So that was exciting...

I send out my first "post" -- I believe that's the word the young people use -- and the electricals in the house have not burst into flame (note to self: thank goodness I put real Lincoln pennies in the fuse box!) I'll take that as a good sign.

And in the meantime, I realize that one of my charges -- in proclaiming the purposefulness of music -- is describing the different ways in which music can be purposeful.

So let's begin to explore the different aspects of "purpose" as it relates to music. For example: Why is that music being made here?

Historically, musical style or genre has often been defined by the venue or place in which it is played. For example, you will most likely find a college marching band striding across the turf at halftime in the local football stadium. Why?

Because that particular combination of brass, woodwind, reed, and percussion had been designed to fill the open air with sound. Historically, the practice had originated with the Turks, when they used drums and reeds to transmit commands to the forces across the field of battle.

And that is why, when the Williamsburg Fife and Drum Corps performed several years ago as part of the Patriots Day celebrations in the Concord Armory in Concord, Massachusetts, the sound was, well, dinful. (audio to come, I hope) The combined forces of fife and drum were created to be heard across a battlefield, not within the confines of a gym.

Let's see if I can get some of that extraordinary sound up here.

Welcome to OBAMB

It is probably appropriate that just as I start typing here and how, the family downstairs have begun their day-long piano practicing. Because these people gutted their pre-war apartment to the studs and replaced all that thick plaster and lathe with a single layer of sheetrock, it always sounds as if these people are all playing in the very next room. Though they have been playing the same exercises for the past three years -- and not really improving, at all -- I will take the coincidence as auspicious.

Blogs have missions and blogs have beats -- OBAMB (note to self: the second "b" is silent) has both. The beat will be music -- in particular, music I like. For the past thirty-five years, I have been writing (more often than not professionally) about music and musicians. During that time, I have written about Igor Stravinsky and Inti Illemani, Ingram Marshall and Johann Sebastian Bach. I've done radio stories about handbell ringers and open mics. Along with several hundred sets of CD liner notes -- primarily for classical releases -- I have been writing recently for the public radio series, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and served as co-host for the webcast of the Whitney Museum's 70th birthday concert tribute to Steve Reich back in '06.

How to describe the mission, though? I've always been intrigued by the idea that music has function -- not so much in the mechanical sense of the cog-and-gearwheel, but rather, that music has purpose. Or, to put it in the jingo of post-Rick-Warren America, music is purposeful. My job as a writer about music is to try and figure out the purpose of the music at hand, whatever it may be.

So, where to begin? I'm thinking Harry Nilsson's proclivity for making things up as he went along in the studio. The starting point was a 1979 interview I did with him when I was a graduate student in Los Angeles.

Welcome! Come on down any time.