Excerpted from
What's Wrong With The Brain
a work-in-progress
by Barry Edgar Hyman
Decades of performing and teaching music have gradually led me to the conclusion that the split between "performers" and "audience" is unnatural and unhealthy. Recently I have even begun to think that this artificial divide is a significant contributor to the general pathology of our modern culture, and not just a matter of academic curiosity. Here are my reasons for these rather controversial assertions:
Anthropologists tell us that in the old days - no more than a few thousand years ago - all the people in a tribe participated in music and dance. Everyone sang, everyone danced, and most contributed to the percussion by drumming, clapping their hands, or slapping their bodies. Children learned the songs and dances of the group at the same time they started to speak and walk, and the old and infirm were carried out to join in as best they could. There was no "audience" - the idea was unthinkable - to not participate was tantamount to rejection or even betrayal of the community rituals, a kind of psychic treason.
But now we have musicians, dancers, poets, and actors performing on stages, where they are often elevated to superior social status, while those deemed insufficiently talented are relegated to the subservient and demeaning role of "audience." The majority of people are given the message, overtly or covertly, that they are not good enough to sing, too clumsy to dance, and in general not qualified to contribute in any way. This leads to insecurity and self-doubt for the audience members, and inflated egos and unhealthy isolation for the performers.
Consider a modern performance of classical music. While the virtuosos engage in pyrotechnics onstage, the audience members are expected to keep totally silent, with no talking, coughing, sneezing, farting, singing, or laughter. They are supposed to sit facing straight ahead, moving as little as possible, and standing up, reclining, dancing - even turning around to look at the audience - are considered incredibly rude. Three or four seconds after the end of a movement, they are finally allowed to stand up and clap and shout Bravo, which is the only relic of healthy community participation that remains. Is it any wonder that we live in a culture marked by repressed, frustrated, obese couch potatoes?
Popular music is better, of course. Audience members are permitted to vocalize, and most venues allow dancing. The "punk" movement in particular displays certain healthy tendencies, in that one of the assumptions is that very little qualification is needed to perform. But if you get up on stage at someone else's concert they will knock you off, and if you try to bring your own musical instrument you'll be barred at the door and ridiculed for your presumptuousness. The social divide between musicians and audience is maintained by armed security guards, and only a few pretty faces are allowed to trade their bodies for the privilege of crossing that line.
I first started thinking about this when I visited Korea and learned that everyone there is encouraged to sing. At social occasions, people of all age groups sit around a table and share songs. Usually there is no accompaniment, and everyone appears to be comfortable singing a cappella, even if he or she is the only person who knows the song and ends up singing alone. But often everybody joins in, and it is also considered polite to drum on the table with chopsticks.
In Jamaica and other cultures with African influence, everyone dances. You see little kids dancing on street corners to the music in their heads while waiting for the bus. If you did that in white America, they would send you to see a psychiatrist! Children in Korea are encouraged to sing, and children in Jamaica are encouraged to dance. But in America and Northern Europe, a powerful cloud of repression descends on young people at puberty, enforced by group ridicule and ostracism. Try singing or moving your hips while waiting in line at a supermarket, and you'll see what I mean. Only "crazy" or "hopelessly egotistical" people do things like that here. You can sing in the shower, or in chorus, or if you join a band, and you can dance when everybody else is dancing, but anything else is frowned upon as silly or even indecent. Large amounts of alcohol are needed as social lubrication before most white Americans will sing or dance in front of others.
Consider what this does to your self-image. You're too graceless to dance, too tone-deaf to sing, too slow-witted to rap or improvise poetry, and too ugly to act. Don't play a drum because you probably can't keep a beat. Just sit there and watch - you aren't "talented" enough to join in! What kind of message does that send to people? Is it any wonder that stifled creativity, pathological insecurity, and self-hatred build up in people until they go postal?
And what is the physical price paid for these strictures placed on healthy movement? Our culture is both sexually repressed and promiscuous at the same time, worshipping the Virgin Mary while for many people sex is steeped in self-degradation, masochism, and disgust instead of pleasure. Heart disease, alcoholism, and obesity are major problems, when few things could help more than regular dancing. Children ridicule each other savagely (having learned from their parents!) for any attempt to break out of the behavioral norms, and then grow up with stiff, unnatural posture and all the health problems that come from lack of movement. Even the cancer epidemic can be related to this problem, because environmental toxins accumulate in people who don't exercise, whereas the circulatory and lymphatic systems flush out a lot of toxins in people who do move!
The sexual issues raised by this divide between performers and audience are particularly interesting. Performance becomes a kind of prostitution, and performers become sex objects, while the audience vacillates between extreme voyeuristic idolization and hateful envy. Consider the man who shot John Lennon. He loved Lennon so much, we're told, that he had to kill him because of some confused notion that he would then become the object of desire and attention. This poisons all of us. When I was young, growing up around Bennington College, I used to be deeply ashamed at modern dance performances because I viewed the female dancers as erotic when I knew that I was supposed to rise above such base feelings to the rarified and sexless world of "art." I actually thought something was wrong with me! Even before that, as a young child, I can distinctly remember feeling horribly perverted and abnormal because my main pleasure at the circus was looking at the short skirts of the women on the trapeze. It took me decades of self-therapy before I realized that the perversion comes from the divide between performers and watchers and not from me. All performance is tinged with sexuality, and all audiences are poisoned by the feeling of being on the outside looking in. The only healthy solution is participation, and sitting there with your mouth shut and your knees politely together is the real perversion.
What can we do about this endemic societal problem? It's not easy, and it may come too late to prevent much unnecessary suffering, illness, and violence, but the solution is to encourage young people, especially self-conscious adolescents, to sing, dance, and play music. I'm not talking about traditional repressive classical violin lessons - just buy the kid a drum or a keyboard or an electric guitar, and then get out of the way. You don't even have to encourage it - just don't discourage it! Soundproof her room if you have to, and then let nature take its course.
And what about you? Is it too late? I think not. The solution is exactly the same. Buy a drum, go to a party, and open up. Make new friends if you have to. Let go! You too can sing! You too can dance! Let us hear your rap! Locked inside, it is corrosive. Let it out, and your life will blossom.
©12/9/2000- Barry Edgar Hyman
Excerpted from "What's Wrong With The Brain," a work-in-progress by Barry Edgar Hyman, artmusic@cserv.net Re-printed with permission of the author.