by Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson and Ben Greenman
Published by Hachette Book Group
282 pages
"When you live your life through records, the records are a record of your life."
So true...
As I look at the continuing evolution of Synesthesia and my own inner struggles as to exactly what this blogsite could actually be and represent to you as well as myself, I realize that those italicized words listed above is exactly, precisely, undeniably and absolutely what Synesthesia is and needs to be: a record of my life through the world of music. And to Questlove, the author of those words, I send endless bouquets of virtual gratitude to which I sincerely hope he somehow receives with the fullness of intended reverence and respect.
In my birthday tribute to the great and timeless Ringo Starr, I remarked upon how blessed I felt to have grown up and learned how to play the drums during an era when rock drummers exhibited such personality with their playing and how they all served to be Master Teachers with not only the world of percussion but also by illustrating to me exactly what drummers could actually be from singers, songwriters, orchestral composers, lyricists, and so on. In this day and age, in the early 21st century, drummers with such vision, talent and personality are in shockingly short supply which makes the presence of Ahmir Thompson, otherwise known to all as Questlove, he of the giant sized afro, complete with protruding pick, not only so welcoming but so crucial as he is unquestionably a Master Teacher for us all.
In addition to being the de facto leader of the hip-hop band The Roots, in which he serves as drummer, producer and composer, Questlove has also gained worldwide recognition and massive following through his work as a songwriter/producer/collaborator with artists as creatively rich as Erykah Badu, Common, D'Angelo, Al Green and this fall, his collaboration with none other than Elvis Costello will see the light of day. He is the creator of the OkayPlayer collective and website, he is known to DJ relentlessly, he has amassed millions of readers on Facebook and Twitter, he is a Professor of the class "Classic Albums" at the Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and still, he and The Roots have found their dream "day job" of lending their musical expertise as the house band on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon." And now, Questlove is a published author with the release of the outstanding Mo' Meta Blues: The World According To Questlove, a compulsively readable memoir that is conceived and executed through a welcoming unorthodox structure which hits the bulls-eye dead center over and over and over again.
The tone of Mo' Meta Blues is warmly conversational and as well written as it is, the book often feels as if Questlove himself is sitting in the room with you speaking directly into your ears and looking you right in the eyes. Just so you are aware ,and to place you in the correct context, I am a voracious reader, albeit a slow paced one as it is quite easy for me to read bits and pieces here and there, place the book down to attend to other life matters and then return to the book in question. Some books grab me more dramatically than others but generally, that is my general attitude and pace. With regards to biographies and other non-fiction books, I do tend to jump around chronologically, reading the sections that are of more pertinent interest to me depending upon my moods and desires. So, please imagine my reaction when I read the following passage, which occurs in the first two pages of the book:
"This book should be different. I don't want it to be your average book...as a reader of music memoirs, I never begin where I'm told to start. As a rule, I find myself starting at chapter 3 or 4, because before that, every music memoir has the same shape. It stars off with a simple sentence about childhood: 'I was born in this city, in this year. My dad did this.' But I don't want to start that way. I can't start that way. I won't...it's predictable and oversimplified, for sure."
Brother Questlove, you had me at this point and dear readers and listeners, I blazed through the entire book, from cover to cover, in under one week! Yes, it is that strongly written as well as enormously entertaining and compellingly philosophical as Questlove immediately begins to essentially deconstruct the memoir as he is writing one.
While Questlove does take us through his life from childhood to present day, with all manner of anecdotes sprinkled throughout (the birth of The Roots and several "Forrest Gump" styled escapades are all vividly presented), he circumvents the "predictable and oversimplified' structure of the memoir by interrupting it with post-modern driven conversations between himself and co-writer/editor Ben Greenman (who signifies his appearances via a different font-and sometimes contributes conversations with himself), footnotes composed by The Roots' longtime manager Richard Nichols, which serve as additional asides to Questlove's main narrative, and even then, the narrative will stop (or for that matter, continues) with stunning passages entitled "Quest Loves Records," where Questlove details his introductions and emotions concerning the music that has shaped his life-so much so that I wish that he writes a future book that is entirely about the records he holds most dear.
