Stromae: Life Lessons

Despite having a specialized music education behind his shoulders and years of musician’s career, this young man from Belgium entered the world music stage quite all of a sudden and conquered people’s affection with his first really popular single “Alors on Danse” (fr. “and then we dance”).

Stromae (Paul van Haver)

Paul van Haver (Stromae’s real name) switched from rap to electro and pop to “evolve”, according to his words. And he did, changing his stage name from ‘opsmaestro’ to ‘stromae’ (inversion) and soon becoming a real stylish 'Paris Dandy' singing about what moved people deep in their hearts. I’ve always been into classical kind of stuff, particularly music but I do find the creative work of this man interesting and not devoid of a new exquisite flair.

Unfortunately, today’s Pop music genre has widely turned into a “I-love-you-do-do-do” empty-ish kind of thing that doesn’t have much about it except the catchy music that is soon forgot. Good lyrics and pop music is not a combo commonly met. After getting acquainted more with Stromae’s work I quite liked the idea behind his music. He calls himself artistically a pessimist but the idea is to talk about the worse and expect the best to come, maybe that’s why the topics raised in his songs usually touch the most controversial themes of the society. They are like life lessons that are taught through music. Thus, matters hit are violence, peace, family break-up, despair, life losses, child’s up-bringing. All that is something that relates to people, as they faced some of that in their lives. “Papaoutai” song (fr. “Dad where are you”) quite particularly touched me, the more effect when you watch a video to it. A boy trying to communicate with his motionless mannequin-like father but in the end becoming as rigid as he is. The background of the song is quite sad, it did consider Paul’s own father who was Rwandan and was killed during the genocide.

All of Stromae’s songs bear that meaningful accent and are small masterpieces in themselves. I do wish this man further inspiration for creation such wonderful music works.

Year 2013 in Music: What's New?

This spectacular year of the Snake is almost over and the Horse is waiting to take over the post and become the symbol of the oncoming year 2014. It’s exciting to see what it will bring, but before it’s officially here let’s have a brief look at the slipping-away 2013 and go through some of the music events it gave us, both positive and sad. So what do we have here?

Music Events 2013
Some of them include getting back on stage of David Bowie, Fall Out Boy; leaving the stage of My Chemical Romance, Jonas Brothers, Attack Attack. Such events as the 33rd Brit Awards (Feb 21), Eurovision (May 14-18), Ruisrock rock festival in Turku, Pori Jazz Festival took place.

Concerts 2013
Among the brightest concerts are Depeche Mode world tour, Pink Floyd show in St. Petersburg, Green Day tour concerts, 30 Seconds to Mars Moscow show.

New Albums 2013
Artists keep recording new albums and there are way too many of them to enumerate but some pretty successful include Hurts’ Exile, Bowie’s The Next Day, OneRepublic’s Native, Bon Jovi’s What About Now, Lara Fabian’s Le Secret, Demi Lovato’s Demi, Placebo’s Loud Like Love, Moby’s Innocents, Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience, Miley Cyrus’ Bangerz, Katy Perry’s Prism, Lady Gaga’s Artpop, Robbie Williams’ Swing Both Ways and numerous others.

Anniversaries 2013
This year became a round date for the anniversaries of many outstanding composers. Among them: Wagner, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Brahms , Verdi.

Losses 2013
Unfortunately, this year was also marked by some sad events, when the world lost some of the really talented and remarkable people – Patti Page (American singer), Sammy Johnes (American country singer-songwriter), Pham Duy (Vietnamese songwriter), Van Cliburn (American pianist), Ray Manzarek (American musician, producer, songwriter, The Doors’ founder), Lou Reed (American rock musician, poet, The Velvet Underground founder), Maria Pachomenko (Russian and Soviet singer), Jimmy Fontana (Italian composer, actor and singer).

Let’s hope that 2014 will be full of new bright achievements and will pass with minimum reasons for being upset!

Christmas Music Time – Get Ready!

December is too far away you’ll say? Ah noo, of course not! Time will fly so fast that you will realize that Christmas is in fact right around the corner! And therefore, it’s about time to start choosing our Christmas music!

Perhaps every composer has at least once dedicated a music piece to this kind holiday. And every year brings more and more Christmas music by contemporary composers who pay it a special attention. However, taking a glance at the history we see that it was not always like that. On the contrary, it used to be in quite the opposite way back in the Middle Ages, say. To begin with, ‘Christmas music’ was a mix of manifold genres like hymns, litanies, carols, chants and it was something purely religious. And above that, it used to be considered sinful and was thus strictly prohibited by Puritans and the Parliament to be sung ‘popularly’ up till the 17th century.

Luckily the situation is different today – the more music, the better. The fun thing is that ‘Christmas time’ is in fact a few weeks before the holiday itself and one or two weeks after it. But it tends to be significantly stretched today, for a couple of reasons. First of all, in most countries (and especially in the US) Christmas is an economy-buster, time for lots of shopping and general expenses. As for music, the radio stations for example are competing for being the first to announce the Christmas time start – it is believed that the first radio station to do it will win more listeners as they prefer to stick with the season-changing leader. That’s why in some places Christmas creep begins right after the Halloween is over!

