Last summer, I was invited to speak at the annual meeting of the Florida Orchestra Association. After an hour of regaling them with outrageous tales from my musical memoir, "Real Men Don’t Rehearse," they asked me to give my vision of the future of the orchestral music performance and education industry. So for what it’s worth, here’s a recap:
My proposal is, I think, a fairly simple one: that we take the current "inner directed" performance model and reverse it, making it an "outer directed" model.
As things stand right now, the most common and typical musical arts education experience tends to reinforce a narcissistic state of mind. The vast majority of musicians I’ve encountered have embraced this mindset. I have known many musicians who have embraced this philosophy so severely, that it seemed that they started each day with the question "what is wrong with my technique today?" And then they would burrow into a practice room and no one would see them for the rest of the day.
Being so fascinated with their highly specialized work, many musicians don’t really socialize well with nonmusicians, as they have nothing to say outside of "what method book are you using lately?," and they tend to be less "tuned in" to the music of their non-musical peers. (For an illustration of this social schism, see the facebook group "You Know You're A Music Major If . . .") I often make jokes about what I call "musical apartheid," as students of music are placed in their own sections throughout high school, they have their own bus to the games, they have their own summer camps, the band has its own segregated seating at the football games, and for college they go to their own specialized schools.
I think we can all agree that when we encounter a self-absorbed / narcissistic individual, we tend to form a not-so-very positive attitude towards them. So it should be obvious that this state of mind should be avoided, and yet in most artistic education environments, it is encouraged. It is very easy for adolescents in particular to fall into a mode of nonstop contemplation of their own navels. And all too often, arts education reinforces this pre-existing self-consciousness. It’s not the students' fault. They are merely responding to be environment we have created for them.
Anyway, what I want to propose, is a complete turning on its head of the current system. Instead of focusing on precision and conformity (and by that I mean precision of technique beyond any practical usefulness, and conformity to traditional ways of performing, for the purpose of "winning an audition,"), I suggest that arts education broaden way out and become totally focused on one question, i.e.: "what does my audience want from me?"
As it is right now, the "audience awareness" of your average music student is extraordinarily limited. For the most part, it exists solely of an intense focus on just one of two things: either a teacher, or a committee of judges at some sort of competition. While such events serve their purposes well, they do not accurately replicate what really goes on between performer and audience in the real world, so this educational model only really applies to educational environments. I think it’s time we challenged ourselves to think a little bigger and broader.
There is much moaning and groaning and gnashing of teeth these days about "shrinking budgets." I suggest that it’s not really about shrinking budgets, it’s that the whole paradigm of arts education is actively limiting itself, and not expanding along with the rest of the universe.
If "arts education" were to start including such things that, not just performers, but all communicators, managers, leaders and sales people need to know, suddenly this would no longer be the purview of the small percentage of kids that actively pursue musical activities. Instead, the "music class" would be the place where you learn key elements of all sorts of terribly adult and important things, such as mass communication, presentation skills, the psychology of an audience, command of timing when under stress, the anatomy of a good event . . . in fact the list goes on and on into infinity. You could, conceivably, have a situation where every kid with any ambition at all to go into politics, law, or business would be champing at the bit to go learn what’s being taught in the performance-ology classes, as that information would give them a huge leg up on any of their competition for the rest of their lives. "Arts education" would be able to command a whole lot more funding if it would start thinking about a much broader and more tangible return on investment.
The common argument that music education "enhances a child’s overall growth and learning" is very nice, but it is somewhat vague and hard to prove. When it comes to getting someone to to dole out hard currency, you want to offer more tangible benefits. Otherwise, as is already happening, you’ll be the first thing cut out of the budget in the lean times.
Of course, instituting this new paradigm would require a major bit of retooling. Most of the people who "teach music" are fifth-generation products of the current culture, and so a great deal of retraining would be required. Granted, this would take an awful lot of work, but the opportunity is there for anyone who cares to embrace it.
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©Justin Locke
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