Yes, I am talking about the ‘Sister Act’ starring Whoopi Goldberg which a few of us recently viewed. I fell in love with this movie when it came out -- I was 11 years old and I thought the movie was amazing, but for a specific reason. I loved the music. I could sing along with most of the songs and I would rewind the tape (VHS-that’s right!) and play my favorite songs over again and dance along with Delores. What I did not realize at the time was the significance of the songs she covered in that movie. Only now do I realize that HDH wrote ‘Heat Wave’, ‘My Guy’ was written by Smokey Robinson, ‘Roll with Me Honey’ by Etta James, Hank Ballard, and Johnny Otis. This movie is saturated with the very same music we have spent the past weeks studying!
Why was it that an 11-year-old kid who grew up in a town of 1,200 in Iowa could connect with such excitement and enthusiasm to music that was created for an entirely different audience? I suppose we may never know the answer to that question, which is why I have always found music to be such an amazing medium as an outlet for emotion. Regardless of how music is created, tweaked, picked apart, analyzed, put back together and marketed, there is no guarantee the targeted audience will be reached and there may even be a chance that an entirely different type of person is sucked in. We have spent time these past weeks following the changes of jazz and Motown from 1959-1975 and I have researched the commerce side of this time period. I have deduced that when push comes to shove the following will always be true:
A musician will create music that allows them to express themselves. An audience will take away from that music something uniquely personal.
No amount of predictions can pinpoint exactly what it is that makes a song a ‘hit’ or how you can keep an audience enthralled about one particular artist, but I know our music industry will continue to try! All I have to say is good luck to them!
-- Kat Breitbach
