Your Musical Talents Needed

For only the third time in my adult life, I went to a protest/demonstration/rally last weekend. Such events were held worldwide to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War. The event included a march of roughly a mile during which my fickle ears (hyuk hyuk) took note of some curious musical phenomena, including:

•a trumpet player playing "Charge" on the wrong partials (you can play it correctly on any brass instrument using any fingering if you start on the third partial and end on the sixth partial; somehow, this person was consistently ending on the fifth partial);

•a spontaneous a capella rendition of We Shall Overcome which modulated not only chromatically, but also diatonically (!) so that it ultimately landed in a key noticably below where it startedand ended on scale degree 7 instead of 1;

•a variety of solo and ensemble percussion music which displayed an exceptional rhythmic ineptitude.

To be clear, this is obviously my problem and not theirs. No one notices or cares about these things save for the few of us public conservatory-educated music dorks, and you can hear them anywhere and everywhere that large crowds gather and attempt to make spontaneous functional music (major league baseball games are the worst in my experience). It's not life and death by any means, but I am always intrigued (and call me an elitist, but also very disappointed) at the overall level of musicianship of the average Joe. I'm quite tempted to show up to the next one wearing a sousaphone, and if any of you other musicians out there ever have the time and inclination to attend such an event, please bring your instrument and musical talents along if at all possible. They are in high demand.