"Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass." (Frank Zappa, date unknown)
Most musicians have always known that there is some truth to the idea behind that famous Zappa quip even long before he, ever so eloquently, expressed it. But it's kind of a real bite in the ass to find out just how true it is.
Not specifically intended to test the Zappa theorem, the recent Joshua Bell prank (as described in this story from The Washington Post) has forever, albeit inadvertently, laid all doubts to rest.
Basically, the "prank" went something like this: violin virtuoso god plays some of the greatest music ever composed for the instrument on a Stradivarius valued at around $3.5 million in a D.C. subway station for about an hour --- just to see what would happen. Result: violin virtuoso god - turned busker - brings in about thirty two bucks but is otherwise pretty much ignored. One of the few people that did take notice put it like this: "Joshua Bell was standing there playing at rush hour, and people were not stopping, and not even looking, and some were flipping quarters at him! Quarters!."
Read the story here (video included)
Listen to the story on NPR here
Still holding out hope for western man? Consider this: here are the respective number of results to a recent google search:
. . about 11,200,000 for "Sanjaya"
. . about 2,030,000 for "Joshua Bell"
. . about 1,260,000 for "Wes Montgomery".
