Category Archives: Education

Of Dreams and AntiWar Songs

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Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, “I Have a Dream” speech

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which brought roughly two hundred and fifty thousand men, women, and children, mostly African-American, to the nation’s capital. It’s best remembered for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, “I Have a Dream” speech, though that was only a corner of the overall picture. W. E. B. DuBois had died the previous night in Ghana, and Roy Wilkins informed the crowd of this fact reluctantly, as he was violently opposed to DuBois’s Communist sympathies. The lineup of speakers at the march was controversial: James Baldwin was not permitted to address the crowd, and other than Josephine Baker, who made opening remarks but was not on the official program, there were no female speakers. The sound system secured for the event was itself an event. Bayard Rustin, one of the primary organizers, insisted on a system capable of being heard throughout the Mall, and he was willing to pay as much as twenty-thousand dollars for it (sound systems at comparable events cost a tenth of that). The evening before the march, saboteurs destroyed the system, which had to be rebuilt by the Army Signal Corps of Engineers. And then there was the music. Here are the day’s singers, along with footage (in some cases audio only) of their performances.

Mahalia Jackson

The Queen of Gospel fired up the crowd with a powerful pair of selections, “How I Got Over” and “I’ve Been ‘Buked and I’ve Been Scorned.” She was Rev. King’s opening act, in a sense, but she was more than that. During King’s remarks, which were originally titled “Normalcy, Never Again,” she spurred him forward with an offhanded comment (“Tell them about the dream, Martin”) that encouraged him to move off his prepared notes and into the improvised, immortal portion of his speech. Five years later, Jackson sang “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” at King’s funeral.

Marian Anderson

Anderson, who had performed at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, was scheduled to lead the crowd in the National Anthem, but was delayed; Camilla Williams replaced her. Instead, Anderson sang just after King’s speech, selecting the spiritual “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands.” In a sense, the performance was a return engagement for her: in 1939, after Anderson was refused permission to play Constitution Hall, Eleanor Roosevelt created an event for Anderson on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Here is a recording:

Joan Baez

Baez, only twenty-two at the time, sang “Oh Freedom” (also known as “Sweet Freedom”) and then led the crowd in “We Shall Overcome,” a song that became a concert staple of hers for years to come, and which she reprised in February, 2010, at the White House in front of President Obama.

Bob Dylan

Three months before the march, Dylan had released his second album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” which marked a huge leap forward from his début the year before; Dylan wrote eleven of the thirteen songs on “Freewheelin.” At the march, though, the songs he performed were both previews of his 1964 album “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” He sang “When the Ship Comes In” with Baez and “Only A Pawn In Their Game,” a retelling of the murder of Medgar Evers, solo.

Peter, Paul and Mary

Introduced as “a group of singers who have come to express in song what this great meeting is all about,” the trio sang Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and Pete Seeger’s “If I Had a Hammer.”

Odetta

Odetta, who had operatic training, became one of the premier interpreters of American folk songs in the late fifties and early sixties. At the march, she sang “I’m On My Way,” the third part of the Spiritual Trilogy that closed her 1956 début.

Freedom Singers

It was a busy year for the six-member vocal group (Cordell Reagon, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Matthew Jones, Charles Neblett, and Rutha Mae Harris), who also appeared at the Newport Folk Festival. At the march, they sang “We Shall Overcome” with Baez; Dylan; Peter, Paul and Mary; and Theodore Bikel.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/dream-songs-the-music-of-the-march-on-washington

How art functions within a society?

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 In the final chapter of Art as Experience, John Dewey develops the theory that art can help us appreciate and understand otherness. People’s experiences that differ from our own, other cultures, and other time periods. In particular, Dewey starts this argument describing the way that art encodes the experiences of a civilization. As we follow this logic, he suggests that the artist is constantly viewing and interpreting the world around him or herself. And through imagination and a process of sort of digesting the events and circumstances of the day, makes products that represent in some important ways the time he or she lives in.

When we then see works of art from another culture, or from another time period, we might understand something of its people. We can begin to imagine the lives, the circumstances, the cultures, of the people through seeing the works of art. And beyond that, we can develop not simplistic or simply factual ideas of a culture and how it functions. But a deeper and maybe even a more personal understanding of the way people think, act, pray or believe. He says, the art characteristic of a civilization is the means for entering sympathetically into the deepest elements in the experience of remote and foreign civilizations.

The arts effect broadening and deepening of our own experience, rendering it less local and provincial as far as we grasp, by their means, the attitudes basic in other forms of experience.

He goes on, works of art are means by which we enter through imagination and the emotions they evoke, into other forms of relationship and participation than our own. Dewey’s choice of that word, sympathetically, is important here. Through the imaginative, the emotional, the felt connection possible in a work of art, because of the logic of art that is about more than usefulness. Dewey suggests we have a unique opportunity to engage in with a work of art, to come into relationship with, or into feeling with, sympathetically, the experience of a person or culture distinct from ourselves. And then we can move past our own local or provincial understanding into a broader understanding of the world we live in. This is of course one of the great benefits of setting history, knowing what came before in different cultures, or different contexts.

But Dewey claims a special status for the arts as a way knowing otherness. Through the arts it’s a more personal individual kind of knowing, like having sympathy with a friend. And Dewey describes the kind of sympathy we feel with a friend in this way. We don’t necessarily form friendship because we accumulate a knowledge about another person. But because of a feeling of shared experience or of seeing the world through their eyes. He says friendship and intimate affection are not the result of information. Right, information about another person, even though knowledge might further their formation. 

But it does so only as it becomes an integral part of sympathy through the imagination. It’s when the desires and aims, the interests and modes of response of another, become an expansion of our own being that we understand her. We learn to see with her eyes, hear with her ears, and their results give true instruction, for they are built into our own structure.

He says friendship and intimate affection are not the result of information. Right, information about another person, even though knowledge might further their formation. But it does so only as it becomes an integral part of sympathy through the imagination. It’s when the desires and aims, the interests and modes of response of another, become an expansion of our own being that we understand her. We learn to see with her eyes, hear with her ears, and their results give true instruction, for they are built into our own structure.

As a good philosopher he acknowledges that this kind of communication, finding what he called a continuity of experience with another person, is a huge issue that philosophers have wrestled with. I can’t help while I read Dewey excitedly talking about this potential of the art. I can’t help but think what would he make of Facebook and Twitter and the internet in general, as a way of connecting people and sharing communication? But at the same time, I don’t think this point has lost relevance in today’s world. He describes a kind of death of human emotional experience, a kind of personal identification to this kind of communication we have through art. He goes on to suggest there’s a kind of mind opening that can happen for us, when we identify with another experience, not just intellectually. But through a true sympathy, that our own ways of seeing, our own attitudes even begin to shift.

He says, the effect of all genuine acquaintance with art created by other peoples, is that we understand it in the degree in which we make it a part of our own attitudes. Not just by collective information concerning the conditions under which it was produced. To some degree we become artists ourselves as we undertake this integration, and, by bringing it to pass, our own experience is re-oriented. Barriers are dissolved, limiting prejudices melt away. This insensible melting is far more efficacious than the change effected by reasoning, because it enters directly into attitude. So there’s a question here, if art has the power to change our perspective, to make us open to others, to incorporate the experiences of other into our own, is this a simple formula? Take the intolerant, add art and arrive at a cooperative and understanding perspective. The answer is obviously not as pure as this, nor as simple.

But I think Dewey in his own discussion of art helps us understand this. And that is he talks about the energy with which a person needs to apprehend art. It’s not just about strolling through a museum, glancing at the pictures, memorizing the dates of the painter’s lives. And walking out of the museum with a great understanding of a far off people or culture. No, Dewey has already advocated that aesthetic experience, the true experience, requires a personal commitment and a devotion of attention, a personal and really emotional involvement. I’d like to think of this as an effort to identify with a work of art or an artist.

How do we relate a moment in our own lives to that piece of music, that painting, that sculpture? Can we identify with it by actively looking inside ourselves for a relatable experience that we’ve had? It’s only then, I think, that we begin to have the kind of receptivity that allows us to then have sympathy beyond the sort of intellectual understanding, with that other person or other culture that’s represented. Before we move on into a discussion of society and what we mean by participating in our societies with art. Let’s pivot to another important point that Dewey makes about art and its role in our civilization. Dewey considers how art plays a role not only in connecting us with people of the past but, in fact, in the ongoing process of forming societies in the present and, in fact, in the future. He contends that art is more moral than moralities. That the basis of what is right and wrong, what is good and bad, where we assign praise and blame. That this is too often fixed, not in a kind of living and changing awake vision of the world, but in the rules and religions of the past. Art Dewey says, is the domain of imagination and imaginative perception, of considering the true patterns of our lives, and envisioning new possibilities in the world. In his words, art is more moral than moralities. For the latter, for moralities, either are or tend to become consecrations of the status quo, reflections of custom, reinforcements of the established order.

On the other hand, art has been the means of keeping alive the sense of purposes that outrun evidence and of meanings that transcend indurated habit. Outrun evidence, he says, and meanings that transcend habit. Or in other words, the artist can generate the meaning of things in the world beyond where we already have evidence, and beyond where we already operate in habitual, hardened ways. That with an imaginative or creative way of seeing the world, we can make judgements that are more relevant responsive to the world around us. Than we would simply by following conventions or standard ideas of right and wrong. And considering the future, Dewey contends that the true futurists, the true ideas about the future, come from the imaginative, the imaginative visions introduced in art.

Only imaginative vision elicits the possibilities that are interwoven within the texture of the actual. I love that metaphor, like the tapestry of life here. The first stirrings of dissatisfaction and the first intimations of a better future are always found in works of art. Change in the climate of the imagination is the precursor of the changes that affect more than the details of life. We’ll return to this later, but I think Dewey here sets us up for a consideration of the social imagination. Or as Maxine Green says imagining things as if they could be otherwise.

A contemporary political theorist John Keane, refers to the interaction of democracy and civil society as being interdependent. They’re not one and the same, but two components of a free society. The way he says it is, a civil society is a category that both describes and envisages a complex and dynamic ensemble of legally protected non-governmental institutions that tend to be non-violent, self-organizing, self-reflexive, and permanently in tension with each other. And with the state institutions that frame, constrict and enable their activities. So, this idea of legally protected but non-governmental, that the government allows this space, but this is not formally government business in this kind of arena. And the key here is that, people have multiple viewpoints in a civil society. Multiple backgrounds, multiple interests. And the space of civil society is where people can organize together and promote these, teaming up with like minded people. People have the opportunity to pursue their goals.

Going back to Hegel, he speaks of the individual as the particular person, and says, that people need one another to fully express their needs in the word. The particular person is essentially related to other particular persons, in such a way that each gains validity, and finds a satisfaction through the others. So there’s a sense of mutuality, that in order to pursue my goal, I may need others with me to do that, and there’s a kind of satisfaction that we can achieve together. At the same time, the multiplicity of viewpoints can lead to this, as Keane had said, this inherent tension. Right, and how do we deal with difference? How do we deal with the idea that two groups may have opposing ideas, that people, we’re trying to work towards the same, within the same democracy, within the same overall system, but have different viewpoints? So how do we deal with difference?

In one sense in the civil society, the right to pursue your interests, and the freedom to pursue your interests is tampered by the knowledge that others have the same rights. I like to think of the idea as property, and property as a metaphor, to understand the dynamic of having freedom within a society. How people come to respect a collective sense of rights? And how people can be part of a collective, a community, while acknowledging difference, while acknowledging pluralities, while acknowledging multiplicity? How does a society mediate the needs of many people, and have them coexist.

Having considered idea of the structure of civil society, let’s turn now to Maxine Greene’s thinking on the subject. That civil society is not the domain of laws or the state, as we were discussing with but rather a place of relationships and of people information. What is civil society? I think it’s a society in part that creates it’s community by means of dialogue, by means of felt connection among consciousness and the world. A civil society is not necessarily a society defined by law or written scripts. I think a civil society, like community, emerges and it’s never achieved. It’s never achieved because people are never complete, and I don’t think the society can be complete. It wouldn’t be what we cherish if it was, well now we’ve got it, we got the Constitution. We’ve got everybody and it has to be always in the making.

And then what is civil? Civil, it comes out of the idea of community, of something in the making, of acknowledging each other as citizens, whatever citizens mean. And citizen is somebody who has regard for the integrity of other people. And out of that regard and out of that feeling of kinship a community or civil society may take shape.

