The Village Idiot and the Band Leader

Village Idiot
RFT Music Stories
The Village Idiot and the Band Leader
Once upon a time, in the outlying provinces of old Russia, there was
a village idiot. In these days, as in many cultures around the world, the
village idiot was considered to be sacred and was allowed to do anything he
wanted. This idiot loved to play the tuba in the town band, which he was
allowed to do because he was sacred. The band leader always attempted to
lead his community group in popular walzes and light opera tunes of the
time, but the tuba player always ruined things by showing up and playing a
shower of random grunts and farts on his tuba, "Hoo, hum, hoo hum, blat,
hbpth."
The band leader tried various ploys to get rid of the tuba player: by
hiding the village idiot's tuba in abandoned mines, by locking the village
idiot in attics, and by attempting to hold secret rehearsals in the basement of
the church, etc., but all his efforts failed. Invariably, the moment he raised
his baton to begin the music, the village idiot would miraculously appear and
begin playing passionate grunts and farts on his tuba, "Hoo, hum, hoo hum,
blat, hbpth."
Now, this band leader was a very talented fellow, and deplored his
fate as a no-account, nobody, country musician. He had visions of one day
being discovered, of traveling to St. Petersburg to conduct the great
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Village Idiot
RFT Music Stories
orchestras there—to be celebrated, and applauded, and appreciated in that
great city. However, he was denied the clear opportunity to display his
talents because that darned tuba player kept showing up and farting all over
his conducting. The band leader hated the village idiot for this, and daily
plotted to rid himself of this evil impediment to his success.
The band leader's one-chance-a-year to draw attention to himself was
at the the county fair held every spring in his own little town. Country bands
from all over the district gathered there and played for the gathered crowds
in a kind of battle-of-the-bands competition situation; the best band won a
little gold-plated cup, and got to travel to a bigger town to compete against
other bands from a much wider area, eventually, you guessed it, performing
in the great St. Petersburg Amphitheater. The band leader pinned all his
hopes on this event, because he was sure his band would win, if only he
could get rid of the tuba player, if only he could get rid of that ghastly "Hoo,
hum, hoo hum, blat, hbpth."
The crucial day arrived. Early in the morning, the band leader
seduced the village idiot into the back of a wagon with toast and jam, and
while the idiot chomped and grinned merrily with strawberries all over his
face, the band leader drove him out into the country. When he felt he was
far enough away, he pulled the idiot off the wagon and chained him with
strong chains to a tree. He tied the idiots hands with rope, and covered his
grinning face with a burlap bag. He tore apart the tuba and smashed it into
flat sheets of brass, and scattered them over the plain. Then he left the fool
giggling under the burlap bag, and drove off exulting in his heart, almost
tasting the acclaim of St. Petersburg.
His moment had arrived. The expectant crowd had gathered and he
raised his baton to lead the group in an arrangement of the quartet from
Rigoletto that he had created himself especially for this occasion. Who
should appear at that precise instant climbing up over the back of the
bandstand, crumpled tuba clutched to his breast, but the smiling village idiot
who began without a cue to gayly "Hoo, hum, hoo hum, blat, hbpth!" before
the assembled multitude. The band leader was crushed, mortified, enraged.
He lunged through the clarinet section at the village idiot with the intention
of plunging his baton into that irrepressibly beating heart.
Suddenly, there was a change in the atmosphere—a breeze, silvered
with snow, whispered a solemn silence over the crowd. All eyes turned to
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Village Idiot
RFT Music Stories
the sky. Above, battalions of white clouds parted, like a curtain, to reveal
choirs of angels singing hosannahs in the highest, a great lofty music. They
descended upon the scene, shining eternal light onto the bandstand and onto
the upturned face of the idiot tuba player, transformed, now, with a beatific
smile of divine intelligence, an idiot's grin; and the band leader and all the
people heard in a flash that the tuba player was playing in tune with the
heavenly host.
Moral:
Many of us get into battles with ourselves, with our self-imposed ego
definitions, about how good we are. We listen to the radio, to our favorite
CDs, to the guy sitting in front of us in the band, and think, "I'm really no
good, nobody wants to hear me." And so we hang back, hiding behind the
other players, muffling our sounds with a self-deprecating veil. This is a
wrong thing to do, because music doesn't have to conform to some objective
standard we can carry around in our little brief case of verbal
consciousness—it can be a spiritual emanation which is pure and truthful
only when we give our best. No one has any right to pass judgment on your
best, no matter how much it sounds or doesn't sound like everybody else. If
you're doing your best, playing with joy and conviction from your heart, you
can be sure that on some plane of existence you are playing with the angels.
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