Violin playing

it's been a week since I defended my term paper about baroque violin elements being able to solve modern violin problems and over the hooplah of my classmates about defending their papers, it just occurred to me that their response to my comment that "i want to have a re-defense" is "don't. yours was fine actually". Looking back, i did get through with it fairly well. But what made me comment that?

After reflecting back, I was convinced that I felt unsatisfied because my defense would never be good enough due to the fact that the questions weren't about the main topic of my paper. The questions were all aimed at the economic stature of the Philippines that cause the minimal population of violinists and the bleak popularity of the violin in the country. I even exhaustively discussed about learning curves in comparison to the guitar but hey, it isn't even in my paper.

So during my defense, my real concern was about disproving the myth that you need to be rich to be a violinist and also like you need to pay professional musicians just to get classical music classes. What really is the stature of the Violin in the Philippines?

Well, as caused by the misleading Promil Gifted child advertisements (most gifted people i know just drank breastmilk then in later years, just water) coupled with the prominence of the meteor garden/boys over flowers/hana yori dango's very own Violinist, hua tse lei (aside from variations of his name over other series) people kinda think of the Violin to be only for the rich (hua tse lei) and gifted (Promil kids)children even if it is very much FALSE.

Violin-playing or lets say, folk fiddling has been part of our culture stretching as far back as the tradings with the Chinese folk where the Er-hu (a chinese fiddle) was traded for other valuables. It has been modified and we made our own versions of fiddles/violins. Media can really influence us. Just look at the pace of Manny Villar's popularity. He spent fortunes on advertising himself on media and poof, he already either caught up, drew up or even beat Noynoy Aquino in the presidentiable's survey.

My message is not only for violinists but for the entire group of people that are hindered or blinded by the media. Don't be too gullible. It is entirely easy to have a kid of Suzuki training go up on stage, play a piece, pay a crowd to applaud then poof, there it is, gifted child (even if Suzuki pupils have an effing hard time reading notes. trust me. I'm Suzuki-trained until 7 years of age and until now, my sheet music reading skills are similar to that of a kid). It's the same way as easy as paying a kid (or groups of kids) to say nice stuff about you just so people would vote you.

My message is, don't believe everything that everyone is telling you to do or not to do. No one told Hillary and Norgay to risk their lives in climbing Mt. Everest they could've just dismissed Everest as a nonsensically easy mountain to climb and go home frostbite-free watching tv and eating popcorn. No one told Ninoy Aquino to go back and face his fellowmen and problems instead of staying with his family and watch his children grow. No one told Rizal to make revolutionary literature (that still inspires the people who suffer today not in the hands of foreigners but in the hands of their fellowmen) when in fact, he could've chosen a safer route and married Bracken as he can still have himself in the history books as a polymath anyways. No one told Mahatma to go on hunger strike to save the people of India when he, already thin and looked hungry even when full, could just cheat the hunger strike. If we look back on the lives of great men, they didn't exactly do the smartest things. They did extraordinary things that opposed human instinctive logic but very much coincided with their principles. If you really, really want to do something, do it. You're never too old or too young to start living your dream.

I really, really wanted to blog even rhetoric stuff, so i do every time i want to. haha