I am connected to many projects in which professional
musicians try to work in participatory and inclusive settings. They invite
people to join with them in their playing, to influence their decisons; they
want to know what their audiences want from them, what their needs are, their
opinions; they want to make music which fits them like a glove or which poses
them the questions they never thought of but need to answer urgently.
And that is great.
But deep down – and sometimes not deep down but right at the
surface and even blatantly open - there stays that other tendency in
professional musicians: the need to feel special, to be the best and the
biggest, to be exclusive, to stand out.
And so it comes that I talk with a former student about a
project she was involved in, some years ago. The project was about
participation and inclusion, about sharing and about empowering; the students –
our future professional musicians – worked, together with teachers, in a circle
with the participants, reacted to their ideas, built something together.
And the former students tells me: “I was sitting in the
circle and I knew I was not appreciated. I knew the teachers felt I was not
delivering enough quality, that the other students were much better. I knew that the
other students felt that. I knew it all, and I felt I had no real place in the
circle.”
Not exclusive enough to be included.