One of the consequences of my having written a number of songs that have become popular with Caribbean people is, as I’ve previously mentioned, that upcoming Caribbean songwriters will ask me for tips on songwriting or, sometimes, with help on a specific problem in a song they’re working on. Frankly, it is a question I am usually reluctant to engage mainly because I have learned over the years, from practical experience, that creative people often react negatively to criticism of their work, and that is not surprising when one considers that creative efforts, in whatever form they come, are actually the very essence of what a person is, so even though they ask for your reaction, when you provide it you are, in effect, making comments critical of that person’s work and they often take offence. Just this past week, a potential songwriter from Berbice asked for my opinion on two songs he had written and in the course of my mentioning two areas where I thought the work could be improved, the young man switched off his home recording of it, walked back to his car, and drove away. I hasten to say that I was surprised but not offended, because I understand the reaction – the criticism is taken negatively because it is the person’s personal work; it raises one’s ire to be told, “dis need wuk, bhai”.
So, as I did recently in a recent column, this is another page of commentary for potential creative folks including, hopefully, the man from Berbice.
One of things very rarely mentioned by songwriters is the process operating at the very beginning when the song is, in effect, being born on the lyrical side, in other words, the idea. Opinions will differ on this, but for me the most intriguing aspect would be the very genesis of the thing, or what the potential song is about. When songwriters speak about creativity, the conversation is often about that aspect partly because it is so mysterious, almost inexplicable. When US songwriter Jim Webb wrote McArthur Park, for instance, with the line “McArthur Park is melting in the dark”, he is using a host of metaphors, such as, the comparison “someone left a cake out in the rain” to get across the idea of loss or change. It’s something we immediately recognise; it is the genius writer reaching us. In a song I’ve mentioned before, “By The Time I Get to Phoenix”, by Glen Campbell, he is travelling mentally with his lover by noticing where she is at different times that day on the clock. Campbell does not say “lover” or “darling” but he tells you loud and clear how deep his connection is to this woman and he does it through the idea of time on his watch. In Sparrow’s song “Dan Is The Man”, about the outlandish rhyming words often used in school books from England in years past, notice that he does not directly castigate the rhymes, he simply repeats them as is and we see his point – brilliant.
A good primer for all potential song-writers is out there in the work of writers who have gone before where one can see this concept of the song idea operating at the very beginning of the work when the writer is casting about for how to say it. So we see the Broadway playwrights, Rodgers and Hammerstein, talking about the “bright golden haze on the meadow” in their classic song “Oklahoma”, or John Lennon asking us to imagine a world where there is “no hell below us, above us only sky”, or Paul Anka, taking a common phrase as almost an emblem of Frank Sinatra’s life in the song, “My Way”.
That idea of the original concept is at the heart of most successful forays into song-writing, and it is what impresses me the most when I see a successful songwriter displaying it in his/her work. The song, “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen is a masterful example of it. The original idea there of using the Biblical story of King David falling in love with a woman he is seeing across the way, is pure genius. Similarly, Kes Diefenthaller’s contribution in his recent song “Savannah Grass”. Evocative thinking.
That ability to see life or love or a beautiful morning in those allegorical or metaphorical ways is at the core of so many great songs and my general advice to young writers is to start thinking that way: to be coming up with intriguing ways to present our subject. As to how we generate that? Therein lies the difficulty. As with all such propensities, it is a gift the writer is born with, and while he/she can certainly expand it and propel it by repetition, the fundamental point remains – it is a gift.
