Sail Above The Clouds
For our Civic term class, Music that Matters, we learned about music that has helped to teach, to inspire, and to ignite. During the course, we had a couple of active people in the music community come in to talk to us about the impact of music; Faiz Razi, Conan Neutron, and Fransisco Ramirez, respectively. For this Action Project, we were asked to create a proposal for My Block, My Hood, My City. Their newest project asks, "How can you make a positive impact on your neighborhood with something simple?"
For my project, I'm proposing adding multiple wind-activated sail-like spinning signs, that when they spin, they trigger speakers within their base to play a small, recorded loop of Fly Like An Eagle by Steve Miller. Additionally, they'd have a message put across the surface of the signs relating to the song and what it protests. I’m going to be putting this musical installation at the Illinois Centennial Monument in Logan Square. This is because it’s not just physically in the center of the neighborhood, but all the major streets of the neighborhood connect to it, and it’s just off of the Blue Line, meaning lots of people will pass by them and potentially take note of them.
The song is a slow-paced, almost space rock-type song that makes good use of the synths and bass present in it. It uses the repetition of the same verses and notes to still get its message across, using its own slowness to its advantage. There’s even a bit of improvisation present in Fly Like An Eagle, part of what makes it a unique song; in some versions of it at the end of the song, you can hear a beeping noise that sounds a bit like an alarm of some type. That wasn’t originally supposed to be a part of the song, and came from an unknown source in the studio, but was kept in by Miller because it fit the song. I also think that the song has a fair bit of intimacy present between the different phrases, especially near the end of the song.
The tempo of Fly Like an Eagle is slow and somewhat methodical, in 4/4 time, and that also reflects the change necessary to help those in need of it, those who the song talks about. The children who don’t have shoes on their feet, the people living homeless in the street. And that also connects into the politics of the song, the "us" vs. "them" present. For this song, I would say that the "us" here is supposed to be supportive of lower-income folks, with the "them" either being the rich or poverty in itself. And in 1976, I think that rising above to "fly like an eagle" above all the problems of society at the time was probably a pretty captivating thought. And the song's message/protest is still relevant today, even.
This installation will benefit my neighborhood, Logan Square, by calling to the issues of poverty and lower-income households getting pushed out of the surrounding neighborhood by gentrification. It should help teach and ignite people about the injustice that they themselves may have caused by moving in (the east side of Logan Square is predominantly Caucasian, while the western side is more Latino). I think that it will also benefit my neighborhood by making the Centennial Monument a point of interest for the public to hang around. Right now, not many people bother to walk over to the monument and small attached park, but perhaps my installation would cause it to become more of a point of interest for the community to gather around.
Below is a video documenting the area that I would set up my installation in.
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