#30 Why make music, with Elijah
An hour-long conversation with London artist, DJ & creative force Elijah, whose 'yellow squares' have been taking the quiet parts of the modern artist experience and saying them out loud.
Please forgive me, for I have started another podcast.
tl:dr:
Why Make Music is a podcast where I have conversations with big thinkers about why music matters. It officially launched today.
The first episode is with London artist, DJ & public speaker Elijah.
Elijah grew up immersed in London’s grime scene right as it was unfolding. From listening to pirate radio as a kid to documenting the scene on bootleg DVDs, he eventually became embedded in the scene at a grassroots level as a DJ, artist and collaborator. In the last couple of years however, he’s become known to many for his provocative Yellow Squares project - a series of koan-like viral Instagram posts where he challenges artists to ignore the conventional wisdom of both the music industry and music marketing entrepreneurs, and instead embrace a truly DIY brand of creativity.
Elijah is the perfect first guest for Why Make Music, and I loved getting the chance to pick his brain ahead of his Australian tour which kicks off this week.
You can listen to the first episode of Why Make Music now on Apple Podcasts:
On Spotify:
You can also watch it on YouTube:
I have no sponsors, no partners, no podcast company, no-one helping me with this. This is a personal project. I don’t have a Patreon, or anything like that (yet)
If you do want to support this project, the best thing you can do right now is share it with your friends. On the other hand, if you simply really do have too much money and you are unrealistically unhealthily excited about this project and you desperately want to support it by giving me some of that excess money, get directly in touch. (Close readers of this Substack will know that I am referring here to the mythical “Crumpler guy” archetype.)
And now .. a bit more of an explanation behind why I’m doing this.
WHY MAKE WHY MAKE MUSIC
For those not paying attention: I now have two podcasts. Trust me, I am even more embarrassed about this than you are.
So to be clear:
Shiel Feels is me free associating into a mic solo, assembling a worldview in real-time, and well, I started it kind of by accident. I’ll continue to use that as a place to experiment and a place to dump my thoughts, until some point in the future when I don’t, because, you know, whatever.
Why Make Music on the other hand, this one I’m taking a little bit more seriously. I have been thinking about this podcast for about 18 months. I’ve turned it over in my mind, in conversations with friends, again and again. I’ve been obsessed with the idea of it, and I’m both excited and nervous about it becoming a reality. Without wanting to jinx myself, I think - I hope - this will be a project that I can sink my teeth into for years.
It is, in many ways, the direct extension of something I wrote here late last year - a post called “What can music do?”
Here’s a bit of what I wrote there, late last year:
Do we need music? Is it important? Is it actually necessary, is it vital, or is it peripheral, a luxury, a distraction? In the next seven years, do we need to nurture the infrastructure of music and musicians, embolden artists, privilege their concerns and their health and their practice? Or should “music” be dismantled, or at least heavily deprioritised, so that we can all refocus on more pressing matters? Where do I land, then?
These questions aren’t rhetorical. I actually do not know the answer yet. But I need to think about it deeply, because I need to feel like I’m not wasting my time entirely. In 2030, my kids will be 18, 15 and 13. They’ll be inheriting the world that you and I, and those before us, have boiled.
If I spend the next seven years devoted to music, will I be able to look my kids in the eye and say that it was time well spent? Or will I shrug and say “sorry guys.” “Sorry, this is all I knew how to do.” “Sorry, this is what paid the bills.” “Sorry, I just really really cared about music, so that’s what I focused on.”
To live the next seven years in music, I have to believe in it. More than ever.
If you’re curious, go back and read the whole piece. It came out of me quite quickly that one, and I have returned to it pretty regularly over the past 12 months whenever I’ve needed to kind of steel myself and strengthen my resolve. The end of the piece, where I braindump all the things that music “can do” (or everything I could think of at the time, anyway) is kind of like a roadmap for the Why Make Music project, to see if I can cover all those various angles across the conversations I’m going to have.
Quite the challenge I’ve set myself for sure. Feel free to join me <3
And now …
TIM WEREN’T YOU DOING A LIVE STREAM?
Ah yes.
Yes, absolutely. That’s still gonna happen. Still keen.
I got 22 responses to that Google Form I posted. Your responses will 100% inform when the live stream will happen, and how. I’m pumped.
Here are some highlights from the results for my fellow nerds:
So yeah - looks like I’ll probably do it at night (my time, AEST). And live on YouTube. Cool. I can figure that bit out, easy.
I’m gonna keep the form open for another week or so before I announce a date and time, so feel free to fill it out if you haven’t already.
UNTIL NEXT TIM
That’s it from me.
Thanks to the many people who have been getting in touch with words of encouragement as I bound deeper and deeper into whatever this is, perhaps best described in my last newsletter as my “fuck-around-and-find-out” era.
If you have resonated at all with my various ramblings about creativity, climate and the artist experience - please do check out the new podcast, ride along to wherever that journey leads me. I’d really appreciate any feedback at all about the podcast - technical stuff, format stuff, also please do suggest future guests, I have a very very long wish list but would love to add some more names.
At the end of the day, I’m doing this first and foremost for me, as a personal project, to explore and listen and learn. But if there is anything I can do along the way to make it easier for other people to follow along and get something out of it, within the limits of my time and resources, I will do it!
Sending love & good thoughts <3
Tim