Came home late last night after an exhausting day (two library gigs on opposite sides of the state; seven hours in the car, six hours talking to kids, no real food, three hours sleep and Red Bull to run on) to find that the bluegrass band who lives across the street from us had set up in the park and was belting out "I'll Fly Away" in four-part harmony, complete with banjo, doghouse bass, guitar and fiddle. It was beautiful and haunting and wonderful, and when the song petered out (as old-time songs tend to) they all hung around the park bench and tuned up their harmony, each voice joining in one after another: "I'll -- I'll -- I'll -- I'll fly away!"
Lovely. There are times when my neighborhood really pisses me off, but tonight was not one of them.
We had a visiting musician drop by the O'Duffy's session this week, a young man from Spain who plays whistle like nobody's business. He visited twice before, last winter, and impressed the heck out of us because he knew pretty much every tune we threw at him, and played a bunch of new exciting stuff as well.
This time, Manuel brought his practice set of uilleann pipes (minus the drones) and though he said he hadn't been at it long, he played amazingly well and brought a new level of lift and draíocht to the session, one that can't really be described unless you've seen it happen.
Toward the end, he set out on a blistering set of whistle reels, unaccompanied except for Aaron's bodhrán, and all the other musicians were just listening, and we all started to pat our feet in perfect time, and it was all so good and right and enjoyable that I don't know how else to describe it.
I don't know why that moment struck me so; it must be because when you listen to a group of people respond to live music, they rarely do so in sync and sympathy with the music. It's about the audience, and the audience's feelings, not the musician's. This was a different kind of moment, one where the other musicians, as listeners, were one with the music even though they weren't playing. Participating, and yet not, propelling the player forward without transposing their own egos.
I wonder if that's not a lot closer to the way music used to be experienced, back when there was no television and radio, when the presence of a wandering minstrel was cause for celebration, cause for stopping your everyday life just to listen.