I was at a conference at Brookings Institute yesterday morning; it was an interesting visit to someplace with a very different view of the things that I do every day, always an interesting moment. According to the press release, it was
" a symposium examining new growth theory as a tool for assessing the impact of art and culture on the U.S. economy, including the theory that cities play a major role in facilitating economic growth."
Lots of endogenous growth, spillover effects and bad power points, but an interesting theme cam up several times that I hadn't heard before (well, not in this particular form).
Three of the presenters mentioned in passing (but didn't unpack) the idea that The Arts 'promote tolerance.' Certainly, that would be a value add (previously intangible), and it is certainly a lovely thought, but I for one was a bit surprised by the extent to which it sat hovering uninterrogated above the screen like a
I'll leave aside questions of music as performed, bought, made, sold, embraced, and reviled in the culture more broadly, and focus on my experiences teaching and my students. Though there certainly are exceptions, I am generally struck by students' INtolerance to unfamiliar or 'other' music. And this is not a question of the composer; I have more stories of students bad mouthing the Beatles and/or Mozart than Berg (him they just ignore). Sure, I have plenty of ways to introduce all sorts of music and stuf to them as we all do, but the act that we have techniques says something about the potential for musics potential to be ignore or rendered moot in our pluralist aesthetic adhocracy. Now, to be clear, I believe quite strongly that music, the study of music, and the practice of music has the potential to be a great source of understanding of the relationships between self and others, and thus could engender tolerance; I just don't think that that is inevitable result of a focus on the arts in life or in education.
As a quick, little thumbnail sketch of my observations of students, I'd suggest four common stances of students:
- Stovepipers
- students deeply invested in a particular domain of musical practice, with little experience on other domains
- Totalizers
- Similar to the Stovepipers in their narrow focus, but rather than simply remaining unengaged with other music, they view a particular kind of music as the telos musical history and practice, and so why would they need to know about Renaissance counterpoint. (They are often also beautiful, unique snowflakes.)
- Flâneur
- The easy, happy loving general happy face of passive listening.
- Students
- Young people working to engage with unfamiliar musics and understanding that this project might, in the end, change them, even if just a little bit. (Actually, I kind of wrote about this before...)
The amusing bit(s) about this are that
1)The flâneurs are the hardest to work with.
2) The students come from no particular place, path, background, or training.
The questions of individual agency and collective action are always present around the edges of musicking, and much closer to the core of musical education; the tricky bit is cultivating the self-critical awareness that encourages engagement and respect, rather than tolerance by passivity.