The Secret Power of Music The Transformation of Self and Society through Musical Energy
I developed an interest in this “secular researcher” music expert’s book via references to it from the early ’90s-present footnote references in several anti-rock juvenile literature advice books, as THE expert music criticism book. Er, nope, though Jeff Godwin What’s Wrong With Christian Rock?, Frank Garlock Music in the Balance by Frank Garlock & Kurt Woetzel, Eric Holmberg’s HELL’S BELLS video Hell’s Bells: The Dangers of Rock n Roll – Original Classic, and other outsider music writers suggest it when they quote this book as high-expert standing.
Other than chapters “The Ancient Music: the Wisdom of China” (pp. 33-71), “The Ancient Music: the Wisdom of India” (pp. 170-186), “Assessment: the Physics of the Om” and “Appendix 6. The Mystery of the Pythagoras’ Comma,” –I have no opinion of those sections, since they’re out of my vinyl junkie interests/experience– there isn’t much to recommend this weird book trying to hang its arguments on Eastern Mysticism, unless you lean towards the idea that “After the dissemination of Jazz, which was definitely ‘put through’ by the Dark Forces, a very marked decline in sexual morals became noticeable.” (p. 194 here, though quoted from Cyril Scott’s MUSIC AND ITS SECRET INFLUENCE book, 1933, the 1958 edition Music: Its Secret Influence Throughout the Ages), and the idea that members of the Great White Brotherhood communicated between England/Europe with the adepts sitting in the Indian subcontinent telepathically. Chapter, “Coda: The Ancient Wisdom Revisited: The Modern Esoteric Viewpoint” (beginning p. 255) brings out the Theosophical Society ideas about those Victorian/Edwardian “new age” ideas in some detail.
Rock Music Kills Plants (the Colorado Women’s College/Temple Buell College story about undergraduate Dorothy Retallack’s bio class experiments The Sound of Music and Plants,, also references that also seem to have been sourced from THE SECRET LIFE OF PLANTS by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird).
Pastor Bob Larson. The Rock Music Hard Boils Eggs–Larson invented this urban legend when he updated his ROCK ‘N’ ROLL THE DEVIL’S DIVERSION 1966 book and retitled it as THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED in 1973+. Also the attribution that Larson was an ex-rock musician (see the “Further Reading” section, page 290, suggesting Larson’s THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED juvenile advice literature classic The day music died), though in 1984, checking out Larson’s recording history was nowhere nearly as easy as with 2010+ google (note: all private press self-published kitsch religious/outsider music releases on Lp, 1966+).
David A. Noebel, THE MARXIST MINSTRELS book The Marxist Minstrels: A Handbook on Communist Subversion of Music, also on page 290. It’s ODD that Larson and Noebel’s books would rate a mention from this UK writer, since those works were a rarity outside the U.S. Christian-related niche book markets.
This is an odd book, strangely argued for the most part, and like Cyril Scott’s weird book picked up enthusiastically to support the idea that any 20th century music that is not (European, er, Germanic) lite music is eeevil, instead of just of bad/low/trash taste. I believe it got reference/sales traction due to a strange alliance with Eric Holmberg’s 1989 rock-paranoia documentary, HELL’S BELLS, Jeff Godwin’s casting around for references supporting his WHAT’S WRONG WITH CHRISTIAN ROCK? 1990 book (that really did not like Amy Grant’s bubblegum CCM discography), Frank Garlock’s extensive footnoting in his MUSIC IN THE BALANCE 1992 teaching kit book, and subsequent juvenile advice books about eeevil pop music since, using “jazz” and “rock” as code.
If your tastes run to a certain twilight-zone “non-fiction” flavor about the sociology of toxic commercial pop music, this is an odd read, and South Park offensive in places. It’s a kitsch philosophy book about eeevil jazz music by psychic race association and post-romantic period lite classical music, not something to be read seriously as reference.
