Why Live Music is Important

I recently got the opportunity to go to a small concert in Lancaster featuring performances by Roach Farmer, Back & To The Left, and Lemon Valley. It was a bit of a challenge to get there (as getting anywhere in Lancaster is), but thankfully, the place where the show took place had a couple of posters outside indicating that, yes, this is the right house (because it was in someone’s house), because had if it not, I would have never found it. 

It was the first concert I’d been to in about a year and a half, and an experience I’m not soon to forget.

Though I had only previously known about Roach Farmer, through this show I gained an appreciation for two bands that I hadn’t previously heard about in Back & To The Left and Lemon Valley, bands with very distinct sounds and energies. Seeing them in person, divorced from the quirks of what recordings they each have on streaming (like Back & To The Left’s incredibly muffled tape-deck recordings), really gave me an increased appreciation for what all three artists put into their groups.

I also found myself socializing far more than I usually do, talking with attendees and even artists mid-set about the Lancaster music scene and other such topics.

This concert was a reminder of why musical performances are so important, getting me thinking about other experiences I’ve had with live music and calling to mind the open mic that AFS’ own Music Society is bringing back this spring.

The Music Society open mic is an attempt to bring back an older project of Music Society’s called the Spring Jam, which is a yearly event not unlike an open mic but with a different level of involvement.

AFS’ Director of Choral Music Justin Solonynka told me in a conversation we had on the subject of the open mic that the Spring Jam, too, was an attempt to bring something pre-pandemic back.

“There used to be two different musical events, before the [COVID-19] pandemic,” said Solonynka, though he could not remember their names. “Part of the culture of the Upper School was to have two open mics every year. The Spring Jam came out of the pandemic as a ‘let’s bring back something,’ and we had this huge event.” 

“It was wonderful, but it was also unwieldy,” said Solonynka. 

The difficulty of the Spring Jam is what eventually brought us to the open mic, as it’s less of a trial for the Music Society and, as Solonynka said, “otherwise, what opportunity do we give students to express themselves musically?”

A musical performance is, in some capacity, a social event. Even if you don’t go out of your way to talk to anybody at a show, there’s a social element to them just for the fact that you are at an event with other people where, more often than not, you know that the other people there have at least the common interest with you of music, and often a common interest in a particular genre.

“I’m a raging introvert… but you’re just surrounded by all these people who love the same music you love,” Solonynka said. “It’s easy to forget that there are thousands and thousands of people like you who also think this artist is amazing. I was sitting there, and I was like, ‘oh, I’m not the only person who’s getting excited for this song, which I thought was a deep cut.’”

Furthermore, an article looking over 59 studies in peer-reviewed journal Musicae Scientiae found that “live music events produce a range of important social benefits for participants and offer great potential for a community-based non-clinical solution to loneliness.”

According to the article, “Sharing emotions, movement, and rituals on a large scale can trigger the intensely communal experience of ‘collective effervescence,’ binding a crowd together with a shared sense of purpose and excitement.”

On my end, I observed something similar at that concert in Lancaster. It was a very social event for me, despite my usual hesitance to be outgoing.

Another feature of performance that can’t be disregarded is the ability to bring attention to artists that attendees would otherwise not know about. Though this is most obviously true through music festivals and open mics, it stands to reason that an up-and-coming artist could find their footing by being an opener for a larger band or—as was the case with my finding Lemon Valley and Back & To The Left—performing at a multi-act show.

Going to concerts and other live musical events is a great way to spend an evening. If you, like me, love music but often fail to get yourself to shows, I would highly recommend carving out some time to do so. 

At the very least, go to the open mic this spring. Trust me, it’s worth your time.