How Music Works (52 page)

NURTURING AMATEURS

In Guadalajara, Mexico, there’s a former movie theater called the Roxy that

has just reopened as a combination bar, gallery, and performance space.

It’s a pretty raw, dusty, bare-bones space, but if the walls could talk they would speak of some pretty memorable days when Radiohead or local punk

bands played there.J

The culturally dispossessed felt welcome at the Roxy. Rogelio Flores Man-

ríquez, who ran it, wrote in a press release celebrating the reopening of the space,

“Culture is formed by
tortas ahogadas
, Mickey Mouse, television, advertising, pop music, opera and the expressions, traditions, and customs that embody and provide a sense of identity to a given community.”27
This inclusive approach to culture can not only make more people happy than the traditional models, but it can act as an insurance policy against all kinds of alternatives. Kids who have nowhere else to channel their pent-up energy often turn it against their own communities, or even against themselves. If they are culturally excluded and don’t feel like a part of society, then why obey its rules?

We should broaden our idea of what culture is. In Japan, there used to

be no word for art. There, the process of making and drinking a pot of tea

evolved into what we in the West might say is an art form. This ritualized

performance of a fairly mundane activity embodied a heightened version of

a ubiquitous attitude—that utilitarian objects and activities, made and per-

formed with integrity, consciously and mindfully, could be art. The Zen phi-

losopher Daisetz Suzuki said,
“Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom, I am swallowing the whole universe with it, and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space.”28 That’s a lot for a cup of tea, but one can see that elevation of the mundane in a lot of areas and daily

activities in the East. The poets, writers,

and musicians of the Beat generation were

J

inspired by this Eastern idea. They too saw

the transcendent in the everyday and saw

nobility in the activities of ordinary peo-

ple. This is an almost Cagean view of the

arts—that it’s all around you if you merely

adjust the way you look and listen.

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Ellen Dissanayake tells us that some African societies have the same word

for “art” and “play.” Even in English, we “play” an instrument. This attitude toward art and performance is in complete opposition to the Western idea of

monuments and great works. It views culture as ephemeral and fleeting, like

music. It’s an experience (again, like music), not an unchangeable fixed image.

Music, in this view, is a way of living, a way of being in the world, not a thing you hold in your hand and play on a device.

Dissanayake writes that art that engages the mind and hands, that is not

just passive connoisseurship, can act as an antidote, for our contentious and alienated relationship to our own societies. She sees art-making as capa-ble of instilling self-discipline, patience, and the ability to resist immediate gratification. You invest your time and energy in your future. This all

reminds me of the recent rise of “maker” culture—Etsy and a host of other

popular companies and fairs around the world that encourage amateur cre-

ation. There’s a growing movement, a real turning away not just from the

passive absorption of culture, but from art and music as mere vehicles for

expressing concepts. The hand has been brought back into the lives of a new

generation. The head is still there, but there is an acknowledgement that

part of our understanding and experience of the world comes through and

from our bodies.

K

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In some communities, music and performance have successfully trans-

formed whole neighborhoods as profoundly as the museum did in Bilbao. In

Salvador, Brazil, musician Carlinhos Brown established several music and culture centers in formerly dangerous neighborhoods. In Candeal, where Brown

was born, local kids were encouraged to join drum groups, sing, and compose

songs and stage performances in homemade costumes.K

The kids, energized by these activities, began to turn away from dealing

drugs. Being
malandros
was no longer their only life option—being musicians and playing together in a group looked like more fun and was more satisfying. Little by little, the crime rate dropped in those neighborhoods; the hope returned. And some great music was made, too.

A similar thing took place in the Vigário Geral favela located near the airport in Rio. It had been the scene of a massacre in which a police helicopter opened fire and killed scores of kids during a drug raid. Life in that favela was about as dead end as you could get. A cultural center eventually opened under the

direction of José Junior and, possibly inspired by Brown’s example, they began to encourage the local kids to stage musical events, some of which dramatized the tragedy that they were still recovering from. The group AfroReggae emerged out of this effort, and, as with the Brown projects in Salvador, life in the favela improved. The dealers left; their young recruits were all making music. That, to me, is the power of music—of making music. Music can permanently change

people’s lives in ways that go far beyond being emotionally or intellectually moved by a specific composition. That happens too, then it passes, and often something else lingers. Music is indeed a moral force, but mostly when it is part of the warp and woof of an entire community.

I visited José Junior’s center and, to be honest, the music I heard was not

always among the best stuff I’ve ever heard in Brazil. That’s not the point

though. I worked with Junior recently on music for a documentary about

alternatives to the war on drugs. Maybe the specific work, the individual

song, isn’t always what’s most important. Maybe it’s not essential that the

music is always of the very top-most quality, as Keynes insisted. Music as

social glue, as a self-empowering change agent, is maybe more profound

than how perfectly a specific song is composed or how immaculately tight

a band is.

In San Francisco, a former elementary school teacher named David Wish

became frustrated when the music curriculum was cancelled in some Bay

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Area schools. He started a program called Little Kids Rock that encourages

children to learn how to play songs they already like, usually on the guitar.

