The Politicization of Music

hello everyone

we’re going to be talking about music

and politics

which is a little ironic for me

because the whole reason i went into

music was so i could avoid politics to

me

music is the ultimate expression of our

shared humanity

kissed by the divine

it’s not to say that music and tribalism

haven’t existed well

ever since people started gathering

around the bonfire

i mean sociologists believe that playing

of rhythms

singing were the very first forms of

human communication

uh it was the first bonding experiences

uh that helped develop hunting skills

agriculture i mean it’s at the very core

of of our social existence as humans

music is our universal language you

can’t

touch it you can’t see it

and the moment we recognize it it goes

away and yet something

remains in our psyche a sense of pure

emotion and i can look out here and i

can know that there are probably a

couple people who wouldn’t

exist if it wasn’t for that sense of

pure emotion that their parents or maybe

grandparents

felt when they heard marvin gaye singing

let’s get it on

uh the the music is also extraordinary

at communicating knowledge on all of us

uh when we’re at the age of three or

four we

learn 26 distinctive

sounds that are at the core of

our language and we learn it so easily

because we all sing it and you all know

what that song is now and you could sing

it with me

a b c d e f g h

i j k element am i am i right

so um music to be able to impart

both knowledge and also emotion

it’s no wonder that in religion and

politics that music has been

a most effective tool our american

landscape

is is wrapped in songs

and anthems that are beloved by most

everyone

and yet now in this day of

uh political polarization

it pains me so deeply because a lot of

our great music

has become polarized as well i’m a

conductor

i have two big responsibilities one is

to the musicians in the orchestra to

make sure that we perform well together

the other is to the music itself and

those composers to make sure

that i represent them with veracity and

good heart every musician in the

orchestra has their single line of music

i have all the lines of music for

everyone

in my score and i spend most of my time

studying

my score i get that music on the written

page

and i hear it inside

of my head sounds tricky and it is

uh but there are some people who are

extraordinary at it like ludwig von

beethoven the great german composer

uh and beethoven spent

a big chunk of his professional life

stone cold death

and so he wasn’t just recreating music

in his mind

he was composing it in his mind

and i think one of the touchstones to

his genius is the fact

that he wasn’t shackled to the physical

world of sound that we all live in

he was able to imagine things that none

of us could even imagine

and then he’d write it down and then we

play it

and then it blows our mind so i have

this sound in my head

of uh a given piece that i’m performing

and in rehearsal

uh i listen to the physical sound that

comes from the orchestra

and to make things line up i might use

hand gestures to speed things up to slow

things down

to bring up the french horns have a

little less violin

but then every once in a while a

musician will

come up with a certain turn of phrase a

certain something that will be really

special

and in an instant i’ll throw out the

sound that i wanted in my brain

and pick up what someone has just

offered and this is a cool thing

about orchestral music is there’s always

this give and take as we are all working

together

to create a unique performance as a pops

conductor i perform mostly

american music everything from popular

classics

to broadway

hollywood pop tunes

and patriotic music a lot of patriotic

music

especially that first week of july you

put together a patriotic program

uh you have a couple susan marx’s you’ll

have

my country tis of these and patriotic

anthems you’ll have a little big band

jazz and broadway and you finish

with the 1812 overture you might not

recognize

the title of this piece but you know it

it’s used in

tv and movies in v for vendetta all of

london is exploding to the sound

of the 1812 overture

yeah it’s got cannons literally the

pieces got cannons

fireworks church bells and what a

perfect way to

end a fourth of july concert well not so

quick

the piece was written by a russian

composer peter

tchaikovsky and uh tchaikovsky is a

brilliant composer

but it’s about the russian war of 1812

the one where they defeated the french

well and

i mean it’s kind of ironic because

really if it wasn’t for the french we

wouldn’t be

celebrating independence day and

uh in the middle of this overture

is this great russian anthem god

save the czar which we’re playing as we

celebrate democracy

that’s kind of crazy but what’s really

crazy

is the way that many of our american

patriotic anthems seem to

uh have been co-opted by the political

french

god bless america by irving berlin

a jewish immigrant seems to now have

become the anthem of the far right

something like this land is your land

this land is my land

uh seems to be some sort of communist

manifesto

i’ll put together a patriotic program

and include some

some r b and soul little funk and people

will say

the program is not american enough well

like the 1812 overture is

or uh that uh we might be considered

jingoistic

for performing the armed forces salute

well even though the military did save

us from worldwide fascism

and abolished slavery in this country

for a terrible

cost but this is not to say that

all patriotic anthems are

uncontroversial

i mean i think back i mean this goes

back for ages

like martin luther in the 16th century

