Making the Scene

 

Back in the day, my wife and I used to bake our own bread, make our own granola, sprout our own alfalfa sprouts and make our own yogurt. The yogurt required some kind of starter and that was called a yogurt culture. Curious that this is the same word that means “a system of learned and shared beliefs, language, norms, values, and symbols that groups use to identify themselves and provide a framework within which to live and work.” When we gather with like-minded people who share those values and beliefs, it acts like a starter sending us to our own particular individual genius. 

 

Thinking about this having just seen the film about Bob Dylan Like a Complete Unknown and then inspired to check out an earlier documentary by Martin Scorsese No Direction Home.  (The first is in the movie theaters— remember them?— and the second on PBS and both highly recommended!) Few would argue that Dylan was amongst the most unique and individual of musical artists, characterized by a relentless restlessness looking for the next sound or song and following his Muse rather than his followers or producers or trends. Much like Miles Davis in that respect. It appears as if he sprung from the head of Zeus, channeling some divine inspiration far out of reach of other fine artists, never mind us lowly mortals. And there is a certain truth to that mysterious innate genius we all are born with being particularly gifted from the gods beyond any reasonable explanation. 

 

What we tend to overlook in our star-worshipping naivety is what kind of work and circumstance is needed to bring that genius into its full blossoming. Miles Davis once quipped something to the effect of: “People come up to me and say ‘amazing!’ as if the notes just poured through me. But man, I had to study!” Michaelangelo said, “If people knew how hard I worked to achieve my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful after all.” 

 

So there’s that. In the documentary film, they tell the story of Dylan robbing his friend of some of his rare record collection featuring a wide variety of artists. Dylan listened to them all and then continued his project going into record stores and taking advantage of their listening rooms (anyone remember those?). His musical mind was both hungry and ripe to absorb them, gathering a wide, wide range of musical style and feeling and guitar techniques and lyrics and transmuting them into his rapidly emerging individual voice. He often “borrowed” existing melodies from various sources, amongst a long list Masters of War from Nottamun Town, Girl from the North Country from Scarborough Fair, Song to Woody from 1913 Massacre, It’s a Hard Rain Gonna Fall from Lord Randall.

 

Most importantly, when he went to New York he became part of a folk music scene that was alive and vibrant, performing just about every night in whatever coffee shop venue was available alongside a long list of other folk musicians from various backgrounds and styles, from the Mississippi Blues to the Irish songsters to Appalachian singers and beyond. He was part of a folk music culture where everyone influenced everyone else, borrowing, begging and stealing guitar techniques, repertoire, performance styles. In short, his genius didn’t flower in isolation but in the living, breathing community of like-minded folks, in the culture that started him on the road to his own voice like the yogurt culture that starts the batch. 

 

And this makes me think of all the other cultural explosions that happened in the same way. Even something crafted in solitude like painting and writing needed other painters and writers to gather as they did in Paris in the 20’s and 30’s, in New York at the Algonquin Round Table. So many "scenes" in so many places that got art moving and growing and changing. In New York, there was the theaters on Broadway in the 30's and 40's and beyond, 52^nd Street in the 50’s jazz community, Greenwich Village in the 60’s folk scene. San Francisco birthed the 50’s beat poetry scene, the late 60’s rock scene, the 70’s modern dance scene, the 80’s comedy scene and more. And so it went in many more places at many more times. Small, vibrant, intimate little cultures where people gathered and shared their work and discussed their ideas. They talked and argued and drank and smoked (cigarettes and otherwise). Alongside the comradery was, of course, envy, theft, love affairs, jealousy, hostility, betrayals, the whole human catastrophe. But also the love and the moving forward of artistic culture. 

 

I love that all of this took place outside of University Classrooms and still aim for and yearn for that kind of artistic community. The Orff world has some qualities of all of that, for sure, particularly when we gather for National Conferences and summer courses. But I worry that the new generation is content with a Zoom gathering or two and online lesson plans. The resulting yogurt is bland, missing the needed start of culture. 

And in general, the thrust of mainstream thinking is to keep isolating us, encouraging us to sit at home, order from Amazon and neglect the local Mom and Pop stores, get our food delivered, choose the TV streaming over actually going out to a movie theater, choose Spotify background music over live performance and bring our computers to the cafes without ever talking to anyone else there. 

 

Whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you do, get out and join the scene! If there isn’t one, create one! The next Bob Dylan or Miles Davis is not going to sprout sitting alone at home checking in on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter!