Music and the Arts: A Privilege For a Lifetime

Something that truly bothers me is when someone believes they have no musical talent or that they used to play as a youngster but gave it up. This is sad because everyone can play music. After all, everyone has music pounding away inside of them in the form of a rhythmically beating heart. That is a solid start and a firm foundation upon which to build. It’s a great reason for people who have never played an instrument, or who, played as a youngster but stopped, to start or restart, playing.  

“Why not?” I suggest. “Fifteen minutes a day and before you know it, you find yourself improving.”

It also bothers me when people say they are too old to begin to learn to play music. 

“What do you mean, too old? You can play music until your last day on this earth.  So why not?” You will be able to enjoy it for a long time.”

It’s also absolutely irrelevant how you “stack up” against other musicians. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is whether you enjoy it.

I’ve always wanted to draw and paint but never made a real effort to learn how. So heeding my own advice, I began taking drawing and painting lessons.

It has been wonderful! Not only has it been loads of fun, but I have learned so much about the creative arts and lifelong learning. I also find myself looking at everything, from flowers, to food, to landscapes and faces, differently – considering colors, composition and perspective and wondering how to go about painting them.

Taking up painting has also reaffirmed that, like music, where you can interpret songs any way you please, in art, it’s okay to “color outside the lines”. That is the greatest lesson of the arts: that you can color outside the lines without penalty. It’s a safe place to test boundaries and explore the unconventional. The fact is, creativity can be taught and learned. But first, it has to be encouraged. The arts are a potent vehicle to encourage such creative, bold and fearless thinking. Mistakes can be embraced, modified and turned into something positive.  For example, as a stream of paint slithered down my canvas, where I saw a “mistake”, my instructor saw an “opportunity”. “Don’t worry about it”, she said, “Embrace it, own it, work off it and use it to your advantage.”

It’s also confirmed my belief that it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks of your art as long as you derive pleasure from it. That requires the boldness and courage to put yourself “out there”. I agreed to be a part of an “emerging artists” exhibit, where my work will be shown in a public gallery. This prompted a friend to ask, “How can you do that? You’ve only been painting for a few months?”    

But why not? Who’s to judge whether your art or music is any better or worse than anyone else’s? As long as you enjoy the process, what does it matter?

But the greatest lesson I have learned and come to appreciate is that, like music, painting or drawing or being involved in other creative arts such as theater, is that these are things that you can do for the rest of your life.

The creative arts provide the opportunity and indeed, privilege, of being able to participate, learn from and enjoy it forever. You never have to “retire” from the arts. Unlike other activities, such as sports or sometimes, your career, the decision to “retire” is often not left to you.

I love the game of basketball and after my competitive career ended continued to play pick up games until age fifty. It was a very sad day to arrive at the inevitable conclusion that my body would simply no longer allow me to continue to play. “Retirement” from the creative arts is optional.  You can do it whenever you want and on your own terms. 

And, like a fine wine, you get better at the creative arts the older and more experience you get. Experience builds confidence and courage to continue to challenge yourself to create and put yourself “out there”. It keeps you vibrant and engaged.

One of the most fundamental responsibilities of our schools and education system is to instill in students a love of, curiosity for and mindset to embrace lifelong learning. That is why it is so important that our schools and communities invest in music and the arts.  But it’s just as important to provide exposure to activities that can be practiced for a lifetime. And the institution through which we as a society can provide such opportunities and privilege is through our educational system

Being exposed to and participating in the arts is vitally important as a vehicle to teach creativity, build confidence and instill characteristics such as discipline and personal responsibility. And as such, everyone can and should enjoy that opportunity and privilege…for a lifetime.

Football Derangement Syndrome: Article One

Given that we are getting ready to slide into football’s peak Season of Insanity that is the two week period prior to the Super Bowl, here’s an item that exemplifies just how severe our nation’s Football Derangement Syndrome has become. 

As reported by Cassandra Negley of Yahoo Sports (December 18, 2018), the Permian Basin Youth Football League requires that each player from ages 4 – 12 sign a letter of intent to show their commitment to a youth team in the league.  It even includes public “signing ceremonies” like those for high school players signing to play in college.

Negley adds this quote from league president Matt Lawdermilk:

“The 4 year-olds play flag. They can’t sign their name so they just scribble.”

Lawdermilk justifies the practice to deter coaches from recruiting players already on a team.

Illegally recruiting four year-olds?

Seriously? It would be funny if it wasn’t so sick.

A clear case of Football Derangement Syndrome. And we’ve got it bad!

