Pop Culture and Why I Like It Lately

Lately, I've been more and more interested in pop culture, which is weird because I'm a bit of an old soul when it comes to how I view things. But on second thought it's not weird because pop culture has been gradually moving backwards in time. I don't know which came first, but it's happening in mainstream fashion too. I'm saying all this to say, I LOVE IT.

Take this guy for example:


Nerlens Noelle. He was born in 1994. In 1994, I was 5 years old and I was sporting this exact same haircut, the high-top fade. It wasn't as high and I didn't have tattoos. But the idea was there. When I look at this, I get nostalgic. I don't know if nostalgia is the case for the popularity of this kind of stuff but I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, things are totally upside down in our country. Perhaps the past is a comforting thing to think about and be reminded of. Nerlens isn't the only one nodding to fads that were popular decades ago. Rhianna's last SNL performance was a blast from the past. So is Kesha's latest video for her single Die Young. And sorry University of Arkansas girls, the leggings, side pony tails, and oversized shirts you took from your dads' closets were around long before your parents even thought of having you.

None of this is really my main point. What I've enjoyed most about pop culture's obsession with resurrecting the past is the change of music sounds and practices. Pop artists from about the mid 70s on to today have been decidedly futuristic, pushing the limits of synthesizers, sound engineering, and live performance production. The last 10 years have been shifting back to something my "old soul" really values.

Music.

I think the technological advances for the sake of music hat have been made over the decades are great. But the robotic precision and auto tuning of popular artists supposedly "expressing themselves" left a lot to be desired for me. Today, the fallibility and rawness of human nature is coming back to music. Adele is a wonderful example of this. Her music is beautiful but simplistic. It allows your ears to hone in on the words and appreciate the emotions in her voice. Who cares that it isn't immaculately tuned from beginning to end. I don't. It sounds good. It sounds real. I feel connected.

Another aspect of reviving the past that I love is the sound that is infiltrating popular music. Beyonce's most recent album, 4, is overflowing with aesthetics of Prince, Whitney Houston, and old R&B girl groups. The music on the album reaches beyond simple influence and has turned into a full on reincarnation. Party is one of her more successful singles from the album and it sounds like something right off of an SWV album. And if you've seen the video, it looks like it was filmed about 20 years ago.  It's incredible. What I like most about the song is that the music backs up Beyonce's voice much in the way that Adele's music backs up hers. The beat does not constitute the most important part of the song. The singer does.

On Beyonce's single Schoolin Life,  you can hear the rhythm, guitar, and keyboard of Prince and vocals that sound like it was written for Whitney Houston herself. While I wasn't really around when either of these people were at their heights, the music takes me back to the sounds that my mom enjoyed while riding with her in the car. It sounds good. I feel connected.

One of the last things I really enjoy about this music trend is the instruments. More and more artists are utilizing the talents of real musicians. Less famous, more independent artists have done this for years. But it's been a while for pop artists to have bands with live brass or orchestras with live strings. Beyonce comes to mind because of her all female band Suga Mamas. But rappers are on this wagon. Kanye did a performance with ballerinas and orchestra about a year ago on SNL of his song Runaway. I think highly visible people like this are putting instrumentalists back on the map. They are making it possible for the revival of second line style brass bands to be successful. Opening up the door for kids to ask what that cool thing the dude is blowing on behind Jay Z. It makes kids demand that they be just like the genius sax player (Clarence Clemons) in Lady Gaga's song. Pop music is reaching to the past to transform itself.

Meanwhile, us "art musicians" are starving for work and playing for quarter full concert houses.

Pop artists are opening doors for art music, the music I love, to become relevant again. This is why I really love pop culture today. It is a sort of connecting vehicle between the present and past. It gives a reason for young folks like myself and those even younger to talk about things that would have otherwise been boring, out of date, and uncool. Face it, art music is the ultimate resurrection act. 200 year old music played for audiences who can remember FDR's Fireside Chats.

