I very much agree with Jean Nimal's comments in the 140808 Digest.  I
have written here on this subject before and hope I will not repeat
myself too much.  But I am confident that our hobby will continue to be
successful as long as we continue to pool our knowledge and experiences
and consider how best to attract new enthusiasts.  I say "new" and not
"young" because we could benefit from new people of any age, including
those already well-represented in our field.

The majority of my experience is with band organs on location at
carousels.  Unfortunately, for several reasons, the public has trained
itself to tune out the music.  The antidote, in my experience, is to
defy the public's expectations by playing different kinds of music in
addition to that which is expected and routinely ignored.  I mix this
music in liberally with the march/waltz, foxtrot/waltz, etc. rolls that
might be considered more traditional, and I have had many more people
express interest in the organ while the non-traditional music is being
played.  These folks are the ones I take behind the organ to show them
how it work and distribute information about enthusiast groups if
requested, etc.  Maybe none of these folks will turn around and become
an Art Reblitz, say, but they will know to keep an eye out for these
instruments, come back for a concert or other special event, tell their
friends about this great piece of machinery they saw, and so on.

Does the organ attract attention while playing traditional music as
well?  Indeed it does, but not nearly as much.  I wouldn't dream of
sacrificing the opportunity of surprising people with music that makes
them stop, prick up their ears, and take notice.  Note that the
dichotomy is not between old and new music.  Wurlitzer arranged some
operatic music that attracts a great deal of attention for our organ
not because it is new but because it is unexpected and interesting.  I
can understand the concerns of those who feel that newer music is in
some way unsuited to these instruments, but from my perspective as an
educator and interpreter, it absolutely works when done right and is a
simply invaluable tool.

I urge anyone who publicly exhibits an instrument to consider playing
both music considered traditional for their instrument and music
considered non-traditional.  Perhaps you could use an arrangement of a
recently popular song to make the point that most of the music people
are familiar with hearing on that instrument was the popular music of
another day.  You should see the looks on children's faces when I touch
on this point during one of my tours, and thereafter they often ask
questions about songs they don't recognize from the '20s and '30s.

Arranging newer music is not without its problems, of course.  Since
the lyric content of these songs is better known, it is easy to offend
people who object to it for some reason.  The Robin Thicke song Jody
mentions, for example, was quite a success in many circles but was
roundly criticized in others as demeaning to women.  Songs chosen
judiciously, however, can work whether they're from the 1920s, the
1950s, the 1980s, or the 2010s.  I would say that each of these
different eras have songs that appeal to a different subset of future
enthusiasts whom we ought to seek to attract. I never have as much time
as I want to spend on arranging, but I have been working with tunes
both new and old for some time, and look forward to having many more
tunes, old and new, that will demand attention for the band organ I
take care of.

For us all to give up the ship would be to deprive future enthusiasts,
both serious and casual, of the opportunity to enjoy these instruments,
their music, and their mechanisms.  Perhaps it is true that the days of
formal enthusiast organizations are winding down.  It would be a shame
for the MMD, MBSI, AMICA, or other groups to fold, but their end would
not be the end.  The proliferation of social networks, video sharing,
and other online interactions are changing the way people in our
community interact.  MBSI and AMICA have both offered me valuable
assistance and opportunities, but I have unfortunately not been able to
attend many meetings yet, so I have learned, and continue to learn, a
great deal from communicating with others online without regular
interactions with formalized groups other than this one. I would like
in the future to be more involved with these groups, and would welcome
leadership roles at the appropriate time, and I suspect there are
others like me.

I just ended another season with the Wurlitzer 165 at Glen Echo Park,
where I have worked Friday-Sunday this summer, and am on my way back up
north for my Monday-Thursday job at another attraction with a
prodigious mechanical music collection.  At both of these jobs, I have
been able to develop tools and practices that are being used to educate
visitors about our instruments.  I am enthusiastic about those jobs and
even more about what I see when I share what I do with friends.  Over
the last few days I posted a few videos of the Wurlitzer 165 to
Facebook, featuring different styles of music as well as the organ's
mechanics.  My friends have been quite interested and I've gotten
several compliments and requests for more information.  Again, likely
no future restorers in that crowd, but every person who learns to see
our instruments differently counts.  Who knows who might see the video
and what connections might be made from there?

I'm hardly always an optimist, but I feel our future is bright.  Our
field might not look the way it does now in twenty years, but change in
how we collect and communicate, or the depth of involvement of the
average enthusiast, does not necessarily mean failure. Mix the music
up, find different hooks in traditional and non-traditional fare, and
see what we end up with!

TJ Fisher
Lincoln, NH