The
kids sang well. The speaker was excellent. The slides were powerful. The timing
was on. But something felt just a little bit off in our annual school Martin
Luther King Ceremony. We held it in our Community Center, a place with good
acoustics and decent enough low lighting. But it just felt too big and
impersonal—the space didn’t support the energy and the intimacy it deserved. Having
sung the songs in the resonant music room, the sound just wasn’t powerful
enough. The Middle School kids sitting in the pull-out audience seats felt more
like they were the audience at a theater show or the fans at a basketball game.
Separated by arm rests, it was hard for them to feel connected. We did have the
100 elementary kids on the floor on the rug and that helped and perhaps if we
had 100 more adults in the side seats, we might have filled the space with the
energy it deserved. But we didn’t. And so it all felt a little flat.
That
night I went to see an alum’s band at a grassroots performance space called The
Red Poppy. It was a small room with folding chairs and the stage, such as it
was, on the same level, with about 60 people crowded together in front and
behind. The band (Taraf de Locos) was excellent— high energy Balkan and Cuban
and Brazilian fusion that invited dancing after intermission. But had they
played in a big theater (or a gym), it would have been a different experience
all together. The small, intimate, crowded space gave it the intensity it
needed.
Yeah,
I know this is not a groundbreaking insight. That a performing space is an
integral part of the performance. The jazz I’ve seen in big concert halls has
never been as memorable as that in small clubs. Jazz itself grew in funky,
crowded juke joints similar to the Red Poppy, kept growing at the Village
Vanguard (where I was once seated so close to the piano that I could have
played a few notes in the bass) and now is reincarnated at places like The SF
Jazz Center— a bit bigger, more formal feeling, but still intimate enough to
feel the vibrations of human endeavor. The culture has become so spectacle
oriented, with big screen projections and such. (I often think it would be
great to have an Academy Awards night in a high school auditorium some year.)
The things that stir me have the intensity of intimacy, the energy of folks
shoulder-to-shoulder, the feeling of huddling around a campfire.
So
next year, we’re going to be crammed and crowded and uncomfortable to let
Martin’s spirit fully fill the room. Yes, indeed.
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