Some Musical Context

A friend of mine today sent me one of the more shocking and eye-opening essays I've seen in some time. It's a blog post about a seemingly innocuous song, "Lassus Trombone." It's a tune known by virtually every trombonist. I've played it many times. I'll never play it again, and shouldn't play it again. You're welcome to read the essay on David Yeo's blog here. To summarize the point Yeo makes, "Lassus Trombone" was part of a suite of songs ("The Trombone Family") whose style and marketing were steeped in ugly racial stereotyping from the era of minstrel shows. 

This was the second time this week I bumped into an ugly legacy for music I thought was benign. Sherry was preparing to be part of a recording of American folk tunes. Just a few days before the recordings were due, her teacher told her that they would be eliminating several southern tunes in the piece. Why? The lyrics for those tunes were highly offensive. The two of us read the lyrics and realized immediately that playing those tunes simply weren't appropriate. 

Will we ever play these tunes again? I don't know. There are occasions in which historians can lend context to allow an audience to understand the circumstances surrounding a work of art's creation, and help clarify how the dated piece of work doesn't reflect values today. Sometimes the material is too offensive to be redeemed (such as the tunes redacted from Sherry's ensemble's piece). "Lassus Trombone" has no lyrics, which makes it's possible rehabilitation more questionable (though I can't play it again). Sometimes the work is so profound that, after there's been an attempt to educate, we can put it out for people to view again, as what the rights-holders to online versions of Gone with the Wind are attempting. Within the classical music world, there is acknowledgement of the antisemitism that is part of Wagner's legacy. Society would be poorer if we couldn't hear Wagner's works. But it won't be poorer if we're done with "Lassus Trombone." 

Reading this essay saddened me that I won't be teaching U.S. History in the fall, for I would have enjoyed creating a lesson around what I learned today regarding that song. Minstrelsy is a challenging topic to teach to high school students. There's no media saved of it, so it's hard to explain. But it was an important and ugly part of American popular culture and it incubated many of the most harmful memes and images that have challenged modern society. When I teach an advanced history class, we inevitably bump into the concept (after all, the term "Jim Crow" comes from the world). But I don't know if I move the students beyond a minstrel-show-equals-bad way of comprehending it. So their understanding is at best surface-level. More likely, they forget what I even taught. And I even know how I would end that lesson, with a showing of this clip from Showboat, featuring "Ol' Man River," perhaps the first attempt in a Broadway show to have a black character sing about the black experience. Something of a counter-minstrelsy piece of American culture. 

On statues and such

A statue that might be less controversial now than when it was first put up.

I'm somewhat astonished at the suddenness with which public opinion has shifted on statues memorializing difficult topics. A few years ago, tearing down statues regarding heroes from the Confederate States of America wouldn't be possible. In the past half a decade it became more thinkable as local and state governments inched their way toward taking them down, cautiously working around a third rail of American cultural politics. Now here we are nearing the midpoint of 2020 and consensus suggests that they're coming down, and those who want them to remain standing are a clear minority. 

Really, only legal niceties are in the way of them coming down. For instance, the removal of the Lee statue from Monument Avenue in Richmond is suspended over language about the deed or the will by which the state of Virginia got access to the parcel on which the statue is perched. 

Perhaps I should pause, though, on this legal nicety thing. Deferring to the courts has become a bit too common in America and the impulse to have everything tied up in the land of judgments, injunctions, and appeals is a significant problem right now. We've fallen out of the practice of legislating in America. We've fallen more horribly out of the practice of compromising. So as ideas to move society forward or backward are stalled in legislatures between uncompromising parties, we increasingly appeal to courts, hoping they'll take our side. John Stewart, in a recent interview for New York Times Magazine, likened this phenomenon to Americans complaining to management as a way of making law. 

The courts' role in complicating this moment aside, we are at an interesting moment. A moment in which the public display of artifacts relevant to the Confederacy are becoming widely unacceptable. Those supporting those displays are maybe even conceding defeat. But the argument is moving now to monuments and statues representing more obliquely difficult memories from our past. 

A recommendation: There's a great article from a art critic and journalist regarding statues such as the Theodore Roosevelt statue in New York. It's worth a read. 

As Americans debate these statues, it's worth considering the context of when those statues were erected. A statue of Christopher Columbus wasn't raised in 1500, but instead centuries later. Why was it put up then? Who was sponsoring it? The statue of Frank Rizzo recently taken down in Philadelphia wasn't put up while he was mayor, or even when he was alive. Instead it was put up in the late 1990s. Why then? 

