Sharing music - song circles
One of the popular activities among musicians is to gather and swap songs. This will happen either as an organized activity which people explicitly attend to trade and/or listen to songs, or informally at parties where the sharing of music and songs takes place alongside typical party events like mingling, arguing about politics or drunkenly missing the chair when you go to sit down.
I have a small peeve about circles of the informal type. In the Quaker tradition, silence and reflection play a large part in the prayer meeting. A particularly beautiful part of the Quaker meeting is the way in which silence is broken only when an individual feels particularly compelled to speak, comment, read a passage or pray. What is beautiful is that there is nothing ritualistic about this. The Quaker prayer session allows the individual to focus in the moment, and serves to help participants come nearer to God and each other.
Creating and performing music holds the same spiritual meaning to me as prayer. But what is meaningful to me is not the ritualistic aspect of going around the circle, but rather contributing when the spirit moves you, and with total attentiveness to the task of sharing this spirit with others.
My friends, I love the fact that the ritual of music binds you together and adds a great deal of meaning to your lives and community. But please have a little respect for those of who can’t treat music as a ritual any more than the Quakers can treat prayer as a series of ritual readings and songs. Don’t be offended when I don’t want to join the circle. I’m just not wired that way.
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