Six Questions for Local School Board Members

Whether a superintendent, principal or school board member, to say that you operate in a challenging educational environment is an understatement. In an increasingly complex world, expectations for providing students an education worthy of the 21st Century are rising. As is public skepticism regarding the effectiveness of schools in delivering that education. As if those challenges are not enough, the resources available to achieve that goal are declining.

In such an environment, education leaders will increasingly be challenged to examine how to invest resources in the most effective and efficient way. While many policy and funding priorities are driven by federal and state mandates, there is an area where local officials have ample authority to establish program and funding priorities: extracurricular activities.

Some maintain that decisions around sports and the arts are not nearly as important as those relating to core subjects or standardized testing issues. However, the priorities demonstrated through extracurricular spending have an outsized community influence. While a relatively small percentage of the overall school budget, they are highly visible activities that the community experiences directly through games and events. The fact is, what education leaders choose to emphasize and invest in speaks volumes as what they choose to identify as “important” greatly influences school and community values and culture. It is a complex relationship with no easy answers, particularly as it relates to the elephant in the room: tackle football.

Challenging the role of tackle football in our schools is the “third rail” of education reform. Regardless, we expect our education leaders to take on the tough challenges. That is what leadership is about. The days are over where boards continue to establish educational policy and funding priorities simply because we have always done it a certain way. The stakes are too high and the world is changing too rapidly.

My purpose is not to attack or destroy tackle football, but rather to encourage education leaders to consider its role in our schools in our rapidly changing world. It is a world that is galaxies removed from industrial America of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s when football was formally incorporated into the fabric of our educational institutions. We live in an information-based, interconnected global economy and world community, where many of the jobs our students will have in the future do not even exist yet. It is a world economy where the most important currency of the future will be creativity.

But not only is the world around us changing rapidly, the world of tackle football is facing seismic shifts, much of it driven by its’ impact on brain health. Evidence of tackle football’s link to brain trauma continues to grow. This mounting evidence begs the question. What is the fundamental role of our educational institutions: to build and strengthen brains or to scramble them? 

There is also the culture of tackle football. Many schools invest a tremendous amount of time, effort, energy, emotion and resources in tackle football. As a result, its influence on the academic values and educational culture of the school is enormous. But it is a violent, often sexist, win-at-all-cost culture with strong undercurrents of anti-intellectualism.  The question is whether the culture of football is compatible with the academic culture and values of an educational institution.

As mentioned, board members and education and community leaders are operating in an exceedingly challenging environment. As a result, it is critical that they engage in open, honest, data driven analysis of whether tackle football is an activity that continues to deserve the enormous amount of time, effort, energy, emotion and resources that have traditionally been heaped upon it. In short, the question is whether tackle football remains a wise and effective educational investment.

To that end, following are six fundamental questions that boards should discuss,  research and act upon as it relates to this challenge.

1 . Tackle football was incorporated into the educational system in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s as a tool to provide students the skills to succeed in the industrial economy of that time.  Should the fact that our industrial economy has given way to a creative, information based, world economy and community that requires a different set of workplace skills, be considered in funding decisions related to football?

2 .  Have the potential human costs to students’ health associated with football participation become too great for an educational institution to assume? 

3 . One of the most fundamental responsibilities of our school system is not only to instill in young people a love of lifelong learning, but also the tools to allow them to continue to learn over their lifetimes. An overwhelming majority of football players will never play the game after high school. Are there better extracurricular activities, for example music, which can be practiced for a lifetime, in which to invest to achieve this purpose?

4 . From a public health perspective, should interscholastic sports programs serve a relatively small portion of the student body largely for public entertainment (Current US Model)?  Or, should school sports and wellness programs be structured  to provide broad based activities that can be practiced by all students for a lifetime (European Model)?    

5 . How do you know what your primary institutional constituents’ opinions are regarding the fit of tackle football in your school and community? Or, do you simply assume you know how supportive (or not) your community is of football and its costs? Perhaps some surveying of the community could provide valuable input?

6. Why not Flag Football?  See: https://www.johngerdy.com/blog-overview/why-not-flag-football

At the end of the day, the primary responsibility of board members and education leaders is to evaluate and prioritize school and academic priorities and programming. While the emotions around this issue will be strong and the dialogue generated by the discussion of these questions will be heated, that fact is, the world is changing too rapidly to continue to sponsor activities that no longer yield an adequate return on educational dollars invested in them. 

Tiny Tim: An American Musical Visionary

If you are over 50, you surely remember him. How could you not? Certainly you remember his signature song: “Tip Toe Through the Tulips”.