Statues are symbols and expressions. And we're living in a time where what symbols and expressions are fluid, charged, and sometimes contradictory. Memes and hashtags are an increasingly important element of dynamic conversation today. We might be readier to appreciate the context of why statues went up now than we were just a few decades ago. 

Keep in mind that much of what damns the Confederate statues is the timing of their installation and dedication. 

Keep in mind, also, that there is tremendous disjointure of time between the deed, the statue, and today. There are many moral contexts in which these statues are set (three really). Allowing them to remain is a moral statement. When they went up is a moral statement. And those moral statements might matter more than the deeds and the time in which they occurred. 

***

I began this post with a photo of Philadelphia's least controversial statue, the Rocky statue at the steps of the Art Museum. Most would consider it quite benign today, and I think that's appropriate. However, it was erected in the early 1980s memorializing a film character made famous in 1976. One can do a little digging to learn that contemporary critics of the film Rocky found quite an edgy racist undercurrent to the film. It's an interpretation that in the context of mid-1970s America carries quite a bit of validity. But the validity of the argument is undermined by each sequel of the franchise. It's hard now to see the Rocky franchise as a racial statement today. Perhaps it's possible for a statue to become less controversial over time. 

Or maybe that's just in Hollywood.  

One More (Thing) Day

One more day I'd like to briefly consider . . . the first Tuesday following the first Monday of November. This year it's November 3. Every other year it's a day for federal elections. 

And it should be a national holiday. 

I bring this up with the spirit of Juneteenth in mind. Juneteenth reminds us of the messy, halting progress we've made on matters of racial justice in our nation. Suffrage rights for black Americans were another delayed promise: granted in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, but not really delivered until the 1960s. And still informal barriers prevent many Americans from voting. 

Let's get closer to doing this right. 

Making the day on which we have federal elections every other year a holiday every year will remove at least one significant barrier for many Americans who wish to vote but don't. And for those who are already civically engaged, let the extra day away from work be a day of community service, perhaps working at the polls. Or knock doors for a candidate. Or blog about the political issues on one's mind on election day. 

Let's be a little less imperfect about honoring the greatest right of citizenship, the right to vote. 

Juneteenth (one day late)

As a student of history I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I didn't know the significance of June 19 until this year. For the first time ever I displayed a flag in recognition of this holiday. The photo above shows the 35-star banner the represented our nation at the end of the Civil War. It's under that flag that federal officials proclaimed freedom to the freedmen of Texas. Amen. Certainly a day worth celebrating every year. 

Dates can be messy things in history. And marking the end of slavery involves one of the messiest examples of pinning a date to mark the end or beginning of an institution. My Gmail address includes the date I most often associate with the end of slavery, January 1, 1863. That was the date on which the Emancipation Proclamation took effect (more on that in a few moments). Others might go to the previous September when, on the 22nd of that month, President Lincoln first promulgated the policy decision. Or, one could go to the previous month: it was during a cabinet meeting in August 1862 that Lincoln shared his desire to announce an end to slavery in the rebellious portions of the country. 

Dates like those put emphasis on policy makers as the shapers of events. If one wants to take a perspective that's looks at the role of common people in moving great change, then look to the summer of 1861 when runaway slaves prompted an obnoxious Union general named Benjamin Butler into hiring contraband. 

Or maybe we should look at the masses who make the tearing down of great institutions possible. Was the end of slavery the day of Lincoln's House Divided speech, when political sentiment suggested to a political leader that the time to resolve the issue of slavery was nigh. Or perhaps we could go to the previous decade when Congress split over sectional rather than partisan lines over the consideration of the Wilmot Proviso. 

Institutions collapse messily and spectacularly. That was certainly the case with slavery. And I chuckle at the irony that the Emancipation Proclamation didn't technically free a single slave, but that it ended slavery. And in reality, the Thirteenth Amendment freed those slaves in Texas on June 19 (but that Amendment wasn't ratified until six months later). A somewhat amusing irony, but appropriate for an act made possible and necessary by a war that fought between two countries one of which, technically, never was a country. 

Of course there are the tragic ironies in this story as well: the redemption of white supremacist governments and the imposition of Jim Crow Laws, the long-delayed delivery of voting rights, the persisting economic inequalities . . . All the more reason for the nation to take seriously a holiday that too many of us ignored for too long. After all, June 19 is a great way for an imperfect nation to celebrate a decisive step it took toward correcting an injustice, a sin with which this nation was born and by which we still suffer. 

