As an amateur vocalist in a university band, I realized that performing is more than just playing, it’s also about communicating with the audience. It’s about being sincere, choosing songs that resonate with them, conveying emotions, and communicating with the atmosphere. A performance should be a communication, not a talent show, and it is only complete when the emotions and trepidation I felt while preparing for the performance are conveyed to the audience.
I’m not a professional, but my university band, in which I’m a vocalist, is meant to perform. Of course, a small club at a university is not a group that exists solely for the purpose of performing, but at least the outside world sees it as such, and I am definitely a performer in front of an audience. The word “performer” goes beyond the moment of playing music on stage, but it also conveys the love and passion for the whole process of planning, preparing, and actually performing a performance.
What it means to be a performer. It’s about connecting with others in a unique way, not by talking to them directly, not by writing an article somewhere, not by writing a short journal entry on social media, not by holding a candle in the street. Being a performer means being the one who creates the “performance” by conveying your voice through music. Being a performer is all about “connecting” with the audience.
Looking back, I remember crying so hard after my first performance that I was embarrassed and nervous. The process of forming a band and preparing for a performance with a group of like-minded freshmen without a single senior was not easy. It was also a struggle to maintain the club by accepting juniors. Barely leading the club, which seemed to collapse at the slightest faltering, he constantly thought about the identity of the club as a band. “What is this band that I’m so obsessed with?” was a question that ran through my head every day. After a year of intense deliberation, I came to the conclusion that “a band is a club that performs, and a performance is a promise to an audience.”
A promise to the audience. It’s more than just the fact that we’re performing when and where. It’s hard to see that in a show where the performers are flirting on stage, cracking jokes that don’t make sense, and just showing off their singing or instrumental skills. Performers who don’t have a message to convey and aren’t willing to engage with the audience are just a “talent show”. In a performance of unintelligible foreign songs and insincere love songs, if the audience is alienated, it is not a real performance.
The audience is not there to listen to you sing and clap; they are the final wedge of the performance, and when they are excluded, the performance has failed. If I want to share an exciting and enjoyable song with the audience, I must think about bringing them pleasure. If I want to share hardships through music, I need to find ways to comfort each other. If I want to simply share a good song, I’ll have to work to find a good song. But it all comes down to the question, “What voice do I want to give them?”
That doesn’t mean that the process of creating my voice is easy. I wouldn’t dare to perform a song that I wrote or composed myself because of my lack of skills. But at least in the process of choosing a song to perform, it is possible for an amateur to choose a song that the audience can relate to and enjoy. As a friend of mine once told me, it’s hard for a performer to perform on stage. A friend of mine once told me that the performer should have “trepidation”. If the person delivering the music on stage doesn’t feel any emotion or trepidation, the music will just be a passing sound to the audience.
Of course, a performance shouldn’t just be a place for the performer to inject their emotions and voice into the audience. All communication should be a two-way street, and this is no different in performance. However, it’s not easy for a performer on stage to hear the voice of the audience downstage. This is why performances require special means of communication. The mood and the response are the channels of communication. The audience’s reactions to the music delivered by the performer are transmitted back to the stage through the “vibe” of the venue, and we communicate through the music and its emotions.
The performer is responsible for the communication in the performance. From the moment I make the decision to go on stage, I become a performer who has made a promise to the audience to perform. And that promise continues until the show is over and the last audience member leaves the theater. A show that simply consists of “wow, I like this song” without thinking about what it is that you’re trying to create will get applause, but it won’t get a true response. A performance without audience interaction is a performance without an audience, and that performance is not complete. It’s the most basic courtesy to the people who have taken the time out of their day to come see you perform.
A month ago, I performed my last show under the name “Active Duty”. It was my last performance before retirement, so I prepared as best I could, but my nerves were at an all-time high. I was coughing so hard that I couldn’t stop, and my throat was in terrible shape. As the guitar and bass harmonized the notes, I felt my heart pounding in my chest. The countless worries, conflicts, and efforts I had made with the club in preparation for the performance flashed before my eyes. The long hours spent preparing for a brief moment of communication that lasted less than 30 minutes made me nervous, but as the drums beat and my tightly closed lips opened to speak into the microphone, the tremors of nervousness turned into tremors of joy as the music echoed through the venue. The tremors on stage were transmitted to the audience as music. I became the actor playing the music, and the audience swayed in response to the music, sending shivers back to the stage. The words, “I’ve prepared this because I want to share a story that you and I can relate to” were perhaps unnecessary.
After the performance, the audience’s reaction that “it was like listening to my story” proved that I was right to create a performance that was meant to connect. The tremors of excitement that had been stirring in my chest were transmitted through the microphone, and I’m sure the audience felt them too.
Someone might ask me. “Is it really necessary for a small college band to ponder such deep thoughts while performing?” I would answer yes. Whether professional or amateur, I am not a solo organist. I am a performer. A performer is someone who creates a show. A performance is a space filled with songs that resonate with me, songs that I want to tell, stories that resonate with many people, stories that I want to share. There is a “me,” an “audience,” and a “we” in the performance. The performer delivers the music on stage, and the audience responds to it downstage. That’s where we communicate, and if any one of us can go to bed at night and think about the performance, I’ve succeeded.
