Musicians Without Borders

I have a device in my pocket that gives me instantaneous access to more information than was at the fingertips of President Clinton fifteen years ago. It also connects me with two billion people who carry similar devices. And this technological tool is an example of the fact that many of the presumptions with which I was trained no longer apply to my musical life.

When I was growing up in the seventies, and being educated in the eighties, the internet was yet to be created or named. We had libraries with card catalogues, and listened to vinyl recordings. Our professors, some of whom grew up in the forties, were reluctant to make the change to cassette tapes, and very suspicious of compact discs. And we were labeled and subscribed into distinct parts of the musical world. We were either "vocal" or "instrumental". Within those groups we were either "classical" or "pop", "marching" or "concert". And those groups were further stratified by voice type, pedagogical style, music education or performance emphasis, and other descriptors.

 

In one graduate school I attended, vocal music education students like me were expected to implicitly "declare" acceptance of a relatively new genre of choral music, the Show Choir. The resistance was fierce from the voice faculty, who demanded a similar declaration expressing loyalty to them. In another graduate school, you were known by your membership or non-membership in many different sub-groups, including strict loyalty to well-known professors, and strict repertoire guidelines.

 

Life in that pre-connected world was analogous to prairie farmland, punctuated only by fences, which separated the groups into their defined property lines, and silos, where the groups' resources were kept.

 

And the prairie of religious life, where I have spent large parts of my musical career, was among the most separated. The barbed-wire of theological conclusion kept neighbors distant, even unacknowledged. And the silos had inner chambers of decreasing size, so that the members of a group strove for inter-necine separation, always hoping to accomplish membership in smaller and smaller groups of purer and purer belief.


Musically, the analogy accurately describes the landscape. Church musicians held to firm positions regarding repertoire and liturgical practice, convinced that over the fence lay evil clothed in chord charts and amplification, or (from the other perspective) pipe organs and choir robes.


The smartphone in my pocket gives me the opportunity to lead a professional life without barbed wire. Thanks to connectedness, my last week included: communication with a friend in New York who was the harpist in the orchestra for hip-hop artist Jay-Z's performance in Carnegie Hall; attendance at a Show Choir competition where my daughter, a first-year music educator, had a group competing; meeting with one of the country's foremost Baroque violinists regarding a period instrument orchestra in Atlanta; and virtually coaching a local high school choir on French pronunciation. I was also able, thanks to the computing tools on my desk, to set several pieces of music for brass ensemble, string quartet and piano. And I was able to share some hymns I had written with other churches, along with their brass accompaniments.


And I was able to learn through those experiences of the enormous culture-changing impact of hip-hop music, and of its adoption of things from other parts of the musical world, like the orchestra in which my friend was playing. I was able to learn of the impressive stage presence and discipline of the singers in a Middle School show choir that surpassed the stage presence and discipline of many adult groups. I was able to learn about the exciting world of historically-informed performance, and refresh my knowledge of French. And I was able to hone my music-writing skill and get immediate feedback about it from other musicians. In every case, my work will benefit from what I observed in those trips beyond the fence.


Each of those opportunities would have been impossible to arrange or execute if I were insistent on living in the prairie of the past. Technology exists that can give us the excuse we have always needed to tear down our barbed-wire and interact with our neighbors. I can continue to strive for my desired standard of classical church music without expressing hyperbolic suspicion toward my neighbors who worship in a different way. My daughter can teach both classical and show choir music and skills to her students, and my friend can play the harp for multiple orchestras, if only we can understand that the silo doesn't serve us well.


Millions watched the tragic events that ended the life of a great artist last week, concluding with the four-hour funeral of Whitney Houston on Saturday. As we listened to the service, we heard one speaker who loved her as a singing actress, another who relished learning new songs with her, and others whose best memory of her included singing gospel music in church. It was an example, although tragic, of a life lived without debilitating boundaries.


All of us tend to feel protected and more clearly defined by living behind fences. But that life causes us to be disconnected people in the midst of a connected world. We are lesser for it. And the new, connected paradigm that causes us to view our neighbor's differences as enrichments rather than indictments, can enable us to remain relevant to the musical world.