I meant to write a comment back when I first read this, but time dissipates .... I am looking forward to catching up with your newsletters shortly.
I wanted to say thanks for your efforts, I am so glad to have such a thoughtful place to go to consider music's relevance to social issues.
For a long while I have been thinking about music's ability to have social impact. The political message of many punk bands was fundamental to my early engagement with music. This has lead me to consider that music can only be "political" in one of two ways: either by explicitly stating social or political positions, or by existing in a larger context with positions stated either as commentary/critique or through practice I.e. communal living or somehow nourishing a subculture. I think about how the communities I engage with do or do not do make statements, or to what degree they follow through with them - one major example being in inherently abstract improvised music.
Just thoughts - trying to let them guide my actions in the future, and looking forward to your newsletter as a resource!
Thank you for sharing, Tanya. Greetings from the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations, briefly known as Vancouver, Canada. I have been grappling for a long time with how to bring my piano practice into alignment with my values. I'm closer than I was. The question of how to bring Climate Justice and music together I find particularly stymying, so I will be reading with great interest.
As someone not associated with any academic institutions, I'm finding it challenging to access some of the readings. If any others have hacks or tips to share, I'd be grateful for them.
Great to hear from you again. Your questioning of the role of music–and your personal role as a musician and teacher–in our current historical moment resonates vividly with my own thinking.
I have faced so many choices in these same areas over the past years, and am facing them still. What kinds of teaching work do I pursue? What do I teach? Why? Likewise with performing. I've been lucky in both areas–I have a teaching job (at the BIMM institute Berlin) where I CAN shape the curriculum for students studying guitar very much to my own taste, which leaves me with a lot responsibility. During the lockdowns, I could have easily chosen to move my teaching materials online in a way that could have prepared the way for a future online-crowd-funded teaching practice of my own–but instead I got a second teaching job a Waldorf school, because I couldn't bear the thought of spending more time at my computer.
As a musician, because I play in a successful local blues band, I kept getting gigs in the narrow class of jazz/blues clubs that remained open in Berlin last year. This was not the music I thought I would be excited to perform as I approach 40, but I found myself grateful to be providing audiences with the increasingly rare experience of live music, and grateful to be playing, and painfully aware how lucky I was. And as far as my own music is concerned, as everyone I know shop-talks about maximising the impacts of recorded releases and figuring out how to break through on tiktok, I fantasise about returning to busking this summer.
I'd like to think that my instincts in all of these areas are potentially productive. That they might have the genuine value–perhaps as a counterweight to novel (perverse?) desires arising from the capitalist and media-driven culture we live in. But could they also turn out to be hopelessly old-fashioned, parochial, short-sighted, ultimately selfish and inadequate to the task at hand? What IS the task at hand? Community-building, sure. Resistance to corporate power...ok. But what would be a coherent position to take, in one's own practice, in relation to these systemic problems?
Looking forward to following your work and thinking about this, greetings from Berlin!
Nick, you're asking all the good questions. Maybe there are layers and dimensions to the task at hand? We can only approach the task / the hand? There's always a lot to untangle with music. Ellen Waterman, an improviser and scholar, said something to me yesterday that helped me to put my finger on the slipperiness of things. That music is mutable; it's embedded in so many other art forms (e.g. dance, theater, film) and social behaviors... and then when you add sound to the picture, it's only more so. So in this regard, music is more like fashion or food than, say, fine art. So the musical position is one from where we can look at everything. Maybe the challenge is that the instability / slippery nature of music makes us want to harden into "verities" (Ellen's word, apt, makes me think of my least favorite phrases like "music speaks truth to power"). Anyway, that's one line of inquiry I'm taking up; the idea of looking where where I'm seeking to harden the slippery.
I'm thrilled that your recovery went so well and that you're back at the newsletter! Right now, I've been turning over and over in my head the big question of where I want to live and what I want my life to look like. I don't feel I'm any closer to answers, but I'm at least able to face the idea after almost two years of totally arrested career/life development.
Melanie! This is no small accomplishment. It takes the time it takes. (And for me, at least, answers beget more questions.) I'm happy to be in touch with you!
This is a brilliant! Many thanks. I will follow with great interest and open ears.
Thank you, Claude!
Tanya,
I meant to write a comment back when I first read this, but time dissipates .... I am looking forward to catching up with your newsletters shortly.
