Yo mec!

Do you know this famous documentary “Music is the Weapon“, directed in 1982 by Stéphane Tchal-Gadjieff and Jean-Jacques Flori about the creator of Afro-beat Fela Anikulapo Kuti? No? Well I recommend you watch it. You will discover the “Black President” in his “Kalakuta Republic”, using music as a weapon. A weapon against corruption in Nigeria, but also against anyone who wants to “civilize” his people, the black African people, to move them away from their (deep or core) beliefs as the worship of spirits and nature … to better exploit them.

Today, Sunday, May 24th, 2015, I am at the “Music School for a Day” organized for the first time in Kingston (ON), Canada, by three local music schools. Renaissance Music, Kingston School of Music and Centre Stage have come together to offer us this beautiful studious, musical and friendly day. Amidst all these wonderful instruments, these professional or amateur musicians, playing with the notes during the workshops, I feel music more like a language than a weapon: a universal language that allows individuals, cultures and people to communicate on the “cacophonous” way towards harmony and peace of minds and hearts.

People I meet for the first time teach me with generosity how to use my instrument and play notes. I also learn to write the 12 bars of Blues. I talk with people like me who cannot live without music.

Fela is actually right: music is the weapon against all these injustices and mental prisons we are trapped in… Thank you to these three schools that hosted these colorful times. Thank you to all the participants, and see you at next “Music School for a Day”.

Music alive! Musicians alive! Fela alive!

Doggy