It’s never finished, never on the way. What is education in an incomplete society? You have to engage children or young people in a constant effort to find themselves and to define their society. Fixing is what scares me. You know it’s done. For me, it may not be for you, the heart of social justice is a real understanding of other people’s worth and integrity. It depends upon a regard for other people’s significance and to change reality that’s what I was doing to change reality. I mean, the idea of a society where each person feels himself on the way, on the way to what it is to live in a place where each person has to be regarded. And the complication is that each person Is not necessarily in your world. Like maybe I should I have regard for certain pop music players even though I don’t like their music. I have to say, well, they’re trying. It has something to do with their feeling of themselves, like Lady Gaga. I wouldn’t dismiss Lady Gaga, even though I can’t stand listening to her or her look. But the good thing about a democracy is we learn to accept the Lady Gagas’ and admire them. You ever see her talking about incompletion and I believe in incompletion. Because if you have, like I always say, all my questions are incomplete, and my answers are equally incomplete. Because if they were finished I’d have no place to go. The trouble fundamentalism or all these things, they feel they have the answer which is so frightening.

In a keynote talk at the conference Imaging Art and Social Change, Maxine Greene talks about the notion of regard and its opposite, or invisibility, where people are not seen, or not regarded as having significance. But regard, this notion of regard, as the basis of civil society, suggests that the most important aspect of a diverse set of people coming together into a community is each person’s ability to really see one another. She says one of the things I think we have to combat, one of the things that stand in the way of fulfillment is exactly that invisibility. Looking at people in terms of their ethnicity, in terms of their gender only. Forgetting that each one is a person. Each one is indescribable. One of the things we have to imagine, what it would be like to have a dialogue among diverse people each of whom is a person. Each of whom has something in them that needs expression. The trouble with fundamentalism or all these things, they feel they have the answer which is so frightening. It’s like what tyranny is like, people burst in. It’s not just the idea of the Nazis. It’s the idea of any kind of authority that takes you over, prevents you from thinking for yourself. Tying this perspective back to Dewey’s question is, is it that capacity to see, to imagine, to sympathize, to identify with that comes from making and perceiving art? Is it that this can transfer to our capacity to live in a pluralistic world? Beyond relating to civilizations in the past, can art serve as a modality to see and imagine possibilities in the present? To see and relate to people living in our world?

Maxine Greene says, if there is to be social change, there must indeed be those who design, project, strategize. But humane and courageous and audacious change must be made by persons who know what it means for spaces to be opened and what it means for imagination to meet other people’s imagination. And for windows to open and remain ajar.

WHAT IS CIVIL SOCIETY? http://archive.communitymusicworks.org/images/SymphonyInTheMaking_AGoldbard.pdf

Today, the phrase often denotes society’s third sector, the aggregate of voluntary social structures that, together with the state and the market, form society as a whole. In the intervening twenty centuries,“civil society” has been used in many different ways to characterize the social contract human beings enter into when we form societies. In his opening remarks, Michael Steinberg, co-convener of the symposium, both a professor of history and music and the director of the Cogut Center, rooted the concept in Hegel’s thought, noting that

Hegel’s attitude in the 1820s was that things that happen in civil society—involving institutions, the press, publications, societies, dinner hours—that all of this is a kind of preparation for the state to come in and take over and set the example of true enlightenment, and take responsibility for cultural life…. As the category develops, it became clear to people, especially to Germans, especially in the mid- 20th century, that the state either was not going to take responsibility for this kind of level of culture and conversation, or if it did take responsibility for it, you wouldn’t really want it to take responsibility for it. So in later postwar thought, civil society comes to mean an autonomous discussion of how culture works, a conversation about affairs that actually involve the state, but a conversation that actually happens autonomously from the state.

Whether civil society is defined as a countervailing force to governments and markets, or it is seen to subsume both, the term seems here to stay.

Civil society refers to the associations of citizens (outside their families, friends and businesses) entered into voluntarily to advance their interests, ideas and ideologies. The term does not include profit-making activity (the private sector) or governing (the public sector). Of particular relevance to the United Nations are mass organizations (such as organizations of peasants, women or retired people), trade unions, professional associations, social movements, indigenous people’s organizations, religious and spiritual organizations, academe and public benefit non- governmental organizations.

source: We the peoples: civil society, the United Nations and global governance: Report of the Panel of Eminent Persons on United Nations–Civil Society Relations, United Nations General Assembly, June 2004.

WHAT CAN MUSIC DO?

Three themes emerged repeatedly: music can be the vehicle or container for personal and social growth; it can serve as a model of how to be a citizen in the larger community; and it can provide an experience of deep equality, a simultaneous encounter with active listening and total presence, with learning and teaching.

