Letter From the Editor, Firebird Magazine, Inaugural Issue
By: Daniela Brigatti , Founder & Editor-in-Chief
“Without music, life would be a mistake”
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Dear Reader,
At the beginning of the school year, mid-pandemic and a year since I had seen any live music, I turned to my co-founder, Sha, and asked him, “what percentage of our conversations do you think are about music?” It was really rhetorical because between long text rants about new releases, hours spent playing vinyl records, and dozens of heated debates over our favorite artists, it would be impossible to quantify the tremendous amount of time we spend experiencing, analyzing, and discussing music. It occurred to us that perhaps there was a better place to organize all of these thoughts than in our rambling text messages. As one of our writers once put it when I asked him why he joined Firebird, “I just wanted to get out of my DMs.” This seemed to be a common theme among our team of writers when we first came together. We started Firebird because we all spend our time listening to and obsessing over music anyway.
One of our Music You Need to Know writers, David Feigelson, once told me, “I think music clicks for some people and it doesn’t for others. For me it just clicks.” Personally, I think music has the potential to “click” for anyone. We’re here to help. What I do think is true is that most of us here at Firebird feel like music has been inextricably interwoven with our lives for a very long time. We don’t just get or listen to music, we feel it. For most of us, there’s an epic origin story to our love affair with music. For Sha, it’s when he was shown the music video for “Help!” by The Beatles as a toddler and became hypnotically transfixed. For me, it’s when my daycare started playing “Here Comes the Sun” by (again) The Beatles every day during nap time and I fell in love with the distant voice of George Harrison singing me to sleep. If these moments are the origin stories, the rest of our lives feel like epics where music is the narrator and we are the protagonists.
Whether it’s My Chemical Romance soundtracking my awkward hormonal middle school angst or Taylor Swift guiding me through my first world-crushing, Earth-shattering heartbreak during high school, I can’t think of a time in my life that isn’t in some way defined by the music I was listening to. So when it comes to my favorite artists, genres, styles, projects, performances, yes, to an extent it is personal. Of course, music-nerds aren’t unique in this. Music is nostalgic for everyone. As children, the voices on the radio or in our CD players were some of the most repetitive and influential voices in our lives. In many ways, my childhood obsessions over Michael Jackson, Queen, The Beatles, ABBA, and Taylor Swift all shaped my understanding of the world in a way that my parents or teachers couldn’t. These artists set up my expectations for politics, adolescence, romance, work and life. If musicians were our heroes, then music must be a superpower. I like to equate music to magic, but perhaps what is more accurate is when Beethoven said “music is a higher revelation than philosophy.” The point is, music, when we really listen, can teach us a lot.
Music has both informed and expressed the world views of generations forever. You can see how the anti-Vietnam war counterculture generation is inseparable from the music festivals of the late sixties like Monterey or Woodstock, which drastically changed both international politics and live music forever. Or, you can also look at the more subtle way hyperpop sounds like the screams of an overstimulated internet generation trapped in the isolation of quarantine. Wherever you choose to focus in history, you cannot ignore the role music has played in building the stories we tell.
In many ways, I see musical movements and projects as mirrors of the society of the time and place in which they were made. If music is so compelling to us in large part because it’s relatable, then perhaps exploring the music of other times and places can allow us to peer into the unique experiences of other groups. I often find myself desperate to get my parents to listen to my favorite new artists mostly because I think it’ll help them understand me better. It’s also why it’s so gratifying to connect with someone over a shared love for an artist or album. To me, music is a beautiful way in which humans can capture emotional experiences that others may otherwise never come close to understanding. Therefore, we should view music as a form of entertainment but also as a time capsule. It’s a language through which history shows us how people felt and thought. But this is not just true of history: Charli XCX released an album in 2020 literally called how i’m feeling now. If you pay enough attention to this album, you’ll begin to notice things like how Charli XCX shouting the words “I’m so bored” on an album made and released during lockdown might someday come to be a valuable resource in understanding the fever dream that was 2020.
I hope that you’ll use Firebird as a resource to discover new artists and grow closer to the music you already know. I hope Firebird will challenge you to reassess some of your opinions and compel you to revisit more familiar music with new perspectives. We want to adventure through the endless world of music with you. I only ask that you read Firebird with an open mind.
We named the magazine Firebird for two reasons. The first, because the mascot of the University of Chicago is a phoenix, so it seemed appropriate. Second, because we couldn’t help but find ourselves struck by the way in which music lives an ever-changing but eternal life. Throughout music’s history, we’ve seen genres and movements age and eventually die. However, from these ashes, music always births something new. Music, in its resilience and glory, is a firebird. I couldn’t think of a more apt comparison to music than a mythical creature that blazes with energy and finds a way to remake itself time and time again using pieces from its past. Music is uniquely supernatural in its power, beauty, and range. We’re here to show you.
Dani
Editor-in-chief
Originally published in Firebird Magazine’s Inaugural Issue 2021
