Everyone deserves music...

I think the first big crowd singalong I ever took part in was at a Crowded House gig. I might be romanticising this but I'm pretty sure it was 'Weather With You'...

"Walking round the room singing stormy weather,

At 57 mount pleasant street..."

And for that beautiful moment the crowd was in perfect voice. Having no confidence in my own singing I still joined in and it was like I was in a choir.

Crowd singing had auto-tuned our voices.

Music is the language of us all...

Now I've been in many a crowd singalong this weekend at Bluesfest. One of my favourites has to have been The Cat Empire. These guys always make me dance, make me laugh and of course make sing. I sing so loud I get hoarse and yet the crowd always sounds in perfect voice. When Harry Angus hits the high notes I drop out but others in the crowd take over, when Felix is singing smooth I kick in a little. We become the best of ourselves.

You see the auto-tune effect everywhere you go at Bluesfest.

Sit down on the grass and listen to music in the afternoon sun. If you're there long enough someone will sit next to you and start chatting. Go for a wander through the markets and while you're checking out some shorts end up chatting with the sales assistant about the difference between Aussie and European men.

Sitting in the festival cafe listening to Trombone Shorty we were joined at the table by Eirin. We chatted music, politics, travel and almost forgot to listen to the music! We made a new friend and when his band 'Gait' comes to Sydney in a few months time, we'll go check them out. Later on that night I got asked for a lighter. I don't smoke but we still ended up talking politics and fashion.

All over the festival this was happening: food halls and bus lines, in the dry or torrential rain. It seemed like nothing was too much trouble and everyone was stoked to be sharing moments with the people around them. Wouldn't it be great if everyday was like this?

The sun also rises...

As the sun sets on another Bluesfest and I'm still wistfully humming along to the music in my head, I'm wondering how to spread this feeling through the year. If only it were as simple as taking everyone in my life to a festival!

Instead I'm going to focus on the diversity, the openness and the tolerance that the festival brings to me. Most of the shit that brings us down in life begins with a simple failure to stop and look at things from another point of view. Music lubricates the gears in that respect; as we dance along the ideas infect us and we see the world a little differently.

So how can I auto-tune the world; do we all just need good music?

That's probably too simple an answer. I mean it's not like we can pitch-correct people's opinions, nor should we. But what if we do consciously what the music does to our unconscious, helping us listen to different ideas? What if we stop ourselves from saying no straight away and ask ourselves what if? We'll never agree with everyone but we'll have a lot less arguments and when we do they'll be more constructive.

"Everyone deserves music". So says another of my Bluesfest favourites, Michael Franti. We deserve it because of all the good things that it brings and we deserve it because we help spread those good things around.

Tribes...

I'm a bearded man. Just putting it out there for those of you who haven't glanced up at the profile picture, or those who did and just assumed I'd lifted a shot from a serial killer fan-site. Bearded men in Australia, perhaps world wide, seem to own membership of a covert society made up exclusively of the facially hirsute. I like to call it the fraternity of bearded men.

As I ordered my coffee this morning at 'Fundamentals' in Byron Bay the magnificently bearded man serving me enthusiastically embraced my company. This brother from another mother saw in my beard a kindred spirit and I felt included. Then on the bus out to Bluesfest day two Rory from Brisbane complemented my beard as he enthusiastically related his struggles to grow and integrate a beard into his own life.

Beards everywhere and I felt myself in the eye of a bearded storm!

Now many people would acknowledge football fandom as the Australian tribe most identified with. Walk into a pub within a team's geographical footprint and you'd better be fan of the wherever lions or the hereabouts crows. Failure to be a local fan or worse to support the opposition will at least garner disapprobation, at worst a swift blow to the head.

'The Beards' with me right of stage!

But I'm not sure football fandom is really tribal in the same sense as beardom. Once a week football fans don the colours and go a little mad. The rest of the time they resume their lives and pass through life unobserved. But communities do not rest, tribes do not disperse to offices come Monday and the bearded wear their tribal brand everywhere they go.

Australian band 'The Beards' epitomise the tribal camaraderie that is beardom. They sing of triumph and desire in 'I'm in the mood, for beards!' but also of the discrimination faced by bearded men and women in 'This beard stays'. And really that is the essence of any tribe.  

You may have your society of secret handshakes, winks and nods but have you spent even a fortnight growing a decent beard? Tribes require an initiation. You will know when you are welcomed; women or men you've never met will smile, stop you and chat because you are kin. 

But never forget your beardless past! We all long to belong, crave the acceptance of our peers. No one deserves to stand, chin bare, against the cold alone. Because belonging is a privilege, and one we should extend to all our beardless brethren. Fully one half of the planet's population can't grow beards and yet without them no beard would ever exist!

Having a beard gives us a responsibility; to extend the warmth we feel with everyone we meet. Let no one miss the warmth of our embrace, or the rash of our pash!