one drop (the importance of musical education)

it’s half-term, horsemouth was out drinking and making music til late and he now faces a little bit of work in the afternoon (he also needs to go and recover his diary). no hangover to report.

horsemouth was thinking about music education - at school he never received any but later the LEA enabled him to study with guitarist folo graff of orchestre jazira at jenako arts in the balls pond road in hackney.

he was watching footage of students of hackney bsix college making music (tarrus riley’s one drop - nice crisp drumming horsemouth must say - and a portuguese rap crew getting evil on the mean streets of stamford hill) and growing sentimental (bless the youth).

horsemouth was also thinking about the hymn singing (possibly the one bit of music that escaped the fact that horsemouth wasn’t quite posh enough for music lessons in the valleys of south wales in the 70ies) - it was a bit of a mixture of the good solid victorian (once in royal david’s city, all through the night and welsh language variants ar hyd y nos etc.) and the evangelical happy clappy (kumbayah). there was probably some separation between the CofE anglicanism and the hymnody of ‘chapel’ (but horsemouth couldn’t tell you much about it). the hymns he didn’t learn then he’s learning now how great thou art, power in the blood, peace in the valley.

there was one lesson of music a week for one year taught to all the students (by the clearly disgruntled music teacher) but it did at least provide horsemouth with the basics of learning to read music (giving something for him to build on later).