Music as Community Building
“Music is the lining of beauty. What makes the flower, or anything, beautiful is the music inside. Music is not just playing the instrument; it's many other things. Music is the kid who needs a glove for the baseball team so you go out and help him out. Always helping people and giving the people, it's part of the music. Part of the service or training should be service to the community as a musician. You're trying to give in many other ways. It's all an extension of that idea, so supporting other musicians or doing your own events, it's a part of extending yourself to giving the community more.” – William Parker
The time tested method of building community that I’ve observed firsthand is:
Make music with your friends
Share that music with your other friends
Invite them together to experience that music in person
Let word spread
This is broadly what happens in the germination of a music “scene” — but I think that word underplays the communal value and the connections that can be formed. Music serves as a locus of joy and emotional-spiritual context, and in doing so becomes the medium for connection. Further, it provides a recurring reason for coming together in a repeatable ritual context for building enduring bonds.
In an age where success as an artist is measured in the arms-length abstraction of streams, musicians would do well to focus on being locally great and participants in a community of mutual exchange. This is the real fabric of life, and provides more nourishment to all sides than a commerce oriented measurement of success.
In these communities, the key is that it’s inherently participatory, and that all activities are vital to its success. It’s easy to put the artist on a pedestal, but they’re just providing a center of gravity. Fans, venues and staff, visual artists, dancers, and others gather to contribute their own energy, and I believe an audience of great listeners is as important to making great music as the artists on stage.
Over time my own musical ambitions have gone from the notion of trying to “make it” to being focused on making music with friends for other friends. I hope that I can keep doing that for decades to come, and that we can hone something beautiful over time rather than trying to succeed quickly.
My belief is that this is what the world we’re living in calls for: deeper in person connections to people we know rather than idolize and adore parasocially, a shared space for self expression through sound and dance, a nourishing give and take.
