Subject: Re: [Harp-L]you know who

[EGS1217@xxxxxxx]

CARA writes: (TOTALLY UNSNIPPED)
 
"All I can say, Barbara, is that we do ourselves a disservice when we are  
too 
critical of another player, especially to that player's fans. It makes  us 
look worse than the person we criticized, and can, in some cases, drive  
those people away, rather than introduce them to a player we like better.  

Often, the players to which we are most attracted at a particular point  in 
our development, are conveying ideas that guide us to improve  our
playing. Eventually,as we develop, we may "outgrow" our old favorite  players 
to pick up new favorites who are conveying that which will aid in our  next
development. However,those old favorites may never go away completely  
because, as we learn more, we understand more about their playing and continue  to 
learn from it. So, criticism of a particular player to that player's fan is  
generally unwise if your intent was to encourage them to improve and hear  
someone else. They are a fan because the player's playing is, for some reason,  
attractive and 
educational to them. You may not understand it or like it,  but it speaks to 
that fan; and until he is ready to move on, the only thing  you can hope to 
achieve is to discourage the fan completely. We can  encourage others to 
listen to our favorites without criticizing their  favorites.

This John Popper thing came up at SPAH last year, by the way,  and nearly 
totally confused and discouraged one of our newest, talented  players. I 
helped him clear it up and reminded him that he may actually  'get' John 
Popper's playing even better than those people who were  criticizing him, 
especially since it was John Popper's playing that had  encouraged him and 
guided him to take up the harmonica in the first place.  But the incident 
caused me to wonder if those mouthy critics of John Popper  could remember 
that the 'P' in SPAH stood for "Preservation" and the 'A' for  "Advancement".
Cara"
 
....YEAH Cara! -- perfectly put!  I only wish they could have worked  an "R" 
in there somewhere -- for "Respect" when they were coming up with the  
Acronym.  Or added to the name: SPAH- Res (respect for every style).  
 
Elizabeth