A Long Run Observation

When thinking of spans of time, I've often thought of 22 years as being the rough timeframe of a generation. Fashions, styles, intellectual trends, political movements, businesses: if any of these things survive a 22-year span, it's somewhat remarkable. 

The commingled protests regarding excessive police violence and the prominence of discussion about whether or not athletes might take a knee during the national anthem (when sports return) remind me of how important things can shift over a generation. A few years ago, the dialogue, or lack thereof, regarding black lives matter and protesting during the playing of the national anthem ended abruptly and with something of a shout down. The athletes who knelt were labeled as un-patriotic and anti-military. Black Lives Matter was radicalized: a dangerous group rather than a statement. Anti-police, too. In 2020 there seems to be a pendulum swinging back, or a middle ground being forged. At the very least, protesting excessive police violence or protesting during the anthem is becoming normalized. At the very least, it won't cost some "son of a bitch" his job this fall. 

What to make of this? 

Nearly one generation ago, we were attacked on September 11. First responders, among them many police, were the heroes of that moment. And our response to the terrorists who plotted that attack was to send an all-volunteer military to war against that terror. A longer, cultural response was honoring the sacrifice that first responders make. Also, there was a significantly serious attempt to acknowledge the sacrifice of our soldiers which, in many ways, was righting a historical wrong from how soldiers during the Vietnam War Era were castigated. 

And now the tide is turning. Police and the flag, which became commingled in 2016 with the Armed Forces, aren't being venerated the way they have been in this past generation. And this is worth noting. 

I remain optimistic a cultural compromise can be forged. Veterans deserve our gratitude. Police deserve our respect, and the acknowledgement that most are effective, brave, and ethical in their work. A compromise that lands in a middle ground between acknowlegement of their bravery and sacrifice and an acknowledgement of the systemic structures that victimize people of color will do us a lot of good. 

Otherwise we'll see a generational shift that undoes the good that "thank you for your service" and the many tributes offered police have done for this past generation. 

Another [Platform] Bites the Dust

About a week after deleting Facebook, I ended my quicker and hotter relationship with Twitter. Let me modify that a bit. I deleted the app from my phone. As long as I don't delete the accounts, it's just a click of the mouse away from where I'm writing now. If I were made of sterner stuff, I would've deleted the accounts outright. As for now, though, I guess I'm hedging my bets that I'll want to be back for the thrill of following sports reporters during Eagles season. Or the chuckles I get from "You Had One Job." Or the geeky thrill of "Map Porn." 

In my time on Twitter I gained an appreciation for the wit geography nerds share via Twitter. Oh, and Merriam-Webster offered some good stuff too. 

Perhaps my revulsion at what social media is doing should be focused more precisely. I should just unfollow the accounts causing the problems. 

---

In the last few weeks I had gotten in the habit of checking my Twitter feeds first thing to see the daily you-may-have-missed-it-feature from two journalists I really enjoy: Kai Ryssdal and Maggie Haberman. No problem there. But then I would find several times a day I would get into angry scrolling, and as I came across news stories and reactions I kept getting madder and madder. 

I knew it was time to at least take a break when the unemployment numbers came out yesterday. As you may have heard, the unemployment rate surprisingly dropped. Immediately Twitter was aflame with knee-jerk reactions that were poorly informed both left and right. 

This guarantees Trump reelection. 

The BLS must have juked the stats. 

And I immediately started my rage scrolling over that, overlooking the fundamentals I teach my students in Macro about economic metrics like this. 

They're essential but flawed. 

Tracking the unemployed population is a little bit like a observing a physicians office waiting room. 

Unemployment always understates the true nature of joblessness, and the CPI always overstates the true nature of prices. 

Percentages are deceiving. 

---

The nation's newspapers are dying but that's where I need to retreat. I've been home now for about three months and I'm getting restless. It hurts to pull the plug on a couple of platforms that I've leaned on heavily the past decade. Regarding Twitter, I didn't like what I saw I had become yesterday, an adult who overlooks the wisdom of what he teaches to reach for his partisan jersey at the first sign of trouble. 

I guess it's back to finding out the news the old-fashioned way. 

Courage and Grace

This ugly and rancorous moment in our nation's history is pushing me to call to mind a moment from earlier in my career. The story I'm about to tell you took place more than a decade ago, in a school different than where I work now. I mark the moment as one of my great failures as an adult, but it humbled me and taught me a great deal. And it is a moment that allowed me to better understand courage and grace. 

