Is It Live or Is It Memorex?

I love fall in the Midwest. The heat and humidity and the allergens that make spring and summer difficult are gone, and I can enjoy sitting on our deck admiring the changing colors of the leaves in the woods behind our house. I’m on my second cup of coffee when I notice several children a few yards down throwing a football. My husband turns up the stereo, and as the music and he drift out the door, he’s laughing. On Saturday Night Live a performer was about to begin a song when her ‘voice’ seemed to start without her. In fact, her microphone was down at waist level at the time and, even worse, the disembodied ‘voice’ started singing the wrong song! This use of what I later learned is referred to as a ‘guide track,’ played to strengthen (or replace) a singer’s voice in a ‘live’ performance, seems to alter the very medium and purpose of the art form of ‘live’ music. Indeed, the internet discussions the following week introduced a new linguistic distinction to me: a performance where the artist uses a ‘guide track’ to augment or replace her or his voice is still ‘live,’ but when an artist uses technology merely to amplify her or his voice, the performance is ‘live-live.’

I can appreciate the difference. We recently enjoyed a ‘live-live’ performance by Rene Marie at Jazz at the Bistro. Although she was backed by three musicians, she opened the set on the stage by herself. I was afraid for her when she started to sing, since there was no other sound to cover a wrong note or hide a faltering voice. This was part of the ‘live-live’ experience, as well as her means of opening communication with the audience. It worked, and the small and intimate Bistro seemed even smaller and more intimate by the end of the evening. Near the end, I saw my husband with his eyes closed, trying to concentrate on the live performance as a reference for listening to recorded music over speakers at home. It is not that he cannot stop analyzing the music and let his right brain loose long enough to enjoy it – he can and does. Still, he bought Rene Marie’s CD and immediately played it when we got home. The sound was different. The piano, for example, weak in the performance, was more prominent on the CD, providing a fuller sound. The vocals, however, were less immediate. But neither of these differences is the point of his comparison, which is rather the way recordings communicate expressive qualities inherent in music—and here one speaks only of degrees of success. No technology could capture the delicate vulnerability of those first few moments when Rene sang alone, or her flashing eyes and smile as she engaged the audience’s emotions. When you are listening to live music you are also ‘listening’ to a multitude of other expressions.

Technology cannot capture the social and cultural context of music. Yet without technological innovation, an art form like jazz might never have arisen. Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877 to record dictation of contracts and business letters. Prior to invention of the phonograph, home entertainment hardware consisted of a piano, a parlor organ, or other musical instruments, and the software was sheet music. By the early 20th century, cutting-edge home entertainment hardware was a wind-up gramophone, and the software was a 78-rpm phonograph record. When electricity entered the equation in 1926, the source could be amplified, and the sound quality was radically improved. As the market for recorded music grew, the social and cultural context of music came to the fore. Context is everything that is not physically contained in the grooves in the record or the digital information on a CD. For jazz, whose popularity took off during Prohibition, the context was both an unconventional, avant-garde musical expression and a marginal art form associated with the outlaw element in American society. By means of phonograph records, musicians across the country could hear changing styles and directions of jazz and respond by imitation and further innovation. Fans could also hear it and respond quickly. Thus, technology and social context went hand-in-hand in the development of jazz. The music would not have been possible without popularization and innovation via recordings, and popularization would not have been so successful without its image as an art form in rebellion against bourgeois conventions.

Jazz is authentically American, and provides a compelling story about our social and cultural life. Jazz tells us something about the relation between art and commerce. From sweet jazz to hot jazz to symphonic jazz to Latin jazz, jazz found its way into highly commercial dance tunes decade after decade. But then the market and the music changed, and jazz went from being a commercial, market-driven musical genre to a highly abstract niche genre on a few small record labels and at clubs like Jazz at the Bistro. Jazz tells us something about race in America, too; it has brought blacks and whites together and kept them apart. Jazz opened up an early expressive communication between blacks and whites. Despite the fact that the leading innovators of jazz were black, white musicians played jazz almost from the beginning, and the highly mixed audiences for jazz challenged segregation. The financial success of white musicians at the expense of black musicians, however, conformed to the prevailing racism of the period. At other times, jazz served to separate blacks and whites, as during the civil rights movement when it became an expression of politicized and formalized black self-consciousness and artistic liberation. Thus, even when you are listening to recorded jazz, whether you know it or not, you are also listening to all the other social and cultural expressions and experiences that surround it and make it profoundly American.

