Mac Rebennack, better known as Dr. John, once told me that when a brass band plays at a small club back up in one of the neighborhoods, it's as if the audience--dancing, singing to the refrains, laughing--is part of the band. They are two parts of the same thing. The dancers interpret, or it might be better to say literally embody, the sounds of the band, answering the instruments. Since everyone is listening to different parts of the music--she to the trumpet melody, he to the bass drum, she to the trombone--the audience is a working model in three dimensions of the music, a synesthesic transformation of materials. And of course the band is also watching the dancers, and getting ideas from the dancers' gestures. The relationship between band and audience is in that sense like the relationship between two lovers making love, where cause and effect becomes very hard to see, even impossible to call by its right name; one is literally getting down, as in particle physics, to some root stratum where one is freed from the lockstop of time itself, where time might even run backward, or sideways, and something eternal and transcendent is accessed. .Tom Piazza
About This Quote
Comparing the relationship between band and audience to the relationship between two lovers in the making of love, Dr. John explains that when they are making love, it is not just sight but sound that holds them together. The sounds that the band plays help the dancers interpret what they see and feel, and in turn, their movement helps the band interpret what they see and feel. This is how it works in all relationships where there is a harmonious exchange between people.
Source: Why New Orleans Matters
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