We humans have a peculiar way of making ourselves feel more important than the next guy. It is purely synthetic and make-believe though, and the true distinctions of character seems to have little effecton social status. The social structures found in symphonic orchestra seems to be a good example of such constructs.

I started my music career as a young boy by learning to play the trumpet. My inspiration was Louis Armstrong (Satchmo) in the movie The Five Pennies (also featuring Danny Kay - not the modern crooner.)

After starting my lessons in The Hague (The Netherlands), I continued my studies with Harry Epstein School of Music in Johannesburg in the early 1960s. Harry (or Mr Epstein for me then)was a pianist and had a team to help him teach. It thus happened that one never really new who was the teacher for that week's lesson. Sometimes Harry did the lesson himself, and that always sent the fear of the diabolus in musica (augmented 4th/tritonus) into me.

Harry's reason for leading the lesson was to teach me to play with piano accompaniment. Normally, that is a good and beneficial thing. However, Harry always had a hefty collection of keys attached by a strap to his left wrist. Those musicians among us will realize that the left hand often plays patterns, or at least subdivisions of the beat. The result was a type of off-beat or double-time jingle, with a variety divisions of the beat. To this young aspiring musician's musical sensibilities this was a major problem as - without fail - it meant that I became hypnotized by the jingle and would foul up my melody-part time after time. Harry never caught on to the problem, and I never had the courage to tell him what the problem was.

Anyway, I did make some progress, and soon I was ready (about 1963) to join the then SABC Youth  Orchestra. During the interview - at which my father was present - Anton Hartman promised that he would give me all the support that I needed to help me with my musical career. Anton Hartman was a god of the South African classical music world. Of course he was; he was a major member of the Broederbond, and therefore one of the fathers of the 'volk' (the people) who covertly steered the country. Thus Hartman's promise came with a caveat: our family had to become citizens of the country. This never happened, but somehow I did make it to the orchestra and enjoyed a good ten years performing with them.

This is where I first encountered human ascendency by association. The closer you found yourself to the conductor, the nearer you were to god. For those to which orchestra structure is not known, instrument seating in an orchestra radiates out from the conductor, with the strings (violins, cellos and double basses) in the first few rows. Behind them comes the woodwind (flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, etc.) Next are the brasses (French Horns, trumpets, trombones and tubas), while the last line is made up of the percussionists. There are variations in size and addition of instruments, but the principle is there. As it is, and it may have changed since, the further back in the orchestra you were, the lower rank you seemingly had in the social structure of humanity.

Fortunately for us brasses who sat in the second last row, the auditorium where we rehearsed was built like an amphitheatre. Therefore we - the brasses and percussionists as well - sat high above the rest of the orchestra - looking down over the woodies and strings. However, we were somewhat outflanked by the percussionists who were all pianists (which is not a traditional orchestral instrument, and usually features as a solo instrument in concertos.) Pianist, as far as holiness is concerned, were essentially on par with string players.

The arrogance in this caste-system was simply astounding, and to me as a young fellow, incomprehensible. How could one's instrument dictate your status in life? That was naive of me, of course. As life progressed I learnt that we humans use all kinds of imaginative constructs to elevate ourselves above others around us; titles, letters, position, degree of wealth, occupation, to name but a few.

Jack was a French Horn player and was always seated to the right of me. Actually an electronic engineer by profession he was a good deal older than me, and always amused me with his cynical comments on what was going on below. Being a youth orchestra, we performed many Classical period symphonic compositions(Haydn, Mozart, etc.) That usually meant that the brass section wasn't all that busy for a lot of the time. A few notes here, and a few there, and the rest of the time one spent counting bars of rest. Believe me, when you repeatedly have to count 30 or 62 bars of rest, you quickly learn to recognize when your few poops need to be sounded. It was during these lengthy periods of brass silence that Jack's creative ability came to full bloom.

During these moments of rest, Jack would make his comments about the general conditions in the 'fart-pit', and he loved to refer to the female violinist as 'floral-farters'. He frequently wondered if the male violin players farted vanilla.

For years after that, whether I performed in an orchestra, or merely attended a concert performance by an orchestra, I couldn't help myself imagining aromas and flavour as the strings sections walked on to the stage ? flavorism one could call it.