4 from ritual to theater and back: the efficacy ... - AAAARG.ORG

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selective inattention
part of the audience. Connoisseurs knew precisely what and who they
wanted to hear. As I wrote in my notebook on December 2, 1971:
Just now the flute and violin are trading and talking and mirroring
musical phrases. I’ve heard this before with voice and violin. But this
is the most profound I’ve ever heard it – there is here an essential
dialogue. Also the audience’s close attention and applause makes me
think I am in Athens at the great drama festivals and contests. This
audience is sitting in judgement – but that judgement is based on its
knowledge and love of the music – and somehow the judgement
supports the musicians – the way the sharp, but willingly adoring eye
of the sports spectator supports the athlete. Only these musicians can
do what they’re doing – but only this audience can do what it can do:
immediately reward the performer. No amount of delayed
praise or end of the show applause can approach the now-support of
an audience that is really with it, and not jealous, not “let me do that
too,” not worshipful – but genuinely appreciative. The lights stay on
here so the audience can see each other, and feel together, and so the
musicians can see the audience.
Also this kind of appreciation takes knowledge of what the performer
is trying to do – a real sense of the task at hand: the audience can’t do
it, but they know what’s to be done. We’ve yet to educate our theater
audiences sufficiently – so they can really demand excellence, and not
just “an experience.” Again, this is a function of a tradition – for an
educated audience, and I don’t mean academically educated, arises in
the midst of a living tradition which people experience from birth. A
living tradition is one with roots and branches among the people. It
can be studied at school but kept alive only in the streets.
Here the music is everywhere: at weddings, in the shouts of the
vegetable sellers in the streets, in side alleys where kids bang homemade
drums, and at hundreds of concerts happening formally and
informally all the time.
It’s different from a rock concert. The audience here is not swept
away. They are not after ecstasy or oblivion or something other than the
music. The music is not a means, it is the thing itself. They remain in
contact with it, in touch with the musicians. Spectators keep their
critical faculties intact. This doesn’t mean they aren’t moved – but