Click on this for the speech! 
I found a terrific little speech by Seth Godin on Ted.com, and I think it might be of benefit as we think about drawing communities together around the arts.
I’ve come to respect Godin’s thinking on a number of subjects. His book, Purple Cow, formed the basis of the Adrian Symphony Orchestra’s reinvention of itself with some quite remarkable results, and it is such a simple concept that it can be applied to a number of seemingly unrelated areas and activities. It has even encouraged me to ask myself, “is this program purple,” when I’m choosing music for upcoming concerts, so it certainly provides a way of provoking new thinking for me.
In this presentation Godin is thinking about how we self-identify, how we look for others with a similar self-identifications, and then how we form groups around that unifying identity.
He calls these groups “tribes”, and as soon as he said it, I found myself reacting to that word because it has such “primitive” connotations. I had to admit that the word resonated within me. And then I had to ask myself, “Why?”
So much in this field is changing so rapidly, I find it somehow comforting to use some enduring tenets of human nature as a guide while I think about what we might do next. It certainly feels better than trying to react willy-nilly to a mind-boggling cascade of seemingly uncontrollable outside events.
I try to remember that underneath change there is something that remains constant, and reflecting on that fact helps us to focus ourselves calmly even while we’re in the midst of apparent chaos. Finding “that which remains unchanging” would certainly make a foundation for action.
What would it mean if what is unchanging is simply that we’re still tribal? It might appear that thinking “tribally” wouldn’t be of much use in a field as sophisticated as the arts, but actually I think it’s a pretty good start!
It’s a bit humbling to realize that even as modern a world as ours still thinks in terms not too dissimilar from that of a hunter-gatherer society. Recognizing our primal tendencies can remind us to draw upon our natural ways of thinking even as we try to solve rather complex modern challenges.
For instance, thinking through a “tribal” prism, we would quickly realize that people don’t just want to be part of an audience, they want to belong. Getting an audience in the room may result from a good marketing campaign, but allowing them to become a tribe is a different matter altogether.
It is certainly what many organizations do in their fundraising operations.
I think there’s plenty of tribal feeling in the arts. But most of it is unconscious, and not all of it is positive.
Much of it is either tunnel vision, where you don’t know or care about art your tribe doesn’t practice or admire, or outright social exclusion, where you put yourselves “above” other art forms.
Finally, serious music has become so serious it no longer dares breathe the word “audience,” which is sad, but in a commercial culture, probably inevitable.