Why Music?

By Jim Overton of Chesterfield Inlet

It starts with a rhythm…maybe a beat inside your head that you can't get rid of. Musicians are born that way. Some go through their entire lives not realizing it. They sing in the shower or when nobody's home. They play air guitar or tap out some notes while waiting for the bus. All it takes is one moment…one electric shock that illuminates their purpose. Keith Richards picks up his first guitar. John Lennon and Paul McCartney hammer out a song for the first time together. Whenever it hits, if it ever does, the effect is like being in a car accident. Everything in slow motion…everything remembered.

I've had musicians say to me that it's like a communion or a divine presence guiding their thoughts. They HAVE to learn how to play guitar or they HAVE to join that choir. Maybe some of us are band geeks in junior high while others stay in their basement building a mixing board from spare parts because it's fun. Whatever. The end result is music. Doesn't matter what kind…as long as it rings true. A musician knows when they're faking it.

"It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself" - Ralph Waldo Emerson. Maybe all music is…is therapy for the musician and we listen to the taped conversations between the musician and their analyst, in this case themselves. As long as the human condition is in the condition it's in (cue the song), musicians will continue to write, compose, scream, play and meditate for all us listeners to understand our own troubles better.

Jim Overton, percussionist for Saint John band Chesterfield Inlet.