Billie Holiday, John Coltrane... I made him discover Laurie Anderson at the time of the movie "Home of the brave".

Leaving a year later to study modern languages, I decided to stop my classical piano studies. In this city, I kept writing, a short story, poems, taking some photos, I was studying of course, and I discovered Claude Nougaro. The taste of French texts had come back to me, or happened, after years listening to English or American music.

Anyway... many years later, I started to buy CDs, and now to download and to stream. I keep all these references as mine, and I discovered some others, like a surprise at a specific time in my life when many things had changed: French rappers, like La Fouine, Lacrim, Orelsan, Canardo, the slameur Grand Corps Malade, and some American references I know less. I discovered French rap late, in 2012, and enjoyed its words because they talk about the reality, sometimes difficult, of life in France for these artists who often represent a neighborhood, a suburbs, a city... Where they came from, and the people who live there.

I love rap as I liked Serge Gainsbourg, Alain Chamfort,, thanks to the lyrics too.

What I love about English pop, in American music I know, up to the minimalist and / or contemporary music of Philip Glass, John cage, Steve Reich or Arvo Part, is music research, the searching for the originality of sounds, rhythms, instrumentation.

Why do we love music?

I ask myself this question, finally, as a composer :

This originality, all these musicians and lyricists, they also owe it, as I owe it, we owe it, to our singular stories, to our influences, the people we meet. But if we are too, it is probably that we bring our share of creation, of somethig new.

Christophe Gervot, musician, writer, concept artist, psychoanalyst, translator and trainer.