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Love as an Erotic Exploration of Sound

Motown was an era where Black people found sound and made it their own. But what really happened was romance translating itself into rhythm. Black artists became the pillar of romance, the agents of romance. Black artists realised a conscience that ought to set us free; Black artists realised love. The Mic's Bea Kasale reports.


I sat in oblivion, really comfortably, for I did not know that melodies could feel like caresses. I didn’t know lyrics could sound like confessions from an admirer yearning all their life for you. I was unaware that music could be so intimate, slow, sensual. I didn’t know music could feel like my first time with desire, my first time with fervour.


Unadulterated sonical expression.


I find it nearly impossible to abandon metaphors and employ a candid nature in my speech. My diction will mimic the obscurity of adoration. My phrasing will endure the unbound voyage of love, of lust and passion. My piece will embody a melody sung from Marvin and given structure by Stevie. My writing, my writing will dare to indoctrinate love.


Motown music, a season of having virtually no substance of bounds, was a time where freedom was realised in sound. Emancipation married romance and love began to speak. Love, for a time, was shaped not entirely by ideology or experience but, in all respects, by possibility. Artists gathered around microphones and sang ballads that shaped the prospect of stumbling into arms that anticipated grasping you. To couple your fibre with their own. To love you, I mean really, to love you.


Romance given a conscience.


I fear that if I speak on the stature of love as we know it, no kind truth might splatter against the canvas. There is longing everywhere you go: students, adults, the elderly. Love is no longer available. Love is no longer a state of being that you perpetually find yourself in. Love is no longer in the air we’ve oxidised. Love is lost, and as such we are. We have no bearings of a reality that was once so easily ours. We are no longer able to receive or give; we are no longer able to gather.


Love, at a time, called us by name and we didn’t shroud or shudder. Love called us by name and, for a time, through song, through artistry, we actualised romance. We lived it. We honoured not our own conscience, but one that has only ever belonged to romance.


Finding yourself in a world permeated with a substance that denotes our inherent fibre, one we have somehow become strangers to, there will always be some sound to serenade your wander. This is my version of saying, “Here, listen to these”:



Bea Kasale

Edited by Daniela Roux


Photos courtesy of Stevie Wonder, Classic Motown

 
 
 

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