The Value of Music is the Experience of the Listener

So my pondering continues.  Where is value generated in music?  Not just where is the money generated, because we know the answer to that question, sort of, but then also, due to the Music Industry currently undergoing so much change, and threats to its old business model and techniques of sustainability, the answers are probably also too temporary - where the money comes from today is probably not going to be where the money comes from tomorrow.

So I try to go more essential.  Where is surplus value generated, that could be skimmed off to sustain the life of the musician?

Three different sources recently tell me that it's the experience of the listener.

One: I'm still making my way through the Audio book of Philip Glass's new autobiography, Words Without Music.  When telling of his early career, just out of music school and during a time of modern revolution in many art forms, he quotes a colleague who I'll have to back and see if it was a teacher or friend or inspirational mentor, or possibly a Yogi because he spent quite a bit of time in India at various ashrams studying those traditions, he quotes a colleague who said that the aim of performance is to create transcendent experiences in the audience.  The colleague says that's why they were stripping out traditional narrative, and the expected trappings of traditional theater.  By removing those familiar things, and presenting experimental live experiences, it create the possibility for a transcendent experience in the audience members.  Philip Glass signs on and says that the music and theatrical experiences he composed are designed to do that too.

Two: My guitar teacher and his wife were visiting, and on that visit he talked about a rehearsal that his band recently had inside a dance studio, in front of mirrors.  They were working on their use of the stage, in terms of their own movements and their interactions with others in the band, and they had been working with a friend of his wife who has a background in theater and stage management.  What he said they picked up is that how you move can help put the song across better for an audience.  You can create an experience in the audience just by playing the song, but by then also stepping back so that the featured performer is out in front just at a certain time when their part is important, or by coming up all together instead of moving separately, it reinforces what's going on in the music and more strongly creates the experience in the audience.  I had just seen his band, at what turned out to be a show right after this mirror practice, and had in fact obtained the experience that he described, which I reliably get at each of their shows, sometimes not until right before the end of the first set, but every time, I hit those heights where the music is moving me and lifting me up, and I feel like the crowd is one entity, and that we're all in the experience together.  Usually they are playing Photograph by Def Leppard when this happens, so I'm sure part of it is my past experience and life-long fandom of the song.  But that's definitely why I go see them, and why I love doing it.

Three:  This video, posted on the Facebook page of a college classmate who has continued performing ever since, as a dancer, and also as part of this band.  Just look at the people in the crowd. Right there, that is the value of music performance, plain as day.

AIN'T NO MOUNTAIN HIGH-Jeffrey Family Reunion 06202015
Posted by Kyle Primous and K Street on Thursday, June 25, 2015