What we learn about music when we study it is precisely that, i.e., about music rather than music pure and simple. As a result listening becomes harder and harder to cultivate as we remain distracted by notions of form, style, technique---this or that irrelevant aspect of what might be being played whether or not it engages the ear.
Music has come to mean something codified, a commodity among commodities. Our experience of it is rarely pure and simple except in certain circumstances. These circumstances are outstanding in that they involve deeply personal experience within a group which then unites in gratitude for the experience and in astonishment at the extent to which it has been fully shared.
I think of Barbes, the boite in Brooklyn where Rachelle Garniez plays once a month: I wouldn't miss it, partly for the reasons described above.
Also, listening to the choir at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in NYC under the direction of the late Gerre Hancock, a sound so deeply human and so richly personal that it produced a palpable agreement among the congregation that we had all been mutually engaged and transformed.
