A first thought on “serving” music….
“I love being a musician. It feels like being a servant – being a servant for you.”
That’s Prince, speaking from the stage at La Zona Rosa Sunday night during a Samsung-sponsored performance that closed this year’s SXSW music business festival. It might seem, at first, like an odd thing for the singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist to say – after all, he’s the one who scrawled the word “Slave” on his face during legal skirmishes with Warner Brothers Records.
But think for a moment about his work ethic, the energy he brings to the stage, the way he pushes the musicians around him to glimpse new vistas every time out. Prince is among a handful of living performers (Bruce Springsteen is another) who arrive for work expecting to actually work – who are willing and able to do whatever’s necessary to enliven and “serve” the music. And its constituents. I wasn’t in Austin, but I’ve seen him probably 35 times and know that he brings the possibility of new great things every time he performs. He carries forward an oldschool notion that is nearly extinct in our instant-star age: When it’s showtime, you pour out whatever you have to take the proceedings to a higher level. Just like James Brown did. And Jackie Wilson. And Duke Ellington.
To be sure, a Prince performance is about Prince and his notorious ego – it’s a dizzying torrent of talent, beamed directly at your pelvis, moving at 150 miles an hour. But “look what cool stuff I can do” is rarely his only motivation. He sees himself as a showman, certainly, but also a keeper of a certain flame, upholding a code of onstage conduct that is vanishing into variations on shoegazer apology. Prince makes his audience care about what is transpiring. He takes delight in the way his band knows its cues – and how cleanly they pivot from one groove to another. From the very first note of a Prince performance, you sense that everyone in the band is all-in, immersed in the formidable task of moving the air. It’s worth noting that this not exactly easy anymore – a performer has to melt down the resistance bred by too much information, override the temptations of the smart gadget in everyone’s pocket, and pierce the armor of indifference, smiling all the while. This musician makes it look easy. I think his mindset – all that being a servant stuff – is one reason he’s so effective.
It’s not quite accurate to say that Prince is a servant “for” his listeners – he’s a servant first to music. If he gets that part right, if he’s true to his internal concept of what music can be, he will have easily “served” – and, crucially, challenged – his audience. This is not some arcane fine point of artistic process: This is fundamental, an orientation. Music thrives when its creators operate in a spirit of humility, when they seek to cultivate connection rather than simply render listeners awestruck. Which is why I love the context of that quote: After the usual SXSW diet of endless showcases and panel discussions about working every conniving angle in the “new” music business, the last word went to a performer who appears driven by a simple and elegant idea: To serve.