3698  Let It Go Wild

Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 12:35:07 -0700
From: Larry Gmucs <gmucs@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Let It Go Wild

Just something I wanted to share: I'm also in a banjo
community. Here's a question and response that I
thought was applicable to Tango. It makes sense to me
if I substitute the word Tango for Banjo.

QUESTION:
i`m thinking of giving private music lessons. What do
you guys charge and do you have any tips like do you
charge in advance or charge for cancellations or no
shows? thanks Bob

RESPONSE
I don't charge for lessons or even workshops. Putting
a price tag on this stuff just screws it up. You'd
probably be better off sharing with people and letting
that take you wherever it is you're supposed to go.

For example, I wrote my first book with no intention
of publishing it. It wasn't supposed to be anything
but a free handout for an after school banjo club. It
wound up in print and it sold pretty well (better than
the other old time books on the market) but when I
made the contents of the book freely available sales
went completely crazy.

This music and these techniques are not our
intellectual property. We have it today because in
the past people were willing to share. We seem to
forget that in the age of the Banjo Camp. I mean, one
of the main reasons that old time banjo is shrouded in
such mystery today is simply because everybody is
cooking up new buzzwords to scam a buck out of an
already shrinking market.

Look around. As soon as people started trying to make
a living at teaching the banjo the instrument started
dying out. The internet is full of people who have
been taking lessons for five years and STILL can't
play a song in any kind of rhythm.

This is folk music. It's our shared heritage. If you
try to keep it, to make it something exclusive for the
elite, it'll bite you in the ass. If you give it
away, let it back into the wild, and you wind up
getting back whatever it is that you really needed in
the first place. You're just got to have faith in the
music and faith in the fact that people are pretty
likely to do what's right.

I know, I know. I'm a crazy no good iconoclastic
sum-bitch.

-Patrick Costello


Larry in Cleveland