Henry Nam

It's simultaneously become easier and harder to advertise yourself as a musician. These days, everything from child prodigy-turned-50-year-veteran to a person with no musical training tinkering with Garage Band or FL Studio can count as a musician. Social networking sites in addition to many marketing websites make it incredibly easy to put up a professional-looking, professional-sounding website (present company excluded from professional-looking/sounding) with very little effort. Because of this however, the music world has become diluted (this also applies to the non-musical world too of course) to the point that saying that you're a musician or have a band or play shows or put forth an album means very little. Well, ok, I should be careful with my words. I'm talking more about a general, public notion of the word and not so much a personal one. To some, I'm sure those things do mean a lot. But as I feel deja vu about writing this entry, I digress.

I believe I've talked before about how little releasing a CD-album means in a day and age where iTunes dominates the circulation of music (iThink). I suppose from the moment that people started talking about music and musicians, it became a commodity, a statement substantiated by how many concerts you've seen turned to how many records or tapes or CD or DVDs or gigabytes of music you own. Perhaps it's because I'm past an age where my powerful, teen-angst emotions are (mostly) behind me, but it seems like a good song doesn't go as far as it used to. We've stopped really listening to music and let it become a social statement of sorts. But I suppose that it's not like 100 years ago, every music listener contemplated on how the music they listened to touched their soul and inspired them.

Anyway, I'd like to move my thoughts to brainvomit some ideas about musical success. Ultimately, feelings of success has to come from the musician. Yet, so many pursue a dream of becoming famous or getting that recording contract or filling up their tour schedule or even simply attracting people to them. Recently, I've been working on some music that really challenges and frustrates me, but to see that all turn into an incredible performance never ceases to inspire me and helps me remember why I do music in the first place. Yeah, I like the money, the recognition, the gigs, and all, but the times I am most happy playing is when all of the practice I put into my craft bears fruition in a performance whether private or public. Seeing everything line up is absolutely sublime and unexplainable.

I'm incredibly fortunate to have musicians in my life who push me to become better at what I do and broaden my appreciation of something that I once hated. I just hope that I'll never lose touch with what is "essential" to me in and about music.