Cymbals Matter

It can start off innocently enough. As you skip down the sidewalk headphoneless, a melody enters your unobstructed listening field. You stop, giving the sound a chance to expand. The door where the sounds originate is blocked by a wide man in a tight shirt who generously lets you pass, putting his index finger to his lips, making the universal sign for “be quiet.”

You enter, staying quiet, slinking into a chair towards the back. It’s there that you imagine the clear room when it was a smoky room, before smoking bans preserved lungs and destroyed vibes. During prohibition, crashing cymbals were a sign that a band of like-minded confederates approved of the dancing, dress, and drink going on at the performing establishment paying their salary.

The music reminds you of the time you stole a slinky from a convenience store and the sound it made as it swooshed and swayed from side-to-side in your cargo pants, alerting the shop owner to your uninspired kleptomania. Here you’re fully aware there are no slinkies, only cymbals. 

Drumming without cymbals might as well be a criminal act, with the banging and the stick twirling. A drum kit without a set of cymbals is nothing more than a false idol to real noise complaints. 

Cymbals allow for musicians to express themselves in ways otherwise closed to them. They are not guitarists, capable of subtlety or nuance, given the opportunity to express themselves using less aggressive forms of musicianship. Cymbals are more than cymbals. They’re symbols. Symbols of the whole spectrum of sound, showing us that Tommy Lee in inside a rotating 360-degree drum kit like a hamster on his wheel, may in fact be the humanity's high-water mark. Can we even imagine such a display without cymbals? 

You can’t just get rid of cymbals by using a technologically superior drum machine. While it prevents severe hearing loss and minor wrist injuries in human beings, do we really want robots taking on the drum solo? Let them adopt the French horn or the oboe, instruments most humans have given up on. But cymbals, percussive jewels made of all types of alloy, still matter. They can be approximated by a lone ox prancing across the prairie with a bell around his neck. With oxen, you have a living, breathing thing, attempting to find meaning in the world through making noise. Drum machines have no such desire.