Charisma Engagement & Folk Music!
This past weekend I watched more than 30 performers take to the stage and try to engage the audience. A few excelled whereas many did no. So what is the difference that makes the difference?
The Wickham Festival is a folk based music festival and has a wide range of acts from relatively obscure solo performers to headline acts like The Saw Doctors. To me it was clear that there were three main differences between the performers who did this well and those who did not.
1) Desire
2) Passion
3) Empathy
Let’s look at each of these in turn and I’ll try to explain what mean.
Desire: Here I specifically mean a real desire to connect to, and build a relationship with, their audience. Strange as it may seem, a number of acts, though undoubtedly talented, seemed to be more interested in their music than in their audience and the result usually was a performance that was flat and which left the audience unmoved. Contrast this with those performers who clearly wanted to relate with their audience and the effect was startling.
Passion: When somebody is passionate about their message or their music, that emotion comes through not only in what they say, but the way they say it. I find it hard to understand how some musicians can stand on stage and play an energetic, uptempo, toe tapping piece and yet have a bored expression on their face. They look like they are going through the motions. Maybe its because they have been performing this set non stop all around the country for the last 6 months? But whatever the reason, the effect is that their indifference to their material is infectious and the audience are not moved in the same way that they are when the performer is fully engaged in their performance and gives it as if it were the first time.
Empathy: Here I mean taking the trouble to connect verbally with your audience at the beginning of your performance. To acknowledge where they are and to express your understanding of that position. I was fascinated when Hazel O’Connor was performing and early on in her set she invited the audience to join in on the next song. Rather than just telling everyone to join in she invited us. Moreover, she empathised by saying that not everyone likes to join in and if you do feel self conscious, that’s OK, it’s not compulsory. The result of her empathetic preamble was that many more people sang along with her. She has taken the time to acknowledge the state of her audience.
Don’t you think the time of day that the artists played was pretty importaint too? I felt sorry for the act that followed the charasmatic Shooglenifty for instance and it had to help that the sun was long over the yardarm for the Saw Doctors to get rousing cheers and a sing-along going.