I regularly ate lunch at that time with a small group of teachers, and one of them was a friend who happened to be black. He was one of a very small number (perhaps five) of black teachers in my district, a district that had a teaching workforce of around 1,200 people. My friend was older than me by more than a decade, a father and husband. A veteran teacher. One of the funniest people I ever met. And one of the most talented teachers I've ever known.

I learned a lot from him. 

He would occasionally call my attention to problems that a black man might lurking in the blind spot of a white man like me. His sense of humor was such that I often would laugh at his observations, but occasionally catch myself awkwardly realizing that what sounded humorous was also a very pointed observation at inequality. Perhaps the moment that best captures that sense for me was when he commented that he "always drives the speed limit" in that Township. 

He wasn't talking about speeding. 

Let me get to the difficult part. 

One time we had a police officer from a local department visit our school. The officer was white. He was presenting to our students on a very important topic. He joined us for lunch after the presentation.The lunch was going well until, for reasons I'll never understand, the officer shared with us a racial joke. Why would a white guest tell a racist joke in the presence of a black man? I'll never quite know. He may have mistook the joke as something that was racial but not racist (if that's even a thing). But as the room silenced, he knew he had done something quite wrong, and he flubbered an explanation and apology as he painfully tried to pull back in the words he had said. 

I didn't know how to react. So I turned to the teacher next to me and painfully tried to change the subject. It was my most cowardly moment as a grown up. 

I was younger then, and not as experienced in how to traverse difficult topics. I wasn't too young to know wrong from right. I remain embarrassed at how small I came up in that moment. 

My friend reported the incident to our principal. The principal immediately confirmed the details of the incident with me (the only thing I did right in this situation). The next day the officer was in our school, conferring with my friend. Apologizing. Listening. 

Later on that next day I apologized to my friend. He told me he understood. He told me he knew how uncomfortable the moment had made everyone. He said that he had come to understand body language and mood well, and knew immediately how awful me and the other teachers felt. 

His forgiveness of me was one of the most gracious things I've ever seen someone do. He remained my friend. When he learned I was leaving our school, he shared with me what he admired about me, and why it pained him to see me leave. He and I almost cried that day. 

---

My friend died several years ago, succumbing to a vicious cancer. He kept the severity of his illness close to his chest. I saw him last about three months before he died.  His first comment to me that night was on the weight I had lost, and he wanted to make sure I was losing it for good reasons. I had no idea how the cancer was ravaging his body at that point. 

Did I mention that my friend was a band director? No. He was. And that exchange about my weight occurred the evening he directed his final concert. 

---

I am now the age my friend was the day that venomous joke was uttered in our lunch room. Like my friend was then, I'm a father now. I've been teaching about as long now as my friend had been then. Like my friend I am well respected and established in the eyes of colleagues and students. I'm not as beloved, though (who could be?). 

What humbles me now in these days of outrage in our nation is that I know no one would ever come into my lunch room and utter a joke that dehumanizes me. I know that if I get pulled over for speeding in that township, it's because I was speeding. I know that I'll never have the serious discussion with my son about what to do when one gets stopped by x that I'm sure my friend had with his sons. I learned a lot from my friend about what protections my race and status provide to me. And I better learned not to take it for granted. 

My friend used to remind us in the lunchroom that our worst days in our school are better than so many teachers' best days in their own schools. Admitting this is a mark of courage. And grace. 

--- 

In these fractured times, one can infer that I'm maligning police by sharing with you this story. If you think that's the case, you and I should talk some more (there's a comments feature here). It's possible to look at the moment I described here and know that behavior and character aren't the same thing. One mistake or misdeed doesn't make one evil. And one regrettable comment by an individual doesn't represent or reflect the group of which they're a part. People make mistakes, they're deserving of love and forgiveness. 

My friend understood that and lived it. I miss him.  

The Context for May and June 2020

I stumbled upon this quote by Scott Woods. I find it useful for understanding our times. 

“The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that. Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people’s expense, whether whites know/like it or not. Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a white person who likes Black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you.

"Yes, racism looks like hate, but hate is just one manifestation. Privilege is another. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is another, and so on. So while I agree with people who say no one is born racist, it remains a powerful system that we’re immediately born into. It’s like being born into air: you take it in as soon as you breathe.

"It’s not a cold that you can get over. There is no anti-racist certification class. It’s a set of socioeconomic traps and cultural values that are fired up every time we interact with the world. It is a thing you have to keep scooping out of the boat of your life to keep from drowning in it. I know it’s hard work, but it’s the price you pay for owning everything."

I don't know much about Scott or his politics. His phrasing here, though, is useful for understanding where we find ourselves in America in 2020.