Musical Monday 4/18/16
April 18, 2016
Musical Monday 4/18/16
I recently attended a wedding where music played a central role. Yes, I know, music usually does factor heavily into the experience at most weddings. But, particularly here. Two live bands performed amidst a DJ playing songs that tried to merge the tastes of the crowd with the bride and the groom. He did so successfully, at least for me.
I really enjoy it when the music at a wedding can infuse into the entire aura. By doing so it can highlight and enhance the entire social nature of the event.
The difficulty with a wedding, and I guess any social endeavor, is walking a line between popularity, wide appeal for the various disparate attendees, and your own idiosyncratic tastes. Hopefully they mostly align, since you’re a thing they all share in common, but musical alignment is not always the case.
Unfortunately, for that one period of time, you may benefit the most by erring on the side of the generic and popular so that someone in their 70s and someone in their 20s will both be familiar. Once that steep, difficult tonal decision is come to, a new danger emerges with making choices too generic and too widely accepted that they become parodies. So you must choose songs generic but not too generic, songs unique but not too unique.
Wedding music must walk a fine line, must travel an aisle down the middle if you will. A wedding is potentially a dangerous enterprise fraught with probable pitfalls, but if the music can be selected satisfactorily, the enterprise as a whole might benefit. It surely can't hurt the endeavor.