Tag Archives: Education

“The Two Ginsbergs”

8 Jun

This got me thinking of two things I learned from Allen Ginsberg, whom I briefly met 15 years ago after he read and sang to a large group at my alma mater:

(1) William Blake’s poems are meant to be sung. Ginsberg performed some of Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and Experience” with a slightly slobbery awkwardly energy I would never forget. (I had yet to hear these.)

Chase this tangent ….

Listen Without Prejudice.

19 Nov

This image via Slog, the blog of The Stranger, “Seattle’s only newspaper,” which is edited by Dan Savage. Apparently, they will now be dropping the star system from their album reviews.
It’s a move in the right direction. Whether in a formal class setting or informal conversation, I’ve always tried to point out that we should treat songs like we do people, listening to them on their own terms, not judging/rating them so much as figuring out what they’re trying to say, and thinking critically about why they’re trying to say it.

The rating system isn’t much more than a tool for marketers, and it’s rarely used in the one way I can think of that might be at all productive. Much like letter grades in a composition course, stars should be assigned with an ear to how well the composer/performer is saying what they’re trying to say, and not with an ear to whether the evaluator likes the musical message.

That said, I wish they would drop the new labels that replace the star system. Yeah, it’s Seattle, the land of Archie MacPhee. I get it. Cute. But they don’t exactly promote the open-minded critical thinking that has the potential to keep bridging the narrowing gap between popular and academic music criticism.

Not to mention they’re missing a label, aren’t they? They’ve got “cute,” “magical and/or gay,” “tough,” and “slow.” Can you tell me which one is missing?

Marriage and Music Education.

10 Nov

If more and more people want to participate in a given institution, the institution had better welcome the new energy or risk crumbling.

Preventing large emerging groups of people from participating in “marriage” will ultimately do for marriage what keeping large groups of emerging musics from participating in music education did for music education programs.

(Hint: they aren’t exactly thriving these days).

Your fundamentals of music are likely not mine. Her fundamentals of marriage are likely not his.

I ain’t sayin’ we need to throw out moral codes.

But maybe it’s time for music educators to focus once again on the songs we’re actually singing, not just the ones that seemingly confirm the theories of harmony, counterpoint, and other distilled “elements of music” promoted for all sorts of weird historical reasons by a steadily shrinking group of increasingly anachronistic people.

Lord knows it’s certainly time for the “institution of marriage” to enrich the relationships we’re actually in, rather than dismissing the ones that don’t conform to the beliefs no doubt also promoted for all sorts of weird historical reasons by a steadily shrinking group of increasingly anachronistic people.

[self-editing note: It should—but I admit probably doesn't—go without saying that many of my friends and I belong to one or both groups of the aforementioned "increasingly anachronistic people." I would never wish to exclude you, them, myself, nor anyone else from either institution.]

Poolboy, Tags, and Labels

2 Apr

A running (and perhaps somewhat childish) inside joke in my inner circle of Madison friends involves no more than a scripted, indignantly delivered one-liner: “Why do you always have to label me?” Other variations include “Why do you have to label everyone?” or “What’s up with you and your categories?”

It started with “Poolboy,” who earned his nickname in part with his handiness and helpfulness, but mostly, to be sure, on account of his appearance. Poolboy rolls with lots of different folks, including his young, cute, and clever kids, and a large, diverse group of friends and family. Perceptions of Poolboy vary remarkably from person to person and situation to situation, and he’s well aware of this phenomenon. So frequently it’s surreal, he’s asked oddly personal questions by strangers and acquaintances alike.

“Are you gay? But don’t you have kids? and wasn’t there a girlfriend?” he might get asked in the local gay bar.

Then there’s the just-as-frequent line of questioning: “You’re straight? But the purple hair!” someone will ask when they notice his lingering glance at a physically attractive woman I somehow failed to notice. (The hair, I’ve observed, is a conveniently mentionable symbol for any confidently expressed flamboyant mannerisms that usually go unmentioned.)

Generally, acquaintances feel forced to conclude, usually in a whisper, that “he must be bi.” All this unnecessary–and to him, pointless– speculation gets to be a little much for Poolboy. If pressed, he’d probably admit that his resistance to these categories is partially a political response. Mostly, though, the questions just annoy him. “I’m a doer, not a labeler. Can’t I just be ‘Poolboy’?”

Of course, without labels we’d have no language; without categories, education as we know it would be impossible. (We might, however, pay more attention to which sorts of words make for the best labels, describing processes, not things.) Moreover, many of us feel that gay (somewhat more so than lesbian) politics is based in the knowledge that people are born gay, and so “gay” must be a category.

In academic circles, there’s a push to embrace more and more narrowly defined labels as we specialize in ever smaller areas of expertise. I will admit to consciously resisting this trend in my own scholarly and pedagogical endeavors. But there’s no denying that labels–some helpful, many meaningless–are at the heart of “music analysis,” whose apparently jealous sibling discipline, “music theory,” constantly strives to label bigger and better systems.

Academic careers can be built on the coining of a new term or theory, especially once people adopt and/or reproduce it. This might not be a musically sensitive process, but it’s power. After all, academics are capitalists, too; especially, so it sometimes seems, when they claim not to be.

Admittedly, in talking about labels and categories we could be talking about any cultural phenomenon. Think: advertising and political demographics, like “Soccer Moms,” “Nascar Dads,” “Green-collar workers,” and “Obamicans.” How many tags–or should I say labels?–should I affix to this post? and why?

Poolboy, I think, is right to resist. Sure, the rest of us initially teased him, throwing what we first heard as trivial protest back at him. Now, though, questions like “Why do you have to label her a ‘bartender’?” have become a way of poking fun at each other while embracing the absurd. The childlike banter has evolved beyond the “your mom” joke into surprisingly sophisticated real-life sketch comedy.

A lot of power lies with those who frame a debate. We can, however, challenge and teach the debate framers, and refuse to answer with a simple, confirming or denying “yes” or “no.” We’re better off reformulating those questions that serve no purpose other than to divide us.

Poolboy reminds us that we can fight the power by playing around it.