As the children down the way retreat into their houses and only the breeze, the birds, and the muted sounds of the stereo are audible, I wonder if jazz and the story it tells about us will survive the ramifications of technological change in musical performance. I wonder whether downloaded songs in their compressed MP3 format and tiny computer speakers convey the expressive nuances music offers. Mostly, I wonder about an educational regime where the elimination of so-called ‘waste’ in the curriculum calls for application of scientific management techniques presumably so successful in business. Although music instruction is important in the development of students who are musically talented, its primary purpose should be to improve the quality of life for all by developing individual capacities to participate fully in musical culture.

That is why the Center for the Humanities will offer Teaching Jazz as American Culture, an NEH Summer Institute (2005) for teachers in public high schools who will investigate how popular music, specifically jazz, can enrich a variety of subject matters. Teaching Jazz will demonstrate how studying a major American art form from social, cultural, political, technical, and aesthetic perspectives can broaden understanding of American history and literature while throwing light on race and gender in the United States. The instructors are some of the nation’s leading scholars of jazz music and American culture. Participants will listen to jazz music every week at Jazz at the Bistro, and the music will be live, not Memorex.

Jian Leng, Assistant Director
The Center for the Humanities

As a teacher and community educator who began performing as a storyteller and publishing poetry in my senior years, what I love about Elders-Probe-the-Arts (ELDPRO) is uncovering hidden talent in children and elders.

What propelled me to develop poetry and storytelling for multi-generations was being humiliated as a child when others laughed at my sixth-grade poem. I wanted to free children and seniors to express their imagination. Poetry is the natural language of youth. Seniors still tell me how they came to a course to listen, but were surprised when they wrote poems, expressing their joy and sadness in a way that validated who they are. I am delighted to provide an opportunity for generations to discover the thrill of connecting to one another through words.

To enhance communication among generations through the arts, focused on storytelling and poetry, we incorporated as a non-profit 501(c) (3) in 2001, assisted by the Volunteer Lawyers and Accountants for the Arts. We have since offered two storytelling programs in conjunction with St. Louis Earth Day. The first year featured Diann Bank, Gladys Coggswell, and other Jewish- and African-American elderstory tellers; the second year highlighted the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

For three years, with the St. Louis Poetry Center (SLPC), we have co-sponsored intergenerational poetry writing. Last year at Covenant House Senior Residence, we offered Connecting Hearts through English and Russian Poetry. Russian-born Americans, steeped in Russian poetry, sparkled in animated conversation with younger American-born poets. Arkady wrote his first poem in English, which ended, “The years run away / And fingers become darkness.”

In Elders-Probe-the-Arts, each generation affirms another by sharing skills and caring. No child or elder can ever get too much praise. Youths seem to gain as much from an elder with dementia or with limited literacy, who might dictate poems to them, as they do from an elder with whom they collaboratively write a poem.

With SLPC, we’ve sponsored varied programs at Mitchell School in North City. Initially, we exchanged poetry with seniors at nearby Hylton Point Apartments, led by Martha Talburt, a poet and visual artist, Constance Levy, a children’s poet and teacher, and myself. Levy taught third-graders. The next year Wendy Surrinksy taught photography and poetry with Mitchell fourth-graders. The children photographed their elders. The program included one third-grader who ended her poem with “I felt like a red and blue balloon in the sky.” Her teacher puffed with pride.