A VEHICLE FOR PERSONAL AND SOCIAL GROWTH

Stanford Thompson, a trumpeter, conductor, and former New England Conservatory Abreu Fellow, is Executive Director of Play On, Philly!, an El Sistema-inspired “out-of-school music education program” that began in West Philadelphia and is now branching across the city. Stanford Thompson described his program as serving “kids that are in many ways from the lowest common denominator of society, now having access to the same resources that I had, so that we now end up helping to reshape lives and communities. These kids have access to learning high-level executive functioning skills.” On its website, Play On, Philly! aggregates this individual learning into four goals for community development:

  • Promote social progress through music
  • Build a foundation for a prosperous and sustainable society
  • Improve and nurture children’s social-emotional well-being, behavioral development, academic motivation, achievement, and school attendance
  • Build pride within the communities we serve, while bringing them together, through developing orchestras, bands, choruses, and instrumental ensembles.

Based on the other side of the Atlantic, Pamela Rosenberg, Dean of Fellows and Programs at The American Academy in Berlin, described the aim of The Musikkindergarten Berlin, a preschool program shaped by conductor Daniel Barenboim’s educational ideas, this way:

It’s not about creating a lot of little musicians. It’s about helping children learn about life through music. If at the end of their time at the Kindergarten, they’ve taken up an instrument, that’s lovely, but that’s not actually what it’s about. It’s about learning to listen to life and to access the world around them through this medium as well. It gives them an additional way of perceiving the world and each other.

M(E)T(A) Manifesto

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I am an Italian independent Creative Practitioner, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), internationally established in the fields of music and contemporary arts. This means that when it comes to Music teaching, my approach to the subject is both pedagogical and one of artistic creation. My pedagogy and my personal values are strongly rooted in the social justice of equality, inclusivity, and diversity. Therefore, in my teaching practice, I foster an exploration of music landscapes and their social values in our contemporary culture.

Exploring sound landscapes and their social values

My plans tackle the intersection between ethnicity and inclusivity within the music landscapes. Starting from the analysis of the artistic production of artists who have been deaf since their birth, I have started to reflect on the question “who owns the music?”.

“Yet while the western classical canon is dominated by harmony, much contemporary music is distinguished not so much by tunes, but timbre. Different genres vary in their sonic textures as much or more than in their melodic figures – a trend that has accelerated as technology has affected recording, production and performance.”

While teaching as Associate Lecturer in the Master course in Graphic Branding and Identity at London College of Communication (London, UK), firstly I would ask the students to explore their knowledge of sound, music play and their individual relationship to verbal languages. Finally, I would prompt the students with a question: how can we familiarize with the music? Is there a way we can share common meanings through it? These are the provocations I’d like to address in my project, aiming to foster the deconstruction of preconceived ideas about music, to finally wider the audience’s perspectives in relations to the materiality of music and its cultural, yet artistic implications on its social values and role within our culture.

“Learning music helps to develop the left side of the brain (related to language and reasoning), assists with sound recognition, and teaches rhythm and rhyme. Songs can also help children remember information (just think of the Alphabet song!)”

Across societies, music is a cultural product. My methodology is researched-based, I develop my ideas gathering a mixture of quantitative and qualitative data. I begin with the study of books, films, and all available materials on the subject, researching on international libraries. Then, if needed I conduct surveys and interviews. Being a multimedia artist, I visually experiment with video techniques and colours. At the core of my artistic practise as well as my pedagogy, there is a strong interest in human existence.

Elena Arzani

Source of reference: 

Elena Arzani www.elenarzani.com

www.christinesunkim.com

Deaf since birth, artist Christine Sun Kim explores the social rules of sound

Paulo Freire 

https://www.freire.org/paulo-freire/

Harvard Gazette, Songs in the key of humanity

Songs in the key of humanity

Harvard Gazette, Music is universal

Music everywhere

Oliver Sacks https://www.oliversacks.com, books by Sacks: Musicophilia, 2007 and Seeing Voices, 1989

Bill Viola, THE REFLECTING POOL, 1977–79

https://www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/learn/schools/teachers-guides/reflecting-pool-1977-79

Music Teaching – PBL

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Reflections on Music teaching and Project based Learning

