Year 8: Week 7 - The Bridge

We all live in a state of profound isolation. 

No other human being can ever know what it ’s like to be you on the inside. And no amount of reaching out to others can ever make them feel exactly what you feel.

All media of communication are a by-product of our sad inability to communicate directly mind to mind. Sad, of course, because nearly all problems in human history stem from that inability. 

Each medium (the term comes from the Latin word meaning middle) serves as a bridge between minds.

- Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics

Our world is full of different mediums of self-expression, because every medium, including prose, poetry, visual arts, films, science, dance, spoken language, and music all are flawed. None of these mediums of communication completely and perfectly transfers ideas, feelings, and notions. Each one of these mediums are an attempt to address the “inability to communicate directly mind to mind,” the central source, as Scott McCloud writes, of nearly all of our problems.

Hans Christian Anderson wrote, “Where words fails, music speaks.” Because there are things that music can communicate from person to person, that words cannot. However, music is imperfect, and as a medium, it fails as well. Each different way of human expression succeeds where others fail and only by being fluent and literate in the plurality of different mediums can we begin to overcome that inability to communicate mind to mind. It is in this diversity of expression that we find the power make the communities we belong to more just, more equitable, and more inclusive.

At the center of a where music educations should be is the value of citizenship, and the primary tool of citizenship is voice. This isn’t a singular tool that is exercised and expressed through a single medium, like a speech in front of a crowd. At its most effective, and most powerful, voice is encapsulating of all of the mediums of human expression. To rely only on the written word is to struggle against this medium’s imperfections. To embrace the diversity of the different mediums of self-expression is to rise above these imperfections. This makes an individuals’ voice more authentically expressed, and more readily understood.

As important as the ability to authentically express an individual voice, as the prayer of Saint Frances meditates, it just as important “to be understood as to understand.” Only through foundational knowledge in the many facets of human expression can people complete the work of citizenship by pairing the ability to express one’s voice with the skill to understand others in whatever ways they express their thoughts and feelings.

So why am have I started out talking about voice and citizenship? Because this is where I start a as music teacher. Music education in an integral of the human condition. It is interwoven in almost every single culture in human history, and continues be one of the most important and most powerful forms of human expression. Some of the most powerful voices in human history found their voice through music, and some of the most influential members of our American society continue to change the world through music.

Music class  is about more than creating music, it’s about developing music as part of an authentic voice, a means of expression, a way to understand the world, and a way to change the world as a citizen. Music is an essential part of the bridge that connects us together