Creating opportunities for live music

The thing about music in general is that, as we’ve explored many times, it’s the language of emotions. But it’s also conversational, which means you really cannot have music without two people. Yes, music can be created by one person and that one person can enjoy listening to what they’re performing, but that’s not what music is.

Music is a language. A language is used for conversations. it’s used for communicating with others. So you need a least two people in order for music to actually mean anything. And it’s not always a performer just presenting and somebody else just hearing, it is an actual two way conversation. We’ll explore that in another article coming soon, but the issue is we don’t always have the right opportunities, or the right environment to participate in live music making. 

Let’s hang out on this language of emotions for a moment. I know mathematicians like to think that mathematics is the world’s only universal language. However, there are at least seven known languages on this planet that don’t have numbers. They actually can’t do mathematics because they don’t have numbers in their language. There’s no concept of what a number is. So they won’t be able to communicate with other people through mathematics. 

Yes, there is a ton of correlation between music and mathematics. I recently saw a comment about that on social media. There is a very big correlation. They are very, very closely knit, but not everyone can participate in mathematics if they don’t have numbers in their language. However, everybody can, unless there’s an actual physical problem such as a disconnect among the vocal cords, they can speak. You could even speak with your eyes.

I ask this a lot from most of my performing groups: smile with your eyes. Even if you can’t actually pick up an instrument and play at the same time and smile, you can still smile with your eyes. And you can tap a rhythm. If you have a pulse, you can tap a beat. You can tap a rhythm. That’s participating in music. Everyone can do it. I’ve taught so many people who claim that they’re either tone deaf or they have no coordination. The people who do struggle with coordinating their hands, their feet, their bodies in general, the drum kit is a great way to start. Okay. It’s not the ultimate musical form of expression or physical therapy, and you need to go beyond simply tapping a beat, but it’s a really easy and good way to actually start getting coordinated. 

Everybody has the right and the ability to create and enjoy their music.

Lee Higgins

According to Lee Higgins, “Everybody has the right and the ability to create and enjoy their music.” Now, the important thing, actually, there are lots of important things in that statement, but I think one of the most important things is the enjoyment part. Music is not just entertainment, there is joy involved. And you can only do that with two people where one person shares something, an emotion or a feeling, through music, another person receives that communication, and then they can respond. 

So how do we make that happen? Who makes it happen? How do we get involved in music? There are three things I would like to explore with you over the next few weeks. These three things, I think, summarize the kind of music that we can get involved with and who’s responsible for it. 

But while we wait for next week’s article, would you mind popping over to Creative Loafing each day until the end of August, and voting for your favorite classical musician in Tampa Bay?!

THANK YOU 🙂