  • Although I am not familiar with teaching how to play music instruments, I have experienced the DAW (or sequencer) the step sequencer, and a range of notation software. Though, I believe I won’t explore any of these technologies further, I am happy to be able to share this knowledge with my students and assist them in their music making.
  • Since the ’70s I have been persuaded that the DJ-producers have an awful lot of sophisticated musical skills. Naming one for all, Mr Brian Eno, who’s ambient exploration into sound and algorythm has largely impacted our contemporary music.
  • David Price theories on “OPEN” learning are absolutely fascinating and I widely agree with his opinions.
  • The best example of open learning I found by reviewing the work of one of my peers, was a module teaching how to sing like Myles Kennedy. In a way, when I was a child by learning song’s lyrics I Iearnt the correct pronunciation of the English language. That was indeed an Open Learning experience. 
  • It is stated that “Learning music helps to develop the left side of the brain (related to language and reasoning), assists with sound recognition, and teaches rhythm and rhyme. Songs can also help children remember information (just think of the Alphabet song!)”. Indeed, music is transdisciplinary by definition and can become a conduit for learning different topics.

Elena Arzani

Pau Casals and JF Kennedy

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13 November 1961 Dinner in honor of Governor Luis Muñoz Marín of Puerto Rico Please Credit Cecil Stoughton. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

Two roads diverged into a bush, and I
I chose the one less travelled by
and that has made all the difference

(Robert Frost, The road not taken, 1916)

The depth yet gentle touch of Frost’s words of wisdom, were mentioned by President John F. Kennedy in his famous speech at Amherst College upon receiving an honorary degree, 26 October 1963. Furthermore, the very same lines could as well be applied to extraordinary musician and social activist Mr Pau Casals, who put into practice throughout his life and artistic work, the philosophical concepts shared both by Frost and President Kennedy.

Indeed, Pau Casals was born in 1876 from a very poor and large family: 11 children of whom only 3 survived, being him one of them. Casals’s passion for music was most probably influenced by his father, who was an organist playing in the local church.

Even though Pau showed an incredible talent and musical ear since his early years, the economic restrictions of his family though, restrain him from approaching the world of music. While contributing to his family wealth by playing the Cello in some cafes of Barcelona, he bumped into the well known pianist and composer, Isaac Albeni, who decided to introduce him to his then friend, Queen Maria Cristina.

The lucky event changed the life of Casals and his family forever, since the Queen provided them all with financial help, and education, and stability.

While attending his studies in Brussels, Pau demonstrated great dignity and character, even when he lost all his financial fortune, by taking a stand against a disrespectful teacher. Although it seemed a brave gesture, the Queen did not approved, and Pau Casals fell into misery again. Years later, thanks to his stubborness, he reached his success in Paris, where he played among prestigious musicians and composers. Pau Casals funded the “Asociación obrera de conciertos” to provide the poor people with the opportunity to attend concerts and listen to the greatest musicians of the world. Music, in his opinion, was a form of art and as such it had to be accessible to everyone. Casals believed in the value of peace, and in 1939, due to the Spanish dictatorship, he began his exile and his long silence of protest and indignation. After some sporadic appearances in concert in the following years, with the end of the Second World War, Casals’ opposition to the Franco regime intensified to the point of pushing him to suspend his activity as a musician in protest. He exhausted his financial savings by hosting and lending money to refugees. Music became his language of protest, accompanied by the young Marta Montañez, and in 1961 he was invited by President Kennedy to play at the White House, in exchange for 30 minutes of private confrontation.

The two men had so much in common, although their role in life were so different. 

Quoting a President Kennedy’s remarks at Amherst College:

“If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. And as Mr. MacLeish once remarked of poets, there is nothing worse for our trade than to be in style. In free society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society–in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation.”

One of his latest compositions was the United Nations Anthem, commissioned by Secretary U Thant and directed by him for his New York debut in October 1972. On that same occasion he was awarded the UN Peace Medal. He died in Puerto Rico, far from his wife Marta and far from his beloved Catalan land in Spain, and without having seen the end of the Franco dictatorship, which he had so much opposed in life.

Elena Arzani

Resources:

https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/03/10/pablo-casals-joys-and-sorrows-jfk/

https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/historic-speeches/remarks-at-amherst-college-on-the-arts?fbclid=IwAR1svDiIjhW9BKuskdk7y9EoNTOUQ9t1Af6O54gJCDoKIIKFPxPrbqhQncQ

Algorave

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In 2011 the duo Alex McLean of Slub and Nick Collins delivered the first “live coding” music festival, that became known by the new coined word “algorave” (from an algorithm and rave). The event was the first of its kind in London, UK, and in a way it was a technological evolution of the Rave subculture, during which people danced to music generated from algorithms. Djs projected their computer screens and used lived coding techniques, so that the audience could dance, while watching the code being manipulated.

