Maybe “smiling faces” was not the right choice of words. Maybe I should have written that audiences react to “faces that do not look to be annoyed by the task at hand.”

Fun and serious are not mutually exclusive in music.

Back to the packaging. When one listens to a CD all of the stimuli come from the speakers. I guess one could argue that looking at the packaging while listening could be another factor, but I wouldn’t put it on equal footing. At a live performance there are many non-aural stimuli that have a great affect on the perception of the performance. The other night my wife and I attended an improvised bass duo performance in a bookstore. The event was extraordinarily well attended, and we found ourselves listening from behind a large brick post. It was an interesting example of how much the visual aspect of a performance affects our perceptions. I won’t say it was better or worse, but it was much different.

So the difference is that a musician’s scowl tells me something about his lack of respect for the music at hand, or the audience, or both. A CDR only tells me about a musicians lack of the capacity to gamble sums of money on nice packaging.

In any case, if the music is really good none of the other stuff matters. I guess ultimately I am agreeing with you that we should look past packaging and listen to the music. I still think that if you are playing a mambo, a smile leads to a better groove than a scowl.

Thanks for the link.

It’s not even so much a “white thing” as it is a specifically “German-French-Italian-English art music thing.” Like I said, the Hungarians take rhythmic authority seriously, as do the Balkans, the Slavs, and the Spanish. But there’s obviously a long history here of an elevated high art music that places itself above that filthy, filthy groove that the rubes seem to like so much.