Part-Time Tooters
Last year, a musicians’ strike shut down eighteen Broadway musicals for a few days. Citing acoustic advances, producers wanted to scale down the number of musicians required for each production. Musicians, meanwhile, worried that such a change would eventually lead to the end of all live music on Broadway.
The day after the strike began, the professor of a jazz class I was taking did his part to rally the troops. Shelving his lecture on Dizzy Gillespie, he launched into a long, pointed rant about greed and class warfare. Musicians, it turns out, deserve to hold certain jobs and get paid certain wages. Every time a musician gets fired, an angel catches a beating - or something along those lines.
In the past, displaced Broadway musicians could always use their audience entrancement (entrapment?) skills to moonlight as car salesmen, but new robots from Honda and Toyota are programmed to add insult to injury. Not only do they play the trumpet, walk, wave their arms, and bow (the Juilliard core curriculum), but one named Crazy HAL may try to sell you a lemon some day.
What’s even more demeaning? To make the robots cute and non-threatening, their creators made them only four feet tall. An especially endearing “chubby” model is reportedly in the works. Some worldly musicians are taking their last chance to bow out gracefully.
