Performing Live and On Stage...

     Is there anything that inspires the soul to fly more than live music?

     Is there anything else that speaks to every cell of the body the way music does?

     The other evening, I had the great pleasure of listening to the music of Ivan Najera and friends, all local artists, at The Center For The Arts in Grass Valley. Billed merely as acoustic guitar music, it was, oh, so much more than that. It was exotic. It was mystical. It was transporting and transforming. It was... beautiful.
     Najera's music combined rhythm and tempo from a variety of sources. There were flamingo, tango, and Cuban bits and pieces stirred and simmered with blues and jazz. His sweet guitar purred and sang, sighed and shimmied as he guided an ever-changing troupe of accompanying musician friends through a collection of his diverse compositions.
     Not a foot in the audience was still; bodies swayed and bounced to the intoxicating flow of melodic sounds. My friend, Bill, my host for the evening, and I sat in the second row of the small auditorium, with a perfect view of the stage. As compelling as it was to watch Najera's fingers fly sagely over guitar strings and Cuban drums respond to commanding hands, I found myself with my eyes closed for long stretches of time. With my vision intentionally cut off, my sense of hearing rose to the fore, and I was able to discern the subtle details of the music with greater clarity. I could feel the vibrations as they traveled through the air and the floor and into and through my own cells. The waves of sound moved through me like through water, and seemed to connect me, with web-like strings, directly to the musicians and their instruments. The effect was uplifting and transporting.
     Each of the musicians was masterful and contributed both solo performances and backup playing. There were saxophone, flute, two kinds of bass guitars, electric guitar, an electronic keyboard and a grand piano, and a wild array of drums and percussion instruments. All of the performers had periods of wild abandon when they sailed off into stretches of improvisation. Eyes closed, heads thrown back, hands and fingers flying over keys and strings, they seemed to be having no end of fun.
     I found myself lit up with happiness, as the fun they were experiencing seemed to fly out across the room, like the music itself, and land on my face in the form of smiling delight. The musicians on stage radiated their "flow" state to those of us in the audience. This sense of "flow" is often connected, in psychology, with "the pursuit of happiness" and a sense of "having fun" and often occurs when one is fully immersed in creative processes. 

 According to [Mihaly] Csíkszentmihályi, FLOW is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand... The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task (Wikipedia, "Flow (Psychology)").

      Being in the audience at a live musical performance of this level, with this quantity of creative energy, leaves me feeling like I was actually a participant in the event, not merely listening passively, not merely listening at the toe-tapping receptive level, but actually contributing actively to the sense of FLOW in the room. Every ounce, every wave, every packet of energy produced on stage was welcomed by this audience member, whose own energy packets and waves were thrown enthusiastically and spontaneously back toward to stage. The invisible, yet discernable waves of iridescent energy, danced and swirled, intertwined and airborne in the space above all of us, performers and audience alike. The space around and above us invited the rising creative energy with open arms, pulled it like a magnet pulls iron shavings, encouraging further spontaneous creation to multiply upon itself into the spaces within space.
     After the applause, after the encore and more applause, my friend and I left, nearly speechless in our appreciation of what we had experienced. It took time for the musical flow experience to be translated into words, and then they only came out as, "Wow! I mean... It was so... so... Wow!"

Find out more about Ivan Najera at his website ivannajera.com
For more information about performances at The Center for the Arts go to http://www.thecenterforthearts.org/