Unity is one of those terms people throw around the music scene. We are all allegedly chasing this unity thing, but we never talk about what it means to us.
Often, we use words we don’t fully understand. Every now and again a cunning linguist hits me with a, “You’re using that wrong”, I argue and Google agrees with them. While definitions evolve and slang is a real deal thing, sometimes overuse of words makes them like empty jargon.
They become terms that get used for branding, something we all get at a base level. Humans coming together for a shared goal is a wonderful idea. Then we get to the part where we need to define the concept and it all falls apart.
The scourge of jargon and buzz words
Google, pulling from Oxford Dictionary, says Jargon is defined as, special words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group and are difficult for others to understand. In other words, it’s slang that professionals say is okay. Then they judge the verbiage the streets use, hypocrites.
The media world have their own sensationalized jargon that derives around creating strong emotional reactions. These are known as buzz words. Sticky, catchy, words with big concepts and little meaning.
To me the purpose of this coded language is to gatekeep access. The knowledge may be freely available, but you must suffer to fully understand what any of it means. I am convinced that a lots of folks in powerful positions listen for certain jargon to assess who is worthy of time.
I don’t think this is nefarious, powerful people are driven by utility. They want to make sure you can understand them when they speak. If the language you choose to use is something that resonates with them, you unlock access to them quicker.
I’m sure in scientific journals specificity is important. I’m also certain those ideas can be simplified into a general set of blocks that can lead someone on a journey of learning. Take them from the basics and bring them to the complex, explaining all the jargon necessary.
Is unity simply a term used to build hype? Or is unity an achievable concept in music.
Different genres of music speak differently
My mans and I are doing a collab. He wanted to produce a song and I am the vocals. When he told me he’d do all the mixing and I just had to write, record and ship, I was in.
We linked up and had a conversation about talking with engineers. My dude has a rock background and knows a whole slew of terminology I don’t. He let me know that I would encounter great difficulty if I didn’t know all the formal language he did.
I am convinced engineers can handle the way I describe stuff. I’ve made music for over 10 years, the people I’ve worked with have understood me well enough. Given I do see jargon as a way to gatekeep I will give him the benefit of the doubt.
I then proceeded to use the term “chop” in the context of beat making. He was unfamiliar with it, and we had to go down a rabbit hole of YouTube videos. I was not that good at explaining what it meant to him.
Each subculture in music breeds its own unique set of words. The same sound may be described differently depending on how old the person is. This entire conversation has explored one language so far. When you add translations into the mix it gets way less standardized.
Just look at the Bible and its history if you need proof of that.
Back to the topic, does unity mean we unify the language set of the terms of music?
Okay, enough stalling, here’s a look at unity
According to Google, Oxford says the second definition of unity is math based and means, the number one. Hmmmm, I get it now.
Everyone says unity they looked it up and realized it means the number one. They are the number one. On some Hip Hop ish, everyone is The Unity of their city. That’s a half joke, a lot of people are trying to be the “Drake of Montreal”.
Can you imagine people looking up words like that? No, the definition you were expecting from me is, The state of being united or joined as a whole. In theory this is supposed to mean a bunch of people working together, bound by a common goal.
The ideal behind unity is a great idea. As humans we seem to desire community and social lives. I know a few of y’all are hermits, but then I bet your DMs are popping with your internet cliques. Tumblr and Reddit got a large number of homebodies chilling and interacting with one another.
To make a group of people unite, with this implied acceptance behind it sounds nice. For all the people talking shit about them, safe spaces have some appeal. They are an effort to create unity by stamping out divisive action.
What we can say for certain, is the primary definition of the word implies a group of people bound together by a something.
How do people unite?
Unity is a noun. The problem with nouns is they simply are. You can think of unity as the destination we are aiming for.
When we are talking about action, we need to use verbs. So, to achieve unity we need to unite. Google, fed by Oxford, says unite means, come or bring together for a common purpose or action.
It also means, join in marriage, but it says archaic on that one. We can say this is some,
boomers would call the people who use it boomers, language.
