Music as it was Meant.

There was a busker in Derby yesterday. He was playing jigs and reels on a fiddle, and he was playing them very well. I listened for a few minutes, dropped a little money in his instrument case and walked on satisfied.

I struck me that here was music as it should be – music in the purest tradition of the art. It was obvious from the man’s face that he had music in his soul, and he was making that music for his own pleasure and the pleasure of those able to meet the connection. He had a case open to receive money from anybody who wanted to pay him, but he would have played anyway.

And I thought back to the recent proposed legislation to strengthen the grip that big business has on music, to ensure that music becomes ever more a commodity to be controlled by pecuniary interests, to make it available only to those who have the money for expensive performances and recordings, and to put further millions into the pockets of people who already have millions enough.