This fall, Mitchell third-graders joined with Tower Grover Manor Residents in South City for a cross-cultural, intergenerational experience. This program, Poetry and Gardens, assists youth in both language and science skills. Lynn Rubright, an arts and curriculum expert, works in concert with Levy to spark students’ senses and imagination through story and movement. Sylvia Duncan, a poet and storyteller, stimulates senior and youth poetry in joint sessions in garden settings. Edyth Ezidore, a specialist at Mitchell, says, “I love the program because the children love it. It’s like magic. It’s almost as great as the Cardinals’ winning the Pennant last night.”

What thrills me about Poetry and Gardens is the child whose natural rhythm tumbles words on to paper, the same way their energy plunges into the earth as they plant bulbs with seniors. Nothing seems to stop them from noticing, wanting to find the right words, creating surprising similes, or jumping up to take their photos with their poem. This fall the students wrote these lines:

When a seed comes out of its shell
it’s like a bird cracking out of his egg
—Chris

Water looks like a silver train
—Wrice

Millo, as he leaned into the lily pond at the Botanical Gardens, wrote the following:

…We scared a frog away.
He ran under the green leaves
then under the lily pads…

We invite you to participate in our Poetry and Gardens series, starting next April. Nationally-recognized nature poet Pattiann Rogers and rap poet and storyteller Bobby Norfolk will perform environmental works. They will be matched with elder and younger poets from Tower Grove Manor and Mitchell School on Saturday, April 9, from 11 am to 3 pm at the Missouri Botanical Gardens. Rogers will teach a writing seminar on Friday night, April 8. Poet Susan Grigsby will teach poetry after school through myths and art in Mitchell Gardens, a program open to youth and senior mentors. Except for the seminar, the programs are free. We are also seeking an English-major volunteer to observe and write about our program. For information contact poet@Elders-Probe-the-Arts.org or (314) 991-1529.

Elders-Probe-the-Arts has the magic of a winner, as there is unity in multiplicity. Currently, in addition to the sponsoring organizations, the program is made possible with financial assistance from the Missouri Arts Council (a state agency), Regional Arts Commission, Missouri Botanical Gardens, and O’Connell’s Pub. The Missouri Arts Council Poetry and Gardens Arts in Curriculum funding is supported entirely by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.

Marilyn Probe is a storyteller and educator and serves as president of Elders-Probe-the-Arts.

The Center for the Humanities announces its third annual faculty book celebration to be held Thursday, December 2, 2004, at 4 pm in the Formal Lounge of the Woman’s Building on Washington University’s Hilltop Campus.

Stanley Fish, Distinguished Professor of English, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (1999-2004), and Criminal Justice and Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago will give the keynote address.

Feature Faculty Presenters:

Judith Evans Grubbs is a leading scholar in the field of Roman history. Her most recent book – Women and the Law in the Roman Empire: A Sourcebook on Marriage, Divorce, and Widowhood (2002) – collects, translates, and discusses Latin and Greek sources for women’s interaction with the law in the Roman Empire (31 BCE-476 CE). Most of the sources – including some not previously available in reliable English translation – are from Roman law, particularly the Corpus Iuris of Justinian (the Digest and the Code of Justinian) and the Theodosian Code published in 438. The volume provides introductions and scholarly commentary both on the texts and on the problems of preservation of the sources.

James Gibson’s research interests include comparative politics (especially processes of democratization), American politics, and quantitative research methods (especially survey research). His most recent book is Overcoming Apartheid: Can Truth Reconcile a Divided Nation? (2004), which reports on the largest and most comprehensive study of post-apartheid attitudes in South Africa to date, involving a representative sample of all major racial, ethnic, and linguistic groups. Grounding his analysis of “truth” in theories of collective memory, Gibson discovers that the process has been most successful in creating a common understanding of the nature of apartheid. He also speculates about whether the South African experience provides any lessons for other countries around the globe trying to overcome their repressive pasts.

The Washington University Campus Bookstore will display the authors’ books, all of which will be available for purchase. Presenting authors will be available to sign their books after the colloquium. The Washington University and the wider St. Louis communities are cordially invited. Please call 935-5576 for more information.

The Center for the Humanities Advisory Board 2005-2006