[Dixielandjazz] Reaching Out To The Listeners

[Steve Barbone]

CAVEAT: Not OKOM, and somewhat intellectual. BUT the parallels between the
music discussed here and OKOM, regarding the "faithful" or listener in our
case, are striking, as is the discussion of declining audience. Especially
interesting are paragraphs 5, 6 & 7 below, and paragraphs 10 & 11 They are
numbered for convenience should you decide to read the article.

Not for everyone on the list but some will understand the parallels of the
music itself, and the parallels between declining audiences in "old time"
churches and those at OKOM festivals.

In short, a case can be made that we in the OKOM world are not alone in
experiencing the life cycle and declining audience of the music we love.
Question is, what should we (musicians) do about it?

Cheers,
Steve Barbone 

Does Simple Music Form Simple Faith?

NY TIMES - By BERNARD HOLLAND - September 23, 2007

A CEREMONY at St. Patrick¹s Cathedral on Sept. 11 offered some patriotic
music and a few dabs of the classics, but everything else made me wonder
whether I should be listening as a critic or as a Christian. A lot of
liturgical music these days asks you to choose between the two.

With its hand-clapping, inspirational, just-folks character, how different
this music is from a tradition that ran from plainchant through Josquin and
Palestrina to Mozart and Beethoven, and finally to Messiaen and Britten.
Without the church to inspire ‹ not to mention finance ‹ great composers,
how diminished the history of music might seem to us.

Beauty of musical color, elegance of harmony, soundness of construction and
exquisiteness of originality once worked as the lure that would draw the
faltering worshiper nearer. Music, as well as architecture and visual art,
represented heaven to the earthbound, something dazzling and unapproachable,
an advertisement for a paradise still held at arm¹s length.

The neo-Edwardian anthems and elaborations on ethno-popular culture at St.
Patrick¹s, on the other hand, might lead us to infer from Bach¹s B minor
Mass or Haydn¹s ³Creation² a certain irreligion, a seductiveness that
captures the senses and leads the heart away from true communion with God.
Does simple music form simple faith, arguably the best kind? Has the Dark
One used great musical art to his advantage?

(paragraph 5) Sophisticated music that doesn¹t reach out directly to its
listeners ‹ that doesn¹t depend on their response ‹ bears the seeds of its
eventual irrelevance. One reason classical music struggles as it does today
lies with the several generations of composers in the last century who
demanded that audiences understand them rather than the other way around.

(paragraph 6) But music written solely for the comfort of its audience is
equally irrelevant. Pushing ethnic buttons as a form of quick access to the
worshiper¹s attention is only advertising. Easy familiarity acts like the
door-to-door salesman¹s foot in the door, the prelude to making that sale.

(paragraph 7) The Christian, on the other hand, can argue with perfect
rectitude that music is just one more evangelical tool, useful Muzak to
accompany the winning of converts and the reinforcement of faith.
Interesting music distracts the faithful, or so this line of thinking goes.
Interesting music does not tell us to be good or bad. It asks only to be
admired. Getting great music and simple faith together happens, but with
difficulty. 

Verdi¹s Requiem, with its visceral depiction of human fright at Judgment
Day, comes pretty close to satisfying both the critic and the Christian. My
nominee for the music that both thrills the senses and puts into its
auditors the appropriate fear of God is the gospel singing of black
churches. The sounds are amazing, and everyone in the building has something
to do with making them.

The church has reason to fear great beauty, hence the effort to rescue our
attention, through plainspoken and deliberately flat-footed modern texts,
from the mesmerizing graces of the Latin Mass or the splendid poetry of the
Anglican Church¹s Book of Common Prayer. I am one small example, having
spent the Sunday mornings of my youth in the Episcopal Church allowing
Thomas Cranmer¹s magical imagery and liquid liturgical responses to roll off
my tongue without a thought to God at all.

(paragraph 10) One reason that less important music is being written for
churches is that composers have other things on their minds: among them,
making a living. Churches were once the center of life, and centers of
wealth and power as well. Composers thrived in their employ in times when
public concerts barely existed. The rich commissioned liturgical pieces as
their personal upscale rapprochements with God. What money for composers
circulates today is largely in secular hands.

(paragraph 11) The decline in classical music and the decline of the Roman
Catholic Church have things in common. Musical audiences dwindle and age;
church attendance in Europe has dropped precipitously; and evangelical and
fundamentalist movements in once solidly Catholic Latin America are growing
exponentially. Without the divide between audience member (parishioner) and
artist (clergy), rock ¹n¹ roll, rhythm and blues, and like species so
involve listeners that the audience becomes an added instrument, singing
along or shouting approval. Religion in country churches is not about
intransitive shows of respect but about energy bouncing back and forth.

In a television interview not long ago the novelist Margaret Atwood gave as
good a reason as any that a recognizably human, touchable God so engages
spiritual seekers. People are lonely, she said. When they look out at the
universe, they don¹t want to see rocks and gases; they want someone to talk
to.

Do we go the other way, approach God as spectators and accept religious
art¹s tantalizing promises of a kingdom of heaven filled with nonstop Mozart
and Michelangelo? Or do we sit down, take our maker by the shoulder, put
beauty in its place and work things out person to person?

Ritual-driven, beauty-ridden Catholics, Episcopalians and Lutherans may not
be doing as well right now as they would like, but history keeps turning in
circles, and they may have their day again.

Meanwhile grab that guitar. Clap those hands.