Jury’s in - the closer you are, the more you feel

THROUGH a three-phased social experiment, Standard Bank has set out to prove that experiencing live jazz is far better than hearing about it.

We all know that experiencing a live performance can be better than just listening, watching a recording, or hearing about it from a friend, but with music now mainly experienced digitally, it seemed opportune to test the theory that nothing can replace the real magic of live performance.

As part of its campaign for this years National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, Standard Bank undertook a social experiment testing the hypothesis ‘the closer you are, the more you feel’. Three volunteers – a music student with tone-deaf parents, an aspiring singer in her 20’s and an elderly sales rep who enjoys classical music were wired to a barrage of monitors, recording EEG, heart rate and blood pressure. Their physical reactions to music were recorded in three different guises;

Phase 1: being told about the performance by a knowledgeable insider. Phase 2: viewing a video of the performance and phase 3: the live performance itself.

The stimulus used was Standard Bank Young Artist winner Nduduzo Makhathini performing his song Echoes of You.

Unsurprisingly, being merely told about the performance elicited the lowest reading, while the third phase of the experiment, watching a live gig of Makhathini at The Orbit Jazz Club in Joburg, yielded the most radical reaction – increased blood pressure, increased heart rate and unreadable EEG results, because there was too much movement from the participants. But who can sit still through live jazz?

Comments Standard Bank’s Jenny Pheiffer, “This was a fun social experiment to re-examine what seems really obvious on one level – just how much better is it to experience a performance live, and it transpires it is quantifiably better. Just one of the reasons why we continue to support major live events, like the forthcoming Standard Bank Jazz Festival in Grahamstown, where we’ll be continuing the social experiment on the ground!”

See the video of the experiment: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDJcS9 hNs2Q&feature=youtu.be To Book tickets to NAF: www.nationalartsfes tival.co.za Info: www.youthjazz.co.za or comment at twitter.com/StandardBankArt