Tired of Being Bombarded with Music

Tired of Being Bombarded with Music

How often have you seen this at a dance: the band finishes a song and all you hear is the din of people talking to each other? No applause, no cheers, just “hurry up and play another song.” Ever wonder what the band thinks when they hear that? We think no one is listening. We’d be right.

One song we play starts with a verse and then has a pause before the first chorus. I like to watch to see if people actually stop. Most nights they just keep dancing in time as if there were still music going on. I’ve taken to pausing for a good 15-20 seconds until everyone realizes the music has stopped and until the crowd of nervous chatterers quiets down and looks to see what’s going on before I continue with the chorus. So why isn’t anyone listening to bands?

It used to be that people valued music, because it was something special. It took special people to play it, even more special people to play it well, and hearing a great performance was something magical. In our modern culture, music has become something with which we are CONSTANTLY bombarded. We wake up to alarms playing our favorite wake-up CDs, head to the bathroom where we flip on the shower radio, then out to the car and listen to MP3s on the way to work. We go up the elevator where there’s some smooth jazz playing in the background and then we plop down at our desks where we sit down all day and work with our headphones on – streaming Pandora, youtube, and rhapsody. Then it’s back out to the car at the end of the day with our favorite drive-time jams, back to the house where we flip on the TV which provides constant music and dialogue through dinner and until we leave for the dance. Back into the car with our favorite swing CDs and into the dance where a DJ spins tunes until the band starts.

How much of that music are we actually LISTENING to? When was the last time you sat down and actually just LISTENED to an album – didn’t use it as a background to cooking dinner, or getting stoned, or driving to work – just listened? The problem is that music has become background in our society. We’re all so afraid of uncomfortable silence that we feel the need to fill our every waking moment with an auditory security blanket– even if we have to make an extra effort to tune that music out when we need to concentrate on other things. We’ve become experts at NOT listening to music.

In the lindy hop scene we’ve developed a DJed culture over the last 10 years that encourages people to view going to a dance as an athletic activity, a social activity, or a creative activity, but we don’t encourage people to view it as going to a show. Well let me be the one to break the bad news: no matter how old timey someone’s dance steps are, how good their swing out is, or how nice their connection feels – no matter how good they look when dancing or how good they feel about themself while dancing - there is nothing vintage about what they’re doing, there’s nothing even INTERESTING about their dancing unless they’re actually LISTENING to the music.

In fact to take it a step further, I’m not sure it’s really even the LINDY HOP, unless you’re dancing to live music and interacting with it. The same steps exist in dozens of other dances. What makes the lindy a unique dance is that it is improvised to live music. There’s an interaction. With canned music you can demonstrate what it might look like if you were actually doing the lindy hop, but it’s an imitation at best.

During the swing era, people went to the Savoy, the Palomar, the Roseland, and 1000 other ballrooms to see shows. Dancing was the way that people expressed their enthusiasm for the music they were hearing. The energy from the crowd and the dancing itself interacted with the music and created something bigger than just the chart the band was playing. You can’t create that just by telling new dancers that they SHOULD clap because it’s a live band. Bands can feel the difference between obligatory applause and real enthusiasm from people who are listening to the music.

So what can we do to correct this as a community? Here is a short list of MY ideas. It’s certainly not comprehensive, but I think it’s a nice start.

1. Get rid of the DJed music between band sets and before and after the band finishes. Make the focus of the night coming to dance to a band, not coming to a dance at which there happens to be a band. People won’t leave on the breaks. One of the coolest dances on our most recent tour was a show we played in Charlottesville where the circuit for all the power outlets in the building went out. We played the show completely acoustic (good thing we brought a piano, please see my previous blog on pianos). It was a lot of fun. Because there were fewer songs to dance to with the break music left out, people stayed through the end of the show to get all their dancing in. Moreover, on the breaks, people actually TALKED to each other. God forbid we might have to come out of our awkward dancer shells and have a conversation.

2. Expect that people will come dressed up to hear a band. Don’t admit people in jeans. Make them understand that they’re coming to a show and a social event. Not a practice session.

3. I challenge anyone out there who teaches to start hiring a stride pianist for their lessons and quit teaching to recordings. This is how dance classes were taught for hundreds of years. Your students can’t interact with a recording and neither can you as a teacher. How can you demonstrate any musicality whatsoever in your dancing when it’s to canned music? I realize this takes some b****. Someone out there must have enough to start the trend…

4. When you’re sitting out a dance, sit and listen to the band. You might really discover that you enjoy swing music if you sit down and listen to some that’s played well by talented musicians! You’ll also be helping to reduce the “din” in the room and helping to create energy between the audience and the band, making everyone else’s dances better. You might even set an example for some newer dancers.

On our most recent tour I’ve found it AMAZING to see the difference in crowds from night to night, and how that affects the band’s performance. On nights where the crowd is responsive to the band, the show is 10x better. Literally 10x. If you have a good band on stage, it is completely up to the crowd to decide how good the show is going to be that night. Good musicians show up every night ready to interact with their audiences – to put on a show. Dancers don’t always show up ready to be an audience – when they do the band and the dancers both have a WAY better time!