by natchaitkin | Mar 29, 2017 | Uncategorized
Recently, it was proposed (yet again) that the National Endowment for the Arts be eliminated, which has arts advocates (and anyone who can do math, frankly) in an uproar. Just before the budget proposal was unveiled, I submitted the following piece to Movers and Makers, Cincinnati’s monthly chronicle of local culture and philanthropy – you can read it below, or here. Though it isn’t about the NEA, my underlying point applies to its fight for survival – when it comes to the arts, investing a little money goes a long way, and is repaid many times over. No one will argue more passionately than I for the intrinsic value of art, but in times like these, it’s also good to stick to the bottom line when you make your case, and there’s a good one to be made.
The Arts Mean Business
Recently, there’s been news from the former site of King Records, at 1540 Brewster Avenue in Evanston. The city wants to save the space, while its owner, Dynamic Industries, wants to tear it down. In a recent article in the Enquirer, Sharon Coolidge offered several good reasons to save the building, including the symbolic importance of a place that was way ahead of its time, as well as the possibility of lucrative music tourism.
King’s owner was Syd Nathan, a savvy businessman who would have a profound impact on both American popular music and social progress. He opened King in 1943, producing country records, a genre to which major labels weren’t yet paying much attention. He soon found another market to crack – R&B. At a time when the music business (like pretty much everything else in America) was segregated, Nathan was a real pioneer, bringing black musicians into King to make what were then called “race records”.
The white musicians started covering the songs the black musicians were playing, and vice versa, and this interaction helped give birth to rock and roll. Musicians of all kinds recorded at King until it closed in 1971 – since then, the building has fallen into disrepair, and is in imminent danger of being bulldozed.
One big reason – 55 feet high, in fact – we can’t let this happen is the mural of James Brown on Liberty Street. The Godfather of Soul was King Records – nearly all of his most important records were made there. When I perform my solo program, Bach and Boombox, I use a clip from his 1970 hit “Get Up”. When I ask the audience where it was recorded, only a few people know – that shouldn’t be.
When James Brown came back to town for a visit 20 years ago, he was very upset to see the King building in shambles. Cincinnati is where Brown rose to fame, and if we’re going to claim him as our own, we need to walk the walk here, and restore King to a state he’d be proud of. And according to Mark Twain, we’re right on schedule!
It’s important to remember that Syd Nathan integrated his studio not just out of idealism, but also to make a buck. He saw an opportunity to expand his reach, and being a good businessman, he took it. It’s a nice reminder that art, social progress, and the bottom line can coexist very nicely.
There’s a more recent local example of the artistic and social good a little money can do – it’s on Warsaw Avenue.
In 2012, City Council member Laure Quinlivan created the Cincinnati Artist Ambassador Fellowship program (CAAF), offering small grants to city artists for community-oriented projects. I was fortunate to receive one of the fellowships, and wound up developing both my solo program and a small business.
Violinist Eddy Kwon, who directs MYCincinnati, Price Hill’s marvelous free youth orchestra, used his CAAF grant to start the MYCincinnati Ambassador Ensemble. Eddy and six students created an original performance piece, based on their own experiences.
Watching this group’s performance was one of the most powerful musical experiences I’ve ever had. They played their instruments, spoke, and sang about being teased, bullied, and even arrested – Ziyad Tooles, the group’s bassist, accused of shoplifting a bottle of mouthwash (which he’d paid for), was handcuffed outside his neighborhood Kroger at the age of 13, and the group’s depiction of this incident was devastating.
I have visited MYCincinnati many times as a guest teacher, and always enjoy talking with Ziyad – he is an energetic, funny, and inspired young man. Until that performance, however, I had no idea he’d been through something that awful. Recreating that incident through performance must have been both challenging and empowering for him.
Ziyad is now learning to conduct, and has led several MYCincinnati performances. Whether he pursues music or some other career, I’m sure he will have an outsize impact, thanks in no small part to his experiences as a member of the Ambassador Ensemble.
