Sound Of The 70's - A Romantic Truth
I've been picking away at it, some gravitational pull from deep in my soul, like a miner tunneling alone through a mountain. (Someone did, check out
Burro Schmidt.)
Like Burro, it might take me thirty years, and maybe more. It could be I might die with it half-dug, or find it out of date by the time I see the sunrise at the other end. It doesn't matter.
I have my own musical theory, and it made song after song, though not by my hands or voice. In fact, it did far, far more than that, but we'll get there by the end of this tunnel you're walking through with me.
For thousands and thousands of years, humanity has poured soul into sound. It's a much deeper means of communication for us than words. Music lets our hearts talk like our brains do with words. In the end, the magic is strongest when both work together, but I digress. The point is that all the music we know rests on the drum bones of our ancestors going back to the first of us to raise a voice or bang two rocks together with rhythm.
We would live in a silent void of a 🌎 🌍 without people who have poured their hearts into sculpting air to please our ears and ease our hearts.
This happened all over the world, with shamanic drumming, rattling, chanting, bell-ringing, and dancing. Since forever, every kind of people everywhere have tried to call back to the hearts of their ghosts, of their loves and lost loves, of their children's future selves, and of their dreams and hopes and wishes for life, and their sorrows.
It happened in the wilds of Australia, the savannah of Africa, the highlands of the British isles, the mountains and jungles of Asia, on islands in the seas, South and North America, and the frozen Arctic and the tundra.
Everywhere there have been hearts and birds, there is song.
Until the past one hundred years, those songs were lost with the singer when their last breath became their ghost rattle. Someone else might sing them, but no one would ever hear that song that way ever, ever again, except in the memories of those who actually heard them.
All they could pass to us was words, technique, and style, but never their voice, no matter how beautiful or skilled.
Now, now we can still hear the dead. Now, we can still feel what they felt. Now, we live in the most musically-rich period there has ever been in human history.
Even more, this wave of music washes around the world, surrounds us, and bathes the background of our lives in universal soul magic. We are the luckiest people to have ever lived in this one regard. There is not even a breath of debate.
Even more, as this wall of soul sounds has washed over the world like a sea of hearts, it has mixed and blended and fused and come out transformed and transmuted. It is the closest of anything I can think of out of all the areas of life to being a unifying bridge for humanity. It makes it obvious at the heart level that we're all the same.
Not only that, it makes it clear that we're better when we work together.
Rock wouldn't exist without the blending of African chants and drumming with European strings and ballads and folk songs. From the Highlands and heathers to the grasses and forests, music eventually came together and blessed us all.
It made the people of different nations feel like they were all a part of one world, in ways nothing else could. If you can share anything at all, share music.
Look how wonderful it was when rock and reggae hugged our ears together.
And then there are Disco, Funk, and House, and much of the 1980's.
I have a couple of mottos in life:
* Life is better on a low-drama diet.
* Keep moving. (As in exercise.)
I want my music to be dramatic far more than my life. It's just better that way. Drama happens enough without seeking it our, and I greatly prefer it being relegated to stage or song.
Exercise, now THAT is one place where music can help us all. One of the best exercises ever invented was dancing. Music can move you, and move you well in that part of life. If you can make time for dancing, a little bit every day if you can, you're going to enjoy moving for a lot longer in this life. Keep dancing, even if it's the arm-chair boogie.
I wouldn't give up any genre of music. They are the color palette 🎨 of soul sounds.
Since I grew up musically in the 1970's and 1980's, I know and love those rich colors the best. I'm painting my best map of those parts of the sea of souls on the walls of the tunnel of time, so that people in the future will be able to wash their hearts with them as they travel by.
Think of it as my valley of petroglyphs, my Rongo Rongo, my Ogham, my Hieroglyphs of the soul.
Think of it as my proof that we're better together than any of us could be alone, regardless of the color and cut of the rags we wear over the many tones of our skin.
In some of the words that speak to me through music, we are family.
There are so many good songs between 1969-1979 that just covering that decade, even with the help of AI, is as much as I can humanly do. Between marriage, work, chores, online classes, and volunteer efforts, this is one of the little artistic gems I intend to polish while I'm breathing.
I would love to do every decade, to be some cosmic curator, but I'm just one human, ephemeral. If someone else feels like taking on the 20's, 30's, 40's and on, or even another run at the 70's, in the best words of my era, rock on. I applaud you.
Meanwhile, I need to keep building the best concert I can.
I love that word, "concert." As in a musically concerted effort. If only we could do that in all areas if life, what a wonderful world this would be.
Excuse me while I try to make it a little prettier.
AquarianM
© 04/18/2026
By: Daniel A. Stafford
(Donated to public domain by author)
Regards,
Dan Stafford
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| Click to visit this slowly-growing playlist |
The sun might be setting on this particular reflection, but the melody doesn’t have to end here. We’ve tucked away a few more musical treasures in the linked playlist that capture that wistful, golden-hour glow perfectly. Hit play, lean back, and perhaps leave a note about a song that makes you feel like you’re chasing the 1970s all over again. Your version of the truth is always welcome in the comments.
