An experiment on urban behavior by the Washington Post has revealed the nature of us urbanites.
Child-looking 39 year-old Joshua Bell – one of the world’s best violinists, and who, besides the Grammy, just won the Avery Fisher Prize (not to be confused with Fisher Price), which is sort of like the American Nobel Prize for classical music, probably more prestigious, since it’s never been awarded to Henry Kissinger – was talked into playing anonymously as a street musician in the entrance of a metro station in Washington, D.C. during rush hour on a Friday. This was an experiment in “context, perception and priorities” and public taste. The question was: “In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”.
The fiddler’s fiddle was a 1713 Stradivarius, reported to have cost him $3.5 million. With it Bell played six of history’s most brilliant pieces of classical music for a total of 43 minutes. During that time the 1,097 people walked by.
The answer was no. Nothing transcending here. No crowd gathered. Seven stopped to listen a few minutes and only one recognized him. The rest of the commutes just rushed by, indolently, on their way to work. They threw into his case a total of $32.17.
“There was no ethnic or demographic pattern to distinguish the people who stayed to watch Bell, or the ones who gave money, from that vast majority who hurried on past, unheeding. Whites, blacks and Asians, young and old, men and women, were represented in all three groups. But the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away”. Tear-jerking, isn't it? A Pied Piper of Hamelin kind of thing, perhaps.
The fact that it was done in D.C., in an area of government buildings, has spurred all sorts of conclusions about federal bureaucrats. But, how would you have reacted? I probably wouldn’t even have noticed. As I walked by, immune to the heavenly tunes trying to caress my ears thanks to my headphones through which the Arctic Monkeys talk about riot vans and funny cigars – combined with a coffee, it’s the only way to get going in the mornings –, I would have just looked at the poor fiddler and though it must be one of the many Bulgarian or Russian geniuses on the streets of Madrid begging for a buck.
As with most Americans, the typically idealized image of Europe is a bit distorted by the original article. In Madrid he may have had to play for three hours to get that sort of donations (us Europeans are bad tippers).
Feels dirty to be urban at times like this, doesn’t it? Where has all the beauty in our lives gone? What is on our urban-beast mind?
They shouldn’t blame us. I think we have over things to think about, like the next model of delivery rental wives we are going to order through the internet, there are, after all, over 9,500 to choose from. Quite some thinking and serious decision-making needed here (Rent-a-wife. Brilliant! French and Dutch only).
Read the whole article – very long – by Gene Weingarten, Pearls Before Breakfast (with videos of the gig), her responses to the massive feedback from readers or a shorter extract (Reuters). You can also hear the full audio of Bell playing and judge for yourself if you would have noticed him, maybe even given the man a buck.
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The 17th of April a Spanish newspaper published the results or their experience of repeating the Washington Post’s experiment with Joshua Bell in Washington. They did this in Madrid in Nuevos Ministerios (where a good deal of the government building are, again, they seem to be wanting to prove something about government bureaucrats!). The “genius” selected for the gig was another violinist, Lebanese Ara Malikian, who lives in Madrid. The repertoire included Bach y Sarasate played on an 18th century (first third of the 1700’s to be exact) Montagnana , quite a relic, even if its impossible to compare it to Bell’s. It wasn’t rush hour, yet this is one of the busiest stations of the Madrid metro system. The results? Pretty much the same, maybe worse. Nobody stopped. One man commented he was “really good” as he rushed by, while another said “Poor man! He doesn’t have a place to rehearse!”. Only Carmen, a 30-year-old woman with nothing better to do, stopped to hear the final minutes of Malikian’s playing.
In sharp contrast with D.C.’s subway, in Madrid the authorities supported the experiment (here it’s not illegal to play inside the statios) and even gave him tips as to where to play, since it’s all a mater of location, they say. One official even commented on how you can tell the musician’s nationality by the instrument he/she plays: “Los instrumentos van por nacionalidades: los del este tocan el violín, los sudamericanos la guitarra, flautas, y los africanos reggae” . You can read the entire news report in Spanish here (with videos).
Well, he wasn’t Bell, but I was more or less right about just how generous Spaniards would be. In 35 minutes he made 5.35€. So the 10 buck/hour estimate was pretty close.
So, be on the look out. Having good musicians play in the metro may be becoming a fad. So, watch out the next time you rush by a violinist - even if you are a stingy penny-pincher and just couldn’t care less about classical music - and at least smile, because you may be on camera.
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