I wanted to say thanks for your efforts, I am so glad to have such a thoughtful place to go to consider music's relevance to social issues.
For a long while I have been thinking about music's ability to have social impact. The political message of many punk bands was fundamental to my early engagement with music. This has lead me to consider that music can only be "political" in one of two ways: either by explicitly stating social or political positions, or by existing in a larger context with positions stated either as commentary/critique or through practice I.e. communal living or somehow nourishing a subculture. I think about how the communities I engage with do or do not do make statements, or to what degree they follow through with them - one major example being in inherently abstract improvised music.
Just thoughts - trying to let them guide my actions in the future, and looking forward to your newsletter as a resource!
Thanks Tanya! Got into the G drive no problem. Much appreciated!
Thank you for sharing, Tanya. Greetings from the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations, briefly known as Vancouver, Canada. I have been grappling for a long time with how to bring my piano practice into alignment with my values. I'm closer than I was. The question of how to bring Climate Justice and music together I find particularly stymying, so I will be reading with great interest.
As someone not associated with any academic institutions, I'm finding it challenging to access some of the readings. If any others have hacks or tips to share, I'd be grateful for them.
Hi Rachel, thank you for reading and for writing with this request. You should be able to find the readings in this folder:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1M98_Aytzpygu42qNWG4UaqDGN_xOT2dp?usp=sharing
Please let me know if you have any problems accessing particular readings, okay?
Great to hear from you again. Your questioning of the role of music–and your personal role as a musician and teacher–in our current historical moment resonates vividly with my own thinking.
I have faced so many choices in these same areas over the past years, and am facing them still. What kinds of teaching work do I pursue? What do I teach? Why? Likewise with performing. I've been lucky in both areas–I have a teaching job (at the BIMM institute Berlin) where I CAN shape the curriculum for students studying guitar very much to my own taste, which leaves me with a lot responsibility. During the lockdowns, I could have easily chosen to move my teaching materials online in a way that could have prepared the way for a future online-crowd-funded teaching practice of my own–but instead I got a second teaching job a Waldorf school, because I couldn't bear the thought of spending more time at my computer.
As a musician, because I play in a successful local blues band, I kept getting gigs in the narrow class of jazz/blues clubs that remained open in Berlin last year. This was not the music I thought I would be excited to perform as I approach 40, but I found myself grateful to be providing audiences with the increasingly rare experience of live music, and grateful to be playing, and painfully aware how lucky I was. And as far as my own music is concerned, as everyone I know shop-talks about maximising the impacts of recorded releases and figuring out how to break through on tiktok, I fantasise about returning to busking this summer.
I'd like to think that my instincts in all of these areas are potentially productive. That they might have the genuine value–perhaps as a counterweight to novel (perverse?) desires arising from the capitalist and media-driven culture we live in. But could they also turn out to be hopelessly old-fashioned, parochial, short-sighted, ultimately selfish and inadequate to the task at hand? What IS the task at hand? Community-building, sure. Resistance to corporate power...ok. But what would be a coherent position to take, in one's own practice, in relation to these systemic problems?
Looking forward to following your work and thinking about this, greetings from Berlin!
Nick, you're asking all the good questions. Maybe there are layers and dimensions to the task at hand? We can only approach the task / the hand? There's always a lot to untangle with music. Ellen Waterman, an improviser and scholar, said something to me yesterday that helped me to put my finger on the slipperiness of things. That music is mutable; it's embedded in so many other art forms (e.g. dance, theater, film) and social behaviors... and then when you add sound to the picture, it's only more so. So in this regard, music is more like fashion or food than, say, fine art. So the musical position is one from where we can look at everything. Maybe the challenge is that the instability / slippery nature of music makes us want to harden into "verities" (Ellen's word, apt, makes me think of my least favorite phrases like "music speaks truth to power"). Anyway, that's one line of inquiry I'm taking up; the idea of looking where where I'm seeking to harden the slippery.
I'm thrilled that your recovery went so well and that you're back at the newsletter! Right now, I've been turning over and over in my head the big question of where I want to live and what I want my life to look like. I don't feel I'm any closer to answers, but I'm at least able to face the idea after almost two years of totally arrested career/life development.
Melanie! This is no small accomplishment. It takes the time it takes. (And for me, at least, answers beget more questions.) I'm happy to be in touch with you!