I have completed my master’s degree in music composition! I have decided to reflect on the last two years by writing a series of posts to talk about my work at Roosevelt University Chicago College of Performing Arts (CCPA) and explain how these projects will grow beyond graduation…
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          IV. Music Reflects: Reflecting on Music 
 
            Today, while reflecting yet again on the seeming hopelessness and inhumanity of US immigration policy, I experienced a strange craving to listen to Vivaldi concerti. Normally when I listen to these famous and often overdone pieces I train my ear with transcription, try to decipher if the ensemble is using period instruments, or test my relative pitch and guess to which Hz frequency the A is tuned. So it struck me as a strange choice to go from our egregious political climate to music I normally consume as a technical exercise or as an apolitical backdrop. But I started to reflect on this choice and suddenly remembered that Vivaldi composed many of these pieces for children living in an orphanage.
            In this context, Vivaldi’s music became a strong advocate for the ability of ALL children, and their role toward the future. It was also a reminder that music, as something beyond the proscenium or your headphones, has a powerful and unstoppable ability to connect. The heart of these concerti at their genesis was arguably a need to look at the future through the virtuosity and creativity of homeless children living in Venice. And Venice, at that time, was a cosmopolitan trade city and the epicenter of hybridity that led to the Baroque. All of these secrets are imbedded in these concerti. And through this, the music can reflect important political tropes today.
            I have a strong desire to control the manifestation of these latent messages within the music I create. A little over a year ago I started a music project that explores the foster care system, and had a test run for this research as my graduate recital, safe, stable, loving and permanent home. The impetus for this endeavor started when I saw two of my undergraduate mentors struggle with the foster care system as foster parents. They had been fostering a baby girl for over two years, she was born addicted, the biological mother missed drug tests for several months, she had been legally abandoned by her biological parents, she had been living with my professors since she was maybe a few months old, and they wanted to adopt her. And yet, at the end of this mind-numbing and emotionally grueling case, the court ruled in favor of the biological mother permanently cutting all ties between my professors and their daughter.
          As I dug deeper into the foster care system, I quickly realized the expanse and density of the institution. The United States foster care system is extremely complex with a spectrum of triumphs, failures, and overall difficulties. To unravel and solve these problems, we first have to acknowledge that they exist on multiple levels within the system. On a broad level, there are structural issues of racism and class dynamics. Zooming in reveals problems due to the state funding structure of the system. Finally, on a case-by-case level, it seems there are an infinite number of circumstances, making it extremely difficult to ensure individual safety and success for every foster youth. For example, reunification, a federal mandate that courts make every attempt to reunify foster youth with biological family members before allowing adoption, is not successful for many foster youth as in the case of my undergraduate mentors and their daughter, who is now missing. And legislating a sweeping change based on the average would still negatively affect so many people. Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) are designed to help alleviate these problems. But even with the tireless effort of these volunteers, the system is still too large for CASA to perfectly address these difficulties.
          Poet and former foster youth, Lemn Sissay, states, “…you can define how strong a democracy is by how it treats its child, the child of the state.” By this, I think Sissay is pointing out that foster care runs latent within the structure of a democracy, and issues converge on and proliferate from this root. These issues include conversations we have or don’t have regarding abortion, education, welfare, housing, and so much more. Current political discourse does not give room for the right amount of nuance in solving these foundational issues.
          My goal for the future of this project to have music provide perspective and inspire activism toward addressing these problems. Currently I am starting to explore these ideas in the context of a multi-media oratorio or concert music documentary. This evening-length work will be inspired by both quantitative research and qualitative interviews with foster youth, foster parents, social workers, CASA volunteers, etc. The recordings of these interviews will be used as source material for electronic pieces, similar to the opening of my graduate recital. This will be a collaboration with Constellation Men’s Ensemble, and possibly other entities in Chicago and Cook County! More on that soon.
          For now, I urge you all to think deeply about the music you listen to, and how your choices reflect your surroundings, as was the case for me with Vivaldi. I also encourage you to remember the message children provide, their constant echo that becomes the future of our society. I can think of a lot of “children” who have inspired me lately.  Happy weekend.

          I have completed my master’s degree in music composition! I have decided to reflect on the last two years by writing a series of posts to talk about my work at Roosevelt University Chicago College of Performing Arts (CCPA) and explain how these projects will grow beyond graduation…
 
III. An Artgrument for a Broader View of Music Performance
 
          In Beyond the Score musicologist Nicholas Cook outlines the various shortcomings our society has inherited in terms of how we appraise and study music. This is evidenced not only by the way(s) in which we currently study and document music, but more importantly in the ways we don’t. Likely the most exciting ‘new’ way of evaluating musical performance is the study of musician’s bodies and how their physical movements both influence and are influenced by the ‘music’. In the ninth chapter of the book, The Signifying Body, Cook takes this a step further and presents the idea that studying physicality not only enhances musical signification, it is sometimes integral toward musics communicative ability. In this sense, when we evaluate music through a narrow lens based on sound alone we potentially miss important, meaningful, and essential ideas. To demonstrate his point, Cook dives into a case study of a particularly bad sounding performance of Foxy Lady by Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970.
          In this performance, 18 days before his untimely death, Jimi Hendrix has many strange gesticulations, a wardrobe malfunction, and finally a climactic ending reminiscent of a lifeless ragdoll. Cook describes his immediate reaction to the video (here) as a response to racial discomfort, “The headline act of the Isle of Wight Festival was a black artist playing for six hundred thousand white fans, the black artist who made his reputation with two white sidemen, in short, Hendrix the white man’s black man.” Hendrix’s embodiment of a ragdoll alludes to racial disparity, slavery, and lynching. In this sense, the need for broader concepts of music is clear. By studying Hendrix’s body as a part of the musical signification it becomes impossible to ignore the racial politics, subjugation, and prejudice Hendrix dealt with, and many others continue to endure today. When the performance is only appraised through sound, or as a particularly poor live performance of Foxy Lady, this important information is easily overlooked.
          Beyond this idea of studying body and physical movement as part of musical signification, Cook extends performance even further. Hendrix was not only an embodiment of the performance at the Isle of Wight, he embodied the cultural performance of racism. I wonder if the fact that this embodiment was largely ignored led to his death? I also wonder if we were even a little better at understanding the emotional weight of this type of performance, and recognized significance of music existing outside of sound-would we continue to have such intense division and misunderstanding? In this sense, I think it is no accident that we have a nearly impossible time arguing for the importance of art in modern society. Art solely as a form of entertainment does not need a broad sense of signification. But by unwrapping a few layers, it becomes easier to see why, say, embodying a character like Carmen could be problematic with today’s concepts of feminism, and harassment. Additionally, this perspective on music performance could unlock countless latent ethical issues within performing arts.
          All of this is to say, that when we narrow concepts of musical performance we are limiting its ability to communicate. I’m sure I am not alone in feeling that humans have not devised a single definition of art that feels 100% adequate, but I think we can all agree that art has a profound ability to communicate and connect disparate people, ideas, and cultures. In this current political climate of cultural division, I want to push myself and encourage others to broaden their ideas of what constitutes music, and allow it to communicate on deeper levels. In my experience, this is a genuine way to connect with more people, and build meaningful relationships across what are often arbitrary divides.