“The first thing I eliminated was the canon,” he said. No more following the ingrained program that made kids learn “Little Brown Jug” before graduat-ing to more complicated, often classical pieces. Only the few kids who had

extraordinary abilities and stamina or parental encouragement have perse-

vered with the traditional approach. The rest abandoned learning to play

an instrument. Another radical thing Wish did was to “eliminate the use of

musical notation.”29 I have to admit that I do often wish I could read music way better than I do. But I, too, was thrilled when I first began to pick out tunes and riffs by ear based on the pop songs I loved. That rapid and profound feedback—hearing myself playing something cool that I loved—was

exciting, and it spurred me to continue playing. Wish’s next innovation

was to add two elements that had never even been considered as part of

the music curriculum before—improvisation and composition. The kids

were encouraged to make up solos and to eventually write their own songs,

sometimes alone and often collaborating.

Critics complained that teaching kids simple pop tunes was dumbing down

their repertoire and would spell the death of classical music, which they’d never discover otherwise. The justification for this argument is that pop music is everywhere, kids will hear it anyway, and alternatives that they might not otherwise encounter need to be introduced. However, this seems to be a fallacy—

as one LKR teacher and classical guitar player in LA said, “Rock music turned me on to classical music, not the other way around.”30 Wish showed that most kids have a vast reservoir of creativity just waiting for permission to come out, waiting for a forum, a context—just like when someone opens a music club!—

within which their feelings and ideas can be expressed. It seems to me that
here
is where funding should go.

Maybe the most successful music education program in the world origi-

nated in a parking garage in Venezuela in 1975. It’s called El Sistema (the

system), and it was begun by economist and musician José Antonio Abreu

with just eleven kids. Having now produced high-level musicians, two hun-

dred youth orchestras, 330,000 players, and quite a few conductors (Gustavo

Dudamel was a product of this program), it is being adopted by countries all over the world. When Sir Simon Rattle first witnessed El Sistema, he said, “I have seen the future of music.”31

292 | HOW MUSIC WORKS

This program starts with kids as young as two or three years old, and

though they don’t play instruments at that age, they begin to learn rhythm

and body coordination. There is no testing or admissions policy—all are wel-

come. The focus, though, is mainly on kids from disadvantaged backgrounds.

90 percent of the students in the Venezuelan branch of El Sistema are poor,

and the program is entirely free. If the kids get to be really good, to the level where they can play professionally, then they begin to receive a stipend so

they don’t have to miss classes because of work.

Of course, this system has a huge effect on the lives of the kids and their

communities, far beyond their enjoyment of music. As Abreu says, “Essen-

tially this is a system that fights poverty… A child’s physical poverty is over-come by the spiritual richness that music provides.” When asked if his music program was a vehicle for social change, he replied, “Without a doubt that is what is happening in Venezuela.” The kids who might otherwise feel that their options in life are extremely limited are passionate about the program. “From the minute a child is taught how to play an instrument, he is no longer poor.

He becomes a child in progress, heading for a professional level, who’ll later become a citizen.”32

Much of the music the kids learn in El Sistema is classical, so I have to

temper my bias toward pop music here, as the program has achieved its goals

many times over. In the smaller villages they might play guitars, drums, and a marimba, so it’s not all classics, but it’s the classical repertoire, the youth orchestras, that are the main focus of El Sistema.

Abreu is now retired, but he guided the system through ten administra-

tions—right and left wing—in Venezuela. I’d venture that this non-partisan-

ship is essential to the survival of these programs, as well as the fact that El Sistema falls under the Ministry of Family, Health and Sports, not the cultural or educational departments. This designation might have helped make the program immune to the arts biases that crop up here and everywhere—I know I

have some. Hugo Chávez has increased the funding for this program, and natu-

rally he would like to take some credit for its success, but it started long before he was on the scene. But it was smart of him to invest in the future of his country, rather than cutting it off at the knees as like No Child Left Behind program did to the arts in US schools. As a result of No Child Left Behind’s emphasis on test scores, US schools gutted their arts programs by more than half in most states. If Venezuela can find the means to fund music programs, why can’t we?

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A similar program in the UK is called Youth Music, but the kids learn pop,

jazz and rap—not just the classics. In one depressed district, Morecambe,

where there had been territorial gang conflict for years, it was suggested that the kids use rap to express their frustrations and to talk about their situation.

A local bricklayer named Jack says, “When I was sixteen, [I wrote] my own

songs about my attitude and gun and knife crime, and how to stop it.” The

neighborhoods eventually declared a kind of truce, though tensions remain—

but it’s a start.

In Liverpool, Youth Music is associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic

and has been adopted by a school called St. Mart of the Angels. Peter Garden, the director of the project, said, “The percentage of children who improved

their reading by at least two levels in 2008–9 was 36 percent. For 2009–10,

it was 84 percent. The figure for mathematics increased from 35 percent to