Street Musicians - Do you stop to listen?
(http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/arbatovagidepar/24669920/787850/787850_original.jpg)
"A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that 1,100 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.
Three minutes went by, and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace, and stopped for a few seconds, and then hurried up to meet his schedule.
A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping, and continued to walk.
A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.
The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried, but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally, the mother pushed hard, and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.
In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money, but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.
No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the most talented musicians in the world. He had just played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, on a violin worth $3.5 million dollars.
Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.
This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste, and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?
One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:
If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?"
Its a busy world we inhabit, a small space full of distractions to take away our limited time from one connection to another. The self is a busy node of least resistance boxed up and placed within one self to dismiss noticing anything other than the immediate purpose imposed upon the schedule.
In regards to musicians.
My son is a guitarist and a well accomplished one at that. I also make noise with my own guitar but not on the level he has achieved. At 17 he was playing solo at clubs and he told me once of his first gig. He threw up on stage and kept playing.
He later on formed his own band, with he, as lead guitar and vocals. His ability is one of stopping people and looking on with awe as those strings resonate magical spells to the soul.
His ability is to mimick other instruments with the guitar.
You can hear him play here http://vidaudio.info
That is him on lead, a bass player and drummer forming a trio. That old number 3.
Ya, its a busy care free world and zombies never have enough time.
A recording from the subway:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM21gPmkDpI
Joshua Bell
Jean Sibelius' Violin Concerto in D minor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITTbY1n3Iz8
I frequent a local store that allows musicians to play
out front all hours they are open, I shop there more
just for this reason to support them, while they support
the musicians. It is nice to see this often, rather than the
harshness of police officers called to remove them.
well I think that is an unjust experiment done only to prove the experimenters point
if you were going to listen to him you would probably think the 100 bucks a small fee for the pleasure
but
in a metro station in D.C. would you expect them to stop for anyone they didn't recognize or take more than a moment if they did recognize someone famous..i.e. a pop star
I would say that 99.9% of those folks had to be somewhere where they work for money in order to eat..
and that they were tunnel focus on accomplishing that task
now you do the same thing on a street corner somewhere at a different time of day.. and then we'll talk
sorry to be such a skeptic but i worked in research long enough to unfortunately learn that most research and most experiments are fishing expidetions to prove someone's point and not to truly learn
who was doing the tes anyway ...now that would be telling wouldn't it..
:(
edit to add
had to go look it up of course
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html
http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/bell.asp
read down in the snoped stuff and you see the the washington post won a pulitzer for that article in 2007
here's the guys follow up.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/24/AR2008062401153.html
Fiddling Around With History
Jacques Gordon in Chicago in 1930 (Jun Fujita - Chicago Evening Post / Courtesy Gordon Family)
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By Gene Weingarten
Sunday, June 29, 2008
You may like or dislike my columns. You may think I am a fine fellow or a jackass. But there is one fact you may no longer dispute: I am a brilliantly original thinker.
I would not say it if I didn't have proof, namely, the Pulitzer Prize. I won it for an article I wrote last year about what happened when a world-famous violinist played for spare change, incognito, for three-quarters of an hour outside a subway station. Playing his priceless Stradivarius, violin virtuoso Joshua Bell, a onetime child prodigy, made a few measly bucks and change. Most people hurried past, unheeding. It was a story about artistic context, priorities and the soul-numbing gallop of modernity.
The stunt, which I had ginned up, was judged to be completely groundbreaking. The rush of adulation from inside my profession was immediate and intoxicating; suffice it to say that at the Pulitzer ceremony in New York, a beautiful and talented young journalism student was clearly disappointed to learn I am married.
Quite pleased with myself, I returned home to find waiting for me an e-mail from a man named Paul Musgrave. Paul works in Yorba Linda, Calif., at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, a fact that is irrelevant to this story except that, wafting as it does from the grave of the man The Washington Post did so much to destroy, it smells faintly but ominously of payback. Besides, as you will see, every last thing you are about to read, in some measure, relates to everything else.
Musgrave told me that he'd been scrolling through microfiche while researching an unrelated project when his eyes fell on a story in the Indianapolis Times from May 1930. It was a wire account of a remarkable thing that had just happened in Chicago. In a stunt ginned up by a newspaper named the Post -- the Chicago Evening Post -- violin virtuoso Jacques Gordon, a onetime child prodigy, performed for spare change on his priceless Stradivarius, incognito, for three-quarters of an hour outside a subway station. Most people hurried past, unheeding. The violinist made a few measly bucks and change. It was a story about artistic context, priorities and the soul-numbing gallop of modernity.
I immediately fired off a return e-mail to Paul Musgrave. It consisted of two four-letter words, both in capital letters, the first of which was HOLY.
In the days that followed, I obtained a copy of the original article from the long-defunct Evening Post. The main story, bylined Milton Fairman, was on Page One, under the headline "Famous Fiddler in Disguise Gets $5.61 in Curb Concerts." The story began: "A tattered beggar in an ancient frock coat, its color rusted by the years, gave a curbstone concert yesterday noon on windswept Michigan Avenue. Hundreds passed him by without a glance, and the golden notes that rose from his fiddle were swept by the breeze into unlistening ears ..."
