Familiar vs. Unfamiliar

Musicians are all too familiar with the struggle of holding a general audience’s attention, even at a live concert. Unless they are already inclined to listen, it seems those in attendance can be moved only to apathy, heads bowed to their phones or turned toward friends in a chat with only an occasional glance or nod in acknowledgement of the stage. What’s behind the general disinterest in music? Russolo offers some ideas:

“Everyone will acknowledge that all musical sound carries with it a development of sensations that are already familiar and exhausted, and which predispose the listener to boredom in spite of all the efforts of innovating composers.”

When a typical audience hears a piano, for example, it can be categorized, boxed, and therefore dismissed. Familiar, it becomes relegated to the background as they spend the concert in conversation or lost in unrelated thoughts. It is like learning about the founding of the United States for the sixth time in school – no matter how the teacher approaches it, among the students all but the history buffs will feel exhausted by the retelling of the same story. I push for the use of new sounds because simply by dint of their novelty a listener listens to the music. Their ear is perked to the unrecognized and their attention is captured in an effort of discernment.

Now, the familiar sounds Russolo referred to were the violins and orchestral instruments of his era but what he says is just as applicable today to the guitars and drums that have been made a staple of popular and independent music alike. Why has this become the case? In 1962, Decca records famously passed on the Beatles because, as they put it to the band’s manager, “guitar music is on the way out, Mr. Epstein.” The story has become a source of ridicule and a common example of bad decision-making but I think we can only laugh at this with hindsight. Guitar music probably was a passing fad in pop but for the Beatles. It’s hard to underestimate the impact this group had, and maybe without them there would be another in their place – after all, a lot has been made about parallel development and multiple discovery.