Vince Guaraldi and his music for Charlie Brown cartoons

I first saw the animated versions of Charlie Brown on television back in 1976 at around the age of ten. Some of them actually dated back to a few years; they were originally shown on US television from the mid 60’s. I instantly took to the cartoons and a huge part of their appeal was the music that accompanied them, written and performed by pianist/composer Vince Guaraldi. I made a mental note of his name when I saw it roll up the credits at the end.

From the start there was something different about Charlie Brown that set it apart from other cartoons. Whereas Tom and Jerry and the various from Merry Melodies/Loonee Tunes began with a fanfare and a flurry, the opening of a Charlie Brown cartoon was more subtle and would often see two characters in mid-conversation. The music was in the ‘background’ yet audible enough to capture the viewer’s attention without detracting from the on-screen dialogue. I imagine this was purposely done. The choice of Vince Guaraldi’s music was a canny one. Like the spoken dialogue in the cartoons, the music is sophisticated and subtle, even though it was aimed at a young audience. Adding to the uniqueness of the cartoons is the fact that its main protagonist Charlie Brown has a world-weary, sometimes melancholy character which the music depicts perfectly.

Many of the cartoons had a theme associated with public holidays in the USA. Thus, there’s the famous Christmas one, as well as specials for Easter, Halloween and Thanksgiving. Coinciding with a time when American children would have been off school no doubt added to the sense of occasion; they were also shown during school holidays in the UK. From the 1965 Halloween special, ‘The Great Pumpkin Waltz’ is a favourite.

Another element distinguishes the music of Charlie Brown from its counterparts. In a Bugs Bunny or Tom & Jerry cartoon, you don’t so much hear full pieces as music as little fragments of tunes that musically depict the dialogue or emotions expressed by the characters, a technique known as ‘tone painting’. This rarely takes place in Vince Guaraldi’s scores; instead you’d get one complete piece of music that sat nonchalantly in the background, rather than brief snatches that imitated each and every action or piece of dialogue.

I had no idea of what kind i.e. style of music it was. I just knew it was something I relished hearing, that was enough. Children tend to be like that, and aren’t self-conscious about what they do and don’t like. I didn’t know the music was ‘jazz’ but it did unknowingly plant the seeds for getting into jazz later on. When I heard pianists such as Wynton Kelly, Bill Evans and Ahmad Jamal, I was reminded of the music I first encountered on Charlie Brown cartoons. Thank Vince Guaraldi for that.

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For The Love v For The ‘Likes’ – Being True To Self

One of the most insightful and candid interviews I’ve heard by a musician in recent years is to be found in the 2017 youtube video ‘Gary Numan – Records In My Life’, part of a series in which well-known artists speak about key records by other musicians that have inspired them. As the backdrop to one of his choices, Numan describes the journey that went from huge initial commercial success making music that was true to his creative vision – followed by a steady decline in popularity resulting in losing faith in his ideas. It led to him, in his words “desperately” attempting to win back the fame, even if it meant doing music which he had no belief nor love for. The story does end well, however, which he shares from 7:14 to 13:52 at the link below.

The majority of artists will never attain the high profile of the likes of a Gary Numan. Nonetheless, there are lessons to be learnt from his story, irrespective of what stage your career is at. In my own musical life, I’ve shared original work on social media that would receive no response. If, on the other hand I did a popular cover, suddenly ‘likes’ and comments full of gushing praise would appear out of nowhere! So I thought, “Ah, I see. If I do more popular covers, I’ll get even more people hitting the like button!” It led to me neglecting my own creativity to a point where I temporarily lost faith in it.

Nothing wrong at all in playing popular covers, of course, if that’s what you really feel happy to do. It can only become an obstacle if your end goal is to put your own unique voice out to the world. These days it’s more important for me to do something I love and feel good about, than to share content that might get more instant acceptance but which doesn’t challenge me. If it gets a like, then that’s a bonus. First and foremost is being true to myself.

As a coda, I’ll finish off with a few more choice words on the subject, spoken by an artist who was Numan’s most important formative influence: David Bowie.