Yes, we’re talking about Tiny Tim, that tall, long, stringy haired, goofy looking dude playing the ukulele and singing in that quivering, falsetto voice.  He was silly, campy and probably did more for ensuring that the ukulele would become one of the more derided instruments of the past half-century. 

But what goes ‘round, comes ‘round because the ukulele is back! And it’s hot! Ukulele music festivals are popping up all over the country.  Even Eddie Vedder recorded an entire album of ukulele songs and won a Grammy for it. Over 1.7 million ukes were sold in 2017, up from 500,000 in 2009.  

 Tiny Tim, as it turns out, was an American musical visionary.

The ukulele originated in Europe and was introduced to Hawaii in 1879 when a Portuguese immigrant named Joao Fernandez jumped off a boat and started singing and strumming his Branguinha. Legend has it that the Hawaiians were so impressed with his playing that they called the instrument “ukulele” which translates to “jumping flea.” The instrument quickly captured the imagination of the islands to where the reigning monarch Kalakaua learned how to play it. By the 1920’s Sears Roebuck catalogues offered ukes for a couple of dollars. Big name performers such as Bing Crosby, Betty Grable and Elvis Pressley incorporated the uke into their acts. 

But by the 1950’s rock-n-roll was sweeping the country and the tinny, toy-like uke was swamped by kids who fell in love with the electric guitar. 

Tiny Tim, however, kept playing it, appearing on television shows like Ed Sullivan. But the image of Tiny Tim and the toy-like ukulele was no match for the electric guitar driven act like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Rolling Stones and Chuck Berry.  

Beginning in the 1980’s some rock stars such as Paul McCartney began to play it. McCartney was influenced by George Harrison who was a devotee of the instrument. And slowly, the ukulele began to make a comeback, despite the fact the most common image of the instrument was still associated with Tiny Tim.  For a wonderful account of the uke’s history and evolution, (and the main source of the research for this paper), check out “The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Ukulele” by Marion Jacobson in January 24, 2015 edition of The Atlantic. 

Clearly, there is a major ukulele uprising taking place in the US, not only as evidenced by the exploding sales numbers, but I have been exposed to the rise (again) of the uke through my work with Music For Everyone. Other than my memories of Tiny Tim, I had no idea of the resurgence of the uke until a few years ago when we began receiving requests from schools to provide them with the instruments to start school based uke programs. MFE, through its annual instrument grant program, has been awarding grants to schools in Lancaster County, PA since 2007. 

Over the first six years of the grant program, we did not receive one request from a school to provide them with a batch of ukes. But in 2012 we began to notice the beginning of a trend, where we would receive at least two and sometimes three requests from schools to provide them with 20 – 25 ukuleles to start a program. I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical but in conversations with teachers it became quite clear that the ukulele may very well be the introductory instrument of the future for young children. The more I found out about it and began to experiment with one myself, it became very apparent. 

First, it is small for small hands. Kids have trouble with larger instruments like a full sized guitar, saxophone or viola. Many instruments are simply too big and bulky for young children. Second is that you can begin playing songs on a uke almost immediately as there are only four strings and you can form and play many chords by playing (fingering) only one string.  The faster you can get children to feel that they are producing real music not only by themselves, but to be able to play music with other players, the better. The more excited they will get about playing music.  The uke is excellent for achieve that goal. 

Don’t believe me? Think back to those recorders or the screeching sounds that a beginner saxophonist or violinist produce when learning the instrument. Immediate, positive gratification and connection to the instrument, the music and fellow players is key in sparking a child’s interest in continuing to play music. This is why teachers love them as an introductory instrument. 

And they are inexpensive. While you can spend over $500 for a high-end model a decent uke for beginners costs around $100. Other than a choral group or a percussion ensemble, the cost of providing 20 – 25 instruments to start a full string program or brass ensemble is prohibitive, particularly in these days of tightening budgets for music and art programs. 

And not only are we receiving requests from schools for ukes, we are also beginning to receive them from community recreation programs and senior centers to start groups for senior. To get a sense of their potential impact on seniors, check out this recently released Music For Everyone video: 

https://youtu.be/9eVUrChexLI

The segment on our Ukulele Uprising begins at the 1.50 mark. 

Finally, there is the sheer fun of it as Jake Shimabukuro explains, “There’s something about the ukulele that just makes you smile. It makes you let your guard down. It brings out the child in all of us.” 

And in these times, we can all benefit from embracing our inner child. 

So, long live the uke!  The instrument of the future. And, as we all tip toe through the tulips, we should pay our respects to Tiny Tim, an American Musical Visionary. 

