One thing I have noticed about my writing with regard to music is that I don’t have a consistent way of approaching an artist or a composition - I just spew out whatever comes off the top of my head. Freewriting is cool, but I need to brainstorm the best way I can approach writing about music so that there is some thematic and stylistic consistency.

First off, I need to figure out how to cite musical works in WordPress. None of my posts regarding Sun Ra or Fela have references to their recorded works. This is especially difficult with Sun Ra given that he released multiple versions of many of his tunes. In any event, I should at least include one citation per post. It’s the least I can do to help anyone reading my blog find an album.

This is, of course, in addition to the embedded YouTube videos. The Sun Ra videos on YouTube are limited, though. Most often they are fully commercial albums, while Sun Ra released a lot of self-produced recordings of rehearsals and concerts. The guy really had a handle on the business side of being a musician. Or, rather, his manager Alton Abraham had a handle on the business, though I would imagine that Sun Ra was still in charge.

Fela’s music is more straightforward in that he released albums with only two or three tunes on them. His whole thing was creating long-form, jazz inspired tunes with the improv coming before the vocal sections (he did release one or two instrumentals, such as “Dog Eat Dog”). Citing his recorded works will be easy because I have most of his albums on CD or as iTunes-purchased MP3s.

Again, citing these recorded works is the least I should do in terms of presenting commentary on an artist’s works. Other things I might write in a blog post are a list of featured musicians, the rough structure of a musical work, key centers (if any)…. Fela usually composed music in modal keys, especially Dorian. One of the things I have noticed from the online transcriptions of Fela’s tunes is that there is no sense of the kind or plateau-modal structure that Fela used. Some sort of simple lead sheet diagram of his compositions would be really helpful for musicians who aspire to playing his music. The full score transcriptions are very cool, but people who play Afrobeat are most likely not great readers (except maybe for horn players). Some sort of lead sheet outline would be greatly helpful.

All of this means that I need to go back through my blog posts and add citations and harmonic sketches. Sun Ra’s music may be more challenging in this regard, but at least I should try. Additionally, I already have a bunch of lyric transcriptions - mostly of Fela’s music - that I can add to the blog immediately. That would be an easy thing to do. I don’t have much of Sun Ra’s lyrics transcribed, but his lyrics, except for a few cases, are generally simpler (though profound). I know that I did transcribe the lyrics for the “Space Chant” on the Live in London album, but I think it is only handwritten. I would be hard pressed to find it. I do remember, though, that I included a footnote about the compositions included in that particular version of “Space Chant” (a title given to these medleys by Graham Lock, I think). I’ll have to dig that up.

So here’s my project: post my lyric transcriptions with some commentary as well as definitions for the Yoruba and Pidgin vocabulary he uses in his tunes. A bit of busy work, but it should make for interesting blog reading.