We learn from this story that two of the handful of songs played by Jacques Gordon were Massenet's "Meditation" from "Thais" and Schubert's "Ave Maria." Two of the handful of songs played by Joshua Bell last year were Massenet's "Meditation" from "Thais" and Schubert's "Ave Maria." Of the hundreds of people who walked by Gordon, only one recognized him for who he was. Of the hundreds of people who walked by Bell, only one recognized him for who he was.
I telephoned Bell -- he, too, had not heard about this other street corner stunt. But, though Jacques Gordon died two decades before Bell was born, Bell knew of him. The two men had shared something intimate. From 1991 through 2001, Bell played the same Strad that Gordon had once owned, the same one Gordon had played on the Chicago streets that day in 1930. For 11 years, Bell's fingers held the same ancient wood.
There were differences between the two impromptu performances; Bell played indoors, but Gordon did not, meaning that some of Gordon's music evaporated into Chicago's frisky winds. Eventually, Gordon drew a small crowd; Bell never did. But the biggest difference is that the Evening Post's story -- the brainchild of Michael W. Straus, the paper's brash young city editor -- was a one-day minor curiosity. Mine, kept alive and aloft by the might of the Web, went global.
I'm sitting here looking at my Pulitzer Prize, which is awarded in part for "originality," and I'm laughing. Is ignorance a defense? Is there a statute of limitations on originality? Is 77 years okay? Mostly, I'm thinking that around the year 2085, a writer -- someone who hasn't been born yet -- is going to wake up one day with this really terrific idea ...
Gene Weingarten can be reached at weingarten@washpost.com. Chat with him online Tuesdays at noon.
© 2008 The Washington Post Company
::)
kinda sorry if i ruined the story but i seem to hafta know ALL of the story..it's one of my defects
besides not being able to speel
sigh
This is sorta cool - I just wrote an essay on something similar for my Social Science module.
It's the process of 'othering' and happens when we're all in a crowd going about our business, when we tend not to focus on individuals, however certain 'out of place' individuals either become marked or unmarked by our subjectivity and tendency to judge by first impression, signalling either a 'desirable' member of society or an 'oddball'.
Street musicians are often viewed/labeled as homeless, poor, disconnected, etc.
Most react by tunnel vision, or tunnel vision accompanied by compassion.
Hey, He made 32 bucks, what else does he want? Besides maybe no one that passed him likes the Violin. try it again while they are on their way out and home. Most people are running to catch that train. If they had stopped they would be late. Not a fair test of people, just a fair test of the old time clock they need to punch.
Interesting experiment. In general I probably wouldn't stop because in the work week I'm on a tight timeline, trying to catch my plane, ect. I may give a brief pause, but depending on my deadline, I likely wouldn't hang around for much more than a minute or two, regardless of the quality of entertainment. SO... I'm not so sure this experiment really proves much. Other than people trying to catch their connection stop for nothing.
I dunno about this train station set up cause if he did it in a mall he may have gotten a crowd since a mall is more relaxed and a place to watch the locals act. Look on utube and you will see break dancers pulling crowds and musicians draw em in as well.
A public spot where people are hurrying to a schedule is not a place to grab a gathering
Quote from: Gigas on January 23, 2014, 10:49:24 PM
I dunno about this train station set up cause if he did it in a mall he may have gotten a crowd since a mall is more relaxed and a place to watch the locals act. Look on utube and you will see break dancers pulling crowds and musicians draw em in as well.
A public spot where people are hurrying to a schedule is not a place to grab a gathering
, , , and I couldn't have said it better. Gold for yah.
Quote from: sky otter on January 22, 2014, 09:26:21 PM
but
in a metro station in D.C. would you expect them to stop for anyone they didn't recognize or take more than a moment if they did recognize someone famous..i.e. a pop star
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SKoGvVYekh0/UJb0tuI4mII/AAAAAAAAA9Q/UHn7LylUNWk/s1600/white-rabbit-with-watch-2.jpg)
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Quote from: zorgon on January 24, 2014, 06:16:19 AM
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SKoGvVYekh0/UJb0tuI4mII/AAAAAAAAA9Q/UHn7LylUNWk/s1600/white-rabbit-with-watch-2.jpg)
Sums up my life ::)
I agree that experiment is unfair. He is an awesome musician, but not being a follower of classical music, I wouldn't have known Joshua from a street person.
I challenge them to redo the experiment with this guy...
(http://i562.photobucket.com/albums/ss64/Micjer_2009/gene2_zps75d5e060.png) (http://s562.photobucket.com/user/Micjer_2009/media/gene2_zps75d5e060.png.html)
or maybe this guy....
(http://i562.photobucket.com/albums/ss64/Micjer_2009/gene_zps2c41fb62.png) (http://s562.photobucket.com/user/Micjer_2009/media/gene_zps2c41fb62.png.html)