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The Arts & The Sound of America Transcript

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Brian Cole: This year is a big one for the United States — it marks 250 years as a country! It’s a huge milestone and cause for celebration, for reflection, and hopefully for coming together. But for “The Arts and Everything,” it’s also an opportunity to dive into something defining about America, something that is uniquely us: our music.  

But what is American music? The United States of America is often referred to as the melting pot, and American music is very much the same. Combined with the indigenous native American peoples, this is a nation of immigrants. Throughout history, immigrants came to this land in many different ways, but each brought with them musical gifts that built the cultural foundation on which we stand today. 

With such a vast, varied, and incredibly complex history, how do we capture or define what makes music...American?  We decided to find out.  

Welcome to The Arts & Everything, where we’re diving into "The Arts & The Sound of America." I’m your host, Brian Cole, chancellor of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.  

In today’s episode, we’re going on a bit of a journey. We asked musicians from around the country, from genres spanning classical, rock, indie, soul, roots, gospel, musical theater and more, what American music means to them.  And the answer is as rich and varied as the people behind it.  

You’ll hear from artists including beloved North Carolina singer and bandleader Martha Bassett; singer, songwriter, pianist and frontman Ben Folds; the acclaimed jazz singer and songwriter Madeleine Peyroux; award-winning music director and conductor Mary-Mitchell Campbell; singer, guitarist, and educator Justin Poindexter; indie singer songwriter Eric Slick, who has performed and recorded with Dr. Dog, Taylor Swift and more; Grammy Award-winning violinist Johnny Gandelsman; innovative American roots multi-instrumentalist Rex McGee; and more. 

It’s a journey that both dives into the heart of American music and just skims the surface. Here’s the Sound of America.  

Justin Poindexter: This is Justin Poindexter, guitarist and songwriter. American music to me is built on traditions that are sincere enough and durable enough to keep evolving without losing their soul. The original emotional truth inside the music is so strong that each generation can reshape it, reinterpret it, and still remain connected to something honest and human. I want to show that through this old song, "Wayfaring Stranger." First, as a plain Appalachian ballad. 

The architecture of the song is simple but incredibly strong. That same melody and feeling can move naturally into the blues. It can incorporate elements of ragtime or stride piano. It can move into gospel and early electric music like Sister Rosetta Tharpe. And the structure is flexible enough to move through Tin Pan Alley and into jazz and American popular song. The sound keeps changing, but the soul of the song stays intact. To me, that's the sound of American music. 

Ollie Watts Davis: I am Dr. Ollie Watts Davis, the Suzanne and William Allen Distinguished Professor in Music at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the founder and director of the Black Sacred Music Symposium.  

American music is art with a specific aesthetic that addresses the central issues of our time. It is an archive of the lived experience of a people. The music of Black Americans is American music with beautiful form and purposeful function. The music of Black Americans is a shield. It is armor for trauma. It is shelter, a haven in times of storm. It is a system, a navigational tool that draws from the experiences of the elders to inform the present circumstance. And it is a soundtrack that captures the lived reality. 

As we hasten to do our part to bend the moral arc of the universe toward justice, the music of Black Americans ably equips us for the task, for it serves as a lens, a way of seeing; language, a way of saying; vision, a way of perceiving; and hope, a light for the path forward. The music of Black Americans is American music. 

Ben Folds: Hi, this is Ben Folds. American music. Man, that's deep. I, of course, am an American musician. I grew up listening to American music, and it is what you are. But you know, when you take, like, when I started touring in Japan, I think that was the first time I really appreciated the depth of American music because of the way that a different culture looked at what I was doing. 

I could feel how complex the melting pot in my system was. I could tell that it's something that might grow on trees here but can't be imitated elsewhere. And that's the first thing I think of when I think of American music. The second I think of is that the best music does come from, mean, to say it, because I don't want everyone to be miserable, but it does come from a bit of pain sometimes. And the kind of turmoil, whether we put ourselves through it or not, that started this country, I think mainly I think about racism, and I think about slavery through things that are going on today, have created the kind of music that just simply hasn't come from anywhere else. And if there's a silver lining in some of the awful stuff that has bubbled beneath in the United States.

But American music is great. It's really what everyone else seems to want a little bit of in their music. And I'm proud to be an American musician. 

Madeleine Peyroux: Hello, my name is Madeleine Peyroux. America doesn't exist. The American people, the people who are, were and will be here, they exist. And from within this enormous messy, barbaric landscape, the American people influence the world with creative freedom, secular passion, open-mindedness, life-giving ideas and beauty.  

