Introduction
Why am I breaking up the flow of an economic blog with a diversion into popular music, you ask? It is a good question. But there is some method in my madness, if I stretch it far enough…
Music and art cultures reflect the prevailing mood of the time far better than anything else. I therefore thought that a look at the musical themes of the last 60 years would be an ideal way of deepening our understanding of the planetary combinations. Furthermore, music and art change as a result of harnessing technological inventions – art always mirrors science - and as we are likely to see the some major technological shifts in the coming years it is a helpful meditation on where we are likely to go.
Finally, there is the relevance of Neptune to the current economic themes. While Neptune does not rule music “per se” (all planets together are what create music both within us and in general), it does transmit the dominating musical themes of each generation and is responsible for what becomes mainstream. Neptune also has a strong correlation with the music business and my next post touches on the subject of consumerism as a whole, so the music scene and industry are a good introduction to this.
However, before I start I feel some provisos are necessary:
When I talk of music I mean the not only instrumental music but the interrelationship between the instrumental composition and the lyrics- the rhythm of the poetry and its vocal interpretation as an integral part of the whole. My approach reflects the fact that I am as likely to be drawn to the lyrical interpretation as to the harmony or beat of a composition. That is just my birth-chart at work, I mention it so that everyone is clear of my definition.
Inevitably the focus will be on the UK. This regrettable bias toward the UK over the US is almost entirely down to my own balance of experience, although the existence of just one chart in the UK for many years when there were a variety of them in the US means it is easier to identify mainstream in the former anyway. The choice of the UK/US, on the other hand, reflects the link to the consumer/western society and the planetary influences those countries themselves resonate to. A perspective from the East would be very different.
Although I shall be dealing predominantly with mainstream chart music, when I refer to the prevalence of a genre at a specific time, this does not preclude its initial appearance outside the mainstream 10 years earlier, since there will always be those whose charts pick up on the coming aspects before others. We are looking at the dominant influence on the masses here, though we will try to address some undercurrents too.
I am not a music expert so I am not so hot on music theory. In an ideal world I would be collaborating on this post with someone who could relate the composition structure of each genre to the planetary configurations at play. Perhaps one day I will get to update this with expert help, but not today.
Not being an expert also means that I am unlikely to pick up the subtleties that define the minute differences between some genres, so I will undoubtedly get some terminology wrong. It might matter to purists that I have identified one sub-genre with its sub-genre antithesis, but from the perspective of the broader themes I am covering it is not important, and you will just have to learn to live with it.
Linked to the subject of sub-genres is the fact that everyone has their own musical identity. As mentioned music is the product of all the planets so it is hardwired into everyone’s birth-charts and the progressions to it. We each resonate to some genres more than others and no amount of “musical education” will change that. (Indeed it is quite a fun game to inspect people’s charts to see whether their claimed taste in music and art is real or just pretension to fit in with their peers). A strong outer planet aspect in an individual chart will determine that person’s choice of genres and can override any taste for the prevailing musical direction of the year or decade. I have tried to be as objective as possible, but inevitably my own chart and opinions will creep in, for that I apologise.
The 1950s – The overture
I will start with the 1950s and rock and roll because of the relationship with consumerism. The ability of the public to buy records was a key practical factor in what on the surface might look just like creative developments. And it is also instructive to remember how we got to that point. Although the history of the phonograph dates back to the mid 19th century, its use by record manufacturers dates to the 1890’s . Similarly radio owes its origins to the 1890’s, although broadcasting was a 1920’s development. The connection of both to the Pluto Neptune conjunction of 1891-2 cannot be ignored.
Finally, in music composition great changes were taking place behind the scenes in the early half of the 20th Century with country and jazz as well as increasing experimentation in classical music.
However it was in the1950’s, as Neptune started its sextile with Pluto, that this all really came together with the shift into popular music as we recognise it today. The birth of rock and roll as a separate genre in the early 50’s corresponded with Neptune’s conjunction with Saturn in 1952, but it was not until the square between Uranus and Neptune in 1954-56 that people were truly ready to break with the old causing the new genre to go mainstream with the younger generation. The trigger was the conjunction of Jupiter with Uranus in 1954, also picking up an opposition with Chiron. In May 1954, Bill Haley & His Comets recorded Rock Around the Clock….a year later, as Jupiter conjoined Pluto, the song set the rock and roll boom in motion. At this stage rock and roll can reasonably be correlated with the growing consumer society in the US and had yet to make mainstream impact in the UK until a few years later.
Shifts were already occurring in style by the late 50s. of which Buddy Holly’s style is a key example. The UK is more inclined to take the mainstream lead with Saturnian themes and the shift in focus to the UK in fact followed, the rather Saturnian theme, of Buddy Holly’s death in 1959.
The 1960’s – Radical shifts of key
The next big step can be reasonably correlated with the period around 1962. In that year Uranus moved from Leo into Virgo and came within orb of Pluto and its sextile to Neptune. Uranus also made an opposition to Jupiter. It was an exciting year of transition for media as a whole and the birth of the Rolling stones in the UK and the Beatles.. However transition years are often only appreciated in retrospect and don’t always produce too much concrete, so, although the Beatles’ popularity, resonating to Jupiter-Uranus, increased through 1963, Saturn in quincunx to Uranus that year delayed some of the impact of the Stones for another couple of years. In fact it is 1964-66, when Uranus and Pluto were together in conjunction and opposed by Saturn that the UK rock scene really took off with the Stones and the Who as well as a host of other bands, who would later come to prominence in various sub-genres, including what has subsequently be termed progressive rock. At the same time the Beatles conquered the US, and in the US the influence of Hendrix began to dominate the genre.
The next key astrological configurations which carried the new musical era on its crest, was the sextile in 1966-68 of Uranus with Neptune. Where the square in the 1950’s had set off rock on roll, in this case the sextile represented gentler experimentation; this was the flower power era, and the period when the growing psychelic rock movement and a greater integration of elements of folk music became part of the mainstream.
The sextile of Uranus with Neptune set the scene for what became during the next decade very important: the (Neptunian) blending of otherwise unconnected (Uranus) musical themes that really created the multitude of genres that followed.
Music technology was the other Neptune/Uranus product of this period- notably the use of synthesizers particularly Moog’s version. Neptune and Uranus together are often considered to co-govern modern astrology and it is rather curious that two of the first records to feature synthesizer were Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, Ltd. by The Monkees and Cosmic Sounds by The Zodiac in November 1967. Synthesisers were another element in the development of popular music that started as just a whisper but became increasingly important later and to which we will return later.
Finally, the conjunction of Jupiter with Pluto in 1968 was the first to follow the Pluto Uranus conjunction. Jupiter makes things bigger and more boisterous and in this case together with the heavy darkness of Pluto it made them louder and took rock a step further into heavy metal with groups such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple all forming in the year in the UK.
The various trends described as developing from 1966-1968 finally culminated as Uranus conjunct Jupiter in 1969 in the huge Woodstock festival, which incorporated elements of all of them.
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