As the book continued, I found so much to dive into sumptuously. I thoroughly enjoyed the sections in which Questlove detailed his earliest experiences with music within his family upbringing and his fascination with circular objects that revolved, a fascination that continues to this day. I especially enjoyed his chronicles of the rise and fall of The Soulquarians a loose collective of musicians (himself, The Roots, Common, D'Angelo, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Bilal, Mos Def, Talib Kweli and others who were lumped into the "neo soul" movement) who were inspired by and banded together in the vein of the hip hop collective known as The Native Tongues (which primarily featured De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and The Jungle Brothers). Those sections were especially meaningful to me as they illustrated a time period during which a sector of hip hop was attempting to reclaim the sense of community that has been lost over the years. Additionally, I also loved how Questlove used his own experiences within the hip hop community to explore the exact point in which the genre changed from something communal into the bling obsessed, cartoonish, overly violent culture it has stagnated in for far too long.
On an especially deeper personal level, with each chapter and sometimes with each page turn of Mo' Meta Blues, Questlove's musings, revelations and memories conjured up powerfully strong feelings within me that made me feel as if he and I could be kindred spirits. Never fear, we are heading down an ill-advised path akin to a "Lifetime" movie. But I wish to impress upon you that certain aspects of our respective life paths--especially through music, the drums and even DJing--congealed to such a close degree that I felt an intensely felt alikeness that extended and transcended itself far beyond mere musical hero worship. With regards to generations, Questlove and I are close in age (just two years apart) and our actual birthdays reside within the same month and are separated by just three days. This aspect of our lives made many pop-cultural touchstones, and especially as those touchstones existed within the African-American community (his love for television's "Soul Train" is nearly supernatural), shared experiences during our early childhoods and formative years. As he continues, I discovered that our shared love of Prince feels equally matched! Who really knows how the man is in real life but Questlove, as personified within his book, represented the very person I would just LOVE to have an on-going dialogue with about music, philosophy, film, politics, writing and all aspects of life as our respective world views feel so similar and yet there is always something else that can be learned from him, about him and ultimately, about myself.
When he speaks of and utilizes his encyclopedic knowledge and love of all forms of music, regardless of race and gender, Questlove touches so precisely upon how the music he embraced throughout his life played into his sense of racial identity and furthermore, the racial perceptions of him from those who surrounded him. In order to be seen as "Black," would he have to hide his love of The Beach Boys so as not to be ostracized by his own community? I know of this exact and painful experience only too well as I too hid some of my most passionate musical loves from members of my community yet I could fully embrace them at my school, which was predominantly White. And in doing so, what does that say about my own sense of racial identity? Why could I not be able to be completely myself within my own community yet it was more possible to accomplish that feat with those who were racially different than me? And even then, there were those in the White community who felt that by being Black, I had no business playing rock and roll (i.e. "White music") in the first place, a misconception which made me more determined to prove myself to them yet I was still hiding aspects of myself from my own kind.
Questlove explores the notion of what "Blackness" is and can be over and again in Mo' Meta Blues as he details the rise of The Roots, his close yet tentative relationship with The Roots' main lyricist/rapper Tariq Trotter a.k.a. Black Thought and even within his own sense of competition and perceived sense of success and failure within the genre of hip-hop itself as The Roots always seemed to be on the cusp of a breakthrough which never quite happened, or at least happened in the way he felt that it should. And there are startling moments in the book when he questions whether his more esoteric leanings have impaired The Roots' ascent in comparison to his musical peers, which then extends itself to concepts of whether if he is "Black enough" for hip hop, a notion he diffuses by explaining that his appearance which includes his imposing height, weight and of course, that afro, who could possibly mistake him for being anything other?
Now, I do not want for you to gather the impression that Mo' Meta Blues is essentially a dissertation about race, and not that it would be terrible if it were, especially as his essay after the horrific Trayvon Martin court decision was one of the most widely read responses on the internet (and deservedly so). I felt that by delving into race as it pertains to music, Questlove hit upon a much larger and undeniable fact: that music chooses you regardless of your skin color and where you originate from. He explores how the music that chooses us helps us to discover ourselves. Hip Hop is the genre in which Questlove found himself just as rock and roll is the primary genre in which the music made supreme sense to me as it understood me and I understood it in return. And so it goes for anyone who listens to, appreciates and loves music at all. It is Questlove's intrinsic skill as a writer and all around Musicologist that makes Mo' Meta Blues a masterful achievement and wondrous reading experience that easily flows from Michael Jackson to Barthes in a blink of an eye and I believe that you will be as blissfully swept away as I.
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