I don't pretend to have the musical background of David Lahm, whose musical prowess I have witnessed and delighted in first hand; and I'm sure that despite my musical training, there are many here who are more advanced than I... but I have to object to the objections to Joni's statement about her later work being more melodic and more harmonically complex. For me, the major distinguishing characteristic between her "early" and "later" work (for me, the sea change begins to occur with C&S/HOSL, and is firmly in place by Hejira) is that her early work has the overt, overarching melodic lines one would associate with European music, particularly 19th century art songs, as well as the American "folk" sensibility; and that her later work deals more with internal melody: internal tensions, internal dissonances and internal resolutions -- which is, in fact, much more African than her earlier work (her earlier work could only be described as African in her occasional use of bluesy ! bent notes, etc. -- a superficial African attribute.) The end result is that we may hear in her later work an increase in "texture," but in my view, "texture" is code for more complex melodic structures. The prevalence of major and minor seconds, both in her tunings, in her chords and in her melodies increases drastically; the result is more complex colorations and more complex emotional response, despite the comparative reduction in "vertically" challenging melodies. I would argue that people consider her later work less melodic because they focus on the relative absence of soaring melodies of the "Song to a Seagull" ilk; in addition, the emotional complexity of her structures produces subconscious ambivalence or even confusion, but this is only because we are not used to having our ears taxed in that way. A quick listen to some key traditions in world music will illustrate how comparatively destitute the western aural palette is, apart from true blues & jazz (this comp! arative destitution can largely be blamed on the dominance of! equal te ning systems adopted in the 18th and 19th centuries, and western music's consequent abandonment of just intonation); and to me, one of her great triumphs in music is helping to create an increased tolerance and appreciation of dissonance and complex colors in western pop music. We all know that she should be more openly celebrated than she is (if I have to watch Dylan get worshipped for caterwauling nonsense on one more televised awards ceremony, I will pull out my hair), but I think that we are not clear on WHY. Yes, she is a brilliant poet and a brilliant composer; she has sung the soundtrack to our lives; and she has always been ahead of her time; but I think that the actual, core reasons WHY she is ahead of her time are not clearly understood. My contention is that she HAS become more melodically complex with time, and that it is her evolving harmonic and melodic complexity that is her major contribution -- not her confessional lyrics, nor her "female" point of view.
:-) Kay Ashley -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ .
