An infant learns language through experience. His mama does not
instruct language lessons; but instead, she talks to him. He learns by
communicating back. However, this process does not only occur with language,
but as American bass player, Victor Wooten expresses, also with music. In a TED
Talk entitled, Music is a Language,
Wooten employs the comparison of a musical instrument to a speech instrument
(the mouth), and a rhetorical question, in order to preach that the language of
music is an unbreakable freedom. In Wooten’s childhood, his eldest brother
gifted him with a guitar; that was not the beginning of Wooten’s musical
instruction as he had been listening to music up to that point. As part of
Wooten’s lecture, comparing the guitar he received to the human mouth, he says,
"It wasn't about learning the instrument first [...] it's about what you
have to say" (Wooten). Just as one learns to speak through language,
he/she learns to play music through an instrument. Language and music are
expressive tools that convey emotions, no matter what instrument is employed. It
is about how one chooses to use these tools. Looking at a musical situation in
a humorous manner, some choose to shed musical light in privacy. Justly, Wooten
states a rhetorical question after recalling the story of a woman who enjoyed singing
in the shower. Justifying her actions, he says, "You're singing because it
feels good [...] so why does that change when someone outside starts to
listen?" (Wooten). There is a freedom when it comes to singing in privacy,
which becomes lost as we grow and learn, and we need to keep that freedom from
falling away. The woman singing in the shower was fearful of other hearing her.
If society is able to look at language and music as two freedoms, performing
music will be just as simple as talking. As Wooten continues to preach, there
is no measurable difference between these two freedoms.
Visual: https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/Interview_Victor_Wooten_Zen_and_the_Art_of_Playing_to_Infinity
Caption: "Expressive Freedom"
