Singing for old people

I wrote yesterday about singing for a big group consisting mainly of very old people and there was more that I wanted to say but there was neither space nor time. Let me get it down now as a 'follow-up' to my previous 'blog'.

If you are singing to a mixed but mainly middle-aged audience you can get away with a lot in terms of content at performance time although you shouldn't 'push your luck' too far. Children and old people on the other hand are never so tolerant. Part of it is that their 'attention span' is shorter, albeit for different reasons. Also other priorities, such as trips to the toilet, are always going to intervene. But it is more than that. With such audiences there is no room for 'bullshit' of any kind, they are looking for not just an interesting experience but also a direct one in which they are involved and participate. The degree of separation has to be less, in fact better no separation at all, more a case of 'leading' and 'following'.

This raises major questions for me about the relationship between performer and audience. Actually 'audience' - in the literal sense of 'those who listen' - is not a good word. There needs to be a better one. The relationship is much more like one between lovers, there is a powerful giving and receiving going on in both directions. When you 'perform' you are 'receiving' the attention of both their minds and hearts, and if you say something important to their hearts you are doing well. So it is not simply 'listening', there should be another word for it. Perhaps we are talking here about Kanzeon in the original sense of "regarder of the sounds of the world".

I especially felt this at Sanrizuka because most people in the room were not just my elders but also from a different culture too. So many of the things that were sharable between them and their own children - the songs that they would have sung in school in the nineteen thirties for example - were not a part of my experience. For most Christmas had played no part in their childhoods, although some of the music - generally the 'popular' items like 'Jingle Bells' and 'Silent Night' which became globalised during the nineteen eighties and they probably shared with their grandchildren.

There is also a subtle balance between 'respect' and 'involvement' that it is difficult to feel out in another culture. With my own mother well into her eighties I'm very aware of the experience of 'reversion to childhood' and these days even her vocabulary has become that of a five of six year old again. I'm also now slightly aware of this 'stripping off of later deposits' in progress in my own being, a peeling of spiritual onions happening. So there's a big part in many very elderly people that wants to be treated like a small kid at a party and you can see their hearts light up and the smiles blossom when they are clapping hands and singing simple old tunes. And at the same time there is wisdom there that calls for special respect.

I'm not particularly good at the kind of confidence and spontaneity that getting up 'out front' and getting others 'going' takes in these situations but some of the group on Tuesday were and they did an excellent job of it.