Let's talk music, no genre boundaries

@frogman 

“……….no genre boundaries”.

No matter the genre, sometimes a performance is so locked in and with such strong collective sense of purpose that it brings a different meaning to “spiritual”:

Perfect description of the vast majority of the performances of guitarist, Allan Holdsworth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcPbmPM7epY

As a good friend and a top LA studio musicians said about Holdsworth:

"For me, Allan Holdsworth was the most innovative improviser of all time on ANY instrument. The great jazz soloists (McCoy, Brecker, Freddie Hubbard, Trane, etc.), all had predecessors on their respective instruments that they copped licks from and modified with their own voice. There clearly was no guitar lineage leading up to Allan's approach. This freak landed ship with a completely new vocabulary not based on anything that was already established. No blues, pentatonics, bop, post-bop...NOTHING"

@audio-b-dog 

 I don’t think the sexual aspect of music only came from Black churches. Later, of course, it was part of the blues.

I was talking about artists who grew up in the church and then turned to secular styles, such as a Aretha or Ray Charles. They carried over a certain "spiritual" fervour/intensity into their "secular" music. The resulting "hybrid" blurs definitions and presumed dividing lines. 

@stuartk 

I knew that's what you were talking about. I was trying to broaden that out, because I think that spiritual fervor is in so many types of music. It usually comes from people who have been repressed, though. Brazil had slavery. The Gypsies have been repressed in many societies and their music is known to have a fervor. (I don't know if it's religious, though.) I would like to draw the line all the way back to people living in caves, but I can't. Like Bill Mahr--"I can't prove it, but I know it's true."

@audio-b-dog 

Ah. OK.  Sometimes I can be a dimwit!  ;o) 

@stuartk 

No, I don't think you missed anything. I just have this interest in the ontology of music that most people don't share. For good reason. It's impossible to know. It's just guessing.