Positively Glorious!

I have this common statement that I make that’s actually an inside joke that I think only I get. Whenever I’m ending something, I say “Well, you know what the music means.” I’ve been given cause recently to wonder that some people might not.

I had a wonderful dinner the other evening with a friend that Jessica and I’ve met through our local community theater. We’ve been wanting to get together to chat for a while, and finally had the chance to visit them for dinner. It was a really exciting night for me because her husband is a bagpiper, and I really, really love the bagpipes. Not the Great Highland Bagpipes (The “GHB,” as they say), I love small pipes.¹ That small, very ancient instrument that you can safely listen to in the intimacy of a small room and which rarely fail to touch pluck my heartstrings.

This man was a small piper, and I was really excited to finally be in the same room with this great instrument. I was even honored by being allowed to play them! For the first time in my life, I held this wonderful instrument in my hand and managed to get out the few first bars of “Mary Had A Little Lamb” before collapsing into laughter.

What bliss! It was as night filled with music and conversation, but there was one interesting conversation that the night brought on which I thought about long after the night was over. In fact, I thought about it all that night, and all the next day.

Why Do People Want This?

Our friendly piper made the comment quite a few times that he didn’t understand why people wanted to hear the bagpipes. He’s a multi-instrumental player who is much more proficient on many other instruments than he is on the pipes, and is much more tied to other music than he is to pipe music. Basically, he can do a lot of things better than the bagpipes. Despite this, he is hired all the time to play the pipes.

By his own admission, he’s pretty grumpy about this, because he wants people to hire and appreciate him for his technical prowess on other instruments. Nope, people don’t want that, they want the bagpipes. Dammit, why do they want that?

It was interesting to hear his annoyance of this fact, because I’ve noticed the same thing. You are really good at one thing, and maybe just barely adequate at another. Despite this, people want what they want, and your ‘adequacy’ is enough for them. You play your unfortunate instrument adequately, thinking all the while how much better this would all be if you could play [the other thing]. And at the end, you have people in tears thanking you four touching them so deeply.

WTH?

All The Air Out Of A Room

A bit later in the evening, we were talking about other instruments and Jessica asked him if he had a guitar. His response was quite surprising and paraphrased as:

The guitar is the only instrument that I don’t care to have in my house, because it takes all the air out of a room… The guitar is that instrument that everyone says they can play, but do you know any guitarists who can actually play it? It’s always the same folky songs with three chords… they all play the same thing!

I was surprised by this, very surprised, and I’ve thought about it for a long time before coming up with a possible understanding. Putting it all together, it seems like the argument is fundamentally about what music means. Specifically, it is about what is supposed to be appreciated within the realm of music.

I actually agree with him that so many people who say they play guitar just play those same three chords and the same folky songs all the time. In fact, Jessica and I are two of those people. I know that I can just-barely-skin-of-my-teeth say that I can play the guitar. My technical abilities on the guitar are about equal to those of a 2 year-old with a dull knife.

Despite that, I find quite the opposite reaction when my, or any, guitar is brought into a room at a party. It doesn’t take the wind out of the room, it fills the room.

Music as Emotion

I think this is the answer: Music is not about technical proficiency, it’s about emotion.

Now, before I get beaten to a pulp by technically proficient musicians, allow me to clarify.

Music is art, and art is an emotional expression. Music connects us, human to human, soul to soul, with each other. Because of that, it’s a conversation of the heart, and in a conversation, both people are there, communicating. That’s why people react to music so strongly, and why people (in my experience) love nearly any kind of music. Because it’s not about “How perfect is this performer” but about “How closely can I connect emotionally with this person.”

Technical proficiency is absolutely necessary to play an instrument well, of course, and it’s something that we should all strive for in the instruments we play. Despite this, I think we do ourselves a great injustice when we suggest that technical proficiency is everything.²

It explains why people hiring him for a funeral want the bagpipes and not another instrument that he plays better. They don’t want technical proficiency, they want emotional connection. You could probably play an old shoe and it would be good if you connected with them emotionally. It explains why so many barely guitarists can get a whole room to sing songs– the same worn-out old folky, three chord songs that they always play. Because people are emotionally connected to those folky, three chord songs. Because it connects us.

It seems to me that his argument is that the goal of a musical performance should fundamentally be the admiration of technical merit. I disagree. The goal of any musical performance, as in any work of art, should be the connection to the emotions of another person. As much as we perfectionists (and I am one) don’t want to hear this, technical prowess is, unfortunately, secondary.

I offer the success of pop music as evidence. If technical prowess were the fundamental goal, would most pop music exist?

I also offer an example. Think about going to two musical performances. In the first, the artist says “I chose this piece because it is incredibly technically difficult, and here is why… I’m very good on this instrument, so this is where my abilities shine.”

Contrast that with the second, a performance where the artist says “This is a song that that someone in the audience wanted to hear. I’m not good enough to do it justice, but it’s such a beautiful song because… I’ll do my best, sing along if you like.”

The difference? One is a lecture. It is a one-way transmission of what the artist wants the people to hear. It’s an artist telling me what to appreciate and respond to.³

The other is a conversation. The other is an attempt to connect to people through art. They are not telling me what to appreciate, but rather journeying together with me to a mutual destination. Both of these examples are actual performances I’ve been to, and both were wonderful performances. But only one of them was one where I felt moved, touched, even loved.

Only one of them I remember fondly.

Coda

It’s often the case that the technically proficient musician is able to move people because they are so capable of expressing that emotion. And of course technical proficiency and emotional connection are not exclusive. In the perfect world, they are commensurate. Hopefully, the technical musician does connect with his audience.

But just as often, or maybe even more often on a smaller– living room– scale, it’s the imperfect musician who moves people. It’s not the lecturer, but the entertainer, who connects with people. The entertainer says:

We are on a journey together, and because we are together, I can’t tell you what to enjoy. We have to communicate. I loose control when we do this, I’m no longer able to tell you what to listen to. I am merely here to respond to what you want, and to listen to you just as much, if not more than, you are able to listen to me. Because conversation is not about speaking, but about listening. That’s scary for me, because I’m up here on stage, and I may be listening to things that I don’t want to hear, but I will do that. I will live with that fear, I will listen to you, because we are on a journey together. My only hope is that we touch the souls of one another in this experience.

That, I think, is why people always want to hire him for the bagpipes and not the trumpet or another instrument. Because they want the connection, and especially at funerals and other emotional events, they don’t want technical prowess.

And they don’t necessarily want to be spoken to.

But they do need to be listened to.

1. And there are a lot of small pipes. In fact there’s a list of bagpipes that shows that they are ridiculously culturally ubiquitous in Europe, Asia, and Northern Africa. [↩]
2. Yes, I know that every teacher in the world is going to call me and complain that I’m an idiot. That’s fine. [↩]
3. Even at the best of times, most of us have a problem being told what to think. [↩]