uh the great theologian while he was

rebelling

against the catholic church wanted to

have nothing to do with the latin masses

in chance

so instead he went to the taverns and

started collecting melodies

he said why should the devil get all the

good tunes and then he put words to the

german liturgy

on top of those melodies and thus the

reformation was born

four hundred years later the reverend dr

martin luther king jr

did a very similar thing with the

leadership of the civil rights movement

and they took hymn tunes like if my

jesus wills composed by louise

shropshire from cincinnati ohio

and they refashioned it into we shall

overcome

they used uh songs

from folk music and pop music everything

from bob dylan to aretha r-e-s-p-e-c-t

but even some of our old-timey anthems

like

yankee doodle or the battle him of the

republic

john brown’s bodies a moldrin in the

ground

or helen reddy i am woman hear me roar

or bruce springsteen born in the usa

these are

all protest anthems and today

we have a whole new generation of

composers creating protest anthems i

mean

we have kesha and the artist’s common

lady gaga i mean who’s to say that

uh in a generation or two we won’t be

playing childish gambinos this is

america

right next to glory glory hallelujah

but what makes american music

uniquely american after all a lot of

people

talk about the american experience as

being a melting pot

i prefer a mosaic

everyone comes here with something

special and unique and we put all of

those things together

and it creates this vibrant diverse

picture of our country that is so much

greater

than the summation of its parts

take music for example the vast

vast majority of american music

comes from africa in west africa musical

traditions that go back hundreds of

years

all use the same unique scale it’s

called the pentatonic scale it’s got

five notes

you can play it on the black keys on the

keyboard

that pentatonic scale came to these

shores in the belly

of slave ships and buried deep

in the loam of slavery and injustice

and over the centuries there were two

musical ideas that came from the earth

the spiritual and the blues both

based wholly upon that same pentatonic

scale

those two branches had blossoms

that were cross-pollinated by

music from the british isles hymn

tunes immigrant songs

native american instruments but all by

evolution or appropriation still have

that musical dna from africa

the dna from the music of africa

is in everything uh from

country western bluegrass jazz

rock and roll r b soul funk hip hop

gospel broadway salsa and latin

this music exists because we

exist it is our american musical mosaic

that is beloved

around the world it is our greatest

cultural export

so how did music get caught in the

political crossfires i had the

opportunity of working

with common with the cincinnati symphony

orchestra

and he told me that music

is a great soundtrack but music in and

of itself

is not activism

music that that inspires us

and unites us and excites us has nothing

to do with the politics

that divides us the music that has

been used abused and abducted by

politicians

to deliver their message is invariably

the antithesis of that message

we have to separate the message from the

messenger like beethoven we have to shut

out the noise

around us and find that inner music

that we all share that’s been forged by

centuries of a shared experience

the good the bad and the ugly

in music there’s a term we use often

philharmonic

it’s usually referred to an orchestra

comes from the greek word filos

love harmonic harmony all of us on stage

performing we are lovers of harmony

because we want to sound

good but there’s another level and that

is

the harmony that’s created with audience

members and the orchestra

that unites us in music that the harmony

that we all have in the same space

together

and then another layer of harmony the

harmony that we all

take with us as we go outside into the

world

and interact with people this

is a power of music and in this age of

covid we are so desperately

in need of that harmony

we’re going to finish things up with the

star-spangled banner

yep i’m going to go there the melody to

the star-spangled banner was

composed by john stafford smith

british composer he wrote it at the

height of the american revolution for a

british

social club it’s a drinking song imagine

during the siege of savannah as

colonists are dying

that john stafford smith and his buddies

are clinking glasses

and singing the melody to our national

anthem

it’s a very difficult song to sing and i

encourage you to go check out the flub

reels on youtube it’s a lot of fun

uh the words were written by francis

scott key

for our war of 1812. well we got that

right

uh the first verse we all know very very

well but there are a lot of other verses

and in those verses

some of the words are controversial at

best and racist

at worst and it has only been

our national anthem for the length of

one

lifetime i’m going to suggest something

else

america the beautiful by katherine lee

bates

here is an anthem that celebrates the

fabric

of our american society not a piece of

fabric

it sings about our home our community

purple mountain majesties fruited plains

alabaster cities gleaming

and it has the greatest patriotic lyric

of them all

crown thy good with brotherhood

from sea to shining sea here’s another

great lyric

god mend thy every flaw confirm thy soul

in self-control thy liberty in law i

mean here’s an anthem that freely admits

that we are not perfect but

empowers us and impels us to do

better not just for now but from one

generation to the next

and to the next now that is a bedrock

of patriotism thank you