What’s left to make fun of?

There is an old joke, in fact a lot of them, about how lowly it is to be a musician. The musician gets to Heaven and finally convinces the powers that be that he’s actually worthy of being there... but is forced to come in through the kitchen entrance, instead. Well, that’s not the end of it. Musicians have a kind of hierarchy of jokes, and at the bottom of the barrel of the profession seem to be about five specific types: Singers, Violists, Bagpipers, Accordionists, and Banjo players.

Some might argue that drummers should be included, but most of those jokes are about lack of intelligence, or social subtlety, not about the instruments themselves (what did the drummer get on his math test? Saliva).

My problem? I find that I can’t in good conscience use those jokes anymore. This article is my last hurrah. The thing is that I have connected in some way with each of these most maligned of musicians, and I feel like I’m betraying them when I poke fun at them.

Let’s start with the singers. In a way, they’re the easiest to poke fun at. I have been a singer all of my musical life, so I feel fairly secure in listing and debating any criticism that might befall this group. Some might even argue my opening paragraph’s inclusion of singers in a listing of musicians. As goes the phrase from the old world wedding, “It’s time to eat. People, sit down; Musicians, STAND UP!” Just as there are people and musicians, many people assume that there are musicians and singers. The two are different.

How many singers does it take to sing “Send In The Clowns?” All of them, apparently. What’s the definition of a quarter-step? Two singers singing the same note. Ok, the stereotype against singers is that they’re not musically sophisticated, and they generally lack the skill and discipline required of other musicians. Of course, you can debate it from either side, but long ago I learned that it is possible to find singers – even in large groups – who understand music theory, the subtleties of intonation (like the difference between how a C would have to be adjusted when it’s the third of an Ab major chord as opposed to when it’s the fifth of an F chord).

I’ve performed with a countless number of musician-singers including the professional a capella (voices only) ensembles Chanticleer and Kitka. There is nothing quite like performing in a group in which everyone is capable of bringing out one’s own part with the strength of a soloist without losing the subtlety of maintaining an ensemble sound.

One of the deepest musical experiences of my career came while singing a capella inside San Quentin Prison, in a room of 10 inmates. The sounds that we took so much for granted were so foreign to these men’s world, that after singing our first piece most of them were staring silently at us with tears running down their cheeks. It was one of those moments when the depth and meaning of being a performing artist was truly and viscerally brought home to me.

Another of those peak moments was while singing in a reunion concert with Chanticleer. This is a group that used to tour with eight men when I was a full-time participant, and now tours with 12 singers. There’s a particular challenge to singing in such a small ensemble. It’s not like singing in a choir, where you might have a few strong voices in each section and a larger number of followers. In Chanticleer, no voice needs to be (or can be) hidden. But during the reunion concert there weren’t eight or 12 singers on stage, but 40. Each one of them a competent soloist and an experienced and accomplished musician. It truly was, as Chanticleer’s publicity calls it, an orchestra of voices.

I remember singing in the middle of a renaissance piece, the title of which I have forgotten. And I remember being completely swept away by the beauty of it. It’s very nice to hear such a performance, but it’s a significantly deeper experience to be actively participating in it. Beautiful music, performed beautifully and quite nearly in exactly the way that it was intended to be heard. It was one of the few times when I was able to enjoy so deeply the actual music, almost separate from the role I had in performing it, but at the same time enhanced by that participation. The sound was surrounding me, from all sides, but it was also inside of me, finding its own way out. The difference was almost like the difference between being in water versus actually being the water.

So obviously, singer jokes don’t go very far with me.

Some might be surprised that I’ve included violists in my list of the downtrodden. Some might be surprised that there is such a thing as a violist. Usually, viola jokes are somehow related to the idea that violists are just a little worse than the worst violinist. How do you keep a violin from being stolen? Keep it in a viola case.

There was once a violist who found a lamp on the beach. She rubbed it and out popped a genie, offering three wishes. Her first wish was to become 10 times better at her instrument. She was at that time a mid-level player in a local semi-professional orchestra, and almost instantly became the most sought-after violist in town. She asked the genie to make her even 10 times better than that, and she was offered jobs as the principal violist (section leader) for three of the most prestigious orchestras in the country. She asked the genie to make her even 10 times better than that and all of a sudden she was playing in the second violin section of that local semi-professional orchestra.

However, it’s a pretty well known fact that Johann Sebastian Bach, while primarily an organist and composer, also played viola. Odds are that he could probably play cello, violin and bass if he had to, and maybe most of the wind instruments as well. But when given the chance to play a stringed instrument, it seems that he preferred the viola because it kept him right in the middle of the music Well, if Bach was a violist, I figure they get a free pass based on that alone.

Bagpipes, accordions and banjos have two things in common. First, they tend to be loud. Second, they tend to be restricted to specific cultural or folk music genres. You can therefore usually substitute one for another in any joke.

There was the accordion player who was coming home from a gig late one night and stopped at a diner for a cup of coffee. Upon returning to his car, he was horrified to see the sparkle of broken glass on the ground and an empty space where his car window used to be. As he approached the vehicle, he saw that in the back seat where he had left his instrument, there were now two accordions.

It could just as easily be banjos. What do banjos and lawsuits have in common? Everyone is relieved when the case is closed. Nobody seems to recognize the shape of a bagpipes case (pretty much just a rectangular wooden box), so that would be a little less effective. But aside from that, they are pretty much interchangeable. While the viola doesn’t get much respect, it doesn’t carry quite the connotation of fear that seems to surround the other three.

The problem with these three is that, one by one, I’ve come to understand each of these instruments and their music. And I’ve come to really enjoy listening to them. Let me say here that I don’t play any of them, even badly, so it’s not just that I’ve built up a tolerance by suffering through my own practice sessions.

