My Road to Prog Enlightenment

Hi,

I've always said that  time never was when music was not progressive, and that it is a matter of our own enlightenment, and appreciation for things that are different, and sometimes a bit more pointed and meaningfull than most twerk'ing!

For me, this probably started in Brazil, when radio and the music I was hearing was so different than anything in Portugal, and in that country, specially our house, things were very classical, academic and specially insulated from the outside world! Higher class well educated folks in Europe are like that! When we went to Brazil, dad basically took a massive step to become a bona fide writer, and that puts us in a shack in the state of Sao Paolo, and of course, that puts you in touch with the "street" and "people", something that the family did not like and had aversions to. Dad, was too worried about his writing and literary works, to give a darn about that but he was in a position that prevented him from doing politics and make comments on it, so he stayed away from it for the most part.

So you land in Brazil, in 1959, and then you end up witnessing things like the coup later, and then the very impressive array of music and arts that were against the coup, and exploded. From Maria Betania, to many others and all of a sudden Beatles, Rolling Stones, and the like, it all became a symbol for something that people did not have.

And the music was totally different!

Form me, as I stated before, progressive, has always been tied to life and living and it's artistic side. Most of the work is not just a song in my mind and in many cases they are the most important works composed in the last 70 years! While there are some nice things in a lot of pop music, in the end, I'm not sure that most of it as as valuable or important but creating a line of definition for it, is tough, and I don't want to argue where Brown Sugar or Sympathy for the Devil belong! But one of those songs is meaningless to me!