What’s your musical poison? The songs or symphonies that make you shudder with displeasure? Whether it’s K-Pop, Bruckner, Barry Manilow or Be-bop that you consider to be an assault on your ears, I strongly advise that a little of what you think you cannot stand, does you good. Try listening to more music you don’t like, and your horizons will expand as the algorithmic shackles of your listening life are thrown off. Trust me, I play music on the radio for a living, and it worked for me.
The morning after the news of Dolly Parton’s death broke, I was presenting Essential Classics on BBC Radio 3, where the playlist is entirely classical every weekday. We played Parton’s ‘Love Is Like a Butterfly’, a feather-light slice of folk-inflected beauty to mark her passing. I watched emails arriving in the programme’s inbox as the song played and I did worry that I was about to get an anti-Parton onslaught. Instead, there was an influx of communications from classical music lovers who wanted to express just how special a musician they thought Dolly was.
But this set me thinking about how far we’ve come. I can’t imagine such tributes being broadcast on Radio 3 even 20 years ago. But then I thought on. Music is music, you either enjoy it at that particular time or you don’t. It doesn’t make it good or bad. Another day, another time, you might feel differently.
So I keep trying to listen to as much music that I don’t want to listen to as I can, while making sure I get my beloved Mahler, Strauss, Elgar, Schubert and Ravel. I’ll force myself to listen to contemporary works; some I like, some I don’t want to hear ever again. That’s how it goes and how it should go, I think.
I’m doing a lot of listening to music which I certainly did not think I liked initially. When my brother was entering his early teens, he discovered Jimi Hendrix. Many hours were spent in his bedroom trying to play along with ‘Voodoo Chile’, with varying degrees of success. To this day I associate Hendrix’s voice with the smell of Lynx body spray which my teen sibling was using liberally at the time. Back then I was a dedicated Suede fan and I really did not understand what sounded to me like a load of psychedelic guitar feedback and some tuneless vocals.
I can’t imagine tributes to Dolly Parton being broadcast on Radio 3 even 20 years ago
Fast forward 20 years and I’m set to take on Classical DJ duties at Handel Hendrix House in London, the place which both George Frideric Handel and Jimi Hendrix called home, 200 years apart. On the surface these are two complete musical opposites. Handel was the bewigged German genius who moved to London in 1712 and never went home. He created some of the most famous classical works of all time. Hendrix was the Seattle-born guitarist who could play his instrument with his teeth, occasionally set it on fire, and who revelled in soaking his sound in electric distortion.
But both Handel and Hendrix understood the sheer life force that music can be. When you listen to Handel’s ‘The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’ and Hendrix’s ‘Crosstown Traffic’, you hear two tightly wrought examples of musical excitement.
Handel was a keyboard virtuoso who astounded audiences in his day with his ability to improvise. Hendrix led lengthy jam sessions whilst living just above the room where Handel composed Messiah. When I listened to Hendrix’s mind-bending improvised solo in ‘Red House’ alongside Handel’s harpsichord finger-twister, ‘The Harmonious Blacksmith’, my ears were opened to a whole new realm of intricacy and pattern making.
Our musical lives these days tend to revolve around streaming services. Although we now have access to seemingly all the music in the universe at the swipe of a screen, the algorithms lead our musical consumption. The streaming service will continually offer up music based on what you just heard, and without even realising it, your listening sphere is shrinking. If you actively decide to try some experimental jazz or Finnish death metal, you’ll throw a curveball to the algorithm gods which might just bring you something new and great.
Radio is still the ideal place to experience music that you don’t necessarily like. Radio 3’s Late Junction is where I discovered the likes of Norwegian jazz genius Jan Bang, and there’s no way I’d have been investigating the glories of electro-jazz without that radiophonic helping hand.
I suspect Hendrix would have approved of listening to things one doesn’t like. After all, he once said: ‘I just hate to be in one corner. I hate to be put as only a guitar player, or…only as a songwriter… I like to move around.’
The Hallelujah House Party at Handel Hendrix House, September 18th, 19th, 20th
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