And we are also the opposite of all that. But like Billy Holiday sang in the old song, “No, they can't take that away from me.” 

Rex McGee: Hello, I'm Rex McGee, a banjo player and fiddler. And I thought instead of an academic answer about what American music means to me, I would just tell you a little story: I was in Ireland on my honeymoon with my dear wife Jessie, way back in September 2002, when I realized something about how the rest of the world probably sees American music, or at least the corner of that I've spent the most time in.  

I made a bold but maybe not so wise decision to time our honeymoon with the Johnny Keenan Banjo Festival. In a Galway pub with my new bride at my side, I joined a Thursday night traditional Irish music session on the fiddle, playing in a style and repertoire I'd been developing for 12 years.  

And I was kinda proud to hold my own in the old country. So, I blended in anonymously with about eight to ten players for a few rounds. But someone noticed my obviously American verbal and musical accent. And soon I was egged on to play something fast, something bluegrass. I tore into Sally Gooden with seven or eight flashy improvised variations.  

And of course, this drew a lot of smiling attention, and soon I'd made fast friends. But later I thought about the contrast of the individual prowess of bluegrass, jazz and concert violin soloists versus the more participatory, more composed, social group sound of old-time string bands and Irish traditional.

So I propose that there's nothing inherently American about individualism and playing fast and improvising, but that seems to be how much the rest of the world sees us: Wild, a bit uncivil, and occasionally brilliant. 

Mary-Mitchell Campbell: Hi, I’m Mary-Mitchell Campbell. When I think about what American music means to me, I think about musical theater because, unlike opera, which really came out of Europe, the Broadway musical theater was born in and developed in America and really reflects all of the diversity of this vast country. It also speaks to the language of popular music. 

We sort of made musicals that were built around the pop music of the time and we've continued to do that. I think a lot about Rogers and Hart and how they really captured the sort of urban sensibility of America with really witty conversational lyrics that were put together with complicated rhythms that sort of embodied New York City. And the other sort of major collaborator in the American musical theater, I think about Stephen Sondheim, and how he really wrote in ways that demonstrated how characters thought, and he embodied that in both the music and the lyrics, and how he asked questions about America through those characters. 

Eric Slick: Hey everyone, this is Eric Slick. When I think of American music, I mostly think of Black music. I think about the music of indigenous people. I think about the swirling pot of worldwide influence. But I also think of music as a long conversation. Ella Fitzgerald opening up what was possible with the voice, Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman stretching jazz until it became something freer, Sly Stone, turning soul, gospel, funk, and rock into a new kind of psychedelia. And then George Clinton taking that and launching that spirit into outer space.  

But American music also means the outsiders. Harry Partch building his own microtonal universe from scratch. Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa twisting blues and doo-wop into surrealist theater. And bands like Pere Ubu, Devo and the B-52s turning funk, garage rock and art school into something strange and joyful. On that note, I think about queer folks in the South. I think about wanderers of the mid-century West and people living on the outer fringes of society. American music dares to be different, but it's also rooted in deep pain and the yearning to break out of traditional boxes.  

Ultimately, I think about it like a kid drawing on the wall with crayons. It's avant-garde, but it also feels inevitable, like it was always meant to exist. 

Steven Banks: Hi, my name is Steven Banks. I’m a saxophonist and composer. 

I don't know that I can define American music any more than I can define what it means to be an American. But music and musicians created here express themselves in relation to the cultural, social, political, and spiritual context in which they live. We ask questions, imagine better futures, and express and inspire feelings from joy to frustration to hope and determination. American music is as diverse as the people are, with an endless array of stories to tell. 

Martha Bassett: Hi, I'm Martha Bassett, and American music to me is hard to define and very easy to take for granted because we're living in the middle of it. Shared experiences across regions, across communities, and it keeps evolving and being reinterpreted by different voices and different generations. American music is an ongoing conversation and as a musician, I love adding my voice to that conversation.  

But what I have to say as a musician has been shaped by the people around me, the people that I play with, the people that I hear, and it's at that local level, that personal level, that music becomes a reflection of a community. American music is who we are based on where we've been, and it's never static. 

Johnny Gandelsman: Hello, my name is Johnny Gandelsman. I am a New York-based violinist and producer.  

I've been thinking about this question of what is American music, and I'm finding it hard to find the answer, really. For a while it was clear in my head. Of course jazz is American music, bluegrass is American music, Pete Seeger is American music, Aaron Copeland is American music. But now these days, I'm thinking more about what is American sound, and to me America at its best is this melting pot, a melting pot of people from all over the world, a melting pot of ideas, of cultures.   

