Category: Music

This is a symphony that has been rolling around in my head for a week or so ever since I read the story about the woman going back to Pakistaniniillyanybody land to be with her husband. Some paternal relative, as in her father or his, strangled her to death as an ‘honor’ killing. It raised a lot of violent thoughts in me. Such brutality, such crazed ignorance and hatred for humankind. What environment is so horrid that killing is the better of living and talking it out or just going ahead and killing the woman, maybe rape her in between so she can get an extra stoning or public hanging like they do off the back of car hauling trucks. These people. God is there to hold the hand of the condemned, or maybe not, maybe it is just an evil, cruel, hatelful, soulless, no ethic what soever other than to kill. “What is your ethic?” To Kill. “OK, bye bye” .
To get it off my chest I labored for a night and a day on the concerto #10 or #9. I had to write and play the pain away. It hurt so much. I thought of all the little girls in Africa, the women in Saudi Arabia beheaded because their husband cheated, the women of all the -stans and India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the southern Phillipene islands, all hijacked and mentally vanquished to death worship, the waiting to force death upon another. Why? It ruins me. Why?
So I wrote Symphony #6 which had been my intention all along, but as I moved through the notes I came to understand why a concerto. I needed something visceral and murderous, dangerous, harsh, violent to cleanse my own soul, to pray and beg God please please pelase not slaughter the women of Afric and Middle East and Central Asia, but they are just prayer flags on a mountiantiop. Cauthet in the wind, maybe catching God on a good day or not.
So i worked on these fthree Asian instruments to get a Silk Road feel to the music, even thogh it was a dirge, It just had to hapen someway. How How can I feel hate? Should i? God commands our love. So I have love and try, pray that they may wake up to their sins nd sin no more. Christ did give us Hope so I hold on. I know some poor girl is being pelted by rocks and acid thrown at her this very moment as she walks that perilous, but still happy child kind of way we were on our way to school. I loved walking to school. All breezy, waving hello, if I was sad or contemplative just look at the trees, the lawns, the flash of cars on Chamblee Tucker Road. But no one wanted to hurt me…..much. At least I arrived and made it home alive without my face disfigured, my body broken, to find I was sold into sex slave as a 8 or 9 year old to a 55 year old man, a death sentence in itself. It’s al they know , all they can hang onto, if if is a girl get her to school, try to see her educated before the men in the family do something horrid, cruel beyond sin, down down down into the lake of ice with Satan’s wings ever chilling the air as he chews more destroyed souls and stares skyward to a light he will never again see. I imagine them here, with the worst, the cannibals, the child killers, they must serve and serve for all time till the end of time and Christ gives them relief into a lake of fire to burn out into nothingness. This is how I felt. how I feel when I imagine the sufffering and fear these women must endure. For it is to come, there is no exit, it awaits and sharpens it’s teeth, let’s the nails grow long so as to punish with deep wounds. This is our world. Not only will we see polar bears, narwhales, elephants, tigers, cheethas, lions, coral and seahorses extinct in our lifetime but what if we see the women of the near east gone, gone, gone. I guess then the sulphur and tar scented men can have their man boy love heaven on earth and some stupid punishment by having sex with only virgins. It is crazy. It is in every way insanity. This is our world. Thank you WWI for your idiot French and British Maps. Thank you England for the years of slavery. The Bedoin, the Shi’a, the whatever who knows, they are murdering Catholics as well. What will be left? Will we ever say to the house of Saud that we know it is them. We know they are behind it all. Thtey send radical imams to friehdly, peace loving people, rape them and their land and leave them as terror driven and lost thier minds. We are a part but we are not all. We have bllood on our hnds for sure. How do you fight a people whose life is so bad that they want to die, they want you to kill them in combat. They want to come home after a bad day planting poppies and land mines to beat and kill their wives. Look. we have it pretty good. For the Catholic Faithful say your rosary abd Jesus prayers throughout the day, do not give up, God, His angels and saints will hear, the compassionate heart of Mary will be awakened. I hope. I pray. And so I write music to life and to move our hearts into a shattion of belieff, into a place of hope faith and love Please. Love the ONE and the MANY. We are all God’s children.

This is the fourth version of a choral piece originally titled Haunted.
Took about 24 hours. I was never happy with the vocals, not the meaning so much but my abilities. The idea was a Mahleresque double symphony focused on the children of war, of what can we do because we are not doing much in the rescue of kidnapped, maimed or killed young women in Africa and across the middle east into Pakistan and India. But I was uncomfortable calling it a symphony because there is a programmatic atmosphere to it such that it felt more like the last moments of a haunted dream, seems forever, 80 minutes or so and I eliminated the vocals because they kept sounding processed rather than the measures of a Southern voice beaten and rejuvinated, then beaten up again. So, here we have it. A feeling of failing to protect young women in 1/3rd of the world. We measure the progress and enlightenment of a nation based on equality to the point that it is not even a subject. So much of the world is fighting to move forward against all opposition, while others are completely unevolved or are slipping backwards to the detriment of woman and the general good of the land. I know equality goes against Old Testament, Koran, Confucianism/Taoism, and does rest in my faith in humanity. If we say someone is just kinda equal, sort of equal, not equal, then we begin the landslide of being property, to the living hell of Gog and Magog (Revelations version of warring states, not Genesis or Ezekial where identity is person and place) whereas it exists in much of the middle East and Africa where slavery is either legal or wears the mask of indentured servitude. And for me, this is how music speaks. We remain God’s children, servants and emissaries, but we also seek equality for all in a democratic republic or social democracy. If we allow ourselves to descriminate against woman, to hold her down, then where does it stop? Biblically we have Mary Mother of Jesus Lord, Mary Magdalene, Lydia, Tabitha and Phoebe who each have necessary roles of moving the faith forward. Deacons. No Mother, No Son. Virgin of Guadalupe because she is our Lady of the Western Hemisphere. In Korea when it was Buddhist they had the first female ruler, the Great Queen Seonduk. Then Confucianism came in a few hundred years later and pushed woman back down, but the oikos (homelife in Greek) belongs to woman. There is much to argue here, so I simply present it as a musical work, a concerto to woman. She’s only had the vote for a hundred years now in America. Who are we, where are we going? I hope to being better human beings. But I worry. There will There will be plenty who find this adn my thoughts all wrong, violently wrong, and all I can say is turn the page.

I apologize that Soundcloud no longer allows actual embedding of the songs as they are directed to the SoundCloud site. Good thing is that SC does not hassle you and has no charges. But I really hate what they did to the way we can hear or present our music.

https://soundcloud.com/h-lamar-thomas/zones-21-talking-with-jarad-1

So, I was talking with Jarad about some new music engineering equipment he brought over, a bit fascinated, a bit afraid, the Logic thing is so clear, bu t I was tired from yardwork. While we talked I was playing/recording smooth Windham Hill type piano mood music on the smooth jazz side. So, I finished it up. And then I could not find it. worked on notes for a quartet for later. Thought why not work on this piece as a question mark of sorts. Like Brahams in a bad mood wanting to pick a fight with Korngold (time travel, Tardis involved of course). So here’s the thing, I worked and played and changed instruments, added, subtracted, played, cut, moved around, and here we have what sounds like a good day in the musical fusion world. Odd, Brahams felt like he was pacing the room cussin’ me out the whole time. The ode to The Heaven is near the haflway mark where resolutions begin to appear. I hope and would fiercely honored if you listen to this and let it have a few plays before making an opinion.

3 grand pianos in different settings.