I wanted to show you this video, as I have talked so much about the choir with no name and my history with community music. I think this video demonstrates the accumulation of power that singing together as a group can generate. Although it’s nothing like witnessing it live in a room, you get an idea of the energy, and the genuine pleasure that is made through using music to build a community.
Ivor Cutlers music has been an enormous influence on all my work. He describes himself as a ‘humourist’ which I think is a beautiful distinction against ‘comedian’. I feel there is a curiosity in things that comedy does not always contain. Humour doesn’t aim to make you laugh, but rather draw your attention to the strange detail of the world. I am constantly in this frame of mind when writing songs, and thinking about performance approaches. He says (13:26 - 13:40) -
“funny how one accepts societies values without thinking”
“you’re not a middle of the road person. No I’m not, I’m a cyclist, I stick to the edge”
These two statements in particular highlight Ivor Cutler’s duty to finding strangeness, or queerness in the world, and displaying it through his art.
I love this video so much. It’s such a clear demonstration of how humour can be created out of so little material. I view the material as genuinely quite serous, so for me it takes on this macabre quality, and I start to feel the performance is a genuine expression of betrayal. The balance is constantly shifting between comedy and seriousness, between pleasure and reflection. When I consider the birthday party, it’s not an inherently funny situation. It is a joyful one, and it therefore provides one end on of the balance against which to place sadness, or more emotive moments. The journey back and forth between the two gives life to the performance.
This video shows again, how comedy can be created out of almost nothing. Andy has completely queered the space by introducing a children’s song into what was perhaps expected to be a comedy performance. There is really nothing funny about it, except for the fact that the situation is so strange. It also demonstrates how prepared an audience is to participate when the situation has been queered. Different rules apply, and the act of participation is no longer awkward.
This is not actually the video I wanted to show, but I believe the other one has been taken down. I wanted to include this because, Joan Baez is a brilliant facilitator of audience participation however I don’t believe that in this instance it works particularly well. The crowd has so much energy, that the control has completely disappeared and ended up as just whooping and cheering. Even though this is a version of audience participation, her intentions are lost on the crowd because of the sheer energy generated from being part of a large audience. I thought about my time performing to the queer community and how much energy they had to give, and how there must be a limit to the amount of energy that a crowd can provide before the musical output is compromised.
This is a brilliant example of queering - how a very serious performance from John Cage with genuine intentions and expressions of structure and sound can be made funny because of the strangeness of the situation. He is seen placing a vase of water in a bathtub and watering it, and slapping radios at specific times. The audience break out in laughter because of the friction of the acts themselves being odd, and coupled with the seriousness of the intention. My birthday party rehearsal has a genuine facade, but generates humor because of the misplaced context: We are not in a birthday party, we are in a performance space. The friction between the two creates a dynamic which is both emotive and humorous.
I love this example from Tom Waits for the coarseness of of the percussion. By using non traditional percussion in place of a drum kit, the sound is made more familiar and therefore closer to the audience’s ear. The same way untrained and vulnerable singers can shorten the distance between performer and listener, the percussion brings a fragility and therefore rewards the listener by bringing them closer to the music. The audience is heard clapping along, despite the fact they were not invited by the performer. This is not a particularly clap along like song, but even so the audience feels welcomed into the performance space and create community with each other. Tom Waits also is queering the situation by performing with a megaphone in place of a microphone, and dancing in a sandpit (what the hell!?) It’s so strange, that you can’t help but be bewildered, and curious enough to want to engage even closer and feel the tactile world he is creating.
(18:30 - 19:40)
The audience can be heard singing along with the chorus of this traditional folk song sung by The Watersons. Folk songs have a power to move people emotionally despite their meaning being perhaps irrelevant to modern life. There is a culture in folk clubs of participation without invitation, as audiences will likely be familiar the songs being performed. In a traditional performance situation, the artists request that the audience sings along, queering the situation by inviting the community of voices in the room to contribute. However in this situation we can see there is no need for invitation or queering, as the norm in this environment is to sing along. When I think about the birthday party rehearsal, I think about moving an audeicne into a more familiar situation. The birthday party is a joyful event where the community is allowed to contribute with singing (example: the happy birthday song).