THE POWER OF MUSIC ACCOMPANIED WITH A LIGHT SHOW by Gary Smolker

Values

Music is about our values.

Music is about our values as a country.

Music is about our values as an individual.

Our music is about who we are.

Friday Night June 15, 2018 Performances of

Chicago and REO SPEED WAGON at the Forum in

Inglewood, California

Friday night, June 15, 2018, I went to a Rock & Roll concert at the Forum in Inglewood, California.

   

REO Speed Wagon and Chicago each put on outstanding shows/performances.

Spiritual Power of Music

Throughout the concert the psychological and spiritual power of music was palatable.

Each song REO Speed Wagon and Chicago performed was performed with the emotional oratorical power of an outstanding preacher determined to resist oppression preaching a sermon re-reinforcing the strength of the human spirit reflected in the slave spirituals:

“Go down, Moses

Go down to Egyptland

Go tell ol’ Pharaoh,

Let my people go!”

Psychic and Spiritual Sustenance

• Music gives people psychic and spiritual sustenance.
• Music always fuels a rising tide of conscience and consciousness – social consciousness and racial consciousness.
• Music is a mighty force for social reform.
• The Music Performed at this concert promoted a personal sense of dignity, self-respect and pride.

Grace and Speed

REO Speed Wagon played meat and potatoes Rock & Roll with a message: “Don’t give up. Press on!” with “Blue Lights” and a blue light show going on in the background.

While performing, the REO Speed Wagon bandleader commented, “Listening to Rock & Roll keeps you young.”

Colors convey feelings, values, relationships, contrasts, dramas and tensions.

The REO SPEED WAGON Light Show

Color is a means of expression.

Color effects us.

Goethe wrote that “… a blue surface seems to recede from us … it draws us after it.”

Blue is linked with eternity, the beyond, supernatural beauty, religious transcendence, the spiritual and mental as contrasted with the emotional and physical and with detachment from the earthly.

Blue draws us into a meditative mood.

Blue cools and calms. It is the color of moonlight.

The Mind and Mood Altering Show Put on by Chicago

      

After the psychedelic images above were put on the screen other images which told a story in pictures which reflected what was going on and the mood of a strong active majority of young people and the public at large that prevailed in the United States during the 1960s.

Everyone over the age of 70 ought to go to a modern day rock concert, like the one I went to on Friday June 15, 2018, and reflect how things have changed and haven’t changed in the United States since the 1960s.

Everyone under the age of 70 ought to ask people over the age of 70 who lived in the United States in the 1960s what life was like in the United States in the 1960s, what the mood of the people was with respect to (1) the Vietnam War, (2) the Civil Rights Movement, (3) with respect to segregation, race relations, and Freedom Riders, (4) with respect to Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., (4) with respect to President John F. Kennedy, (5) with respect to the Space Program, the Moon Program, (6) with respect to the assassination of President Kennedy, (7) with respect to the assassination of Dr. King, (8) with respect to the Civil Rights Act, (9) with respect to the Voting Rights Act, (10) with respect to social reform and (11) with respect to America’s dissenting tradition.

I am a visual person.

My personal reaction to seeing the light show put on by Chicago while the Chicago band members were playing their musical instruments was that I felt like was in a time machine that had transported me me back to the United States in the 1960s when the Beatles invaded America, when I watched the Beatles perform, when I listened to newly released Beatles’ songs, what was going on in my mind while I was watching the Beatles’ movie “The Yellow Submarine”, how I felt and where I was and what I was doing when I heard that JFK had been assassinated, vivid memories of watching Vietnam Protestors protest, the light show reminded me of what it felt like to be fully personally aware of racial segregation, my feeling as I was witnessing non-violent civil rights protests, how I felt upon hearing that Martin Luther King had been assassinated, what I felt while I watched President Nixon resign, etc. etc.

The 1960s in America was a time of civil unrest but also a time of feeling we (Americans) could fix anything.

For many Americans (myself included) the 1960s was a time of hope, a time of optimism, a time of being idealistic and a time of idealism, social activism was rampant, massive public protests were ongoing and there was rising prosperity.

The light show put on while the band Chicago played its musical tunes, brought back all those memories to me.

Below are some of the scenes flashed on the screen behind Chicago as Chicago performed at the concert.

 

    

Dr. King delivered the historic keynote address we know as his “I Have A Dream” speech before the nationalized televised March on Washington on August 28, 1963. He received the 1964 Nobel Prize for Peace. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.

The alternative to violence is nonviolent resistance, made famous by Mohandas K. Gandhi, who used it to free India from the domination of the British empire in 1948 and made more famous in the 1960s by Martin Luther King’s leadership in a concentrated drive against injustice.

Laura Bush Speaks Out: Separating Children from their

parents at the border ‘breaks my heart.’

Laura Bush is a former first lady of the United States.

The following is my quotes of something written by Laura Bush on Father’s Day, June 17, 2018, which I read today in the “Washington Post.”

“I live in a border state.  I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel.  It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.

“Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso.  These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history…

“We Americans pride ourselves on being a moral nation, on being the nation that sends humanitarian relief to places devastated by natural disasters or famine or war.  We pride ourselves on believing that people should be seen for the content of their character, not the color of their skin.  We pride ourselves on acceptance.  If we are truly that country, then it is our obligation to reunite those detained children with their parents – and to stop separating parents and children in the first place.

“People on all sides agree that our immigration system isn’t working, but the injustice of zero tolerance is not the answer.  I moved away from Washington almost a decade ago, but I know there are good people at all levels of government who can do better to fix this….”

“In 2018, can we not as a nation find a kinder, more compassionate and more moral answer to this current crisis? I, for one, believe we can.”

Laura Bush, the performers and audience at the Friday, June 15, 2018 concert at the Forum, in Inglewood California, which I attended believe AMERICA CAN NOT ONLY BE GREAT BUT ALSO GOOD.

 

COPYRIGHT © 2018 by Gary Smolker