What connects more is the “similar” definition it provides, come or bring together to form a unit or whole, especially in a political context. I think we are looking for unity because of how dope the process of uniting is.
Now we know that to achieve a unity we need to have a reason to have said unity in the first place. Here is where I think the whole unity talk falls apart, we don’t know what we want.
This is why I try and stay goal oriented. At least I can find people with shared goals, and it helps us unite to achieve them. Relationships don’t work if the end goals are diametrically opposed.
Unity is probably temporary
People act like unity is some forever state. It can definitely be something that lasts for a long time, decades even. Inevitably people will die and the times will change.
Here’s a morose thought, the only way to win at marriage is for someone to die. At that point y’all really did it. You stayed united until it was no longer possible. All other outcomes imply the marriage inevitably lost its unity.
Countries, movements, and institutions always fall. No empire has survived. It can be argued we are at the end of the American empire as the US dollar slowly gets replaced as the global trade standard.
I think there is a lot of confusion behind the way unity is spoken about. Why are we uniting?
CY’s MTLUnited series has a clear statement. We are uniting, on that night, to showcase what Montreal brings to the table. This employs SMART goals to achieve success.
I can get behind the idea of unity, when the thing we are uniting for, makes sense to me. If you want to know how to make your goal clear, click on link I shared above. Project managers are people who create unity at work by organizing tasks and keeping everything on schedule.
It may sound weird, but the entire science of management is about creating unity. Plus, they got to create unity where no one really starts off caring, at work.
Can the music scene unite?
Yes, the music scene CAN unite. This is a choice the individuals in the scene need to make. However, if you are simply throwing the term unity around, it’s not going to happen.
This may sound pompous, but you have to convince me, and every other stubborn person out there, that your idea is proper. You are dealing with people from every education background, every ethnicity, and every age group.
This literally means if you want unity, in theory it has to include the people you hate in life. If we want the Montreal scene to pop off, the ego thing is going to make that quite impossible.
There plenty of layers of hatred and avoidance of people I am not qualified to speak on. I wrote that for the people it applies to, to acknowledge it’s been explained to me. This article is a thought piece on what it would take to create unity.
The first time I even heard this term in music, I can think of, was through Hip Hop. It was in reference to coming together on the other side of life to avoid violence.
I think for music, the goal needs to be coming together to make money.
But Holden, not everyone makes music for money
Here is where the unity starts to fall apart. To keep it simple, there are 2 main groups of musician types. The hobbyists who make art for art. Then there are the ones trying to make a career out of this.
The hobbyists try and build a culture where no one talks about return on investment. The ones building a career definitely spit that ROI game. Since each of these camps have different long-term goals when it comes to music, division happens a lot between these two camps.
Both groups have totally valid reasons for making music. Both groups contain artists that do great work and both groups contain cornballs.
In music there are only so many slots that exist in the attention spans of people. Since both groups of people still want their art consumed, this creates frustrations down the line.
There ends up being this divide between people willing to lose money for their art and people who are unwilling to do so. What makes it murkier is that willingness to spend money exists among hobbyists and career seekers. There are also broke, give me types, no matter where you are at.
So, unity must include people who want to make money and people who don’t want to make money. It also needs to include people with money and broke people.
Given the thousands of rappers alone in Montreal, the process of uniting will require a plan that includes all the variables we can think of.
What about that content?
One thing I hear a lot is that if the content is fire, the people will come. I highly recommend these folk watch Wu Tang American Saga. Take time and actually look into how the mega successful groups achieved the success they did.
The content has to be fire, but that shouldn’t even be mentioned. People make art on a spectrum of growth. I didn’t know anything about a pocket in 2012. My shit tight as fuck in 2023.
If y’all really want to block blessings for people because they are early in the game, that is not going to create unity.
Having fire content alone isn’t enough. You need a brand that conveys a sense of unity. When you see a music video with 50 people turning up to a song, it slaps harder than homie by himself rapping in an alley.
