I Got the Music In Me-In The Stone - Earth Wind And Fire (1979) Part 2

Part 2....

Many moons ago when I was between 9 and 11, my sister and I were cleaning our room and as an Alabama A&M University football game was being broadcast and half time arrived, the announcer said the band would be playing Earth, Wind & Fire's hit song "In the Stone". My first thought was, "I have never heard of this song and I know all their songs...how is this a hit?". 

My greater challenge was that the performance was instrumental.  While I connect with lyrics after composition, enjoying HBCU band performances before that day and since are still filtered through knowing a song's lyrics.  It was love at first listen, but I was still curious about the lyrics.

As the song opened with its grand horns and then percussion, I was transformed...that music that composition, that arrangement was transcendent and beautiful and somehow possessed "Funk".  I am right now being transported to the very spot in my room I stood looking at the radio (to me then still a magic box like the tv) as the composition and its performance blossomed in my ears.  The radio was for me then and on good days now a portal to a spectrum of concepts and emotions that begin and end with LOVE.

It would be weeks maybe months later before I heard the song being played for the Soul Train dancers and would become briefly acquainted with its lyrics. I can still remember thinking that Saturday morning watching Soul Train, "WEUP doesn't play this song".  The beauty of the composition could still be felt through the TV broadcast which had been so different from hearing a HBCU's band perform it live.

Having played in the band connected me with things in the music that it has taken me many years to realize everyone simply won't hear.  Besides Stevie Wonder's music I connect first with composition (and melody) and then lyrics.  I am the only woman I know who does that...casual polls among friends and musicians suggest women classically connect with lyrics, first and then melody.

In adulthood we all, I believe, reclaim the parts of childhood or youth that we can. Music is both a background and foreground of our lives...if you love the Elements like I do then you may have enough years behind you to remember records (33's, 78's and 45's), reel to reel tape, cassettes, cassingles, CD's, CD singles and now we listen to a waveform known as the MP3.  The music we once enjoyed via these tangible mediums we now enjoy as intangible, ominuously collected by 80 Gigs or more on an iPod or some other off brand MP3 player.

I got a new computer almost 2 months ago now and a friend helped me reconstitute my music library until I take myself back to the Apple Store for a data transfer session so that my music library can be moved from my PC to my Mac.  In addition to the music we put on here, where there were deficiencies of my faves I immediately upload from my hard discs, but then there is...
 

Being in line at a store and seeing an EWF Greatest Hits CD for $5 (brand new) and flipping it over to find an interesting hodge podge of what Columbia Legacy labeled "Greatest Hits".  "A&R guy, give me your job so I can show you how its done even if you are trying to offer something different and yes  I appreciate you for not putting 'Let's Groove' on there" I digress...amongst this 'hodge podge' was my jewel, 'In the Stone".

In my car there is a CD player. I rewind relentlessly to hear every lyric because while the chorus is clear, "true love is written in the stone", Maurice White's amazing and signature phrasing doesn't allow me access to every word (of this poem).  His voice is an instrument and very melodic, but like many artist it is not always accessible by the natural ear...phrasing a lyric to match the melody just doesn't allow it to always be well... articulate (we love you Anita Baker).

However I have damn near put my ear to car speakers trying to hear and understand every word and since I've uploaded the $5 CD to my computer and iPod, I have continued my mission to decipher every word.  There is ministry in there...I just know it ! ...There is healing in there...I just know it !

Well in this tech savvy world I don't have to expend much more time or effort to figure out the lyrics...alas (as we all know and I learned from HS students a while back) there are websites for which you key in your selection and voila...lyrics

So hear to preach and teach us what the word of God is saying to us from the Stone...the Bible...are the Elements...Earth, Wind and Fire...

"In the Stone"
written by Maurice White, David Foster and Allee Willis


I found that love, provides the key
Unlocks the heart and souls of you and me
Love will learn to sing your song, yeah
Love is written in the stone


Every man I meet is walking time
Free to wander past his conscious mind
Love will come, and take you home, yeah
Love is written in the stone


Do you believe, my friend, in what you claim?
People of the world all doubt the same
Bringing questions of their own, yeah
Truth is written in the stone


In the stone you'll find the meaning
You're not standing tall
In the stone the light is shining
Forever touching all


Life experience a passing day
Time will witness what the ol' folks say
Getting stronger every day
Strength is written in the stone


Deep inside, our hearts for you to keep
Lies a spark of light that never sleeps
The greatest love you've ever known
Yea is written in the stone


In the stone, you'll find the meaning
(why) You're not standing tall
In the stone the light is shining
Forever touching all


Never, never my darling
Never you'll be alone
Never, never my darling
Never you'll be alone
Ever, forever my darling
True love is written in the stone


Never, never my darling
never you'll be alone
Ever, forever my darling
True love is written in the stone


Never, never my darling
never you'll be alone
Ever, forever my darling
True love is written in the stone


Never


Ever


Written In The Stone


Never


Ever


Written In The Stone

I Got the Music in Me...In The Stone - Earth Wind And Fire(1979) Part 1.

