Why I Refuse to Play for People
by
, Nov-07-2016 at 1:18pm (5365 Views)
"Hey, will you play something for us?" That's often what people say when they walk into my house and see the mandolins and banjos hanging on the wall, the guitars leaning up against a bookshelf, the shelves of music ...
My answer is always the same: a resounding "NO."
With a follow up: "I'll play if you play, too." And I point out that I have stringed instruments, recorders, kazoos, drums, and even soup pots and wooden spoons. They can play any of those along with me. But if they don't participate, I won't play.
Here's why. It's easy for someone who's not playing an instrument--someone who is inundated 24 hours a day with re-recorded, highly edited, polished, synthesized and lip-synced and I don't know what all sounds--it's easy for that person to think that music is just sort of a natural thing that's everywhere, so easy to do, always perfect just like they hear it on Pandora, Spotify or a CD. When they hear live music, and it's not extra-ultra-perfect, they start judging: "That's not very good. That's not like I heard it on the CD. That guy doesn't know what he's doing. He should never play in public." Or whatever: they think less than processed perfection is a failure. When what it really is, is a triumph of the will for the musician to believe that you can create magic out of wood and wire.
On the other hand, when people are invested in creating or participating in music--even if just with that wooden spoon and soup pot--they become part of a community. They're "musicians." They see how hard it is to keep a beat. They start unconsciously getting into making their own playing sound better. They end transported out of their imaginary world of air guitar where they can play just like Joe Walsh or Keith Richards, having to fight the reality that a spoon and a pot--or rosewood and steel--just don't naturally produce a nice sound: you have to work at it.
If they're willing to ante up, I'm in. If they want to be entertained, they can go buy a CD or fire up Pandora and feast on synthetic perfection.