The differences between the various kinds of performance are not clear- cut, of course. It is easy, for example, too easy in fact, to set up a simple antithesis between the relationships of a symphony concert, as a representation of the values of the contemporary industrial world, of the scientific worldview, of the bourgeoisie, or whatever, and those of other ways of musicking—rock for example, or reggae—as representing various degrees of rejection of (or as some would have it, liberation from) those relationships. That kind of neat antithesis has been the basis of a great deal of pop sociology of music, often bringing with it a cargo of unwarranted judgment, either covert or overt. Unfortunately, although there may be some truth in the antithesis, it hardly matches the untidy reality of musicking in the real world.
It is true that there is a good deal of the values of the contemporary industrial world or the scientific worldview built into the symphony concert, including, of course, the musical works that are played there; I suggested that in my first book (Small 1977), and I have seen no reason since to change my mind. But those values permeate as well, to a greater or lesser extent, all the large-scale public musicking that takes place in the Western industrial world.
All public performances, for example, are open to anyone who has the price of admission, which means that the passing of money is an important factor in whatever values are established there. In all of them the experience is shared with strangers, although the degree of intimacy that can be attained during the performance may be different, and in all of them the audience is kept apart from the performers and is to a greater or lesser extent dominated by them. All maintain a network of stars and superstars whose glamour and inaccessibility is part of the deal, and all rely for their very existence, if not as forms of artistic activity then at least as social institutions, on a highly developed technology. The existence of these and other factors in all these kinds of performances makes for a complex ambivalence to which no simple antithesis can do justice.
The great rock festivals of the 1960s and early 1970s, for example, were famous as events where strangers came together for a few days in tens and even hundreds of thousands to share not just a musical but a total social experience. They were experienced by those who took part in them as a liberation from the day-to-day social constraints of their lives, where strangers were free to encounter one another, even perhaps to become lovers, where no style of dress (including none at all) or behavior was too outrageous to be tolerated so long as it did not interfere with the enjoyment of others. The musical performances came in an endless stream, sometimes in the foreground and sometimes in the background (whether foreground or background at any moment was an individual matter), but always a magical presence acting as catalyst for whatever human encounters were desired. The sociability was not separate from the performances but an important element of the total musical experience.
During those two or three days it was as if a new society had been brought into existence—loose, tolerant, intimate, unconstrained, and loving—the Age of Aquarius it was called. It was, of course, to a large extent a cleverly stage-managed illusion. But even to the extent that it was genuine, it was not just, as many commentators hastened to point out, that it depended on the very technological culture from which the participants thought themselves to be escaping; it was also, as was pointed out by only a few crotchety critics, that no society, no sociability, not even in the Age of Aquarius, can exist without constraints on behavior.
At rock festivals, as at any other kind of musical event, there were, and are, right and wrong ways to behave, right and wrong ways to dress, to speak and to respond, both to one another and of course to the musical performances. To dress or behave there in ways that come naturally in Symphony Hall would be to invite ridicule, if not downright hostility. There are even right and wrong drugs to get high on; I remember some hash-smoking friends at one rock festival registering fierce disapproval of a nearby group who were drinking alcohol—cider, for god’s sake!
What was extraordinary was the speed with which these norms of behavior became established. Virtually nonexistent at the beginning of the 1960s, they were firmly in place, and even too conventional for some, by the end of that decade. A whole generation of young people was aware of them, even those who did not subscribe to them.
That they were felt by those present not as constraints but as liberation only goes to show how lightly norms fall on those for whom they represent ideal social relationships. But then, that is true of behavior, including dress, at all musical performances, symphony concerts not excepted. The fact that those who enjoy the event do not feel constrained but feel rather that they are behaving in a way that is natural and normal suggests once again that a musical performance, while it lasts, brings into existence relationships that model in metaphoric form those which they would like to see in the wider society of their everyday lives.
It looks as if the relationships that are established in a symphony concert mirror those which we might call the official relationships of our society. At any rate, to take part in a symphony concert, as in other classical music performances, is an activity that earns complete approval from those authorities who provide and attempt to enforce the norms of our social and political lives. As I have already suggested, we behave there according to the canons of middle-class good manners, and we police ourselves for signs of deviance from them. No policemen or security guards are needed to enforce them, no one searches us for weapons or drugs, and we expect to be treated by the hall staff with courtesy and respect.
The further performance behavior deviates from these middle-class norms, the heavier becomes the enforcing presence; even today it is quite common to see security guards patrolling rock concerts. I remember, too, a performance in a London cinema in the late 1970s by a group of Jamaican actors and musicians headed by the distinguished vernacular poet Louise Bennett. Naturally, Jamaicans came in hundreds to see and hear them. It was a happy crowd, mainly middle-aged, with a strong residual sense of their Jamaican roots; there were a few whites, and we all waited good- naturedly in the cold outside the cinema until we were admitted, only a few minutes before the performance was due to start. Finally, we were admitted in single file through the only one of the half dozen entrance doors that was open. Each face was scanned, as its owner passed, by tense and anxious uniformed staff clearly expecting trouble.
As one of the few whites present, I found their attitude offensive, but my black friends shrugged it off, not wanting to spoil their evening by showing resentment too overtly and being refused admittance. During the performance the audience was hardly ever quiet; the buzz of comment and laughter rose and fell with the music, the jokes, the sketches in Jamaican patois, the recitations by Miss Bennett herself, who would probably have wondered what she was doing wrong had this audible reaction not come back to her. It was an essential element of the performance, the audience’s contribution, and without it the performance would have been a sad affair indeed.
At an even further remove from the norms of and the social approval accorded to the symphony concert, there is a description in Tricia Rose’s book on rap, Black Noise (1994), of the indignities that thousands of young black Americans had to endure before being admitted to a rap performance in a big New York stadium. She describes how the initially very good-humored crowd was divided by aggressive security guards into male and female lines, how each individual was separated from others and subjected to a humiliating body pat-down and scan with a metal detector and even a search through handbags and pocketbooks, and how the cheerful, expectant atmosphere rapidly soured. Such procedures not only serve to exacerbate the very attitudes that they purport to control, but they also indicate how heavily the enforcing presence falls upon those whose style of musicking does not fit the approved social norms.
It is not, of course, just the behavior itself that produces anxiety in the authorities—that is for them merely the sign and signal of the identity of those taking part—it is the identity itself that is disturbing. The mere presence of a few hundred middle-aged Jamaicans at a London cinema was enough to inspire fear in the staff and that of thousands of young African Americans coming to enjoy a performance in a New York stadium seems to have caused something approaching panic.
This leads us to an idea that I shall be developing