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Welcome back everyone.

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Today, in this new episode of Where is the Music Podcast I wanted to share with you my commentary, my ideas, my feelings about the song, about a tune that has been close to me for many years, and I think many of you might.

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Recognise. This is a song called “Calling you” from 1987, a movie called Bagdad Cafe the the reason why I picked this songs for today.

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Is because it offers a perfect platform. A perfect example of the reason why we're here. Where is the Music podcast is is a space where I offer commentary and ideas on why music matters. Regardless what

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We can say about it what we can rationalise about it. Very often we cannot say much about it. We have very little to rationalise about.

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Music and this might be the reason why certain music is so significant, so meaningful to us. The song I was saying offers a perfect example.

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For a variety of reasons, personally I think I heard this song the first time in a soundtrack collection when I was a teenager at the time.

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There were a few around of significant famous movies of the time, and so there were collections being sold that contain the the, the, the main theme, the main songs of those movies and this is how I encounter this song together with if I recall.

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The soundtrack, from Rocky's Eye of the Tiger, the soundtrack from other movies. It's no point to go in the direction, but the song is called. I was saying calling you and the artist is Jevetta Steele. I know.

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little about her, I think I felt a little curious throughout the years, I would say.

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Maybe 25 years, to investigate, which is what other things she has sung, and in the same manner I've never seen the movie.

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On one side I probably say to myself, why didn't you investigate more? Why didn't you go into it and probably discover other things as interesting as this tune? But the truth is that.

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Music has the power.

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The potential to reach us to touch us profoundly without any further information, without any necessarily even context. I see. I I haven't seen the movie itself.

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But still the song means a lot to me and to this day I'm not entirely sure still yet why.

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So I wanted to take this opportunity to take it a little bit apart and show how how it is made or at least how I think it is made. We are going to listen to it certainly, but before we listen to it, I want to.

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To offer you a little journey in and around it so that you have a sense of what this song is is made of. My hope is that by doing this.

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Sort of. Operation of dissecting it. Perhaps you you will be inspired to do it the same or similar to.

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Other songs that might have been close to your heart as this was to me.

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So we can say this song cannot be farther from the genres that we mostly have talked about in this podcast.

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This has to be with the fact that the singer comes from, clearly from the her style of singing comes from a from a gospel upbringing, from from a gospel heritage, and the song I just Googled. It is categorised as pop.

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Her singing style. You can find some Blues in it, some R&B. There is no piano in it. My relationship with the piano has.

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Been constant throughout my life, and I've always found difficult to really be passionate about music that has no piano. It maybe with the exception of electric guitar.

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In this particular case, there isn't even any electric guitar.

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The lyrics perhaps might have something to do with it. I can read some to you. They're not, they're not long.

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A desert Rodd from Vegas to nowhere.

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Some place better than where you've been.

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A coffee machine that needs some fixing in a little cafe just around the bend.

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I am calling you. Can't you hear me? I am calling you.

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A hot, dry wind blows right through me.

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The baby's crying and I can't sleep, but we both know a change is coming.

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Coming closer sweet release.

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These are pretty much the lyrics for the entire song.

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And the the melody I can play it to you right now.

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This is it. I played a verse.

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And I played the chorus.

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Notice the lack of complexity. In a sense, it's very short. It's kind of repetitive. It's very little material.

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The lyrics certainly do hint at some moment of hypnotic feelings. Maybe not necessarily this distressed, but not particularly enthusiastic or positive either. There is some some references to maybe a bit melancholic, anxious.

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Feelings, the melody that I just played does not have too peculiar contour, perhaps except this kind of chromatic descending line.

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Once again, why are we choosing this one? Before we answer, let's go talk about the the third element of this music, the harmony. This is where perhaps things get more interesting, but once again, we're not going to find, I think.

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The answer I've written down the chords. This is a song that I've been playing for for a while, so chords are quite rich.

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Hear this?

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This is the opening chord. It is quite striking.

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There is some dissonance in there.

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OK, there is an element of hypnotism, the top notes.

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That keeps repeating.

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But other than this, it's quite linear. It's quite straightforward.

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Even more interesting are the courts from the chorus.

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Notice already how rich and complex is this very unstable chord?

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And this other one.

