“How can you create a
love for music and performing in your program?”
Truly,
the million dollar question. And in response to all the other million dollar
questions I’ve been presented with over the course of my life, I’ll start off
by answering the same way: “I don’t know.” I really don’t. I don’t even have a
program yet, let alone a well-developed game plan for cultivating what is arguably
the human being’s most powerful and perplexing emotion: love. But, in my attempt
to provide a decent answer to the question, I need to begin by talking a little
bit about my experiences with music at a young age.
I
didn’t always love music. Actually, I didn’t even like it, not even when I was
forced to take piano lessons at age 4, nor during the 9 years of weekly lessons
thereafter. No kid likes being forced to do something, I suppose – they like to
choose their own adventure. I guess my parents started to see that when I
became a teenager, and though they still insisted I take some sort of music
lesson, they allowed me to switch to guitar. I enjoyed playing guitar about
halfway through the first lesson, and then I didn’t really enjoy it anymore. My
parents struggled to get me to practice. They set a strict timer every other
day, reluctantly letting me go after I sat there nonchalantly and
unpassionately strumming the three “Smoke On The Water” chords for 20 minutes
straight.
I
think about my childhood every time I hear a fellow colleague tell me about
their early love affairs with the world of music, and how they knew from the
start that this was their passion, their future, their dream. I thought about
it as I was watching the movie, “Chops.” There were interviews with kids who
were 11 and 12 years old, and they talked about how much music meant to them.
They brought up names like Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and Wynton Marsalis
when asked who their heroes and idols were (I think my hero when I was 11 was
either Mike Piazza or Pikachu.) They cared about practicing, and about honing
their craft, and the thrill of performing with others, and personal success,
and they were light years away from being able to buy a beer. I’ll go ahead and
say it – I was jealous. I kind of still am.
Granted,
over the years of taking piano lessons, I had become relatively decent. But
being good at something isn’t quite enough to inspire passion towards it. I
mean, I’m pretty good at riding a bike but never in my life have I aspired to
become a competitive BMX rider like Dave Mirra. I remember going to high
school, and how I wanted to join the marching band because my older sister was
doing it and she told me how much fun they had at band competitions and
whatnot. The problem was, I didn’t play anything that a marching band requires,
so naturally, I was thrown into the Pit. My years of piano lessons made the
xylophone seem like an old friend, and I was easily able to figure it out and
start making some music. The other kids in the Pit, especially the upper
classmen, were impressed that I picked up mallet percussion so quickly. After
about only a week or two into the band season, word got around that I was a “Freshman
Prodigy” which of course was hardly the case – I had simply taken piano lessons
and they hadn’t.
I
think it was the social praise and attention from my peers that first made me
start to take performing music seriously. It made me want to get better, to “show
them a new trick” as I started mastering more advanced percussion literature, a
lot of it in my spare time. I sought out new pieces and started listening to
more marching band literature, which eventually took me into the world of
concert band literature, to orchestral pieces, to early classical music, and so
on. By the time senior year rolled around, it was a no brainer that I wanted to
go on to study music – it was one of the only things in school I got enjoyment
out of.
This
is where the original question gets tricky, because for me, I didn’t acquire
the love for music and performing from my teacher. Truthfully, none of my music
teachers growing up were anything special, and certainly none of them inspired
me to develop my personal sense of musicianship or to seek out exciting musical
opportunities. I didn’t go to an Arts high school like the kids in “Chops”
where the faculty were recruited solely for their devotion and contribution to
the field of music, art, dance, or drama. My private teachers were just
elderly, retired people who knew a few tunes and could get beginners by – none
of them had degrees in music or a sterling reputation for greatness. No, I didn’t
get it from them – mostly, I had to find it myself.
So
I can’t answer the question like others could: drawing back and thinking about
what their cherished music teachers did to inspire them. I have to answer it by
thinking, “What do I wish my music
teachers had done to inspire me? What would have facilitated my path to music?”
