Talisman: Art, Audience & the Artist

[It] is about listening for that song that is our song, that song that actually travels across the diaspora, that song that
might engender a new form of radical black politics and its about waiting for that song. Maybe that song would
have been Marleys song at a certain period in time but in our moment it feels like were waiting to hear that song.
- Saidiya Hartman (Fugitive Dreams of Diaspora, 14)
I say, play your own way. Dont play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on
what youre doing, even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.
- Thelonious Monk (The Thelonious Monk Reader, ed. Rob van der Bliek, 109)
It is these tender feelings of deep and silent admiration evoked from our hearts by the beauties of creation that
should find adequate expression in the fine arts.
- Haile Selassie I

Creativity requires a seismic shift, what Kodwo Eshun calls a perceptual disturbance, a
sensory alteration. The artist makes this warping of thought and feel audible in the present
episteme.
Meanwhile that song Saidiya Hartman mentions plays in real time. It feels like were
waiting when we look in the wrong places for it. The public takes a while to pick up on new
sound as tastemakers direct listeners to 20th century spaces where content substitutes for
framework; where clarity, coherence, continuity, linearity and accessibility govern expression;
where art is neatly packaged in genres for store-shelves. Refreshingly, todays genre stretching,
genre busting media ecology positions musicians to play against the grain of music as dictated by
the industry. But when the music is performed, the musicians, like the listener, must each time,
undergo that all-out sensory alteration.
Like the witchdoctor, the artist is struck by the lightening and thunder of perceptual disturbance
each time s/he engages in creating. The creative processs ritual magic trumps the spectacle of
exhibition. Like the magician, the musician must play without assumptions of uniform or
universal interpretations. After all, music is like an amulet, or rather a talisman infused with the
artists motive. The particular talismans message does not have to be understood or explained to
viewers. The talismans efficacy reflects the artists strength of will and pointed intent.
Harnessing the talisman for healing unites musician and listener in a possessed creative moment.
Music therapy models often involve the patient playing an instrument or singing in the creative
process. It sounds counter-intuitive, but to heal, the artist must play without worrying about
being understood.
In a world with 7 billion-plus possible interpretations at a time, artists may get anxious about
connecting with listeners. Artists may feel pressed to give the public what they want to stay
relevant. Artists are aware that lyrics and sound-created moods are culture specific and are
subjectively interpreted. It is presumptuous therefore for a musician to desire being universally
felt and understood all at once. When the artist becomes the message, the art is felt. Audiences
feel the artist's unique motives, but not necessarily the songs content, resonating with the core of
our being. And to speak to and from this core, artists have to say exactly what they really want to
say. Artists have always had license to prioritize being felt over being readily understood.
1

The fear of alienation suggests that it is impossible to connect with listeners unless we give them
what you think they want. But its ok to alienate. Akae Beka (Vaughn Benjamin), whose lyrics
sound relatively opaque, reminds us that audiences only learn through their own zeal to know.
Bob Marley alienated many while turning audiences on to reggae and Rastafari. He generally
wrote simple and clear lyrics. Still, many of his educated fans enamored by his persona easily
miss his point. Meanwhile mainstream music criticism fuels the lie that the masses are simpleminded and cannot understand unfamiliar concepts. If that were true, why should the masses
think differently while perception-shapers keep reinforcing untenable frameworks?
Thankfully, the masses are more sophisticated than it appears. Salvador Dali thinks, they are
infinitely superior to the rubbish that is fed to [them] everyday by [the] middlemen of culture.
Here, we must differentiate the masses from mass-mediated public thinking. For the masses,
revolution is never far from the surface. So as Sekou Toure says, instead of writing a
revolutionary song, musicians must know that revolutionary songs spring naturally from our
everyday interactions as we fashion [our music] with [our] people. If, in fact, Vladimir
Mayakovsky is right that revolutionary art must have revolutionary form, Eshuns question,
What can we do with an art form that has not already been done? is crucial. We must possess
initiative, which is the creative ability to think in new ways and do new things. [The artist] has
to always stay ahead, as Haile Selassie counsels. [We] cannot be content with mastering
existing styles. The artist must keep his imagination vividly alive, so as to originate ideas and
start trends.
Artists and audiences can align their expectations with what is yet to be by transcending their
experiences, education and environments. Otherwise, differing tastes and orientations will
always guarantee misplaced expectations. How do ones culture specific experiences and
expectations help in processing perceptions of art? Andrei Tarkovsky compare[s] Eastern and
Western music. He finds In the Eastern tradition they never utter a word about themselves. In
contrast, The West [and westernized world] is forever shouting, This is me! Look at me! Listen
to me suffering. Loving. How unhappy I am! How happy! Mine! Me! In traditional African
lyrical music internal rhythms are often the focus, not rhyme; fluid measures are upheld, not
meters of even numbers. Sometimes textures are the anchor, not harmonies. Using a western
gauge, African music may be heralded as exotic but its unsettling appearance precludes it from
consideration as satisfying, high art.
While cultural orientations and idiosyncrasies inform aesthetic values, the higher value is in the
culmination of the creative process, the interaction between the sound, the elements in the
setting, the listener, the artist as a medium, the ancestors, the powers and the Most High Creator.
Here the musician is the listener, the transmitter, the channel. This primacy of the unseen is why
some African wood carvers sculpt pieces that could charm and art galleries, yet destroy or bury
the splendid artworks without exhibiting them. For them, it is less about utility. It is about the
tender feelings of deep and silent admiration evoked from our hearts by the beauties of creation.
At that point, the musician sees the music as a talisman embodying that perceptual shift
necessary for the healing. S/he also realizes it promises no applause. The healing is in the wholehearted immersion in the infinite unknown where the creative process is all.