Social Music

I'm still feeling a little bit fuzzy from a succession of late nights. All the reasons were different - they weren't all parties! Last night, for instance, I appeared to have the opportunity of getting to bed early, and then my doorbell rang at about quarter to ten, with official visitors. Not to worry, I have a holiday coming up fast.

Friday night was especially fascinating, as I went to an Acoustic Music Club evening with a friend who performs there. As brethren evening get-togethers often seem to end up as acoustic music clubs, in effect, it made for an intriguing comparison.

The main difference, I suppose, was that in this case, the music was the point of the gathering, and everybody who was squeezed into the function room in the upstairs of a pub was there either to play or listen. For brethren, the music is just an expected part of a social gathering. Organisation and expectation tends to kill music when that's the basis. On Friday night we all faced forward and paid attention while a compere announced each performer, and they had two songs each. Brethren wouldn't think of doing it that way: it's often a struggle to get the first person to play anything, but once anyone gets going, they usually continue until there is some reason to stop, while social activity happens around them.

Thinking about it, brethren have an ambivalent relationship with music. On the one hand there is the general belief that anything enjoyable which isn't spiritual is wrong to at least some degree, and on the other there is the tradition that music belongs to God. That's a tension which makes a certain kind of oscillating approval pretty much inevitable. Singing, by brethren doctrine, is "transport" and also fellowship, and therefore hymns are a good thing. Other music has to take its chances depending on the taste of the people whose taste matters.

Back when I was much younger, with a mid-western American leadership, country was in, jazz was out, and classical was suspicious. Anyone who enjoyed classical music was too cerebral to be spiritual. Every child who could summon up the smallest amount of ability to play notes in approximately the right order learned to play an instrument, and as soon as they could render a recognisable version of a popular song were added to the unofficial roster of "people who can play". Anyone who could actually play enjoyably had to get used to being in demand when at any social occasion.

So the Acoustic Music Club was familiar in that way, with a variety of talent on show, the variety including the amount of talent per person. It was cosy, and it made me smile. Sometimes the feeling of mutual encouragement and social enjoyment is more important than the inherent value of the entertainment itself. Some of the performers were very good, and none of them was less than interesting.

About twenty years ago, the music among the brethren began to taper off, as the general attitude became more serious. Certainly children appeared to stop learning to play music, and those who didn't actively enjoy playing forgot what they'd learned. Those who did still play were still much in demand - if anything more so, as they became fewer in number. More recently the pendulum seems to have swung again, and teenagers are once more very serious about music. They even seem to know current songs, which is most mysterious considering they aren't allowed to listen to pre-recorded music ...