New Music

2011, Age 39. "Between Two Lungs," by Florence + The Machine, from Lungs.

For a couple of years I got to teach a class on the history of American popular music to high school students. It was a lot of fun because I was able to design a curriculum (while still addressing standards, lest you education folk be concerned) around something I am passionate about. I also had that wonderful experience as a teacher of feeling as if I were learning almost as much as my students. I certainly wasn't ignorant of the topic when I began, but my understanding is much deeper now.

There were several "big ideas" in the course, threads that ran through virtually every topic. One was that American music is unique because it is largely the product of two very strongly musical cultures - from West Africa and the British Isles - intersecting on unequal terms and in sometimes violent ways. The blues becomes the archetype for this convergence, and the basis for everything that follows. Another big idea relates to the way new musical ideas become a part of the culture. The script goes something like this:

A younger generation of musicians grows up in the musical tradition of their predecessors, learning the basic materials of the genre. Then something in the culture at large - technology, market forces, political realities - intersects the lives of these young artists, and the music is transformed. The new style is not entirely original, but it is perceived as such. The older generation rejects the new music, believes it to be inferior or perhaps even threatening to conventional values. Over time, the new style is accepted and the younger generation grows up. A new generation begins to learn the music of the generation that preceded it and the whole process starts all over.

Now this is true to a degree of virtually all art at all times all over the world, but it seems to be more true of American music, beginning perhaps in the 20th century. John Philip Sousa said that the new jazz music "makes you want to bite your grandmother." Cab Calloway pejoratively referred to bebop as "Chinese music." Sinatra said that Elvis' music "fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people." Nina Simone thought that rap wasn't even music. And so on. These reactions have become so predictable, in fact, that when you look at the history of popular music as a whole, it begins to get a little dull.

It is not lost on me that this second big idea is closely related to the first one. Speaking in generalizations, you can almost divide American music into music black folks listen to, and music black folks used to listen to. As the dominant white music establishment begins to accept styles that have their roots (for the most part) in African-American culture, that culture moves on to something else. A topic for another day, perhaps.

Music education tends to mirror these historical trends and behaviors. Time was, you couldn't even study jazz at colleges in the United States. Now we have entire schools dedicated to jazz and rock music. To a point. Those styles that are in the ascendancy of youth culture are largely ignored. As Lady Gaga asked rhetorically, when questioned about dropping out of school, "What could they have taught me about 'Disco Stick' in college?"

If you speak to music teachers, you will notice that their attitudes tend to reflect these generational biases. Many seem to believe that the last truly legitimate musical expression happened in their youth, usually when they were in high school or college. Some continue following the new releases of the idols of their adolescence, but it is rare to meet a music teacher who is actively listening to the music his students favor. A few even express bewilderment that 14-year-olds don't share their tastes. I remember one middle-aged music teacher bemoaning the fact that none of her high school students had heard of Kansas. (I should point out that this was in the pre-Guitar Hero era.) I'm not sure why Kansas should represent the acme of musical expression in this teacher's mind, but whatever.

For me, this gets to the heart of why there is so much passionless music teaching going on in our schools. I would guess that many have forgotten what it is like to really love music. Do you remember what it was like, that first time, or maybe the first dozen times, when it felt like a song you were listening to, or singing, or playing was the best thing you could ever feel? For those of us who chose this as a career, this was followed by several years of music school, then a few more years of the daily grind, trying to get 12-year-olds to remember the fingering for A-natural concert. If we aren't careful, we forget why we decided to do this in the first place. The truth is, it's rare to find music teachers who are still players. To many of them, the sheer joy of music-making and music-listening is something that belongs to their youth.

This certainly isn't true of everyone. The best music teachers I know still play music regularly and when you see them, they ask, "Have you heard . . . ?" I love talking to these people. My friend Rachel is one of the best music teachers I know. She also lives in the small town of New Haven, West Virginia, so she's the de facto maestra of Mason County. She directs the church musical. She accompanies singers on piano. She plays bluegrass bass. She occasionally sits in with a local jazz group on trombone. Et cetera. She also loves listening to music. She's the one who hipped me to Florence + The Machine. We were working together on a project and she kept saying, "You gotta check out this song."

I like this whole album. Florence Welch is one of those big-voiced rock anthem singers like Bono or Steve Perry, which is not to say she can't use her voice in other ways (check out the smarmy "Girl with One Eye"). Yet she seems most at home at forte or louder, belting it out like she's alone in her car going fast down an open highway. In fact, most of these songs make me want to get in my car and drive - anywhere - but fast, and singing at the top of my lungs.

"Between Two Lungs" is the perfect song for doing this. The instruments are boomy and full of echo, Florence is belting in full chest voice at the upper end of her alto range. It might be a love song, I'm not sure, but it's the song I'm falling in love with at the moment. Whatever it's about, it's bursting Flo's lungs to sing about it:

Gone are all the days of begging, the days of theft,

No more gasping for a breath.
The air filled me head to toe
And I can see the ground far below.
I have this breath and I hold it tight
And I keep it in my chest with all my might.
I pray to God this breath will last
As it pushes past my lips as I . . . dance!
This record probably won't change my life. It doesn't matter. Being able to wake up every day and hear something new makes getting out of bed worthwhile.

I've written several times about the transcendent power that music has, that it can transport you to another time or place, or make you feel like a different person. New music is almost a fountain of youth. This is so true, in fact, that when the apostle John wants to describe heaven, he says that it is a place where new songs are sung, a place where tears will be wiped away forever, where there is no more dying. I don't know what I think about that anymore, but I do know that when I feel like wiping my tears away and living forever, I can think of nothing better to do than ask someone, "Have you heard anything good lately?"