by Andy Krikun
“Connection, I just can’t get no connection, And all I want to do is to get back to you!” – Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
I remember traveling to Asheville, North Carolina to visit members of my wife’s family gathered together for a family reunion at a local trailer park. Feeling like a school of fishes far from water, our family made our entrance to multiple stares and silence. It was obvious that the battle lines were drawn between us Yankee family members from the elite Northeast and the down home Southern country folk. Each group huddled separately together and talked among themselves. I decided to take out my guitar and I began to strum a few chords. Shortly thereafter, a stranger strolled over and asked, “Is that a Martin D18 you’re playin’?” That’s all it took to break the ice as I offered him the guitar to try out for himself.
I’ve had the same scene play out again in many other places. In the foothills of the Himalayas with my guitar in tow, a group of teens from a nearby village asked me to play a Beatles song. After the Beatles song, I amused them by performing a popular Nepalese folk song in their native tongue. During the course of my month long stay in Nepal, I played music with several local folk musicians who were dedicated to music despite working at their “day jobs” as laborers and government officials. My perspective on the trappings of pursuing a career as a “rock star” began to change and I realized that creating connections through the power of music was of the utmost importance. I also realized that the arbitrary boundaries drawn between musical genres and propagated by music educators and the music industry were limiting the experiences of musicians, listeners and students. Couldn’t Beatles songs be construed as global folk music? In the words of ethnomusicologist John Blacking, “distinctions between ‘art’, ‘folk’ and ‘popular music’ should dissolve as human beings achieve the most important goal of ownership of the senses.” [1]
Returning to college as a graduate student, I studied the role of music in global cultures and learned about and performed the classical, popular and traditional music of Ghana, Uganda, Bali, Java, Nepal and India. A number of years later, landing a fulltime position as a community college music professor, leading several ensembles and creating new courses in popular music, I began to see that my role as an educator is to forge connections between diverse students and helping them to explore the connections between music, society and the self. To witness new connections being forged between students who would never have had the opportunity to get acquainted with each other — suburban and urban youth, teenagers and senior citizens, international students, students with disabilities, students from a variety of cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds as well as vastly different musical tastes and experiences — collaborating on music making, is my greatest gift as a teacher.
[1] Blacking, J. (1981). “Making Artistic Popular Music: The Goal of True Folk,” Popular Music, 1: 9-14.
“I began to see that my role as an educator is to forge connections between diverse students and helping them to explore the connections between music, society and the self. To witness new connections being forged between students who would never have had the opportunity to get acquainted with each other…collaborating on music making, is my greatest gift as a teacher.”
What a great sentiment and what a great gift. It made me think of another quote I’d read a while back: “The most radical thing we can do is introduce people to one another.” I couldn’t remember who said that, but a brief web search leads me to credit a Tweet by Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter.
And it’s true. Introducing people to one another is radical and life-changing for all involved. And to get to do it through the music we love is even better. Sometimes when I’m hosting a rehearsal for an event at the magnet high school where I work, I think about Paul McCartney and John Lennon, from different neighborhoods of Liverpool, meeting at that church function that fateful day. The people who facilitate those introductions may stay in the background but nevertheless radically transform people’s life trajectories.
Beautiful post Andy, and thanks for sharing.