I’m the last member of the family who knew William Grant Still personally. My grandfather died in 1978, I was 8 years old, and the youngest grandchild. So, after I go, his story becomes something you can read in a history book, but not hear firsthand.
I feel the weight of that obligation. Don’t get me wrong, being the grandchild of a great man, especially that great man, is a rare blessing. Yes, he is the Dean of African-American composers. Yes, he was the first African-American to conduct a major symphony, the first to have an opera or symphony performed by a major company. But he was also the one who taught me to play “Inchworm” on the piano and read the Uncle Remus stories to me, but fixed all the grammar.
The list of first goes on, by the way. He had nine honorary degrees and a trophy case in the living room with the keys to several cities.
All of which meant very little to me when I was a kid. I just knew he was my favorite person. I learned about the great man after I finished mourning my grandfather.
And one of the things I admired most about my grandfather was his purpose. He had a mission in life and an incredibly powerful faith that he could change the world for the better.
He was born free in the South in 1895, the first of my family on that side not born into bondage. While racism is still prevalent today, of course, and still limits the opportunities and freedoms accorded to people of color, there’s no denying it was much, much worse when my grandfather was growing up in Arkansas.
The reason he was the first to do so many things is blacks weren’t supposed to write or play classical music. Any black musician invited to Carnegie Hall in the early 20th century was expected to play jazz or blues.
But my grandfather believed art music both embraces and transcends race. It is both the pure expression of a culture and a voice that speaks on an emotional level to all colors, all creeds, all genders, all people.
William Grant Still believed God gave him a purpose: to unify the races through music. And God knows he tried. And failed.
I can look back now and see his purpose was not achieved and his mission not accomplished.
Today, most people know the name of Copland but not Still. Today, he’s referred to as a black composer while Bernstein is just “composer.” And when do you hear Still’s music most often? In February for Black History Month. And, of course, the races remain divided.
He may have been wrong about what he could achieve in one lifetime, but he was wonderfully right about something else: the power of music to transcend.
Research shows listening to music is more effective than drugs at lowering a patient’s pre-surgical anxiety. Music might help people recover after a stroke or fight Parkinson’s disease. Music can lift your mood, raise your IQ, improve your focus, and even prevent the mental deterioration associated with old age.
Music is primal. It speaks to a human mind on a level we can’t track in an MRI or EEG. I may disagree with you on just about every political issue, but both our hearts may thrill when a soprano hits a high C.
There’s a reason politicians use music at their rallies and protesters sing as they march. People feel so strongly about the national anthem they don’t want anyone kneeling while it’s sung.
Singing in a choir or playing in a band can increase your empathy. And that’s crucial today because, by some measures, empathy has fallen by about 40% among college students. That may not worry you, but it should.
The reason human beings are the dominant species on this planet is not superior intelligence or strength or speed or stamina. We have thrived because we collaborate. Scientists have even shown our brains grow when we are in groups, not when we’re isolated.
We need each other to survive and to progress. We have evolved to be the most sophisticated communicators on the planet. We can share goals and intentions and passions and problems. All of that counts. Bees can work together like a well-oiled machine, but they can’t understand intention and wishes. On the other hand, I can’t make honey.
Empathy is not just a soft skill we were supposed to learn while watching Sesame Street. Empathy is how we function and survive. Our superior communication skills can only go so far if we’re not willing to help each other.
Collaborative music making can increase empathic development in all participants.
Look, I don’t think music is a magical pill. It can do as much harm as good, because of its power to manipulate emotions and stir passions. The Nazi anthem “Die fahna hoch” is one ghastly example. But the act of making music with others is good for you. It’s good for your brain, your heart, and it’s good for humankind.
You know, scientists right now are working on robots that can write music. They feed hours and hours of Mozart and Beethoven and John Williams into the data banks and tell the computer what kind of music they want. The robot creates a 20-minute score for a short film or 12 hours of music for a video game.
