It’s spring concert season at your local public school, and if you want to have your spirits lifted, your hope renewed, and see the promise of democracy in action, go.
This happens even—or perhaps especially—at that oft-feared and much-dreaded institution: the big urban public high school. Or, in the case of the concert we attended, a combined (7-12) middle and high school in a nearly century-old brick building bursting at its seams with thousands of students.
With so many students in the school, nearly 1,000 participate in one of the two “music nights” held each spring. There are concert bands, show bands and jazz bands; show choirs, gospel choirs and a capella groups; female choirs, male choirs and string orchestras.
There are 7th graders who’ve been playing their instruments for less than eight months. There are seniors who’ve been singing in public since they were five years old. And as they take the stage, and their parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters and classmates listen attentively (for the most part)…they make music.
Wonderful music. Glorious music. Sacred songs sung in languages living and dead. Popular music from the 21st, and 20th (and 19th, and 18th, and 17th, and 16th and 15th) century. Classical music from Russia, Germany, France, England and Italy… and from New Orleans, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago and New York.
The younger instrumentalists play simpler pieces, with great concentration and great gusto. As the night goes on and the performers get older, the music gets more challenging and complex. Negro spirituals sung with the precision and power of the 19th century Fisk Jubilee Singers. Jazz songs that swing with the polyrhythmic assertiveness and assurance of mid-20th century bebop bands. Orchestral compositions performed with passion and nuance.
More girls sing than boys, so a few years ago the choral director formed an all-female choir for some of the high school students. Over 100 young woman fill the stage and sing with a piercing beauty—from tones barely above a hushed whisper to full-throated chords that seem to rustle the dusty old curtains.
One reason boys don’t sing is right around 8th grade their voices change. A note they could reach easily yesterday is out of reach today. They try to hit a note and instead slide up and down, desperately trying to shape their changing vocal chords into a position that will hold a tone. What to do?
The new choral teacher has formed an all-male choir…of 8th grade boys. The 15 of them are the smallest performing group to take the stage that night in the expansive, high-ceilinged, acoustically challenging auditorium. And they sing beautifully. Not perfectly, but beautifully. And now that’s 15 more young men who know what it feels like to stand tall in front of hundreds of people, open their mouths and change how every one of those people feels.
The final string orchestra—made up of seniors and the most musically talented juniors—always provides special moments. For one, it is stunning to hear the progression from the novices they were in 7th grade. Five years ago, they still were learning about eighth notes. Now they’re playing one of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos—3 parts each for violins and violas, and 2 apiece for cellos and basses. It’s a piece written for a small chamber orchestra, such as would play for a king and his guests after dinner.
These teenagers, drawn from different backgrounds and circumstances, play with a grace and delicacy and beauty that would please any 18th century European monarch…while also filling the hall with a power and energy and sound that is, in its own way, utterly subversive of the culture of monarchy.
And that is as it should be in a democracy, in a public school. The arts—all arts, high and low, visual and performing—are the birthright of every citizen: to hear, to watch, to perform, to create.
Some older Americans view the generation coming of age in the 21st century with great fear and trembling. So many of them have dark(er) skin, speak different languages, use different slang, listen to different music.
At a public school concert almost anywhere in America today (yes, even in your town), those same children sing and play and perform not just the songs of their generation, but the songs that connect one generation to another, stretching back over hundreds of years and thousands of miles, dozens of languages and a multitude of differences.
They get up on stage, and in what they sing and play, and in what we hear, and then in the hushed moments of silence after an achingly beautiful melody, and the rapturous, raucous applause after the stunning climax of a song, the beautiful bonds that unite us as human beings, and the common culture we share in and create as citizens of a participatory democracy are strengthened and renewed once again.
The kids are all right.
