I’ve been pondering that elusive “something” that happens when people make music together. The key point here being “make music together,” as distinct from “play (or sing) music at the same time.”
This has been on my mind lately because many of our Ananda singers and musicians fall into the second category and I’m not sure how to help them find their way into the first one.
Why does it even matter? Well, imagine you want to make a cake. You find a recipe and gather your ingredients — flour, sugar, eggs, etc — and put them all in a mixing bowl. As you stir the ingredients, they lose their original form, gradually blending together into something new. All the ingredients are still there but they’ve been transformed into something different, something more.
But how would the cake turn out if, before being put into the mixing bowl, each individual ingredient was placed inside it’s own plastic baggie? You could stir and stir and stir, but your ingredients would never blend together and transform into a delicious cake!
To be continued…