Music is not only my muse, it is my healer...okay and my lover too.  I present the song of the week ( 2 weeks or month until we get a new song of which there are already new ones brewing), as my healing and growth are moved forward in the hopes that what is said, sung and performed will help somebody else to move forward.

"In the Stone" by the INIMITABLE Earth, Wind & Fire is one of so many amazing records from a catalog that spans 30+ maybe 40 years.  I will not tell my age, but for all of my life that spans back to conscious memories of childhood and in particular memories of radio, 1600 AM WEUP in Hunstsville, AL, I don't remember them ever not being played on the radio. 

At home we had "Saturday Night" on a Casablanca Label 45.  Their songs that punctuated my childhood are "Septemeber", "Boogie Wonderland", "Got To Get You Into My Life (their arrangement on this cover is MATCHLESS), "After The Love Is Gone", "Reasons", "Devotion" and the list goes on ..."Getaway","You", "And Love Goes On" and "Side by Side".

I don't mention songs like "Let's Groove" (a mega hit that crossed them over which is always good for the musician's pocket) or even "System of Survival" because these represented a shift in their continuum of creation. While the success they brought the group are to be applauded, it signaled a turn from the melodies, hymns, spirituals that I loved and songs that had been for the listener (me) transformational.

In the 6th and 7th grades I played clarinet in Davis Hills Middle School band.  My sister played saxophone. Learning to play music was awesome.  I can't say that we demonstrated a particular gift for our instruments, but we tried.  All band camp kids know that when you enter a band as a school activity you are taught music.  You are taught scales and what terms like crescendo mean and what symbols on the sheet music signal a staccato, crescendo, decrescendo or rest. 

I was always impressed with "staccato" because it required...demanded precision. (Staccato is what you hear when "Getaway" opens...they ROCK it)  For two little girls who already LOVED music, being in the band and being taught music lifted me to a new level within myself.  I saw a glimpse of a higher self at 10 years old.  I didn't know what to do with the higher self, but I saw her in the distance :)

Of all the Soul Music played on the radio, I would submit that EWF was most recognizable as band.  I didn't imagine them in an orchestra arrangement in rehearsals like we were at school, but they sounded like they were HUGE.  Their horns and horn arrangements were a major signature for them as a band. There were so many signatures to their sound.  They were and still are flawless.  I heard Philip Bailey sing at a funeral here in LA recently and Verdine White spoke...for me they are timeless icons of Soul Music...of Music. Their compositions were classic and rhythmic at the very same time.  You can listen in a chamber fashion or you can DANCE.  God is so in their music.

My sister and I composed very short songs that we went on the garage and played.  We, I believe assumed that's what you are supposed to do when you learn something new.  EWF (and some TV scoring) bridged a connection for us between what we were learning what was available to be done as musicians. Participating in band meant you were to try, do it, get in it and be a part of it.  We had taken ballet very briefly so while this wasn't an introduction to the arts or craft it signaled to us that we had permission to ..."do something" that started within and came out.

I reflect now (many years later) how beautiful that was because, we saw no barrier between ourselves and the music.  Thank you Earth, Wind and Fire. Because your MUSIC was on the radio, we believed in enough of our potential to try...to not only play, but compose. Though our potential was neither recognized, realized or encouraged (God had another plan). To this day I still see no barrier between me and the music. I am looking to purchase a tambourine and learn piano on this computer...I will not be stopped :)

Anyway this notion of "no barrier between hearing and doing or seeing and doing" I want to bottle that and teach it to Ali, so while I work on that concept for child rearing I share Earth, Wind and Fire's compositon "In the Stone".  The song is still transformational and now that I pay attention to lyrics...I am even more moved...



"In the Stone"
written by Maurice White, David Foster and Allee Willis

I found that love, provides the key
Unlocks the heart and souls of you and me
Love will learn to sing your song, yeah
Love is written in the stone

Every man I meet is walking time
Free to wander past his conscious mind
Love will come, and take you home, yeah
Love is written in the stone

Do you believe, my friend, in what you claim?
People of the world all doubt the same
Bringing questions of their own, yeah
Truth is written in the stone

In the stone you'll find the meaning
You're not standing tall
In the stone the light is shining
Forever touching all

Life experience a passing day
Time will witness what the ol' folks say
Getting stronger every day
Strength is written in the stone

Deep inside, our hearts for you to keep
Lies a spark of light that never sleeps
The greatest love you've ever known
Yea is written in the stone

In the stone, you'll find the meaning
(why) You're not standing tall
In the stone the light is shining
Forever touching all

Never, never my darling
Never you'll be alone
Never, never my darling
Never you'll be alone
Ever, forever my darling
True love is written in the stone

Never, never my darling
never you'll be alone
Ever, forever my darling
True love is written in the stone

Never, never my darling
never you'll be alone
Ever, forever my darling
True love is written in the stone

Never

Ever

Written In The Stone

Never

Ever

Written In The Stone