heir difficulties, and the birth of their daughter, Blue Ivy.
In the video on Tidal, we see Jay Z rehearsing with the orchestra, rapping in a wool cap before a festival of strings, before a mixing console where a DJ is spinning, before friends to whom he's showing baby pictures on his phone as the song plays:
Last time the miscarriage was so tragic
We was afraid you disappeared but nah baby, you magic
So there you have it, shit happens
Just make sure the plane you on is bigger than your carry-on baggage
Everybody goes through stuff
Life is a gift, love
Open it up
The video ends with the arrival of the night of the first concert, with the arrival of the famous and not, with a prayer with the players led by Jay Z. White-tuxed, immaculate, he heads with mic in hand for the stage. That night, those nights, all reports are that, with the orchestra, with the crowd, exquisite music happened. Hits, mostly; "Glory," also, with Jay Z saying, "I didn't think I was gonna make it through that one," and one editorial change. On "Big Pimpin'," he elided the word whitey from the line "Comin' down and sippin' daily, no record till whitey pay me." I do not know why, other than what one might conclude: It no longer seemed the word that the song needed to say the thing he wished to say. And what he said was, as he took the stage, but before the audience could see him, as the orchestra was playing its overture and strings soared through the famous space, Jay Z's voice joining them before he did: "Sounds so beautiful, don't you agree?"
Darwin's perplexity over the matter of why humans make music is sweet, in retrospect, sweet in the way many of his other errors and examples of shortsightedness are not. He took a dim view of the capacities of women, and a dark view of the capacities of black people. Many of his lyrics, one could say, were racist and misogynistic. As Jay Z says, in "Glory," "God makes no mistakes, I made a few / Rough sleddin' here and there but I made it through."
So, to the matter of why humans make music, we would report back to Darwin, in all his usefulness and imperfection. We make music not to charm the opposite sex into reproducing. Rather, we make music to make a shared world in which we can believe that reproduction is worthwhile. We make music not to ensure the survival of the species but to ensure that the species feels that there is a reason to survive, evolve, thrive.
Jay Z: He makes music.
This article appeared in the June/July '17 issue of Esquire.