I learned about this at the TED conference last month. I heard a computer scientist named Pierre Barreau talk about AIVA, an AI that can produce what he calls “personalized music”, music on demand. If you don’t like trumpets, no trumpets. If you hate jazz, no jazz. In a way, it’s the natural extension of our personalized Facebook and Twitter feeds that we can curate.
These days, many people only read the news they agree with, so of course they want music they find inoffensive. But the very idea of creating personalized music using artificial intelligence is deeply troubling to me.
It calls into question the purpose of music and all art, really. Why are we doing this? Why study for years if a computer can allegedly do it just as well? Why practice and pay teachers for the rest of your life if somebody can pour Handel into a robot’s data banks and get a new oratorio? Hardly cause for Hallelujahs in the Headlee household.
I have two big problems with using an AI to create music. I’ll get to the second one a little later, but let’s start with this idea of creating music to order.
A study in 2005 focused on the bias against dark-skinned people. Researchers went to a public school and found all of the children had at least some bias against dark skin. So, they split the kids into two. The first group did nothing different, but the second group listened to songs from Cape Verde, a place where people are very dark-skinned and where many of the immigrant kids at that school were born. In the end, Group 1 was just as prejudiced as ever, but the second group that listened to the music was much less likely to stereotype based on skin color.
If we’re allowed to make music to order, we don’t allow for transformation through music. We kill the chance for real surprise and discovery.
We’ve seen how disastrous it is when we’re allowed to read only the news pieces we like, how much worse will it be when not even our art challenges our beliefs and biases?
We are isolating ourselves to a stunning degree. A third of Americans have never met their neighbors. One in four doesn’t have a single confidante. Membership in PTAs, churches, social clubs, and bowling leagues has fallen dramatically.
In 1960, only eight percent of people said they’d be upset if someone from the other political party married into their families. Eight percent. Today, it’s more than 80%.
But I can go to the concert hall and take my seat next to someone who disagrees with me on just about everything. We may both hear the same piece of music and our heartbeats and brainwaves might begin to move in sync. We will have a communal experience. We may hear a violin solo that makes us both gasp, we might both be moved by a slow lament in the cellos.
What if our concert halls become as polarized and divisive as our Twitter feeds? What if I only share that communal experience with someone in my tribe? If that is our future, I fear for our shared humanity.
But I have another issue with robot-produced music, and it’s this: why do we need it?
There are so many things humankind does badly. So many things we need and welcome help with. Banking, weather forecasting, tax returns, dating, bargain hunting. But we’ve got music covered, thank you very much.
Psychologist Steven Pinker once described music as “auditory cheesecake.” QUOTE – “an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of…our mental faculties.”
Cheesecake, he wrote, “packs a sensual wallop unlike anything in the natural world because it is a brew of megadoses of agreeable stimuli which we concocted for the express purpose of pressing our pleasure buttons. Pornography is another pleasure technology. . . . [T]he arts are a third.”
He’s taken a lot of criticism for that remark. Allow me to add mine. The arts are not cheesecake. Human beings have been making art and music longer than recorded history’s span. Some biologists believe our language developed first as song.
Music is an essential part of what makes us human. I believe it’s crucial to our survival. If we are to make strides toward greater equality and fuller understanding, we will do it while singing our lungs out in protest marches. If we are to reach out to those of other colors, nationalities, creeds, and beliefs, we will almost certainly be more effective if we set our message to melody.
I was once a music school graduate. Some time and a lot of tough experience have passed since then. The hard truth I bring is that most of you won’t make a living from performing music. And those who do will not be compensated to nearly the degree you deserve. A musician’s average salary in 2010 was 22 dollars an hour. That’s about 45-thousand a year.
But by pursuing a degree in music, you’ve made a brave statement of optimism. You’ve aligned yourself with people like my grandfather who believe music can, and will, make the world a better place. No matter where you go when you leave here, I hope you continue to make music, teach music, play music.
My grandfather may have been wrong about solving racism with melody. But he was not wrong to believe it can be done.
And it won’t be done by a damn robot.