Just Beneath The Skin – August 2022 single release

Just Beneath The Skin is actually a re-release; I first put it out in 2011 as a free download. It remains pertinent, and especially so in the post-2020 lockdown world. I’m very proud of how the song’s video turned out and hope you too enjoy it. Downloading and streaming information can be found in the video’s description on youtube.

Stop The Pigeon(hole) – the value of being musically eclectic

“Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is. And I always hated categories. Always. Never thought it had any place in music.” Miles Davis

“We’ve got to learn to stop thinking in terms of categories – “this is this and that is that”. No, there’s cross pollination all the time.” John Lydon.

‘Playlists are the new radio,’ a recent writer (Ari Herstand) confirmed. When people want to hear music of a particular genre, there’s an abundance of streamed playlists for them to choose from. In turn, artists whose music is of a specific style can target their audience. Here’s a thing, though: What if the music you make covers a variety of styles, or doesn’t fit neatly into the existing categories? Or, what if it ‘blurs’ genres to the extent that it makes categories misleading?

Playlisting by genre is convenient. From one angle it’s understandable as people want to have some sense of what they’re going to listen to. The down side to this is there’s far less sense of discovery and surprise, which is a big part of the pleasure of listening to music. We can all recall the first time we heard a certain song; part of the reason why it moved us was because we had no preconceived idea about what the style or genre was. In fact, we’d have been oblivious to those things.

It’s interesting that while the internet has given us access to a wider variety of music than ever, listening habits may be becoming more rigid. Radio stations set up to play 70s rock exclusively run the risk of disapproving listeners if they happen to slip in a track released on January 1st 1980 (at midnight).

Without wanting this to be one of those ‘it was better in the good old days’, let’s look at how things were in the pre-digital, pre-internet music industry. The UK top 30/40 system was obviously limited and had its flaws; with one major radio station and tv station on offer for popular music, we were in effect ‘told’ what to listen to. Despite that, there was tremendous variety on offer. Long before ‘diversity’ became a corporate buzzword and a box to tick, you could hear a real mixture of contrasting artists one after the other. David Bowie, Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley, Kate Bush, The Police, Grace Jones, Prince. Punk, reggae, 2 Tone, post-punk, disco alongside pure pop. There was never a sense that it should be all separate.

Perhaps because of that, in Britain the blurring of musical styles by combining different elements was commonplace. Which is as it should be: History shows us that musicians combining influences of different styles of music is how we ended up with genres in the first place. In other words it’s a normal approach, without which we wouldn’t have soul/r&b, jazz, ska, reggae, hip hop and so on. Even so much that goes under the term ‘pop’ is hugely varied in its sound.

In his memoir A Cure For Gravity, the singer/songwriter Joe Jackson (whose work often cuts across genres) uses the analogy of chefs creating new dishes rather than just reproducing the same menu. Categorising of music by genre is always going to be with us, especially with the internet being as rigid as it is, but there should always be room for those artists going beyond labels.

Never Stop Trying – 2022 single

A new self-penned song which I released on the 5th of May 2022. Vocals and all instruments performed by me. Available to download or stream at iTunes, Amazon and Spotify. The photo below was taken by Riaz Ahmed in September 2021 in Little Germany, Bradford.

Cooking food and making music

Not being a major gourmet, I’d never considered any link between the respective arts of cooking food and music making until recently. What triggered it was attending the funeral of a friend’s mother, a Jamaican lady of the Windrush generation who had made her transition in December 2021 at the age of 85.

Among the tributes given was one by a woman who as a thirteen year old had attended a cookery class delivered at Bradford West Indian Parents Association by this Jamaican ‘auntie’, and another Caribbean lady. By all accounts these two women were a joy to work with, yet with a formidable strictness that would have made Gordon Ramsay quake in his chef’s hat. In her tribute, she recalled one class in which she took out a notepad and pen to write down in great detail the directions given to her. Noticing the skeptical looks of her teachers, the conversation that followed ran a little like this:

“Weh yu doing?”

“Oh, I’m just writing down the ingredients.”

“No need, love. All yu need in the kitchen is yu hands, yu eye, and yu mout’.”