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Also quite unstable and the third.

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Also quite unstable.

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Also on the table so the cars is made of a stream of instability and this is perhaps is something that we can we will be able to find in the song.

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Four more chords.

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Notice the chromatic line that I was talking about earlier is here outlined.

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The descent.

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Slow descent.

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OK, so we have the elements. Now we have a single simple melody. We have some interesting lyrics and we have some very, let's say, rich and unusual chords.

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Now is. Is this it? How does all of this come together in inspired, beautiful tune?

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There have been quite a few reviews, of course, for the for this song, and I think I just learned this song one some award for its role in the soundtrack.

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Has been called hypnotic, strangely fascinating, and the the vocal skills of the singer extremely elegant and perfect for for the expressiveness required in this tune.

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The instrumental section of this tune features are harmonica.

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That offers perhaps a a clear contrasting section to this instability that the harmony provides so far.

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Now I'm going to play it. I'm going to put together melody, chords and rhythm to give you a sense of what the song is. If you want to hear it already, I'll ask you to be patient for a bit and to join me.

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In this process of uncovering the elements of this tune so that when you do hear it, your perception of it will be hopefully enhanced. So this is the verse and the chorus.

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So you get probably already the overall hypnosis effect. It's quite strong, but you also when you hear the melody and the harmony put together, you start appreciating the magic.

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When I dissect the tune like that and offer you the elements once separated from the other, you can't react to it. You can't respond to it.

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This is a very good way for me to offer you a glimpse of what we do as musicians, especially as creatives, which is the material we deal with on a daily basis in music.

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Classes we take things apart.

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To understand them, to to, to realise their potential, to embody them, hopefully at the instrument, so that when we do put them together in music, the magic somehow emerges by itself. The task here is.

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Certainly technical one needs to learn the vocabulary of music and is to learn the the fundamentals. What is Melody, what is harmony, what is rhythm, etcetera. But one still needs to be able to.

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Identify the musical elements for their role in the magic somehow, exactly as a magician does. Create a complex trick by putting together a variety of skills. Some has to do with how fast the.

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The hands move. Some has to do with the word that he has to say some has to do with where he looks and altogether make magic. At this stage we haven't heard the magic at its full gear.

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We are going to listen to it later on. I wanted to spend a little bit more time on.

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The construction of this theorem.

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UM.

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There is a sense that the verse and the chorus have a story telling that somehow we digest, we process, we perceive, but it's very difficult to to put in words.

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Once again, music does challenge our ability to rationalise, to formalise, to articulate in terms and in logic what perhaps many of us can perceive at once. So the verse is set on.

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Circular motion given by the accompaniment.

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Four chords, and if you notice, there is we already pointed out that this little dissonance.

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This little this one here that comes back at almost every chord.

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The loop does seem to be representing some sort of thoughts series of thought stream of thinking that cannot be escaped, some sort of at once, if no hypnosis, but also mental circular.

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Madness that is growing and growing the music in this manner has a representational aspect, a representational power just for the simple idea of looping.

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A series of sounds, the series of sounds do carry attention with ebbs and lows. This tension goes high a little bit and then comes down.

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Now high little bit.

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And then relaxes a bit.

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And again.

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So in a sense, whatever the melody is doing, this harmonic setting is kind of already designed to provide a psychological emotional.

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When we do hear it for a while, and especially if you learn the course and if you can play it at the piano, you will start embodying this psychological, emotional.

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Context. The situation is even heightened in the colours exactly because each chord is on stable. As we were saying earlier. Let's play them again.

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Notice the effect of coming back to the loop.

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The sense of hypnosis seem to have continued through the verse through the chorus back to the.

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Why? Because this this circular motion didn't stop. It does seem that whatever happens in the melody, whatever. However, a singer is going to sing on top of this accompaniment that creates duality, as I'm listening to this tune.

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And as I playing the melody I am participating in the beautiful duality of music creation, music, creativity. What is this duality? What am I talking about? Well, the duality to me is something that comes so often in class is a duality between what is.

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Given has a steady instruction.

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The tangible aspect of music making.

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These are the chords to play. These are the notes to follow. This is the tempo to be aligned with. Those are practical things that we can follow. We can get better at, we can be more crafted and more refined at.

