Music Education - Mo' Meta Blues, The World According to Questlove
Not long after I started to DJ, someone sent me this article. I had heard The Roots, who were on rotation in the skate shop I used to work at, snuggled into a playlist on Scotty's iPod along with A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul. I knew nothing of the individual band members, though, and that Fast Company article was my introduction to Questlove. Here you have one of the most knowledgable men in modern music, and he's not afraid to play what's considered 'corny' in his DJ set? I still learn something every time I read that article, and am reminded of the ever-important emotional factor of DJing - as Quest says, 'manipulating you emotionally through your memories.' Anyone who has heard me talk about what I do knows that I share Questlove’s view that it's all about familiarity, nostalgia and making emotional connections.
Anyways - back to the book. It was an education and a half in hip-hop, a call for authenticity, and at times a philosophical journey. It left me googling names and places, and listening to stuff I've never heard before - any music nerd's favourite thing to do. I'm currently listening to D'Angelo's Voodoo album, a project Questlove poured a great deal of passion into, and spends a lot of the book talking about. Hailed in Mo' Meta Blues as a re-birth of soul and a 'profound awakening' in terms of production, it is an education to me (and a freakin' good album - go listen!). Through stories and songs, the book travels through the past twenty years - the lifespan of The Roots - and for me, that touches on some memorable milestones in my own journey as a lover of music. I loved seeing the late nineties and early 2000s through a different set of experiences. I had been an eager teen consumer of mainstream music, and Questlove speaks as a behind-the-scenes observer, unsure of how to engage with an industry seemingly headed towards consumption at the expense of authenticity.
All in all, I enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to music nerds, hip-hop lovers and DJs alike. Many of us can relate to the experience of having albums that define a period of our lives, that take us back to moments in time whether they are good or bad, and this book is about 275 pages of just that. There's a deep underlying love for music in Questlove's memoir that can't be ignored, and it definitely fed the flame for my own musical journey.
Fave quotes from Mo' Meta Blues:
'When you live your life through records, the records become a record of your life.'
'Everyone goes through those dumb rebellious phases, mainly because they're using music as a means of showing off their personality. They wear it as a badge. And it's a shame that people are so willing to hang their personality on their artistic tastes.... What a shitty way to go through life, hiding your love for music so that people don't think the wrong things about you.'
'Music has the power to stop time. When I listen to songs, I'm transported back to the moment of their birth, which is sometimes even before the moment of my birth. Old songs, rock or soul or blues, still connect with me because the human emotions in them, whether jealousy or rage or hope, are recognizably similar to the emotions that I'm feeling now...'