It wasn’t until I thought about this anecdote the following day that it struck me how much this approach has in common with music making. The sense of going by your own feel and intuition rather than following a strict format. The feeling of being in the moment, where the piece of music doesn’t have to be identically played every day, sticking rigidly to the same arrangement. In this way, the same meal/piece of music will be different each time but still taste good.

I’m sure people have experienced how food prepared by sticking to the letter of a recipe book usually doesn’t taste right. It’s as though there’s something missing. Even more in keeping with the musical process, I’ve seen a couple of cookery articles where writers are saying it’s OK to make mistakes in the kitchen, embrace them! I’d be willing to bet that some of the tastiest meals were created despite the misgivings of the cook believing they’d put either too much or too little of an ingredient, over-cooked it, etc.

To end on a culinary note, here’s Candy Mckenzie performing ‘Ice Cream’, with Lee Scratch Perry at the controls.

The Wisdom of Mistakes

One of my favourite musician stories is an anecdote Herbie Hancock shared about a concert he played in 1964 as the pianist in Miles Davis’ group in Stuttgart, Germany. It has an unconventional twist to it because rather than the usual recalling of how on top of their game the band was, his recollection actually centres around a wrong chord he played.

Many musicians have had the experience of mistakenly playing the wrong chord, note or beat during a performance (or for that matter a writing session) and finding that the thing they played ended up sounding better than what they’d intended. Herbie’s account runs on similar lines but takes the meaning of the event much further.

He takes up the story at 2:06 up to 5:34.

What’s remarkable is Herbie uses this experience on the bandstand as an analogy for what takes place in the process of everyday life. The phrase “turning poison into medicine” draws upon his Buddhist practice. I’m also reminded of the Kybalion (ancient Egyptian-based hermetic writings), and two of its seven principles/laws – ‘correspondence’ and ‘polarity’ respectively. The law of correspondence relates to how you can draw analogies from one life situation as a way of teaching you about something else that may be ostensibly unrelated. In this case we have the details of a musical performance being put forward as a metaphor for life. There’s also the law of polarity, which the Kybalion presents as follows:

“Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.” (The Kybalion)

Let’s say someone finds themselves in a challenging situation, due to their own or others’ mistakes and bad choices. By being open enough to reflect and learn the lessons contained therein, the person can grow and the same situation becomes transformed from being “poisonous” to its polar opposite – medicine i.e. something that’s healing. The important point being that they had to make the mistake in order to then experience the growth. Just as Miles might not have played those amazing melodies without Herbie’s ‘wrong chord’.

Perhaps Miles Davis was right when he said “Do not fear mistakes. There are none.”. Then again, all truths are but half-truths.

Influences: Sunday mornings and reggae

An abiding childhood memory of mine is hearing ska and early reggae tunes playing in the front room on a Sunday morning. Time-wise, we’re talking about 1970 onwards, a few years before I started primary school. It’s a piece of nostalgia that many of the Windrush generation and their children will recognise and identify with, irrespective of which island that they or their parents and grandparents hailed from. This was also the period when the original skinhead movement was at its height in Britain, adopting the new songs coming out of Jamaica as its anthems.

The music also has a strong association with food, specifically the delicious smell of Jamaican rice, peas and chicken that my mum would have been preparing. Ska and reggae tunes pumping away, sometimes the occasional pre-ska JA pop by Wilfred ‘Jackie’ Edwards, along with the waft of the expectant big dinner. In a way, the vibes from those tunes were a hidden ingredient that went into the food. Even at that tender age, I understood that this was my parents’ way of maintaining ties with ‘back home’. Strengthening the link further, we even had the Jamaican Weekly Gleaner newspaper delivered to our home on Sundays, where we could find out about current events on the island.

I’ve many a favourite song from that period, far too many to mention. Standouts are Monkey Man by The Maytals, Double Barrel by Dave and Ansel Collins, Them A Laugh And A Kiki by The Pioneers (aka Soulmates), the whole of the Tighten Up Volume Two album, Here I Am Baby by Skin, Flesh & Bones – the list goes on! For me and my brothers, having being born in England, we were getting a glimpse into our parents’ world, the island that had nurtured them. They’d tell us about how a song such as Long Shot Kick De Bucket (about a racehorse that died during a race) was based upon real events. There always was a little sad undercurrent to the way the Pioneers delivered the story with their sublime vocal harmonies.

