There’s the progress: We have found A way to sing around the problem Building towered foresight isn’t anything at all. …from REM’s Fall On Me (lyric changed with permission) * I’ve been asking musicians in my town to go beyond traditional acoustic venues and share their music in Community Venues for the better part of the last decade. Outside of a small group of folks that have proven to be persistently supportive, the overwhelming response has been some variant of “I don’t have time”. Not an hour in over a decade… the inspiration for It’s Time That Time Was Overthrown. I’m convinced they believe time hangs on a wall and orders them and their Life about. And I am sometimes certain that a big part of the reason musicians will not come is that they believe that Community Venue audiences fall in the “Special Needs – Music” category and are thus somehow less than the best; they are somehow of diminished music business value. It’s as though musicians imagine there is an Album for Amputees, or a Songs for Seniors CD that they must cover; as though they must follow and learn songs from the Developmentally Disabled Top 40 in order for a Community Venue audience to “get it”. It’s as though “Music is a Universal language, except that They would not get my music”. It’s as though the idea of transcendence does not apply to the perceived Special Musical Needs of a Community Venue audience. And sometimes I even imagine that Utopian singing musicians Dream of a world where Equality means that no one has to “Be Like” the people in Community Venue audiences. In their Dream world there will be no “old people”, or “disabled people”, or “sick”, or “suffering” people, or whatever they imagine these Fellow Beings to be Being. When the world is free of “people like Them” these musicians will truly be able to sing freely and celebrate the Joy of Being freely and openly, without thought of monetary worth; without fear that someone won’t “get it” – or buy it… In the meantime though, let’s keep the Other-based-blues alive. It’s a tough world, because, well, “Look at Them. That sucks, to Be like Them. My vision is of a world free of Being like Them.” And off they go to sing about Them, or do a benefit for Them; but never anything with Them. It’s no fun to hang out with people you don’t want to Be like I suppose. I notice too that it seems the further away They are in space and time, the more appeal there is to doing something about or for Them. Most musicians that do not have an hour in a decade for a Community Venue audience have plenty of time to do shows that benefit Katrina victims half-a-country away; or tsunami victims or Darfur refugees half-a-world away. But disabled Fellow Beings, right Here? Seniors, in my own Community? My neighbors? Grab a cup of coffee and my guitar and go play for an hour and make some new friends and fans? Outside of my demographic? Huh? Be the Change I sing of seeing in my world? Huh? ** copyright 2009 Greg Allen Morgoglione
Posted on: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 12:50:50 +0000
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