So many favorite melodies widely recognized today, from ancient carols like O Holy Night to the lively Jingle Bells, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas or All I Want for Christmas Is You and so on. For those who celebrate Christmas ‘musically’ too – here are some lovely carols to sing along to. Get ready!

"Who You Gonna Call? Ghostbusters!"

Less than two weeks left till one of the most mysterious holidays so loved by not just teenagers but also grown-ups and kids – Halloween. The time when witches and all the dark forces get out to this world and celebrate the ball. Fancy dresses everywhere, a lot of ketchup blood, drawn scars and of course scary music all around.

But Halloween music isn’t always about some creepy sounds and zombie groans. There have been a lot of scores dedicated to this holiday that are not somber at all. Having a certain amount of joking to it, Halloween is the time of fun, humor and mimicry. Some works written and filmed for it became huge hits just on their own, let’s remember Michael Jackson’s Thriller video at least – masterpiece!

As little kids, most of were a bit scared of and charmed by the other worlds, ghosts and external forces. And that is why movies dedicated to those phenomena were especially popular. One of such movies is Ghostbusters with its unforgettable theme song that we remember even after many years. The film score to Ghostbusters was composed by Elmer Bernstein, and the catchy song written by Ray Parker, Jr. It is believed that the famous song added about $20 million to the movie’s box office success. And the video to the song made it to #1 at MTV.

Young and Beautiful (Lana Del Rey)

Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful

Will you still love me when I got nothing but my aching soul…

They say youth is the most carefree time of our life, full of passion, enthusiasm and, of course, love. The time when it seems that none of that will ever end. But will it not? The apprehension of the inevitable aging and the changes it will bring is a strong emotional message conveyed through the recent song by the young and sensual American singer Elizabeth Woolridge Grant – or Lana Del Rey.

This alternative rock ballad performed by the dreamy Lana Del Rey was a long-awaited and quite an expected song for the charming singer’s fans. The song was recorded as the soundtrack to one of the most stunning recent movies “The Great Gatsby” – a TV-version of the same-named novel by Francis Scott Fitzgerald. Like movie like soundtrack – both well-received by the critics. Even though in most music journals “Young and Beautiful” was called a very somber song, a haunting one, it was acknowledged to perfectly fit the idea. Moreover, Lana’s unique vocals polished with еру early 20’s music style worked a good picture, helping to express the whole nostalgia, despair and tragedy in the movie.  The song was Lana Del Rey’s first single to get into the major US music chart, to the Top 10 best tracks. 

The popularity of Del Rey’s original style was thus preserved and passed on from her previous hit song “Video Games”.  

A Little Treasure for Piano Students

Some composers managed to get famous right from the first masterpieces, others got recognition only after death, and some great minds never got a chance to be revealed to the world despite their talent. It’s always a wonderful discovery when another genius gets ‘dug out’ of the history’s treasures. Ernst Levy was no doubt one of such precious findings.

Ernst Levy at work

Levy is first of all a prodigy Swiss pianist, and performing was what he was primarily admired for in his lifetime. But he was an amazing composer too, as well as a teacher in demand. After Levy left for the USA, a couple of universities offered him a teaching position, and he had to agree only for the necessity to earn money for living. How surprising it was when it turned out that during those years Ernst Levy composed Fifty Pieces for Piano Students. And not just a simple set of educational pieces but a work that is no less amazing than Bartok’s Miscrocosm. The manuscripts were long-lost in the dust of Basel Library until they were found and digitalized. How this wonderful edition is available online.

Piano teachers and students – for your attention!

Hometown Glory

So many words of appraisal and admiration have been said about one of the most successful young singers recently – Adele. Now observing her commercial and non-commercial success it’s hard to think that there are singles that were not ‘great’ from the very beginning – everything seems gorgeous. The author of well-known hits like “Someone Like You”, “Skyfall”, “Rolling In The Deep” and others, was usually torn apart by the public in applause. But some of Adele’s songs had their own long-ish struggle for fame and acknowledgement.

Adele

“Hometown Glory” is no doubt one of such compositions.  It was written for Adele’s first album “19” when the singer was being convinced by her mum to leave her native town and go to study in a university in London. So strong was the girl’s love for her hometown and so ardent the unwillingness to leave it that she composed a song about it in just 10 minutes.  The music work was hardly noticed then – only 500 copies were created and only due to the overall success of the “19” did the song manage to get into some UK charts.

However, after the re-release of the song in 2008 (as a debut single for the US market) the glory found the “Hometown Glory”: it immediately got into the UK Top 40, was used in numerous popular TV series, got a Grammy in 2010 and became one of Adele’s biggest hits, joining the list of other masterpieces.