The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #171205   Message #4140481
Posted By: GUEST,keberoxu
28-Apr-22 - 04:07 PM
Thread Name: audience singing along in concert
Subject: RE: audience singing along in concert
I guess there are two ways of viewing this,
and people tend to fall into one of two camps.

My blood relatives, for example, subscribe fully to
the convention of a professional standard of entertainment.
They cannot stand Martin Carthy --
I speak from experience, I invited one relative as my guest
when Carthy was at the height of his vocal powers, years ago --
because his stage presence is not the ingratiating, oily, syrupy sort
that they are used to from the really commercial entertainments.

Mister Carthy, and his worthy daughter Eliza,
subscribe to the other concept of an extended family.
I have to say that, by definition,
this warm, embracing, familiar experience
is a circle that includes some and excludes many others;
and I have myself experienced
the shadow side of that exclusive circle,
when I went backstage and
could not praise the headlined performer in person because
they were cordoned off by a tight ring of local folkies
who would only let through people whom they recognized,
and I was a total stranger to them all . . .
and remained so thereafter.