Advice for young people: be careful what you listen to
I am of the age where young people in their late teens and twenties, and especially my students at Temple, ask me for general advice about life. I can give plenty of advice, but most of it would take a long time to explain and I save it for articles and books I write. Here is the one piece of advice I can give quickly: choose the music you listen to when you are young—that is, when you are falling in the love for the first time—wisely because that is going to be the music that rocks you for the rest of your life. These days, the music I listen to is mostly jazz. I love the classics-Duke, Parker, Monk, Trane, Sonny, Ornette and, most of all, Miles. But I also spend time exploring new avant garde jazz made by people whose names are not widely known and who, in… Continue reading