More About gone but not forgotten

One day The Muse Of Music got to thinking about these people and their precious, all-but-forgotten music. Can we afford to take them or their music for granted, even though many of them did? Why do we seem to be letting them slip through our fingers? Why is it that they could jump and jive and thrill to their music but we can't seem to? Does the same blood run through our veins and do have the same kinds of feelings and stand up for the same principles?

The answers came readily. Yes, times have changed, but people haven't. People today are as capable of reliving those feelings and rising to those principles as they ever were. We, too, are able to experience the joy of life through music and to rise to greatness.

This line of thought led The Muse to this feature.

Gone But Not Forgotten is not the outcome of an historian's desire to chronicle times past, a sentimental longing for what's gone and can't be reinvented afresh, or a statement that we do not forget. Nor is it the outcome of a desire to preserve the past merely out of gratitude and respect for those who lived it, although they certainly deserve all the gratitude and respect we can muster. Nor is it about preservation, even though the advent of new recording and restoration technology has given us a golden opportunity to serve posterity—one too valuable to be thrown away.

Gone But Not Forgotten is a statement that this music speaks to us, too, unequivocally. Why should we sweep all this vibrant music into a "cone of silence" when we have the power to make it our own, almost with an equal verve?

Although the artists who created this legacy are long gone, their inspiration lives on. In this feature The Muse offers a way to relive a slice of a great past, a chance to let these artists speak to us once more, as they did to our forefathers. No, it's not just to celebrate the past that The Muse features this music, but rather to celebrate the present. Gone But Not Forgotten is just a simple case of doing the right thing for those who will carry on after the last survivor of the "greatest generation" is finally gone forever—us.