What was this exactly, a performing art or an evolution of technological music making?

Alex McLean is the creator of Tidal Cycles, the main program live coders use to make music. Djs report that the focus was on people enjoying dancing and listening to the music, however, it takes a software engineering knowledge to type the code, while the audience isn’t required to understand what is displayed on screen.

Is there something missing here? Are we heading toward a misinterpretation of the language of music itself or, on the contrary, this could be seen as a natural consequence of a more digitalized approach to our daily life, that is slowly shaping the culture of tomorrow?

The English musician, Brian Eno, who is world-wide renewed for his pioneering contribution to music, and self-describes himself as a “non-musician”, in 1970 established a randomized approach to musical practice, which was rather conceptual and involved generating electronic dance music with algorithms. Eno influenced the techno culture of the ‘90s, which evolved and turned into a political protest, when the Government prohibited raves describing them as gatherings where music, (defined as a succession of repetitive beats) is played. The Anti EP, and more precisely the track “flutter”, was, therefore, a protest against the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.

Hence, in the same year, two designers at Microsoft contacted Brian Eno, asking to compose music for the Windows 95 project. Mark Malamud and Erik Gavriluk commissioned Eno the “The Microsoft Sound”, that had to be 3 1⁄4 seconds long, and as they said, in an interview with Joel Selvin in the San Francisco Chronicle: “a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah-blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional”.

When comparing the Algorave to a more traditional culture of popular music, many are the elements that seem to be left out from the artistic production. No education of instrument play is required, as well as a previous knowledge of music composition. Still, this conceptual approach to music making embraces contemporary culture.

“Do you think that media-rich technology is the answer for music education, whether in a curricular sense or in self-directed, informal learning? Or do you think that technology is developing so fast that we should be more conservative in our uptake of it – and even then, what technology do you think is worth investing in, if any?

In 2017 an article published on the British journal “The Guardian” titles: ‘We could build something revolutionary’: how tech set underground music free. 

A provocative reflection may then consider the cultural role played by Institutes such as the Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul, as opposed to Computers Companies. Furthermore, the very same performances of both Afghanistan National Institute of Music and the Algorave Festival may be considered as two forms of social action, using the language of music to pursue freedom.

As Director of A.N.I.M., Ahmad Sarmas, says in his interview with Sydney University Dr. James Humberstone: “without cultural diversity, we shouldn’t say that all right, we’re building a civil society. What kind of civil society are we building if an Afghan child or an Afghan will be deprived of learning Western classical music or playing jazz or not being allowed to learn its own musical culture. Or not being allowed or unable to get engaged in cultural dialogue to any means that can be understandable to the wider community.”

What are the opportunities and perils of artist devoting their work intentionally to a humanitarian cause, for instance, or to addressing political oppression in the context of the wider education?

Hence, Francis Xavier, founder member of the Motorik record label, when interviewed by Dr Humberstone, said he didn’t get influenced by a guitar first, instead he was intrigued by the engineering side of the musical composition, being a reader of UK Magazine Music Technology. Francis was also influenced by “synthetic drums and synthetic machines, and just the creation of noises to make a pop song” underling how there is an EQ component, when learning music, and that the language must resonates with oneself, in order to be engaging and attract the student’s interest. He also pointed out how the role of a Dj is often misinterpreted, leading to the wrong assumption that the person qualifies only in changing songs for the audience.

And then again, as Lecturer of Sydney Conservatorium of Music and Western Sydney University andmusic educator Dr. Wendy Brooks quiet rightly pinpointed in her PhD study, there is a wrong age associated with the initial use of technologies, that is internationally agreed. So, how can we “free” music of whatever genre, if we are constrained by a wise use of media technology? Moreover, how may traditional studies for composition equally coexist with a conceptual improvisation within academic institutes?

In Francis Xavier’s opinion, “to disregard electronic music, to do that would be quite a sin, because it’s so, you could use a technology to be more immediate, and you want people to just grab hold of it straight away, and have interest. And I think that’s where music should head, I mean, I think teachers should be more open to the current use of technology to teach people in music.”

As long as music is performed and conduits the transmission of social values, I guess both “languages” can be presented as 2 faces, that complete each-other by tracing a solid fil-rouge between cultural heritage and innovation. And perhaps the notion that, the act of imagining a different reality is the precursor of positive social change.