When you perform and see hundreds of people rocking out to your music it’s amazing. The footage of 18 people in a room does not convey the idea your brand is uniting people. Your ability to bring people together, or unite them with a common goal, is directly correlated to how much money you can make in this game.
Take this blog, if I can unify enough eyes on this site, I do better in life. It tells people there is something here that is doper than elsewhere.
Unity is actually sexy AF.
Trying to find my tribe
Along the way I realized unity is a big concept. I don’t want to unite behind everyone and everything. I am open minded to letting stuff be, but I can’t back everything.
All love to Fred E Fame, but I don’t care about the Tory Lanez case. I’m not from Toronto. I have no desire to show unity on that subject, in fact I’m too ignorant to have a valid opinion.
I have a liberal, corpo-hippie take on life. I have a lot of values and principles and I’m even sometimes a hypocrite because of it. I believe in redemption arcs and trying to build a better future to make up for my past sins.
Instead of trying to unite with everyone, I want to bond with my peoples. We all put out energy into the world. Some energy I find attractive and other folk turn me off. To me unity is being surrounded by energy that fuels me instead of draining me.
I want to work within systems that encourage unity amongst the different tribes. If y’all play old school country at your parties, I may not want to be there. I do want your party to be popping and full of bags.
Then, when the party plays music we both like, we link up there and it’s all love. This lets us focus on our tribes and build security. Then we branch out and create stronger connections.
It’s not a competition
I’d be lying if I said low key, I wasn’t trying to smoke the world with my efforts. I had to actively turn down my competitive spirit.
Competition is a fire way to improve skills. It’s fun when it’s friendly and everyone follows codes of conduct. In art, the ego’s are fragile and competitions can go sour petty fast.
Allow me to be clear, I am aware of how petty I am. I be plotting vengeance stories like a scorned spouse when I’m really in my feels.
Once that happens it goes from fun, to dumb. Now there are people in my city I just walk by and don’t say hi to. This is the consequence of a younger Holden’s mouth.
My goals have me netting 6 figures a year and touring. There is no reason to compete to achieve that. Literally by working with my peers, even the ones I don’t like, we get there faster.
Maybe if we’re talking the Billboard charts the competition gets different. I have 0 desire to pursue that. I want to go on tour with my team and come home with enough money to go write the next album.
Over the year the KIL Team united and we are all a lot farther a long for it.
We should care more
To sum this up, unity will only exist in contexts where there are clearly defined goals. Then the people who want to pursue those goals will unite to achieve them.
Part of the greater unification effort is to accept that other people’s goals are valid. There are caveats here, I’m not mad at shutting down bigotry. But people go too far with the hate.
One of the reasons it’s hard to pull people to shows, is our peers will actively make fun of what we do. People on social medias are watching our lack of unity with pop corn and staying home. If we can’t even give each other love, why would they bother to show up?
I think the hobbyists need to cool off and stop trying to mess up the bags of the people chasing careers. The pickles are a gimmick, but, it’s also art. I made money off my art because of it, that’s fire. We can all agree sharing corny pickle stuff is on the “sellout” side of things, but ya boy trying to recoup now.
The people chasing careers need to give more dabs to the hobbyists. Frankly that’s what they want, would make them happy. Seems easy enough.
No matter what you personally are trying to get out of this, you have to remember your actions impact other people. Putting out hatorade isn’t going to help.
My success comes from giving back and showing positive vibes. Even if my compliments come too easy.
Time to hit new waves
I thought that last section would be the end. A lot of this stuff is kept bottled up in me. It’s hard for me to get through the layers of my ideas in regular conversation. People don’t watch the podcasts like that.
I’m grateful this platform exists. The more I write, the easier it gets. If my words in blog format can do more to create unity, I can try and shut up more IRL.
Key word is try.
I want to see everyone around me getting rich. However, I’m not invested in helping every idea succeed. I’m down to unite with those who are down to ride with me. I know what flavour of chip I am, and it is certainly not pickle.
I still fucks with people who are pickle flavoured.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone