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Ssssshhh! I’m here for the gig, not your loud voice

Opinion

September 28, 2023 — 3.30pm

Fun fact: gig etiquette exists. Acceptable behaviour differs depending on genre and venue (with anguished subclauses about tall blokes pushing in front of short women, or Camp Cope’s feminist edict against “non-consensual” crowdsurfing) but there’s one inviolable rule that’s also the most often broken: talking.

What’s the rule? To always assume you should be as quiet as possible because – newsflash! – people can hear you. And literally everyone came to hear someone else.

Ssssssssssssshhhhhhh!

Ssssssssssssshhhhhhh!Credit: Marija Ercegovac

That someone on Friday night in Sydney was modern powwow singer Joe Rainey. As a member of the Red Lake Ojibwe people from Minnesota, Rainey came a long way to perform at the Art Gallery of NSW’s North Building for the opening night of Volume, a 17-day festival of sound and vision.

To be fair, many did sense it was their end of the bargain – and a privilege too – to hold the space, silently, for Rainey’s deeply spiritual singing, while he did the work that First Nations people so often do of cultural translation: the performative but also emotional labour of closing the space between cultures and, in this case, hemispheres. Rainey was drawing not only on his own voice, but that of his Ojibwe family and ancestors too, and his singing had flashes of paste-you-to-the-wall force.

And yet. People milled around the edges talking, while whispering rustled even in the knot closer to the stage. “The gig-talkers have won,” wrote David Bennun in The Quietus in 2013. “It holds out in pockets here and there, but for the most part, quiet music, as a live affair, is done for.”

If you’re surprised that it’s not actually your birthright to blather through a show just because you paid for a ticket, you’ve probably ruined countless nights already. Take a bow, the three eggy-voiced boofheads who bellowed through Sleaford Mods at the Opera House in June, mistaking the bellicose swag on stage as their remit too.

Joe Rainey , a modern powwow singer who is a member of the Red Lake Ojibwe people from Minnesota, performing here at the Art Gallery of NSW as part of the Volume Festival.

Joe Rainey , a modern powwow singer who is a member of the Red Lake Ojibwe people from Minnesota, performing here at the Art Gallery of NSW as part of the Volume Festival.

Non-talkers have developed tactics to deal with it. A benign glance followed by an irritated one, some glaring and, finally, not always without anxiety, telling talkers to pipe down. Musicians have famously waded in too. Slowcore band Low would play with decreasing volume to combat chatter.

Of course, it’s OK to shout the chorus at a pop show if everyone else is doing it (but not at a Lorde concert) or to yell back if stage banter invites it, or tell your gig buddy you’re nipping to the bar or the bathroom. That’s called reading the room.

It’s the loud whisperers that boil my blood. My primate brain responds to the fundamental trying-to-be-heard aspect of a strident whisper and can’t ignore it. The sibilant “s” sound really carries too.

Rainey’s later show in AGNSW’s tank space commanded a much more respectful crowd and, as a result, people emerged as if from a trance. That’s what can happen when you stop talking and surrender to a performance.

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My disappointment is compounded by the political moment in Australia. Rainey was clear that his music represents First Nations resilience, spirituality and pride. “It’s not easy being an Indigenous person, no matter where you are,” he says. “Listen to them.” The audience at Volume was the more academic end of Sydney’s music and sound art community, here as a national referendum is nigh about respecting First Nations voices. As was Rainey’s show.

So if not us, who? If not now, when? Gigs aren’t mere entertainment you’re passively witnessing – you’re part of it. Your energy, your attention, your answering spark.

But talking at gigs is not yet taboo. “People struggle to pay attention when it’s anything extended or less song-like,” a friend at Volume says, charitably. I get it; it’s 2023 and our attention spans are shot. This is where taboos, and normalising silence, step in. How many movies, plays and symphonies have you sat through, wordlessly, because that’s not what you do in that context?

A gig is not that context either. If you feel genuinely compelled to bellow, chat or whisper, leave. Pass-outs are always possible and most musicians would rather play for 10 awed listeners than 1000 disinterested talkers.

Or perhaps organisers should step in. Just as toddlers like boundaries, so do gig-goers. If chatting is anticipated, an organiser could explain at the outset that talking is not welcome. The power of public censure then follows.

If we can do it for train carriages, why not a gig?

Kate Hennessy is a Walkley Award-winning freelance arts, travel and music writer.