I’ve recently fallen in love with Debbie Millman’s podcast, Design Matters. Debbie—whose story is fascinating in its own right—masterfully interviews designers and other creative professionals about where they are now and how they got there. In a recent episode, Terry Teachout explains how, growing up in a small town, commercial television was instrumental in introducing him to the arts:
[Debbie Millman asks Terry Reachout how he was exposed to the arts growing up, given there was only one movie theater in his town, and it only played old movies.]
Reachout: Well, the factor that you left out of this account is network television …
Millman: …there were only three channels back then.
Reachout: That’s right. And they all felt, or were required to feel by the FCC, that they had a responsibility to present various kinds of arts programming. So I saw Vladimir Horowitz on CBS, not on some sort of public station. I saw George Balanchine’s choregoraphy on the Ed Sullivan show, not on Dance in America. It was through the medium of commercial television that I discovered the larger world of art.
My introduction to Jazz music happened, as these things often do, by a lucky accident: a friend gave me Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue. I listened to it, fell in love, and then did what I always do first when I want to learn about something. I turned to the internet. I looked up the other musicians on the album and explored their biographies and works through Wikipedia, blogs, forums—whatever I could get my hands on. Like Teachout, local access to the arts—namely Jazz in my case—was limited at first. I was lucky to have great private teachers from the beginning, but it was the internet that appeased my insatiable, somewhat obsessive curiosity about the rich history of the music.
As the arts become more marginalized in our schools and culture at large, we have a responsibility to adapt and find new ways to reach people. We have more access to information and media than ever before thanks to the internet, but this abundance makes it difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. This is where mentoring—an essential part of the way Jazz has been passed on since the very beginning—comes in. If my teacher hadn’t told me to check out Relaxin’, Workin’, Cookin’, and Steamin’ by the first Miles Davis quintet in our first lesson, and given me a copy of Ahmad Jamal’s Cross-Country Tour in our second, I probably wouldn’t be the same musician I am today.
Commercial television is not going to do for us and for our children what it did for Terry Teachout. There is no replacement for in-person experience and one on one work with a qualified teacher for learning any skill, but when it comes to the arts, I believe the internet can do a lot more. As a tech savvy kid, I was able to glean what I needed to grow as a Jazz listener and player, but the internet has evolved a lot in the past fifteen years and it’s time for us to catch up and use it to make the arts accessible and cool again. We can use the internet to make up for our shrinking local markets and diminished funding for art programs. Some have already started: Jazz at Lincoln Center, Smalls Jazz Club, and NPR Music offer live video streams of performances, and services like Spotify and Rdio offer huge music libraries for next to nothing.
That most Jazz musicians’ website look dated undoubtedly contributes to the perception that Jazz itself is dated and stale. I’m sure we’re facing similar challenges in film, theater, and the fine arts. Most artists don’t have the time or the interest to improve their presentation on the internet. As artists, we need to be willing to invest in ourselves and get professional help. As web professionals, we need to develop better, affordable ways for artists to reach their audience.
People are hungry for content that’s more meaningful and challenging than reality television and commercial radio. Let’s find better ways to give it to them.