Last week, I attended a lecture by Dan Asia regarding the future of musical education in this country, particularly education on the subject of music history. A colleague described the lecture as being about "how we are failing our students," in our teaching methodologies.
The first part of of the lecture started well; Mr. Asia spoke about the need for deep listening and about the tradition of the university as a place where people sought to learn about truth and justice and beauty.
He asked the audience to participate in a deep listening exercise in which we closed our eyes and listened to a few minutes of a composition, "Blacklight," which he composed. He later asked us to repeat the exercise, and to notice what different things we noticed on a second hearing.
I think these sorts of exercises are valuable, and in fact our university offers an entire course based on a similar goal of nurturing deep listening. We do this by exposing the class to a wide breadth of dissimilar music and ask them to critically analyze music using parameters like sound, melody, rhythm, harmony, and growth. We also ask them to consider 3 questions- who's playing, who's paying, and who's listening.
So, I share Asia's view that deep listening is a skill that we need to cultivate in our music students.
I could not bring myself to agree with much of what else Mr. Asia had to say.
He made the argument that the way we are failing our students is that we are not telling them with authority what great music is and what music is truly of value. In his view, the music which ought to be taught in a university is music of the common practice period. Harmony, if I understood Mr. Asia correctly, is the sole parameter by which great music ought to be judged. Music of John Cage, for example, is rather rather worthless by Mr. Asia's view, while the music of Mozart, well, that is deserving of our time and study.
I sat there and listened to Mr. Asia dismiss many world music traditions by name, including mariachi, gamelan, and pop music, the latter of which he described as being ultimately immoral in its focus on banal subject matter. It may have sociological significance, he argued, but little musical value. He went on to say that he would rather see universities do away with courses on rock and roll, jazz etc., in order to focus on music that is truly valuable.
This argument was rather shocking to me, as I have watched and listened and participated in a variety of musical traditions outside of the Western European Classical tradition and found these musics to be quite complex, beautiful, and profound in their composition. Generally these art forms that I am familiar with (music of Ghana and other regions of Africa, Indian music, flamenco) place priority on rhythm over harmony, but in my view this makes it no less intricate or compelling or emotive or worthy of study. I can't understand how he dismisses Jazz- as a pianist who did not grow up reading charts, I often find jazz music more complex in its harmonies than, say, a Mozart sonata. The knowledge that a great jazz pianist has to possess regarding scales, etc.- it's enormous. I've never heard anyone seriously try to argue that Western Classical music was "better" than jazz... Mr. Asia noted that part of the problem with curriculum today is that we are afraid of making value judgements. But how can you say geometry is better than algebra, or that European history is somehow more worthy of study than the history of Asia. Ridiculous.
But when things really went South was when he began to eviscerate the culture of today's young people. The people who came to hear him speak. The people who he wants to buy his music. The people he is trying to convince to listen to Puccini.
He stood there in front of them and said they had no direction, that they had no ability to focus, no conception of what it means to work hard. That they had no academic curiosity and were only interested in receiving an "A." And on and on. That it was our responsibility to "show them the way," i.e. the way of some dead European white guys.
Now don't get me wrong- I love the music of those dead European white guys. But hearing Mr. Asia speak about todays young people- it was disheartening. I can't help but think this is how we are failing them. This generation has heard so many times that they are distracted or lost or in whatever way inferior to previous generations- is it any wonder that maybe some of them believe it?
It makes much more sense to focus on commonalities. To judge music within the parameters of the framework of the priorities it was created within. And to encourage tomorrow's scholars, not belittle them.
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