What, you may rightly ask, does this have to do with King Records? The answer is that both Syd Nathan’s work and Eddy’s represent what great things can happen when you give musicians room to experiment and collaborate, and that it can be good business, too. MYCincinnati has been a big part of the recent revitalization of Price Hill, attracting new residents and businesses to the area, and the $6,000 (not a misprint) Eddy got from the city has been multiplied many times over, from empowering students like Ziyad, to the great publicity generated during the group’s 2016 tour to Cleveland, Columbus and Pittsburgh.
Unfortunately, the CAAF program only lasted two years before falling victim to budget cuts. Let’s bring them back – Eddy’s work shows that they are a great investment, in art, people, and the economy, and so, in that spirit, I propose we rename them for Syd Nathan.
Hard to believe, but it’s an election year again, and I urge you to press local candidates to support economic development through the arts, by restoring the CAAF grants, and by saving 1540 Brewster from the wrecking ball. And Laure Quinlivan is running for council again – if you live in the city of Cincinnati, make sure you vote for her this fall. She knows better than anyone that the arts mean business!
Cities like Memphis and Nashville have reaped huge economic benefits from music tourism – we should join them. In a town that treasures both its history and arts scene, while always watching the bottom line, this is a no-brainer, people – let’s get on up and #SaveKingRecords!
Till next time,
Nat
by natchaitkin | Oct 26, 2016 | Uncategorized
In my last post, I wrote about my summer visit to my grandmother, and the importance of our music in our relationship since I was a kid. A few weeks after my trip to LA, I attended the Bar Mitzvah of the son of one of my closest friends, who also grew up in a family of musicians. Virtually everyone in the Gershfeld clan plays a string instrument, so as part of the festivities, there was a reading of the Brandenburg Concerto #3 by three generations of the family – the Bar Mitzvah himself on cello, along with his younger brother (who leads the beginning), father, uncle, aunt, cousins and two grandparents – as well as his cello teacher, myself, and a few other guests. Check out the video – it’s a hoot.
https://youtu.be/GjXaW9x24ug&w=550
As you can see, the joy and sense of community in that room was remarkable, and the experience reminded me that this is what music is for – to be played. I know so many people who only know “classical” music as listeners, and I would bet that many of today’s concertgoers are not players themselves, which is a shame. There was a time not so long ago when families like the Gershfelds were the norm, not the exception I suspect they are today. Wouldn’t it be great to have family gatherings like this one in every home?
Well, here’s one way to make it happen. My friends at MYCincinnati – a free orchestra program serving children in Price Hill, on Cincinnati’s West Side – are now offering a class for adults, populated largely by, you guessed it, parents of the kids who already study there. My favorite part of the picture is the kids helping their parents – they too are passing music from one generation to another, just in reverse! Let’s hope more string programs will follow their example, and more families can experience the joy of playing the Brandenburg Concertos together!
Till next time,
Nat
by natchaitkin | Dec 1, 2014 | Uncategorized
Last week’s post was about Mark O’Connor’s attack on the Suzuki method, which I (and many others) found quite harsh, mean-spirited and a huge waste of energy. This week’s example of unnecessary squabbling in the string world is a similarly strident (and questionable) attack on El Sistema, the Venezuelan method of community building through youth music education, which has received tremendous attention in recent years and has inspired many new programs in countries around the world.
The father of El Sistema is Jose Antonio Abreu, who began working with 11 children in a Caracas garage in 1975. Since then, upwards of two million children have gone through the program, including Gustavo Dudamel, music director of the LA Philharmonic. The program is praised for paying both musical and social dividends, and is the hot trend in both education and community engagement efforts across the music world these days.
With such popularity, I suppose a backlash was inevitable, and it comes from a British academic. In an article in the Guardian newspaper, Geoffrey Baker, a music lecturer at Royal Holloway University who has just written a book on El Sistema, to be published by Oxford University Press, claimed that far from being the “beacon of social justice” as it is portrayed all over the world, in Venezuela it is viewed as “a cult, a mafia and a corporation.”
