You know theres nothing that pisses me off more than musical snobbery - It makes me seethe , twitchy ( more than usual ) and just generally pisses me off .Theres no need for it .
I ve been fortunate to have always been pretty musical , started playing the piano when I was 6 or 7 though if you heard me now I think you d probably disagree .I was obsessed .I d get up before school - play the piano - get home from school - play the piano , my lovely piano teacher who as it happens used to live across the road from my parents used to despair as I was constantly rushing her to go through the piano book to the harder pieces , skipping all sorts of steps , getting the fingering wrong etc etc , but I didn't care I just wanted together to the ' difficult bits ' by working them out for myself .Of course by the time we d officially got to that section of the book I had to re-learn them all with the correct fingering rather than my very haphazard kind.I also taught myself recorder ( after a fashion ) and started violin lessons and played with the local orchestra for a while..... I was lucky I loved it , I seemed to have natural aptitude for music though lets face it , I m no Mozart.
Not everyone is naturally musical . Thats ok , its not an insult , just a fact .Any musician has to work at their craft . 10,000 hours by all account, don't know if that's true - certainly feels true .Think I ve certainly gone over that now lol.Anyway I digress - anyone who ' finds ' music in whatever form , I think feels their life is enriched . It doesn't matter if it's playing a tamborine at your local church or joining a ukulele group , joining a salsa drumming group or playing in The Albert Hall , the O2 , its ALL VALID.If you feel that somehow your life is better for playing or you get something out of it then that's glorious - it doesn't matter if you re good or bad or mediocre - if you enjoy then thats all that matters .
Sadly I ve found over the years that there is a huge degree of snobbery.I don't really understand why .Maybe its because some instruments are deemed as being ' uncool ' ....ie ukulele , recorder , people quite often look down on such instruments - WHY ? No-ones asking you to play it ....If that persons enjoys what they do and gets something from it thats good enough for me.
I am part of ukulele group ...Monday nights was always uke night before covid and we’d all convene in our local pub and spend a few hours playing , chatting having a laugh and taking it in turns to sing and play - now I ve been playing and singing pretty much all my life , I m used to it but for others in the group , for whatever reason , they ve never sung on their own before , maybe they were told they couldn’t sing or felt they weren’t good enough but it’s was a new thing and somewhat scary . So for me the fact that people who come long are now singing on their own for the first time in their lives is the absolute BEST thing .That they feel comfortable enough and at ease and secure enough within the group to have a go - I don’t think you can ask for more than that .Music shouldn’t be about exclusion ‘you re not good enough so you can’t play , you can’t sing like Beyoncé so you can’t sing a song’ ....NONSENSE - sing out loud , play that chord , blow that recorder , bang that drum , strum that uke .. it may sound trite and twee but music comes from the heart , don’t let someone else’s snobbery make you think twice about what feels right for you -
if you love it - DONT EVER STOP