Born On A Rock Farm

by Aragon

Legend

From the mouth of a filly, a legend was born.

Many years later, hundreds of historians and music researchers would study Inkie Pie’s neverending journey and the enormous influence it would have over the Equestrian culture. What at first started as a simple travelling musician that did nothing but play songs nopony had heard before and then walk away, soon turned into a rising tide of cultural awareness and somewhat philosophical movement.

Soon, ponies who lived in the town she was visiting would do anything to go to one of her “concerts,” as they called what Inkie did—sitting on a bench and playing to whoever was there. For a pony that lived the way Inkie did, that was already something, but the real cultural movement didn’t start until ponies started following her between towns, if only to listen to her songs a little more. That fine line was the frontier between successful and important musician: soon Inkie Pie had what would later be called a “cult following,” a group of loyal fans, all of them musicians at first, that would never try to bother their idol but would always listen to her, and eventually, write her songs down.

“Inkie’s Band,” as that group of fans ended up being named, would eventually be fundamental for the later studies of Inkie’s career, as she never left any written document of her songs. Some ponies speculated that she never really thought about her songs as “music” per se, so she never felt they were worthy of being immortalized in a paper sheet, but the general opinion was that Inkie Pie didn’t know how to read music, simple as that.

How Inkie’s Band appeared was, unlike anything else in Inkie’s life, something easy to figure out by the musical erudites that came after her, if only because its founders wrote everything down. It all started when three members of the Appleloosa Band worked as the judges of a little musical contest for foals. As they graded the younglings’ voices, they soon found out that there was one filly that stood out among the rest.

Even though that little filly didn’t win the contest, there was something in her voice that they couldn’t really describe. Some called it “happiness,” some said it was more like “acceptance,” and at least one pony said it was “selfishness”. Even though her voice wasn’t the best one and certainly she had a hard time keeping certain notes in tune, her performance was the one that really stuck with the judges.

When asked about her singing, the little filly pointed at Inkie Pie as her inspiration, and explained who she was to the judges. And that same afternoon, Inkie Pie’s band was created and its members hit the road looking for red hoofsteps.

Why did they do that? Everypony had his own answer to that question. Some said that the way music sounded after listening to Inkie was different, was better. Some said that it helped them see the life in a different way. And some said that they didn’t know, but they felt like they had to. Those songs, they said, didn’t sound like anything else they had ever heard.

The most amazing thing about Inkie Pie’s music was that, from a purely objective point of view, her songs weren’t very good. Inkie sure knew how to play the guitar, as anypony who ever saw her playing would testify: her hooves caused her pain but gave her the ability to feel the instrument in such a personal way that it was merely an extension of her own body. However, she lacked the theoretical knowledge to create anything complex.

What stood out in Inkie Pie’s music, what turned her into a pony that could move more than a thousand ponies, was the message behind it. Her songs were not repetitive, and would evolve with time—her earlier works would sing about pain, childhood, her family, and the like; while with the years she would end up singing about life on the road, about music itself, and about changing the guitar strings because she would bleed on them now and then. And once, but only once, she sang about dreaming. However, the general theme was always the same. The general feeling would always be the same.

Inkie Pie would sing about how life is life, and how there’s nothing to do to change it. She would sing about death being just another part of life, about pain and how it changed one, and about accepting who you were. Inkie Pie composed some of the saddest songs in Equestrian archives, but nopony would ever say that what she played wasn’t happy music.

And even though not everypony would be touched, musicians who had listened to Inkie’s music would change their sound, sometimes without noticing so themselves. But the songs would never sound similar to Inkie’s: hers had a particular sense of pride, of teenager rebellion, something that was so incredibly personal that couldn’t be imitated. Instead, they would put just a little bit more of themselves into their compositions.

That artistic wave would shatter the musical world, and even though not everypony would be part of the Inkism movement, it would create a clear point of reference. Musicians and experts would forever talk about Music Before Inkie and Music After Inkie to understand that radical change in the way ponykind understood how to sing songs.