[Warning: a long, but moderately well-written post]
Not 'willful ignorance', it seems more like fear of something that isn't that scary.
Respect matters. My experience is that the Staple Singers were correct, that people and society in general will give you no more respect than you give to yourself.
I have no knowledge about FVH's actual level of musical knowledge. But I do know that a whole lot of that "weeze too stoopid" pose that many pro musicians adopt is just marketing, and is about as true as this wall of amps:
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The actuality is that there's a whole lot of mental activity involved in playing music. They've given musicians small plastic keyboards and put them in fMRI machines, which can measure blood flow and mental activity in the brain. Listening to music that you like invokes a lot of mental activity, playing along with music lights up even more of your brain, and improvising a solo over that music lights up almost every region of the brain like a Christmas tree. Improvising music is the most all-consuming brain activity that they've found. (As far as I know they haven't tried to measure our brains on sex yet. It would be quite difficult in an fMRI.) That is why playing music can be so much fun - it's tickling our brain all over.
We store most of our musical knowledge in our subconscious mind. We have to, because the subconscious is much faster and more powerful than the conscious. A big part of why we practice is to automate and store that information there so we can use it later. You practice something and before long it takes little-or-no conscious thought to play it. But there's still the same amount of 'thought' going on as before (the fMRI proves it), you've just moved it from the conscious mind to the subconscious. It becomes automated, like walking.
Doctors, lawyers, and engineers also have to practice to get good. New lawyers lose almost all of their cases, doctors in residence usually make mistakes that kill 2-3 people before they become good, and fresh-out engineers are almost useless their first year. All have to practice to move the skills they learned in school with their conscious mind into their subconscious. That's why experienced doctors, lawyers, and engineers can zoom in on the main issues and not get overwhelmed by unimportant info.
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I once loaded up my gear, drove an hour, played the gig, and then had the club manager say "You guys were great! You really had the place hopping! But the crowd didn't come in 'til later so I can't afford to pay you anything. How about you come back on Lady's Night next week and do it again?"
The beer distributor got paid, the liqueur seller got paid, the bartenders got paid, the waitresses got paid, the landlord got paid, the ice delivery got paid, the utilities got paid, the people who made the napkins and plastic cups got paid, the people who pick up the trash got paid, and the club almost certainly has a lawyer on retainer. Why is the band the only one whose payment is optional and left to the whim of the manager?
The night that Asleep At The Wheel won their first Grammy, they heard about it while having problems getting paid for that night's gig, trying to locate the invisible club manager.
As a friend of mine said "If the music industry is a circus parade, why are the musicians always the ones marching right behind the elephants?".
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So when we say that we played something 'without thinking' or 'instinct' or we play this "don't know nuffin" pose, most of our society doesn't understand that we played something using primarily subconscious knowledge. What they hear and understand is that we operate at the level of dumb animals and so give us the same amount of respect. The popular image of a rock musician is a lot closer to someone like Axl Rose and Steven Tyler than it is to Robert Fripp, Tony Levin, or Bill Bruford.
Notice how musicians who primarily play music composed in the 18th and 19th centuries don't do this. You never hear a classical musician doing that 'weeze so stoopid' act, they afford themselves some respect for what they do. And they get paid accordingly. Pre-pandemic many people who played in orchestras were making around $130K between performances, rehearsals and lessons. More in larger cities, more for section leaders, much more for conductors, etc. That's a bit more scratch than most people who play music composed in the 20th century make, at least where I live.
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Respect matters. And in the U.S. respect is closely tied to compensation. If we act like our craft is trivial and easy, the greater society won't respect it either. I think the knowledge stored in our subconscious should count too, just like a doctor, engineer, or lawyer, because we worked hard to put it there. And I think applying that knowledge correctly deserves respect and compensation.
