Useful Musicology

Today I walked into my regular coffee shop and to my surprise they were blasting Viennese classical music instead of their usual fair of indie rock and downtempo electronic dance music. When I enthusiastically identified the composer for the second time in a row (first Haydn, then Mozart), the gentleman behind the counter said, "well, isn't that what you are paid for?" Baristas like bartenders sometimes exude so much wisdom. Needle-drop tests aren't necessarily part of our job description (although that skill certainly helped me win my first job offer out of college), but it is what gets us the big money in copyright cases. For many outsiders, our ability to identify music determines our minimum value.

But I do have a larger point. Many of you have probably read Stanley Fish's latest column about the "value" of the humanities. (If not, go read it now.) As one of the most public intellectuals in the humanities, he says many things that make me feel validated about my existence. Or maybe not. There are many of us in the humanities and cultural studies who take great pains to argue for the relevance and utility of our field of study. I myself was once confronted with that very question on a first date. (At the time I admired that boldness of the question.)

But in those late nights when I consider the worst-case-scenario, or when I accept money-making musicology gigs outside of academia, I wonder about the utility of my field of study. What will I do if I can't fulfill my ambition to be a real live professional musicologist, not just someone who plays one on TV or the blogosphere? (I'm not sure that dead-pan humor works on blogs, but I try.) Sure, this gloomy topic might have something to do with some rather looming fellowship deadlines where I have the unpleasant task of arguing for the relevance of my dissertation topic. Or perhaps my dreary emotional state is just a symptom of Winter quarter at my institution. (One professor in my department refers to the zeitgeist of Winter and Spring quarters as the "22-week march to the summer.") We spend a lot of time arguing for relevance, and Fish rightly argues that this pursuit is misguided. Humanistic studies rarely produce concrete results.

Yet, some people automatically assume that such utility is just the case. Just a month ago, there was a moment when I was conducting field interviews when someone asked, "What can you as a musicologist do to help? What can your research results do for me?" I improvised an answer, of course, but the question still dogs me. At its root lies a question of ethics that is far more familiar to ethnomusicologists than historical musicologists. (Again, my in-between status is giving me unexpected problems.) Aside from doing our research subject "justice" when contributing to the academic discussion, does our particular brand of work afford us the opportunity to make a meaningful difference? I'm not talking about our immediate fields here (where such changes are assumed as part of intellectual discourse), but the larger "public sphere." Not all hope is lost, of course. Phil has been posting about musicologists in the public eye. And this summer the UC Humanities Research Institute is sponsoring a summer seminar to begin addressing that intersection of humanities, policy, and industry. I certainly hope these events and the ongoing popularity of other events like the Experience Music Project indicate a new possibilities for us to make a difference. But while music scholars are certainly engaging with the "public sphere" in new ways, I still feel ill-equipped to provide answers about the immediate utility and exigency of my research. This is unfortunately what needle-drops, copyright cases, and that exchange in my interview seem to be requesting. Maybe I should follow Stanley Fish's logic and just bask in my own uncertainty. It is a good place to start.

Single-Serving Public Relations

Here's a fly-by-night post from the road:

I love that scene in Fight Club where Edward Norton explains the concept of a single-serving friend in reference to travelling on airplanes. From the perspective of his character (Bob, is it?), every experience on airplanes comes in single-servings including one's social relationships. And he's right. I'm currently stuck in an airport Santiago, Chile on a (::gasp::) 7-hour layover (don't ask) on my way to Rio de Janeiro and I've just finished with 10 hours of non-stop single-serving friendship-building that I liken more to public relations.

This friend was no less than an eager undergraduate off to South America for his first extended stay. He only spoke English (which was a little disappointing since I couldn't practice my Spanish or Portuguese) so free-flowing conversation was inevitable. But the moment when I was forced to pause was when he asked me what exactly it is that I do. For this student, nothing I said made any sense and I found myself faced with a completely different side of the doing-what-you-love / guilty-pleasures discussion that we've been having over here. That is, are we in trouble if we can't explain the merits of what we do to a college-educated citizen?

Giving the simple, "I study music" answer simply does not suffice for a 10-hour plane ride of mostly undivided attention. Nor does a mini-lecture rapidly culled from all of my first-day experiences in front of a room full of undergraduates. The big difference in this situation is that this single-serving audience doesn't start the conversation expecting to hear about musicology. Even more to the point, this person doesn't necessarily care about the humanities or social science perspective (or my feelings, for that matter). For this moment of single-serving public relations, I found myself without the crutches of GE requirements that normally force otherwise passive consumers of culture to listen and participate.

So what do we do when we basically have to defend our field(s) of study to people with very little patience for the academy, especially those non-applied "ologies" that have a very difficult time seeming relevant? Oh, you know you have faced this same quandary. This debate has been raging for years. Most of the time I ignore the starkness of this reality; I continue to study what I love without guilt and pick my methodologies with care all in the pursuit of doing good work and contributing to the academic conversation. I also teach with enthusiasm and hope that I engage as many students as possible. I try my best to forget those uncomfortable conversations with family or old friends who really don't understand how studying what I love could be a career. But these discussions are very much about about public relations and sometimes I wonder if we, as a group, couldn't be doing a better job at it. For example, maybe we should insist that those conversation openers not end with "I study music," but rather begin there. Such brief explanations rarely help.

I don't know. I am trying to not to read too much into one of many similar conversations I've had in the last few months (make that years). Maybe I'm just tired from not sleeping on a long, bumpy flight. Maybe I will take over that couch on the other side of the lounge...