One thing I noticed was, those records were only played in our home on Sundays, except at Christmas time. For the rest of the week, it was Radio One at breakfast and around teatime, with its selection of mainly British and American pop, and of course Top Of The Pops without fail every Thursday. There was also some ‘crossover’ because in the early 70s, reggae frequently featured in the UK charts. Things such as Let Your Yeah Be Yeah by The Pioneers, and Bob and Marcia’s Young, Gifted and Black were on constant rotation. Yet it was English artists that we heard predominantly on the radio, and, by a neat coincidence, our family meals on weekdays were mostly the same dishes that you’d find in any English home – give or take the odd serving of plantain, dumplings or yam now and again. This would have been pragmatic on the part of my parents; making an elaborate Caribbean meal would have taken up too much time after they’d come home from work. Hearing ska and reggae only one day a week took on a special significance; I’ve also no doubt that by hearing such a wide variety of music throughout the week is the reason why my tastes were eclectic from day one, and remain so to this day. Though I still like to play reggae tunes on Sundays – keeping a great tradition alive, you might say.

‘Cometh the Hour’ – 2020 single release by Imani Hekima

I decided to put out this song as a way of voicing my perspective on the times. It’s a song I actually wrote a couple of years ago but which feels nonetheless relevant. The track was released on 16 November 2020 and can be downloaded at iTunes, Amazon & Spotify.

An interview that I did on BCB Radio on November 25th, 2020 can be heard below.

WHY MUSIC THEORY BOOKS CAN HINDER LEARNING MUSIC

The best way to begin learning music theory is probably to ignore music theory books as much as possible. Along with books I’ll also include Youtube tutorials and blogs – most of them, anyway. Though for the time being, do please continue to read this one.

Use your ears

As a foundation I’d always advise learning the musical alphabet – which might sound a bit obvious but you’d be surprised how many musicians haven’t done this. A picture chord book at the start of your musical journey can also be invaluable, as it helps you to see how chords are put together.

Apart from that, you learn much more by using your ear. Sit down with your instrument and put on a recording of a song you want to learn. Be patient; play back any tricky sections and with time and persistence, you’ll get it.

If you find playing by ear difficult, then put in extra work. There are many good tutorials on Youtube that can help in this area. Get hold of a song book or chord chart that has the chords for particular songs you’d like to learn but don’t become too reliant upon song books either. I would also say avoid all apps like the musical version of the plague – not just because they get things completely wrong at times, but because you aren’t using your ears. Your listening ability is the most important skill you have as a musician (apart from avoiding being financially ripped off), and there are no short cuts.

Drawbacks of theory books

Music theory books basically do this: They will look at a selection of pieces of music. It’s then noted that many composers at a certain time were using particular kinds of chords, rhythms, approaches to melody etc.

Music theory books usually say something on these lines: “This is how a chord progression works. This chord is always followed by that one…” Unfortunately, what most of these books don’t tell you is that musicians have always CONSISTENTLY broken or ignored these ‘rules’.

Imagine how confusing it would be to learn loads of music theory, and then try to learn and understand a song. It would be even more confusing for someone to write a piece of music, having never used their ears.

So, when SHOULD you learn music theory?

First of all, you should only learn it if you think it’s really going to help you, otherwise do what works for you.

I think it’s best if you start once you’ve got enough experience of learning songs by ear under your belt to begin with.

In general, sheet music, music theory, and video tutorials on youtube can be useful, in moderation. Their number one flaw is that they each fail to develop the listening skills.

You can learn all the rules of grammar in the world, but that on its own can’t teach you how to write or tell a great story. The same goes for music theory. This is why there are so many instances of artists who haven’t gone through academic music training that have come up with brilliant tunes.

There are some things you can only learn by doing, by putting the books to one side and putting the ears to work.