The musician in Jonathan Meur

Jonathan Meur has a passion. It’s making music. Yes, I see him almost everyday as a colleague going about life- surviving, working, making it count. But then there is this creator that lurks inside, pushing  him every now and then to walk across to a sidewalk cafe, plug in his acoustic guitar and a Korg workstation and sing. Sing his own words. His own tunes. His own compositions. 

Indie musicians have it rough. Sidewalk cafe’s , roadside Esplande’s, here and there gigs…these are the moments that keep them alive. Push them to extend their boundaries and keep creating amazing music. Music that has not yet sold out to labels or their marketing. Music that is about the art and not the money. Music that is created after backbreaking effort, at the wee hours of dawn, inside subway stations, over coffee table napkins, because the day is about survival, about ensuring that a salary cheque comes into the mailbox. 

But what separates them from “we the living” is the power to believe and the passion to keep at it. Anywhere between 5-500 fans, or bystanders. It doesn’t matter. The arpeggio comes live, the piano sustain keeps going, the harmony makes the emptiness disappear. 

No Jon and I are not great friends. Hell we don’t even know each other. But this is not about that. It’s about the human ability to create something out of nothing. 

No Jonathan Meur is not on Vevo. Or Spotify. Or Billboard. I don’t even know whether he will cut an album someday. But this song, is as good as I have heard anywhere. In terms of  originality, lyrics, tune and composition, it made me feel as good as any good song does by artistes who have a gazillion views on Vevo and million downloads on iTunes.

The video sucks. Cos people like me( who think they know a lot about filming and photography) sometimes screw up in trying to experiment with exposures. But the audio is good. The song from what i understood was written by Jon while coming to work in the subway. It is about Strangers. 

And Jon and Gabriel make four minutes of magic out of it.

And I hope Jon makes that album which does get a million downloads one day.