Nonprofit Leadership Tips from the Basketball Court

This essay appeared in the September 22, 2018 edition of Blue Avocado.

As a former all-American and professional basketball player turned nonprofit leader, I see tons of similarities between life on the court and as an executive director of a small nonprofit. Everything I learned playing the game comes in surprisingly handy, especially the importance of both defining and continuously revisiting roles and responsibilities, trusting teammates, and striving to break records.

Are Roles and Responsibilities Clear?

On the basketball court, coaches spend an enormous amount of time outlining players’ roles in an effort to maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses, both of which are key to winning. For example, I was a good scorer, while other teammates were incredible defenders.

Defining the roles and responsibilities of your staff, volunteers, interns, and board members is perhaps the central challenge of nonprofit leadership. Articulating and defining roles is critical because nonprofits rely so heavily on volunteers.

This is particularly important when it comes to identifying and recruiting board members. Just like a basketball team, an effective board must be well balanced with members who possess a varied assortment of talents and expertise. Simply being passionate about the mission doesn’t qualify someone for board service, although of course it’s an important pre-requisite. Most importantly, you need to ensure clarity around the specific skills and contacts candidates offer, and how these overlap with current or future needs. Make sure to clearly articulate new member’s responsibilities and how they relate to the needs identified.

For smaller or start up organizations with minimal or no staff, developing a working board where members understand their specific roles and how those align with the organization’s needs is essential.

For example, in 2009 my music-focused nonprofit implemented Keys for the City, a program that placed painted pianos throughout the streets of Lancaster. We needed a well-connected visual artist to coordinate the design and painting aspects of the program. So we recruited one and clearly outlined her responsibilities around identifying and securing artists. Almost ten years later we can proudly claim Lancaster PA as the “Street Piano Capital of the World.”

Is Your Team Evolving?

On the basketball court, team chemistry and individual roles evolved over the course of the season due to injuries and constant adjustments in style of play. Nonprofits, like any team, must adapt as new opportunities, challenges, and issues arise. A lynchpin to ensuring this is constantly revisiting roles and responsibilities.

For example, we are in the process of finding a new board member to serve as our treasurer. The board member currently in that role conceived a program to catalogue and repair every single instrument at every public school in the county. It’s a big, detailed, expensive, and operationally challenging program, but also a huge opportunity for us. We’ve been communicating throughout regarding him eventually relinquishing his duties as treasurer to tap his skills to build and execute what will become a major program, and we’re excited to finally be ready to make that transition.

Trust Your Teammates

Once roles and responsibilities are established—or re-established over time—the real challenge begins: trusting your team to carry them out.

In my former basketball life, my most important role was scoring points. But to do that, I had to trust my teammates to help me get open and deliver the ball to me at the right time and place.

Trusting teammates to do their job is especially important if you lead a small nonprofit. In the case of my nonprofit, we started with a volunteer staff of one—me. Since 2006, we’ve grown to a point where we invested over $1.6 million in grants, scholarships, and general support for school and community music programs. With no full-time paid staff until 2016, we have been successful because we have a working board and volunteers who understand and execute their roles and responsibilities.

In short, whether on the basketball court or in a small nonprofit, all of that strategic recruitment and role defining is of little use if those people are not allowed to do the jobs for which they’re recruited. Without trust, the ability to grow your organization and increase community impact will be severely limited.

Or, in the words of the aforementioned treasurer turned instrument repair guru, “You identify ‘doers,’ tell them what to do, and let them do it.”

Are You Striving to Break Records?

At Davidson College, I held the school career scoring record for 30 years, until Steph Curry came along. Records are wonderful, but they’re made to be broken, whether in sports or in your nonprofit.

As a founder, I’m still working on letting our “doers do their thing.”  But we’re making progress as evidenced in our evolution and growing impact. One of our signature initiatives is an annual instrument grant program. This year, we awarded over $112,000 to 51 different schools and community arts groups to purchase instruments, breaking our previous 2017 record. That’s the kind of record we’d love to keep breaking!

When you set a new record, take the time to celebrate it, but soon after, set a new target that exceeds your old record, and put a plan in place to reach it. Where are you motivating your staff to exceed their previous successes?

Some have said, “If you play life as a game, you’ll always win.” While the work of nonprofits is no game, there are many lessons we can learn from them. In my personal experience playing basketball, the most relevant and applicable lessons I learned on the court and now think about daily in my new career as an executive director center around defining and continuously revisiting roles and responsibilities, trusting teammates, and striving to break records. Now that I’ve shared my playbook, I hope you find these helpful, too!