One of my strongest beliefs in education is meeting students where they are. If we "high art" musicians don't meet potential audiences  where they are, we won't be dying anymore. We'll be dead. No more morbid resurrections. Just gone.

I think people might like what we do musically a lot more if we showed an interest in what they do musically. It doesn't mean that we play "pop classical" music on every concert we program. But it might mean that we perform something with more contemporary influences and sounds, which doesn't mean a-tonal, tone row inspired crap (not that it's all crap). Rather, commission composers that are writing in traditional forms but use hip hop sonorities. Try programmatic music that sounds more like being on a mission in Call of Duty than it does the city sounds of Chicago. Meet the people where they are.

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra has done recent work with some famous DJs, video game music, and Kid Rock. And while they are not the prime financial planning example, they appear to be an orchestra for the people. After all, what is music without an audience?

Is our music so great and our egos so mammoth that we will resign to kill ourselves slowly rather than"taint" our empty sanctuaries sounding of Bach, Hindemith, and John Cage?

Performance Practice

The longer I study music in a school setting, the more curious I become with the schools of thought surrounding interpretation of music. I personally think that music should be performed any kind of way that the performer feels best expresses themselves and their ideas. That is not to say that education should do away with teaching performance traditions. Rather, the idea of free, sensible expression should be encouraged more in secondary education.

In my limited observations and experiences, self-expression is a limited privilege to aspiring classical musicians. Unless you fall in the prodigious category or just have no respect for the thoughts of your teacher, you must resign to the conventional, to the common practice, to the historically accurate. It doesn't matter if you are in school to sing, conduct, or play. There is an air of "you're too young to know how you feel. So don't let your feelings interrupt

I think of instrumental music like an argumentative essay. No matter how outlandish or commonplace your argument is, your it must be supported by evidence and take a progression that is logically followed with relative ease. To that point, why is it looked down upon to approach music the same way with something like Bach Cello Suites, Telemann, Mahler or Tchaikovsky symphonies? In these instances, I often hear people say "their interpretation went too far," or "it was too fast," or "the cello suite was too romantic." I always ask, "Well, did it sound good?" Ultimately that's what matters right? I mean, if we were meant to scrupulously follow the "intent of the composer," how would anything we listen to ever sound different?

While Bach, Tchaikovsky, et al possessed a level of genius that I'll never reach, they were also human. Musicians seem to forget that. The pedestal that musicians put these titans on is more like hagiolatry than it is admiration. There is trepidation and needless apprehension, in my opinion, when approaching their music. Music is innately connected to the human experience. So is it really music if the performance of a piece ignores (even if a little bit) the experience of the one resurrecting it? I would say no. It's almost music. It's something watered down. It is academic and contrived.

Two of my favorite people in all of music epitomize the kind of interpretive ideas I'm suggesting. The first is Pablo Casals. He was a brilliant educator, cellist, and conductor. I recordings of him performing all of Bach's Cello Suites. Plainly stated, it's expressive and it's beautiful. He did not concern himself with the "musical right wing," if you will. Rather, he would study the music intimately; its repeated motives, harmonic structure, direction of line, all to render an accurate, human performance. His thoughts are crystal clear and rather moving in David Blum's book, Casals and the Art of Interpretation. It's a long, methodical read but it is full of expression and lots of stories from and of Casal's himself.

The second person whom I really love when it comes to expression is Leonard Bernstein. He possessed a rare fearlessness when on the podium. The first, most powerful thing that comes to mind is a recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 2 he did with The London Symphony Orchestra. The composition is itself very flamboyant but Bernstein takes it to a pleasant extreme. It is a vulnerable openness that I admire and that I strive to bring to everything I perform. Listen to it. It's seriously awesome.

History and the present together make for the most compelling performances and the most authentic ones. Again, just my opinion. But it's something I feel very strongly about.

Random aside:
There is something about moderation these days that evades American culture. Take politics for example, religious right or sassy socialist. Purist or wholistic person?  Choose one. There is no middle ground. Weird.