A week ago, Iman was complaining about bands not able to communicate with their audience, not even saying a few words to the public, and playing their set almost without opening their mouth; he called it a failure to communicate.
But I am not sure if bands necessarily have to communicate,speak about their music and make the effort to explain their intention to their fans. If they do, it’s fine, I sure appreciate it as most people do, but if they don’t, should I blame them for being in the wrong profession or for not doing their role?
Why should they have the obligation to connect with their public? Anyone recognizes that Dylan is one of the greatest songwriters of our times but he nevertheless performed entire shows his back turned to his audience, wearing dark glasses, even mumbling his lyrics, basically having about zero communication with the world around him. Should he have behaved differently? I don't think so, it changes about nothing regarding his talent.
We have to make the distinction between being an artist and an entertainer or even a PR person, songwriters belong to the first type, but not necessarily to the second type. For example you would not expect a visual artist, painter or sculptor to sit in front of his or her work all day long and explaining the painting, the sculpture to everyone visiting the museum, would you?
The problem with musicians is that their art has to be executed in front of an audience to really exist, but I would bet that a lot of them would prefer their work to exist without this obligatory condition. Being an artist does not make you necessary a entertainer willing to crack jokes in front of an audience.
And if songwriters decide to talk, beside small talk like ‘you are a great audience’, ‘thank you’, ‘we are on tour’, what can musicians talk about? The first subject to come up is their art of course, their songs, the circumstancesof the writing, and the eventual meaning.
However many songwriters are reluctant to explain their own songs, and I would say they are right. Isn’t it better to makeup your own idea about a song that seems so personal to begin with? Do we need to be explained everything or isn’t it better that the song is living a thousand lives in the imagination and interpretation of people? The best song sare eventually the ones that allow this personal exploration and projection,the ones that bring another level at each listening. And a good song is much more than asimple explanation, it is a sonic, atmospheric, sensual experience and giving a song a concrete and definitive meaning may actually kill the magic. Even though I try to write about music, I struggle every day, as there is always something I can’t put into words, …As Georges Braque said ‘In Art there is only one thing that counts; the thing you can't explain’.
So if we consider that songwriting is an art, we should not assume that a musician’s performance comes with the requirement to talk to us like car dealers who want to sell us a product. Because songs are not products, they make us see and experience something new, different, and no PR campaign should be necessary if they are good.