Some great thoughts from singer/conductor/composer Bobby McFerrin on the Berklee College of Music podcast. He’s recounting the experience of colleague Yo Yo Ma on a visit to Botswana, where a small village had no concept of why someone would schedule a performance in a specific place at a specific time. Says McFerrin:
They don’t have any concept of performance. There was no word in their vocabulary that suggests that music is somehow going to happen later on…. Music was here. And music was now. Why do they have to wait to hear music, and why do they have to go somewhere else to hear it?We have a tendency to make our performances the most important time or part of our day, when music to these villagers was an integral part of their day.
In response, McFerrin makes a point of integrating his concerts into his day, rather than building his day toward those events. He’ll just show up, walk on stage, and start singing (much to the anxiety of the presenter, probably).
It’s a reminder that as we strive to make performances and cultural experiences ‘special’ we also make them ‘separate’ from the daily lives of our communities. And while there’s value in creating ‘an event,’ there’s also a cost in the way we’re connected, or not connected, to the music and creation of the everyday.
Thanks, Pops, for the link!
Bobby McFerrin is always making music. I ran into him in a hotel bathroom once, and as he left, he sang “Bwe de du bop!” Was like my own, personal two second concert.
Thanks for sharing.
I like McFerrin’s observation, but the response — the performer making performace part of his/her day — doesn’t seem to match up. The villagers have no need for the distinction of a performance, probably because they themselves, all of them, have incorporated music into their own lives. Everyone is a musician, any time can be music-making time. In that way, the concept of a performance is redundant.
Wouldn’t his observation call for breaking down the concept of the audience and our culture in general that performance is separate from daily lives? From “American Idol” to commercial classical orchestra’s virtuoso worshipping, we have been so married to the 19th century notion that music is best left made by the specialists, while amateur music making has gone to the way side. Music and art programs in schools are being shrunk; why teach everyone music, when we know not everyone is going to be a pro musician, and we assume that everyone has the “innate” ability to appreciate music?
I hope we soon take a page from the villagers: teach everyone the way to make music, in each person’s own capacity; and as a society incorporate music into daily life, making music making part of everyday for everyone, and not just the performers.
Bobby McFerrin is a genius! And his commentary about the role of music in that village is fascinating. But is he merely thinking out loud or truly insinuating that music as a special event is a less preferable model for the enjoyment of music in our culture? Maybe one of the things that makes our music special is that it IS performed by highly skilled artists, is planned and scheduled, and requires a certain level of etiquette.
Although I appreciate the sentiment of primitivism, it’s easy to forget that we’ve figured out public sewer systems and wireless internet and all sorts of great things. Maybe formal music consumption is one of those great, historic, significant things.
I think the future of music is participatory. More people will be making their own music, just as they did in the past. I’ve written about it quite a bit, so I’ll just point you there:
http://brandsplusmusic.blogspot.com/search/label/audience%20participation
And I did cite McFerrin in one of my posts.
http://brandsplusmusic.blogspot.com/2009/12/audience-participation-in-music.html
This is such an interesting concept, but much deeper – and perhaps less “innocent” – than those of us in Western culture might think. Do musicians in Botswana get compensated for their work? (I suspect, for example, that Botswanan author Bessie Head had to publish outside of her adopted nation of Botswana to earn any meager living she might have from her extraordinary writing.)
It’s so easy to apply our Western ideals to the other lands we visit. And much more challenging to grow to understand it.
The many hard-working musicians and other artists in the Western world must both love and dread these sort of conversations.
I’d like to suggest, too, that exceptional musicians live in all communities – whether music is culturally “ever-present” or otherwise. There is always someone or some few that do it better than everyone else and draw a crowd when they do. I cannot believe all or even most people in any nation or village can be called “musicians.” Nevertheless, on the spiritual side of his impressions, McFerrin gives us a beautiful thought upon which to reflect.
This is like comparing someone dividing a simple basket of apples fairly among the household by counting out everyone’s share, with a research physicist using quantum math to look at the first few seconds of the beginning of our universe. Both are useful to the world, neither one is primitive, useless, or elitist. Both uses of mathematics have their different reasons to exist. Both need to be taught. Maybe the thousands of years it took humanity to develop ‘simple’ mathematics is a clue that when wondering about today’s highly composed and performed music, we have a few years to go yet before we understand what it means to everyone, and how it fits into our complex world. We are still evolving, in the arts as much as anywhere else.
Baloney and more baloney.