As a musician who has been playing various gigs for years, I have had the privilege of adding music to all the special moments and occasions that punctuate people’s lives. It is seldom that communities around the world gather for these celebrations without music, albeit very different kinds of music. Not all cultures require “specialists” to provide the music and in this day and age, some choose rather to use pre-recorded music. However, I am always deeply aware that when arriving for most “gigs”(just another job for me), musicians are sharing in one of the most important days in someone’s life or in a group of people’s lives.
Due to the significance of these occasions, there is equal pressure for the celebrations to be executed well and often there is someone who has taken hours to think through all the finer details of the day.
You can imagine then, that I have often witnessed the ways in which celebrations do not always go according to plan.
As I have observed both the “instagrammable” and “uninstagrammable” parts of these celebrations, I have realised that it is indeed both sides of this coin that make these special occasions memorable.
The outdoor summer wedding that needs a quick “Plan B” when you wake up to pouring rain; the beach wedding where the bride’s veil blows away along with the floral wedding arbour; the wedding officer who gets the couple’s names wrong (that wasn’t so good); the missing wedding contract; the forgotten candles; the funeral tribute that goes on for an hour because there was just so much life to honour or the power-outage that results in lunch being served late.
This list is endless, and I will never be able to remember them all, as after 30 years of making music for special occasions (yes, I started young and I’m that old!) it seems that almost every beautiful occasion has a story to add to the book I should have written. It is often these stories of things not going according to plan and the ways that people managed their way around them that stand out for me.
Perhaps my greatest learning as someone who gets to witness these events from the musicians’ vantage point is that it is those who recognise the greatness of these occasions but also manage to hold the less important details lightly, who truly relish the day and its meaning for themselves and their families. It is probably not surprising that the place where I most see people managing to do this is at the memorials and funerals where we, as humans, seem most able to acknowledge that we are not in control and are able to accept imperfection, frailty and vulnerability as part of the greater package of life.
