Indoxination: it’s my new word. Bear with me for a moment.
Traditional music instruction bears much in common with organized religion: the willful perpetuation of grossly imbalanced power structures; the axiomatic infallibility of the revealer of wisdom (and its corollary – the expectation of unquestioning obedience from followers); and of course, the disavowal of any alternatives that may diminish the authority of the institution and its hierophants, whether you’re priest above or acolyte below. In short:
We teach the way we were taught. We are programmed to reject alternatives. We want to exercise the same power and control that was once exercised over us when we were students. Anything else is anathema.
We as music educators are thus indoctrinated and intoxicated, the latter in the archaic sense of being subjected to toxins – in this case poisonous ideas: we are indoxinated. This indoxination prioritizes the act of teaching over the process of learning, because the intention is to prioritize teachers over students. And the situation is so toxic, the power imbalances are so pervasive, that we have started to confuse the simple and basic act of “being nice” with “innovative music making.”
After my last post, Geoff Baker, the prolific writer and researcher on all things related Sistema, sent a link. You can read the article he sent here: it describes in very loose terms an apparently new approach to music education by a woman named Susan Collier based on principles of “play”, “exploration”, and “listening.” The article is heavy on such generalities and gives scant detail on actual pedagogy, but for me the most interested and revealing element was a video of Susan’s son and protégé Jacob Collier “improvising an orchestra.”
I’ve made my opinion on this kind of thing known before: my little rant on the charlatanism of this kind of improv is, for the record, the most reproduced and viewed page on my blog by a very large margin, probably because it resonated so strongly with many open-minded and open-eyed music educators. And this video was déjà-vu all over again, as the saying goes. Collier Jr., clearly a highly trained musician, stands in front of an excellent orchestra and proceeds to micromanage every millisecond of the musicians’ output, stomping them like my proverbial player piano.
But he’s just so nice about it. He appears kind, humble, full of praise, gently asking, even though situationally he is really issuing commands that the musicians are not at liberty to debate or ignore. He is incredibly friendly while dictating every single aspect of what is happening at all times. The musicians have absolutely no agency, simply generating pitches or variants based on his copious instructions and signaling.
Collier Jr. is another exemplar of what I call the smiling tyrant, the latest addition to the music education pantheon. These are the individuals who are charming, polite, friendly, apparently humble and down-to-earth, and yet cede zero authority to the musicians for outcomes. The wolf whose primary operational divergence is the retention of his sheep costume while devouring members of the flock. As for the sheep, such is their habitus of indoxination that they actively denigrate and deprecate any approach that strays from their expected norm of serving as dinner. (Put very plainly: orchestral musicians think less of conductors who don’t boss them around.)
And apparently, being nice, being friendly, being polite is so alien to group music making that it looks like praxial innovation.
Being nice is good. Invoking musician agency is better. You can do both at the same time.
The differences between autocracy and giving agency can be difficult for the indoxinated to appreciate. In my own work as an ensemble director and coach, when demonstrating intellectually/artistically inclusive rehearsal techniques, I am frequently challenged by observers who think that my issuance of any instructions is an infringement on the agency of the students. These individuals are simply missing a crucial difference. I have been granted the authority to run the rehearsal and to manage time: in short, I use my knowledge to streamline process. The critical point to understand is that the musicians have agency where agency actually matters: in the product.
My medium, the western orchestra, is what Bernstein called “exact music.” His use of the word “exact” refers to written music notation. It is an enabling constraint, a limitation that simultaneously confines, defines, and liberates the art and its practice. In the context of exact music there are only so many avenues in which agency is even possible, which makes the exploration of those untraveled streets even more critical. Collier’s “improvisation” is a back alley dead-end, barely worthy of a quick glance before making a u-turn. But let’s also be fair: the “improvisation” is not the product here. Collier is. And he did play, explore, and listen. It’s too bad the orchestra had zero chance to do the same.
The best way to share a teaching technique is to show it, and I have multiple videos online demonstrating my work. But I’ve also taken on the challenge of articulating my methods through the inexactitude of the printed word. I call it C4 Oriented Rehearsing, (or just C4 for short) as it focuses on a sequence of four key “c” words. My experiences, my videos, and research studies show this unequivocally produces better social, artistic, and technical results in a shorter amount of time than conventional methods. The real catch?
It requires relinquishing some of the absolute authority traditionally vested in the podium. Which makes it a threat to those who hold power dear, to those who aspire to power, and to those who find security and comfort in their own disempowerment. All the indoxinated.
Jonathan Andrew Govias 