Elena Arzani

Sources:

https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/16150/1/what-on-earth-is-livecoding

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/nov/22/we-could-build-something-revolutionary-how-tech-set-underground-music-free

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/part/V/crossheading/powers-in-relation-to-raves

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/nov/30/is-algorave-the-future-of-dance-music-sheffield-algomech-festival

“WHY” supporting the Arts at time of Covid19

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Around 1930, the Great Depression period, a federal program for artists and the safeguarding of the arts was established in America. Contrary to the idea that the art sector was only playful and entertainment, jobs were created under the national direction of the Curator and art expert Holger Cahill and the presidency of Roosevelt, financially supporting writers, musicians, visual artists , directors etc. Funded by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Federal Art Project, since 1933, was the first of 5 “New Deal” projects, which financed art workers for 11 years. The Milwaukee Handicraft Project, a major project, was started in 1935 and became famous for employing over 5000 unemployed people, many of whom were disabled, discriminated against due to old age or poor school education. In total it is estimated that the Federal Art Project has created over 200,000 jobs, subsidizing renowned artists such as Diego Rivera and Mark Rothko, as well as some of the most important public works of art today.

At times of Covid19 spread, I am experiencing a sad reality concerning the way the artistic sector is disregarded in Italy. Indeed, politicians opted for economic strategies, that do not support the Arts, nor take under consideration the worth, and impact on the Italian society and culture, of Museums, Galleries, Art Fairs, but mainly Musicians and their Industry. Being Music a conduit for personal development and social growth enhancing the collaboration within a community as well as providing an experience of deep equality, I disagree with the current political position of my Country of origin, and I feel pretty speechless.

Maxine Greene defines the concept of regard as essential to the success of civil society: “A citizen is somebody who has regard for the integrity of other people and out of that regard, out of that feeling of kinship, a community or civil society may take shape. It’s never finished….[It] depends upon a regard for other people’s significance and potentiality.”  Being culture a “fluid reality always in construction and evolution”, I wonder, have Italian politicians consider the impact of their present choices on the future?

Hence, I can totally rely on what President Kennedy’s speech in 1963: “If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice”. I therefore, believe that by refusing to help the artists, creating a state of poverty within that sector, Politicians avoids confronting with “unwanted” forms of criticism, a tactic that in a way reminds once again of Maxime Greene’s considerations, when she says in a keynote talk at the conference Imaging Art and Social Change: “The trouble with fundamentalism or all these things, they feel they have the answer which is so frightening. It’s like what tyranny is like, people burst in. It’s not just the idea of the Nazis. It’s the idea of any kind of authority that takes you over, prevents you from thinking for yourself.”

While all over the World people are marching against racism and social injustice, fighting the continuing disparities of opportunity, Nations need to be supported most than ever by those artists that can foster social imagination, informed by values of tolerance and a skill for engaging with difference.

When commenting on Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, M. Greene suggested that he was opening the way to imagination, providing the people with inspiration and a view.

As JFK said: “If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him”

Elena Arzani

Tech or Classic teaching methods?

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Music can be a conduit for personal development and social growth enhancing the collaboration within a community as well as providing an experience of deep equality. While learning music people can engage totally in the learning journey, simultaneously encountering active listening and total presence. This applies also when teaching the subject. In order for the experience to be fulfilling, it is crucial to engage the students’ attention for the whole length of the session. A balanced misture between enhanced technology into teaching and a more classic delivery, seems to me the most successful method. As ultimately, a teacher aims to create that kind of “flow” within which students can passionately enjoy their journey through education.

For example, at Liveschool, the world’s first music training center that uses exclusively, Ableton Live, the methodology in use foster the creation of news skills while providing student-centered learning experiences, that are designed around the student’s interests and expectations. The simple idea of beginning the lesson working on a song suggested by the student in that very moment, seems to me pretty extraordinary. At the same time, considering to embed in the course curriculum technologies that allow students to learn music from the perspective of a electronic musician and a DJ, it’s as simple as pretty revolutionary nowadays. A true breath of contemporaneity!

In conclusion, I totally agree with the Australian music educator and composer, Richard Gill, OAM, when he says that ultimately education is about getting to opportunity to expand the horizons of your knowledge, learning things one didn’t even know they existed, and developing skills.

Elena Arzani