George Gershwin, an ante-litteram #indie

What does "Indie" mean? I'll try to explain it in my italian-English. Maybe Independent, unchained.

An author is independent if he is obedient to his talent and is able to express what he feels inside. No need to be politically correct (or incorrect) to achieve this result, the two things are not inconsistent with each other.
It'is true, think on our own often involves going against the main-stream, in which case we must be ready to reaction with self-criticism, but with a belief in our own ability: if you think you have something to say, who can argue otherwise ?

George Gershwin lived a century ago, giving us memorable pieces, and if he were here today I could think about him as a real independent .

He was able, just as geniuses do, to translate into music love, passion, everyone feelings, and he did it, in my humble opinion, more by the songs than by the so-called classic works, highly valuable, but not supported by the same natural emotional intensity.

Not an conventional composer, but not only a chansonnier, an author of revues always hovering between serious and popular: he was George Gershwin, a first-generation jew raised in Brooklyn, son of a Russian Rabbi escaped from bloody events .

He played piano without method; but he composed songs since the age of fifteen years, when his parents bought the instrument to his brother Ira. His first job was to play scores for twelve hours a day in music stores for customers who wanted to hear the most famous songs . Can someone tell to him that he wasn't able to play?

He felt the distrust surrounding him in the intellectual circles, where people considered his, a second-choice music, compared to the classical .

He forced himself into a trip to Europe in search of conventional inspiration. Here he went to class by more good teachers while at home he was popularly acclaimed, not only musical icon but synthesis of the American Way: a New World, a New Music born from the ashes of the old, the desire to live and to seek new ways. Experimenting and exploring have never represented nothing revolutionary for an American, of course!

But one fine day Maurice Ravel, to whom he had turned once again, victim of an unjustified sense of inferiority towards his older brothers, gave him the fateful question:

"Why do you want become a second-hand Ravel when you are already a first-rate Gershwin?"

And you, my friends and Indie-colleagues, do you want to become an imitation of someone else or to show who you already are?


Learn from everyone, be yourself, be independent .