I'll Pick, Pickin'...and other thoughts of Community
Reflections on the Kansas Communities Conference

Tim Fairchild, Chanute City Commissioner
December 6, 2006

Have you ever been to a bluegrass festival? This is a gathering of youth and old age; expert and novice; player and listener. The music is engaging and the affectionados call it “pure”. 

Long lost friends and complete strangers join licks and verses to create and re-create well known melodies and songs. For pick-o-philes of this genre' there is nothing better than the goosebumps on goosebumps that these festivals create. 

It occurs to me that none of these bumps-on-bumps could occur should I be alone. Quite simply when there is nobody with whom to share the licks, the music isn't near as “pure”. There's no mandolin chop to the bass line, no banjo to drive the fiddle, no boomy dreadnaught rhythm keeping everyone on beat, no bluegrass song is completely sung without the four part harmony.

For a bluegrass musician, actually for a musician of any genre', the understanding of community might be a short trip. The telling and enhancement of life through music is a phenomenon as timeless as the bedrock of a mountain. But music doesn't happen if there are no intent. Human music is always intentional!

This notion of intent presents a departure point for a gathering of community “players” from all across Kansas. At the Grand Prairie Hotel and Convention Center in Hutchinson the instruments were platonic; ideas, hopes, dreams, challenges; intentions of better places arising from the changing keys of well known songs seeming to fade.

Our communities are changing, and so too must the music to which we dance, the partners we bring and the instruments of our bumps-on-bumps. Neither lullaby, waltz nor hoedown resound 'less the intention to sing stands firm. And how can we keep from, how can we refuse to sing?

The festival of community invites all, much like a festival of music. Several are required, all are invited to join for the song is incomplete without sufficient harmony. The community will not stand without intentional singing and we will not thrive if we allow the song of community in Kansas to fade. 

Join in our song of the Public Square, bumps-on-bumps are created there!