A good example of musicians at work comes from my boss, Don Puluse. You’ve gotta keep in mind that Don has a credit list as a recording engineer that is really totally awesome (to use one of my daughter’s favorite expressions), including Sly and the Family Stone, Chicago, and other such luminaries of the rock universe. Anyway, Don tells about a mix session at Columbia Records during the heyday years, when he was working with a legendary producer who shall remain nameless. He and Producer X were sweating away over a hot console mixing some tune that probably went triple platinum and has become a Golden Oldies staple by now, and after about six hours of intense work, Don recalls saying, “Hey, X, have you listened to these words?” and X said, “Words? There are words to this tune?”

My point is that we musicians tend to go “inside” the music (my term) when we listen. We hear the orchestration, the chord changes, the rhythmic patterns, the quality of playing, the intonation, etc. We also hear the singer, but what we usually end up listening to is the quality of voice: its timbre, expressiveness, and phrasing. We don’t hear the words. We do it this way because, I think, we are musicians. We have an affinity for this sound stuff; it is part of our very being. Listening to musical sound is like breathing: it is utterly natural for us and we go inside the music without effort or thought, as part of our natural talent.

Meanwhile, what about the great mass of listeners out there? Do they go inside the music? Do they go inside the notes that Bird or Miles played, for instance, and hear them speak? Many of them must, I think, and in doing so they are like us; they have the same musical predilection that we do, the same musical intelligence and sensibility that makes us hear this way. But many probably go inside the words instead, just the way we go inside the music. So maybe they have a word sensibility that is equivalent to our music sensibility.

And this raises an interesting point. I went to college and studied English, lots of it (and in high school I wrote stories and poems, even thought about becoming a writer). I spent a year in English composition, a year in contemporary drama, a year with the Metaphysical Poets (who?) and a year with Shakespeare. And I actually enjoy this stuff! I enjoy reading, enjoy words. But I have never had the emotional response to words and poems that I do to music. I don’t go inside poetry the way I go inside music. Some of my favorite music is choral music from the Renaissance. Most of the words to such music are in Latin, or else are English translations of Latin words about God, which I generally find really boring. But I love the sounds of those words. I love the sounds of unaccompanied voices singing Latin words like “Kyrie” and “hominibus” and “aeternam.” These words have no literal meaning to me, but they are rich in association, with churches (which I do not find boring), college, singing, meditation, serenity and a host of other good things (I apologize if this sounds a little New Age).

Anyway, what I love about singing is this: when a blues singer like Mama Yancey sings, in her rough, reedy voice, “Make me a pallet on the floor, . . . when your main girl comes, I swear, she will never know,” I hear and feel her plaintive ache, need for love, and self-abasement, in the bending thin edgy tone of her voice. I feel her pain, but I feel it through the sounds of her voice, not through her words.