[MD] Joshua Bell piece in the Washington Post

[Dan Glover]

Hello everyone

>From: "Ben Golden" <theplaidninja at hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
>To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
>Subject: [MD] Joshua Bell piece in the Washington Post
>Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 01:31:52 -0500
>
>I briefly used this forum about a year ago, but eventually left for reasons
>I'm not going to go into here.

Hi Ben
Thank you for writing and sharing the article. Good to see you back.

>
>I recently came across an interesting piece in the Washington Post, where
>they had renowned violin soloist Joshua Bell play in a subway station in DC
>and observed people's reactions.  With a couple exceptions, no one paid him
>any attention.  The piece is at
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html
>
>As I read the article I couldn't help but run some MOQ analysis.  What's
>interesting is that Pirsig seemed highly non-elitist with regard to
>observations of quality.  He relied upon individuals, rather than experts,
>to determine what had high quality.  Thus there seems a clear 
>contradiction;
>Bell is considered a top-notch performer, yet individuals don't detect the
>high quality of his performance.

Dan:
>From the article:

"But the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every 
single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And 
every single time, a parent scooted the kid away."

So it appears individuals do detect high quality yet others will not allow 
them the experience. Doesn't that tell us something about our society in 
general?

>I'd offer the following questions:
>
>1) Does the high quality of Bell's performance come from the social value 
>of
>his celebrity?  That is, are his listeners enjoying his performance not
>because it sounds any different from a worse performer, but because experts
>have given him social credibility?

Dan:
No. People in general are too busy to care. I think Robert Pirsig mentions 
this in ZMM when he and Chris notice all the unhappy faces in the lines of 
cars.

>
>2) Does the quality of classical music come from a dated social value, 
>which
>says that it's high art?  Did people at some point decide that classical
>music was high quality without reference, for various reasons, to other
>types of music, such as jazz, techno, or Cuban folk music?

Dan:
I would hazard a guess that no matter what type of music was being played, 
no one would have paid much attention. Except of course the children.

Thanks for reading,

Dan