Music has that special ability to be all-consuming, taking us back to a memory, a relationship, a loss, a summer holiday or even a belief system.
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Left, a young Dolly Parton fan at Glastonbury in 2014. Right, the crowd sings along with Snoop Dogg at the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park in London in 2005
More than often, I’m drawn to the music crowd rather than the performer. It’s here that we can see the meaning of the music we hear. We can see how the music feels. That most intimate of moments where we are lost in the occasion; the memory or meaning of songs; the personal played out in the most public of ways.
Young couples in love singing along to Paolo Nutini; George Ezra holding the gaze of adoring fans; the consumed abandon of House music or Nigerian fans in awe of the Game and the guttural sounds of American Christian thrash rock music creating a mosh pit of stomping teenage physicality.
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Clockwise from top left: watching Flyleaf at the Cornerstone Christian rock festival; seeing Asa at the Mamas, Abuja, Nigeria, in 2009; Big Thief fans at the Albert Hall, Manchester, this year; dancing to Gong at Glastonbury in 2014
Fans on the front row, standing for hours and dressed to be seen, the anticipation becoming unbearable. Friends in the crowd peering for a view. Fans on shoulders, as the crowd sing and move in unison. Occasionally the light reveals a moment, a look, or a mood.
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Above, the Cornerstone Christian rock festival. A member of the crowd takes a photograph of Travis at the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park, London, in 2005. Below, Gong fans at Glastonbury in 2014
Live music: The gig. The venue. The crowd. In the faces and reaction of the music crowd we can read and see that mix of live sound and shared personal experiences. There for all to see, all wrapped up in our reactions as we hear, see and feel the music.
Generations are often labelled by the musical experiences of the time. House music, Garage, Punk, Britpop. During this Covid moment, the Spotify generation is being deprived of the live music they love.
Looking in on musicians’ living rooms, listening to virtual concerts, deprives us of the visceral feeling of the bass, the drum beat, the comradeship. It’s an experience empty of meaning to the human condition.
Even in ordinary times Glastonbury on TV is not the Glastonbury in the flesh.
Live music is that moment, as the sun dips, and the Who starts a set with their huge chords and lyrics to My Generation and a young woman, wearing a trilby hat and engulfed in the fall of stage lighting, lets out a huge cheer, raising her left arm and two fingers aloft.
It’s a connection made only at the gig. Without the live audience, music is weaker. And it is these moments that I’ve been seeking.
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Fans cheer the Game at the Mamas, the inaugural MTV Africa music awards in Abuja, Nigeria, in 2009.
A singular experience, in a communal event. The joy of music. In these Covid days the gig may well be dead … but long live the gig.