For someone who doesn’t like them, it may be most difficult to imagine having an affection for the bagpipes. For me, it goes back to my background as a singer. Two vocal traditions conspired to drive me to study the Scottish bagpipes’ musical literature. The first is that of the traditional a capella ballad, or story-song that is found throughout most folk cultures. It is a particularly ripe tradition in the British Isles.

The other is known as Tuvan throat singing. Tuva is a country near Mongolia where there is a folk tradition that features a technique by which a single singer seems to be singing two notes at the same time.

From a physics standpoint, any time you speak you are actually producing a wide range of pitches and sympathetic harmonics. By moving your mouth to form syllables and their component phonemes, you naturally adjust the set of harmonics you produce. We hear those variations of harmonic flavor as vowels.

You might think that there’s a quantum difference between an Eh sound (as in “bed”) and an “ih” sound (as in “bit”). But if you look at a spectral analysis of the two, assuming that nothing is changed except the vowel, they are simply gradations along a continuum from OO-OH-AH-EH-IH-EE. That’s almost exactly the same as a long, drawn out “Why,” and in reverse it’s “YEOW!” It’s all just different specific harmonics being emphasized by particular gradations of resonance in your mouth, around your tongue, and so on.

The trick of throat singing is to really focus one of those secondary harmonics to a point where you can here it as a separate pitch above the drone or fundamental note. Some people find it easiest to by singing the word “EAR” very slowly. Listen for a subtle kind of high sound in the range that you might otherwise call a whistle (except that you’re not whistling). Once you can hear it, hen try to focus and control it by moving your tongue to vary the size and shape of the resonance chamber that the “R” sets up inside your mouth.

Ahem, sorry for taking the scenic route there for a moment …

But one thing I noticed after I’d kind of gotten the basics of throat singing figured out was that the relationship between the second (high) pitch and the first (drone) is precisely the same as the relationship between the Chanter (melody reed / pipe) and the bass drone of traditional Highland bagpipes. There’s room for one to meditate on why two cultures as vastly diverse as the Scots and the Tuvans would figure out such technically different mechanisms to produce essentially the same relationships of sounds, but I’ll leave that for another time.

Once I’d written and recorded an arrangement of Amazing Grace (a very traditional Highland bagpipes tune) to feature this type of throat singing (http://www.saxon.com/stephen/songs.htm), I naturally got curious about what other songs I might be able to borrow from the Scottish tradition and apply to my newly acquired vocal technique.

That’s when I discovered the ancient bardic tradition of Piobaireachd (pronounced PEE-Brecht, literally meaning Pure Breath) (*1). This is some of the most challenging music for serious pipers, and it tends to show who the really mature players are, as opposed to those who have technique alone. Originally, the Scots would have a ballad singer serenade the troops with inspiring songs before battle. At some point, the piper took over that role, but played the same songs, and performed variations on the melody in place of the song’s lyric verses. In ancient times, many of the soldiers knew the stories of the songs, and so could take inspiration from the piper in much the same way as he would from the balladeer.

Well, once I started looking into Piobaireachd, the traditional theme and variations format was very familiar to me as it’s present in classical music and in a different way in jazz. After I started to understand the specific variants of the ornaments, the whole of a piece started to make sense to me. I soon found myself listening to a 15 or 20 minute continuous piece and just getting lost in it almost as a meditation. As I have told a few people, if you can get into it in the first minute, then 20 minutes is nothing. If you can’t, then you might as well turn it off, because it will drive you batty, otherwise.

So now that I’ve experienced some of the depth of soul of the bagpipes, I don’t really feel comfortable making fun of them anymore.

To me, the banjo was never a particularly good foil for humor. As a child, I had regular and loving exposure to the music of Pete Seeger (the guy who wrote Abiyoyo) as well as the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, among others – both on records and in live concerts. Pete without a banjo is almost unthinkable, and to listen to his songs without recognizing what a wonderful force for social good he has been throughout his life is to miss a major facet of American music.

Later in life, I heard the banjo in a completely different context and it made me realize that it’s been unfairly limited through the years. It was a recording featuring Michael Brecker, a phenomenal tenor sax player and there in the background of this really cooking jazz groove there is the unmistakable sound of a banjo driving it forward. Suffice it to say, the banjo for me has never been a very funny joke.

Maybe the most difficult one to cross off the list of shame has been the accordion. I was taught early on that if a piano is (as it is, all too often) simply an imitation orchestra, then an accordion is an imitation piano. Kind of like a photocopy of a reproduction of real art. But alas, even that has changed for me. In 1996, I was in on the formation of a band specializing in Klezmer music, a traditional form originally from the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe and then transplanted to New York in the second and third decades of the 20th century. I’ve played klezmer music (or more properly put, I’ve been a klezmer) since the mid 1980’s when I recorded and toured with the one of the key ensembles of the klezmer renaissance, The Klezmorim.

About six months after The San Francisco Klezmer Experience was formed, we brought on an accordionist (who was also a singer – two strikes against her!). I didn’t know how it would work out, but I wasn’t leading the band, so I just concentrated on playing my parts and tried to keep an open mind.

As it turned out, we had added a musician who happened to play accordion. The band has been nothing but better off for the change, and I have long since been convinced by her playing that the accordion can be a subtle and extremely musical instrument.

So what’s left to make fun of? In some ways it’s just like ethnic humor, or any other jokes that degrade their targets. Once one becomes familiar with the targets themselves, the jokes lose their value.

But all is not lost. There will always be politicians…

- © 3/13/03
Stephen Saxon