And so I'm thinking more about American sound and I think it's really all of those cultures, people from all over the world doing exactly what they want to be doing. And the fact that you can hear all of those things in America to me makes them American. And I'm glad to be a part of that world. 

Aristotle Jones: Hi, I'm Aristotle Jones, the Appalachian Soul Man. I'm a musician, storyteller, songwriter, radio show host, community builder, and a lifelong Appalachian.   

What does American music mean to me? Well, American music is the connection to our future. American music means standing on the shoulders of those who came before. It means taking what was gifted to us through a melodic presence, applying it to the world we live in and adding in our own personal perspective. A perspective that encourages optimism, a perspective that praises creativity and a perspective that showcases love. American music is energetic. 

American music is vibrant and, best of all, it's influential. It has a way of bringing together folks of different ethnic backgrounds and geographical locations, as well as folks from different generations. All can enjoy the trajectory of American music from work songs and coal camps and spiritual tunes from primitive rock and roll and soulful folk music to EDM and hip hop and modern music. The through line of American music is optimism, hope, ambition and passion. It's also a way of expression that allows disenfranchised voices to be heard, the quiet voices to be loud. It creates a space for hopes and dreams to intermingle with hard work and reality. I find that we are conflicted as a nation about the myth of America and our creation and our attributes and the reality of America and what we hold dear as our values in our everyday practice.  

And folks are looking for a way to connect with each other and to fit in, but American music isn't about fitting in. American music is about standing out. American music is about exceptionalism. 

G. Phillip Shoultz, III: This is G. Phillip Shoultz, the third of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Artistic Director of Sing Democracy 250 and Associate Artistic Director of Vocal Essence. 

When I hear the phrase, “what does American music mean to me,” I think back to the origins of American music, the root foundation system, which is the Negro spiritual. These enslaved siblings of ours, out of incredible hardship, created a genre of music that spoke to their condition, but also the hope for a better future.  

The rhythms and the melodies of these songs have inspired and influenced the genres of music that we listen to this day. The entire branches of trees that have emerged in American music, both popular music and cultural music, folk music, all begin at their essence, at their core, from the Negro spiritual. So we have this dissonance here to wrestle with, this cognitive dissonance of this really... there are no words strong enough to talk about how painful, how ugly that time period was, but yet out of that ugliness, out of that hatred, came this source of beauty. 

That's what I think of, and that's the beauty of America is that out of hardship, out of darkness, we can find light, we can find beauty, we can find hope. 

Brian Cole: Personally, when I think of American music, the first things that come to mind are the incredible genres of music that were born here. These are demonstrably some of the most important in world history, proven by their global proliferation: Blues, Jazz, Roots, Country, Rock & Roll, and Hip Hop. And that first one, the Blues, really is the foundation for almost all the others. And its musical DNA is deeply rooted in West and Central Africa – an evolution of the powerful spirituals and work songs that come from call-and-response tradition, improvisation, and rhythmic syncopation.  

For all of the incredible musical riches that we have in the United States of America, we are indebted to the many diverse peoples that brought their culture to this land from elsewhere. On this nation's 250th birthday, we celebrate how so many different traditions of music-making made our music what it is today.  And nothing is more American than that.  

Thank you to our wonderful guests, Martha Bassett, Ben Folds, Dr. Ollie Watts Davis, Justin Poindexter, Aristotle Jones, Eric Slick, Madeleine Peyroux, Steven Banks, Rex McGee, Mary-Mitchell Campbell, Johnny Gandelsman and G. Phillip Shoultz, for sharing what American music means to them.  

And now be sure to ask the same question of yourself: What does American music mean to you? And what is the Sound of America? 

Music in this episode: "Wayfaring Stranger" performed by Justin Poindexter; Ollie Watts Davis singing "Spirituals No. 3, Deep River" with Jupiter Quintet and Stephen A. Taylor as arranger; "The Ascent of Stan" by Ben Folds; "American" by Madeleine Peyroux; a rendition of "Sally Goodwin" by Rex McGee; Mary-Mitchell Campbell playing "Being Alive" on piano; "Over It" by Eric Slick; "Come As You Are" by Steven Banks; "One More Run" by Martha Bassett; Olivia Davis' "Steeped III," from In a Circle Records, performed by Johnny Gandelsman; "Streets of Osage" by Aristotle Jones; and G. Phillip Shoultz, III, conducting "Redeem the Dream" at a Sing Democracy 250 performance.