Full disclosure, round two: I am not trained in the ways of El Sistema, but I have done a lot of teaching at Cincinnati’s incarnation, MYCincinnati, a wonderful program run by the amazing Laura Jekel. Here’s a video about the collaboration between the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra and MYCincinnati, which is my favorite part about being a member of that ensemble:
http://youtu.be/wkM5_5Aei2g&w=320&h=240&start=15
In the Guardian article, Baker complains about El Sistema’s “lack of rigorous evaluation to quantify its claims of ‘miraculous social transformation.’ ”
“I found many Sistema musicians unconvinced by claims that the project was aimed at Venezuela’s most vulnerable children,” he writes. “Pointing to a lack of mechanisms for consistently targeting this demographic, they suggested most musicians come from the middle levels of society.”
The article also offers a countering point of view: “Reynaldo Trombetta, a Venezuelan musician and writer who has worked with El Sistema, in his home country and then assisting (cellist Julian) Lloyd-Webber, set up the programme in the UK, rejected Baker’s allegations.
“He said: ‘I’m not really sure who Mr Baker spoke to and I have my doubts about the reach of his research. I have to wonder if he spoke to any of the parents of the kids from the barrios, the slums, who are desperate to get their kids into El Sistema because for them the alternative is these kids getting involved in drugs or crime. You would have to ask them if they think El Sistema is a mafia or a tyranny. More than two million kids have been involved and we still see huge queues, all the time, of parents desperate to get their children into one of the 300 nucleos [community music schools]. Most of the people involved are not aspiring to be musicians, they are just in a country where you don’t learn much about excellence, you don’t learn much about teamwork, you don’t really learn what you can achieve when you work hard and El Sistema is absolutely still a beacon of light benefitting a lot of people, even in things like educational literacy and maths skills.’ ”
Baker’s main complaint seems to be that there is a lack of data to support El Sistema’s claims of community building and personal enrichment for the kids who pass through it. Anyone who’s paid attention to education knows how hard it is to show that sort of thing in numbers, but let’s allow him that one, and say that there could be some better number crunching done. In fact, Trombetta agrees, suggesting that it would be very helpful.
The Guardian also points out that Baker doesn’t offer numbers to back up his claims either:
“Marshall Marcus, former head of music at the Southbank centre and now the chair of Sistema Europe, also cast doubt on Baker’s allegations.
‘My experience over many years is that El Sistema certainly is mainly involved with children and young people from economically challenged circumstances,’ he said. ‘If it is thought by someone that El Sistema has become more skewed towards middle class students rather than helping those living in poverty then I would be interested to see any figures that show that. I have not seen any to date.’ ”
The article also adds: “Argentinian pianist Alberto Portugheis, who was responsible for bringing El Sistema over to play in Britain for the first time almost a decade ago added: ‘El Sistema has had a fantastic effect on education in general in Venezuela. But you cannot expect a musical education to make all the problems of poverty in the country disappear.’ ”
This is a crucial point, I think – learning to play the violin may give someone a great deal to help them deal with the difficulties in their life, but it does not make those difficulties disappear!
So, why am I writing about this? Like O’Connor, Baker seems intent on tearing down something that is very popular and does a great deal of good. Is El Sistema perfect? Of course not – no system is. And as someone who spent eight years working for the Pentagon, I can tell you that anything operating on a large scale has all sorts of problems! Most importantly, like the Suzuki method, for El Sistema to be successful, IT ALL DEPENDS ON THE TEACHER!
In any case, both O’Connor and Baker are doing more harm than good. As I said last week, music education is viewed by many as a luxury, and both the Suzuki method and El Sistema have convinced millions otherwise. We don’t have time for circular firing squads in our business – let’s leave that to others with less important work to do!