For me, this starts with firmly rooting your principles into your program and
having a set of expectations that cannot be swayed, and most importantly, I
have to believe in these principles with all of my heart. I look at the principles
of Wynton Marsalis, highlighted in the movie I watched: “Try to find the best
teachers. Listen to the finest players. Be true to the music.” I think how
simple they sound, but how fundamentally true they are. Three simple directions
that are quick to establish sincerity and suggest a solid reputation. I look at
Charlie Parker’s words: “Master your instrument. Master the music. Then forget
all that [stuff] and just play.” Within those words are nothing but the truth –
the keys to creative thought, the genesis of what it means to be a critical
thinker, to think like a musician, as
author Robert Duke urges our students to do in the classroom.
I
wish my music teachers introduced new music into my life. I wish they told me
why they were so significant in a way that a child could understand, not in a
way that a seasoned musicologist would understand. I wish I was asked how
different music made me feel, and what pictures or feelings came into my mind
when I listened to different artists tell intricate and inspiring stories using
no words. Because that’s a way that hidden door could be opened – that door,
lying dormant in young, impressionable minds, that can lead you down the road
to pure creativity, to a world where the teacher doesn’t bark orders, “Sit
down, shut up, stop drumming on the table, focus on your book and turn your
mind off to everything but pre-calculus” and instead you can stand up and fly
out the window with all of your friends to the top of the Statue of Liberty, or
to Egypt, or Spain, and take in all the colors, the sounds, the smells, and
think to yourself, “What a wonderful world!” Because, that’s what music has the
power to do. That’s the reason behind music as entertainment value. Because it
takes us somewhere else for a while, somewhere romantic, somewhere exotic, or somewhere crazy, or
somewhere perfect.
I
want to do all those things as a music teacher. I want my program to be one
that teaches that power within music, and what it takes to fully understand and
appreciate it. I want them to be able to share that power, and that knowledge,
with others around them. I won’t get swayed by the older teachers who tell me
that my ambitious spark will die down eventually. I know that not every student
shares my love of music, and that’s okay. I know that most students I teach don’t
want to listen to any music other than what’s currently playing on the radio,
and that’s okay, too.
The
real answer to the question is that we can’t create love from
nothingness. There needs to be just a little bit in our students already, that
we can identify and nurture and grow. You can’t stand over a patch of dirt for
weeks and wonder why there’s no garden growing, even after all the rain and
sunlight and attention you’re giving it – there needs to be seeds in the ground
first, and unlike a garden, you can’t put seeds of music love into our
students. You can try and try until you’re blue in the face, but you can’t make
someone love something that they don’t.
Does
that mean music teachers shouldn’t even try to inspire music appreciation in
our students if we know fully well that there’s no prior interest? Of course
not! But please keep in mind that when somebody tries anything, there is not
always a 100% success rate. You can try and you can fail. I can try my first
year to build an ideal music program that fits all my principles perfectly and
I could fail hard. And then I can fine-tune a few things and try again the next
year, and have a little bit of success. Then I try a third time and have some
more. The more we try, the better “triers” we become. And that’s the only way
to establish a reputation of achievement that is your own. Students will want
to follow a program that has such an admirable reputation – it’s up to you to
build one. Success breeds success – a student reluctantly joining a program
with an established failing reputation knows he or she doesn’t need to try so
hard or dedicate that much time, but a student joining an elite program that
has a reputation of talent and success behind it wants to be a part of that, and will do his or her very best to
meet the bar that has been set by previous groups. And the individual time that
is spent making strides to meet that bar, and the knowledge that is gained in
between… THAT can start to create a seed.
“It’s
just like when you fall in love,” Wynton Marsalis tells us at the end of the
movie. “You see, what you love about it is that ‘man, there’s another one of
us, too.’ Now there’s two of us, and the two of us make one. That’s what
swingin’ is – there’s 15 of us up there, and we’re one.” That’s the love between
a musician and the music, and a musician and his ensemble. Everyone’s on the
same page, working for the same thing, playing in harmony, playing in time,
acting as one unit. It’s the love I discovered through marching band. It’s the
love that can be found in all of our music programs someday.
