When musicians record, their invisibility to listeners removes an important
channel of communication, for performers express themselves not only
through the sound of their voices or instruments but with their faces and
bodies. In concert, these gestures color the audience’s understanding of
the music. As Igor Stravinsky rightly explained, “The sight of the gestures
and movements of the various parts of the body producing the music is
fundamentally necessary if it is to be grasped in all its fullness.”36The violinist
Itzhak Perlman, for example, is effective in concert in part because
his face registers and reinforces every expressive nuance in the music.
Perlman himself once remarked that “people only half listen to you when
you play—the other half is watching.”37 The visual aspect of performance
is especially important for pop musicians. What would pop be without
the wriggling and jiggling, the leaping and strutting, the leather and skin,
the smoke and fire? It would merely be sound, and so much the poorer
for it.