#100daysofpractice day 48 - playing by ear Zombie by The Cranberries #bass #music

100 days of practice day 48 - taking up a challenge/suggestion to learn Zombie by The Cranberries for rhythm. I love alternative music. I'm not big on genres, but I'd consider alternative and jazz standards to be my favorites if I were. But more than anything, words are my heart. And often it seems the lyrics and meaning of this song are overlooked by the powerful drive of the rhythm and dynamics. I love learning about others, but I also know that that includes understanding and respecting that no matter how much I can learn, I can't know what it means to be someone else, to live their truth and life. Zadie Smith, a Black British author, wrote a beautiful introduction to Toni Morrison's short story Recitativ. In it, she mentioned being an outsider looking in at Seamus Heaney's poetry - a Northern Irish Nobel prize-winning poet (and, thanks to her shining her light on his art, one of my favorite poets, too). She wrote that though she isn't part of his culture, reading his work gave her perspective that she wouldn't have otherwise. But she also wrote that, no matter how much she read, she could never truly know what it means to be Northern Irish, to understand that lived experience - and that having an outsider's point of view isn't to sow division but to show respect. Toni Morrison is my favorite author, and we're both American women. But despite my reading, I can't know firsthand what it's like to be a Black woman in America. As with Ella Fitzgerald - she's my favorite musician, but I can't live her story, only respect it. Thinking I can truly know others' experiences isn't respect. All paths are different, but we should all work to make each path more gentle without thinking we can know what it's like to take another's steps. To me, that's unconditional respect. And to me, that's love. Regarding Zombie - written by Irish musicians in response to IRA bombings - it's not my story to tell. My country has been violently divided between north and south. Scars from that division still exist. But equating that to understanding firsthand experience is wrong, and it matters to hear those who lived the story tell it themselves. #bass #zombie #thecranberries #cover #playingbyear #eartraining #respect