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And then there is the imagination, the soul, the interpretation, our ideas about it. I can play a little bit faster here. I can play a little bit softer there. I can add an extra note over here or I can take away the pedal in that particular spot.

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Things that depend more on our personal judgement on our personal sense of taste than and.

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To play in the end is nothing else to interpret, so this is not a piano class. Nevertheless, this is an invitation for for you if you if you do play an instrument to see how the music that you love can become a way for you to explore.

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By yourself or with your teacher? Exactly. All those feelings that the music somehow elicits.

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This song has already become today an opportunity for pondering about two ideas. First, how the magic is created by putting together elements that by themselves have no particular relevance like bricks in.

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Cathedral are just bricks.

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This is something to ponder about.

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And the other thing is that plane becomes.

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The perfect opportunity to embody what the music that you're playing is trying to express. This is certainly no easy task, no easy fit, but at the same time, music does offer this opportunity. I love this song for more than 25 years.

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And when I learn how to play it, I enjoy it even more.

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Every time I listen to it, I feel connected. I feel perfectly myself and the fact that it doesn't belong to a genre or a category of music that I'm particularly close overall makes it even more significant.

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It's like this song goes in corners of my life, in corners of my personality and emotions that are really remote. I can't talk about them really. Which, by the way, makes it a perfect case for our podcast, isn't it?

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Impossible to talk about music. We all acknowledge that, and that's why we are here. We are acknowledging the limits of it so that we grow perhaps a new vocabulary about music.

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So I'm going to play you the song. This time I'm going to start from the colours and I'm going to continue with the instrumental. The reason why I do that is because earlier I mentioned that.

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The instrumental involves an harmonica solo.

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And provide also.

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Delightful contrast with this sense of hypnotic instability that the whole song somehow is able to deliver.

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I'm not going to play the exact solo of the recording, but I want you to notice the complete change of setting the harmony here does open up. It's like a moment of a moment of peace.

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A full breath of fresh air.

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This is provided fundamentally by the harmony by the chords. A new chord can have such an impact.

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Well, if you are asking what is that chord, this is just a major chord. The power of that chord is the power of context.

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The instability that I that we described that we heard so far.

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Has lasted for a good couple of minutes, probably even more.

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Saw a major chord, a solid stable normal major chord after 2 minutes and a half of instability. Guess what has the effect of complete contrast the harmonica?

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Has a wonderful little solo. I never transcribed it myself. I will do my best to do something at least pleasant and delightful.

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After the solo and gonna conclude with the final chorus and final verse.

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So we're going to listen to the original recording. Now, if you have never heard it before, this is fantastic. This is really good the way the best way to get inside the work of art.

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Is to really deep dive into it and music sometimes is quite tricky to do. So when songs last so little time. In this case it's somewhere around 3 minutes, 4 minutes so.

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If you do know the song, the song, perhaps you now have a greater range of information that you can use to appreciate it.

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How the magic that we have described so far?

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Lifted to a completely new dimension by the vocal style.

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We've talked about hypnosis, we talked about instability.

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Strangely fascinating style.

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We talked about a lot of things, but the voice has the ability in this particular interpretation to.

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Lift it all up.

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This is not chords anymore. These are not notes. There is no melody and harmony. Now it's just music.

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Enjoy the beauty of Jevetta Steele's voice in a context.

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That has nothing to do with Blues. Pop. Gospel is just music. If you want to listen to my piano solo interpretation of this tune, don't forget in my YouTube channel I provide a link in the description of the podcast. Thank you for listening to today's episode.

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I will see you again the next time. And here I give you calling you by Jevetta Steele.

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A desert Rd from Vegas to nowhere.

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Someplace better than a where you've been.

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A coffee machine that needs some fixing.

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In a little cafe just around the bend.

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Calling you. Can't you hear me?

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The baby's crying and I can't sleep.

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We will know a change is coming.

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Come in closer sweetly.

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I know you hear me.

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You know, you hear me?

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Desert Rd. From Vegas to nowhere.

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Someplace better than where you've been?

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Machine that needs some fixing.

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And a little cafe just around the bend.

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The baby is crying.

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I can't sleep.

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And I can feel a change is coming.

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Come and closer. Sweet.

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Calling you.

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Can you hear me?