Fred Grazier

Have you tried searching the internet for "wedding bands"? The result is almost always "wedding rings" and jewellery. Try the dictionary and guess what? You get the same results. But what you want is a band that plays entertainment music and everything that would fit your requirements to enliven your wedding celebration.

The way to hire wedding bands not too long ago was by way flyers or the yellow pages. It took considerable effort and time arranging for the band hire if you were a first-time customer. You would have to visit the offices of the wedding band hire company in order to get a glimpse of the bands and how they performed the type of music you prefer. If you were not satisfied with what you hear and see, you would have to start from step 1 again with the next band hire company.

Music makes weddings complete. But what makes music complete? An angelic powerful singing voice can be considered complete music a cappella. So is an instrumental rendition of a musical piece in acoustic guitar, piano, saxophone, violin or any other instrument by a musical virtuoso. But a full orchestra performance with even just one violinist losing note or tempo sticks out like a sore thumb and is less than complete. It is a fiasco contemptible to art and music critics.

Have you ever attended a wedding ceremony and celebration on a foreign setting? Or have you seen such a scene in a movie? Being foreign is not only in the perspective of being of a different nationality. There are also differences in matrimonial cultural practices across religions and sects. The symbolisms are sometimes absurd and funny but we just do the motions especially if we are directly involved in the ceremony being a close friend to one of the parties in the union, for instance.

Wedding bands do not just mean wedding music but covers all genre or type. Local bands which play for local events such as weddings and similar functions were came to be known as wedding bands by popular etymology. It is not also without a reason that they were called such because they are the best performers when it comes to wedding music and entertainment.

Since that disaster at the Tower of Babel, man had to live and struggle with language. Ancient or modern, these languages have become an invisible barrier that separate countries and cultures. Even people of the same country have difficulty understanding each other if they come from different regions of different dialects. There are funny anecdotes concerning dialects in every country and inter-country language differences makes for good humorous tales.

Music is an important element in a wedding as the celebration will never "feel" complete without it. And we should be thankful there are wedding bands around to hire for such an occasion. But have we ever wondered how wedding bands are formed? It must be difficult to lead and manage members/musicians who are all artists. How is leadership determined?

Music is universally accepted and recognized as an art form and medium. But how, when and where it came about is something that is yet to be written about. For purposes of discussion, let us try and construct that history of the origin of music as an art form and medium. As such, the concepts and ideas that will follow will be largely hypothetical. Any parallels and similarities should not, in any way, be construed as actual and real.

When we talk about wedding bands, it is actually music we talk about. People seem to focus more on effects instead of the source. Take the song Imagine, for instance. While we claim it is the melody and the message of the song that makes us appreciate it that even rate it among our best-loved favourites, we cannot deny that if it was Yoko Ono who originally sang it instead of John Lennon, it is almost without doubt that it will not appear in any of the charts, even in Japan.

Marriage used to be an unwritten agreement between two people who commit themselves to a husband-and-wife relationship. It was without the benefit of a ceremony we now call a wedding to seal the pact. It did not need specific venues to get married in those early days. Religion or society, both yet informal then, had no concern about marriage and other present-day functions such as christening, etc.