Bluffin’ in Bangkok

Yusoof Monawvil

A solid bluff can be pulled off in the midst of a speech, perhaps on a resume, and with skill, in a game of cards. It goes without saying that bluffing has gotten people far; fortune-tellers, astrologers, and palm-readers all make their careers off of bluffing. But where it truly matters, in the realm of music, bluffing just won’t do the trick--and the students at Dalat that participated in the band festival at ISB are manifest proof of this.

As evidenced in the oh-so-reliable source that is the ol’ spaghetti Western film, to call a bluff on a shifty-eyed card player requires a careful mix of intuition and calm, cold, and calculated judgment—not the sort of thing the average joe could pull off. With careful selection of rhetorical devices, a politician delivering a speech could bluff over a speech regarding a controversial subject or topic—techniques that might widely go over the heads of many constituents.

But this is far from the case in the wild world of art and music. Young bluffing musicians can only get so far in their musical escapades. Bluffing on practice times becomes evident once shaky hands push down on valves and poorly set embouchures fail to eek out supposedly-practiced high notes. Calling a musician’s bluff requires no intuition, judgment, calculation, or analysis of any sort—just listening. With art and music so finely engraved into the material of mind, the shortcomings of any individual or ensemble in performance are self-evident to any member of an audience. And it is with such knowledge in mind that Dalat’s students have come to represent the school so eloquently and gracefully this year.

But... it would be a horrible lie to say no bluffs were had on the band trip. Gabby Gardner (10), remarks that while not performing, the group went to the mall, “[We] found these really funny shirts but one stood out. The shirt had the face of a little kid and the word “bluff” written all over it. On the way out, we showed the funny shirt to Mr. Ramos and to our surprise he decides to buy three of them—one for him, one for Mr. Kearney, and one for Ms. Goh, who really didn’t like it.”