Once upon a time, not so very long ago, there were subjects devoid of controversy. We often joked that motherhood, the flag, and apple pie were immune to criticism. Of course, everyone stood for the National Anthem. Sadly, this is no longer the case. Motherhood and the flag are now considered ideological lightning rods and even the best apple pie may soon have reason to worry. 

        Literacy, particularly musical literacy also seemed inviolate. Why would reading music or even studying music be a source of controversy? Jon Henschen is a veteran of the financial services industry based in Minnesota. He is more used to writing about bull and bear markets than sharps and flats. But he studied music in school, played in jazz and symphonic bands, and has carried a love of music throughout his life. Recently he wrote an excellent article, “The Tragic Decline of Music Literacy and Quality.” It should be read in its entirety, but a brief summary is in order. 

          Henschen argues persuasively that musical literacy, though of great importance, has declined radically in recent years, due to the reduction of school music programs and boys and girls studying less music at home. He writes, “Both jazz and classical art forms require not only music literacy, but for the musician to be at the top of their game in technical proficiency, tonal quality, and creativity in the case of the jazz idiom.”

          He bolsters his case by reminding us that more than 364,500 pianos were sold in 1909; but in recent times, annual sales have fallen to between 30,000-40,000 in the U.S. Since the 1980s and the high-tech computer revolution, children are less likely to take piano lessons; at the same time, school music programs have been reduced.

          Henschen also discusses another subject which unfortunately invites controversy, the indisputable decline in the quality of music, especially popular music. To support this assertion, he provides evidence from Joan Serrà of the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona. A scientific study by Serrà and his colleagues revealed that much of today’s pop music sounds the same, lyrics are shorter and repetitive, and electronic technology is used to slur the sounds we hear as part of a homogenous pop sound often created by the same small group of people. Henschen’s conclusions are right to the point; we need to encourage musical literacy in schools and parents should recognize the value of music education and the arts in the children’s lives. His article drew an enthusiastic response from non-musicians as well as those have made music their professional life’s work. 

          However, there was one sour note. His article was challenged and dissected by a reader intent on making the opposite case. Interestingly, the critic who challenged Henschen’s hypothesis is Andy Jarema, a public school music teacher in Michigan. Normally I wouldn’t devote a lengthy response to someone’s criticism of an article I didn’t write. I have no reason to inveigh against Mr. Jarema, but his assertions merit a meticulous rebuttal for a very specific reason. His talking points are nearly identical to those raised by many others in response to people like Jon Henschen or anyone else who has raised these issues, myself included, in my own books. Those of us who assert that change isn’t synonymous with progress and that good music is in danger of galloping toward oblivion always are faced with the same criticisms. So a response is due.

          Let’s consider Andy Jarema’s arguments one by one.

          1. The real problem, he tells us, is lack of funding for public school music programs. Of course, every musician knows that instruction in music and the arts are always first on the bureaucratic chopping block when budgets are cut. This problem is as old as music itself. When Lowell Mason introduced music into the Boston public schools in the 1830s, he had to initially teach without pay. When John Knowles Paine became America’s first music professor at Harvard, he too had to initially teach without pay as well. I’ve often quipped that one thing never changes in America’s musical history: people are always trying to find new ways and reasons for not paying musicians. But it’s about more than money. It’s how money is spent. If money is spent in the wrong ways, including efforts to promote current pop, rock, and rap products in the schools, the increased spending will be completely wasted. Throwing money at a problem doesn’t solve it; in fact, it has the potential to make things worse. Marva Collins, the remarkable teacher who founded West Side Preparatory School in inner-city Chicago, was once a guest on the radio version of my program, “Mark! My Words.” She gained international fame for turning out graduates who could compete with those from exclusive prep schools and then sending them on to great academic achievement. She didn’t do it with a huge budget, but with old-fashioned discipline, high standards, and a healthy respect for tradition and achievement.

           2. Mr. Jarema announces with confidence, “The decline of music education is more of an issue of privilege and social justice than anything else.” This is troubling because it represents pure politicization. What do privilege and social justice have to do with students emerging from school as musical illiterates? The term “social justice” usually implies that students or citizens should be regarded not as individuals but as members of groups, the identity of which is arbitrarily defined by the social justice warriors. Status is determined by victimhood and the concept of “intersectionality” in which one’s status increases as one can self-identify as a victim in multiple ways. Is Mr. Jarema suggesting that music should be judged on the basis of the ideology it expresses?

           Music sends a message. Many of Bach’s compositions were signed with the letters S.D. G. or “Soli Deo Gloria,” which meant “To God Alone the Glory.” Australian conductor Patrick Thomas wrote that “Perhaps it was Beethoven’s faith in man’s inextinguishable brotherhood and his hatred of tyranny that remain the finest examples of this man’s unique and lasting inspiration.” In modern times, Dr.Miklós Rózsa, the renowned Hungarian composer, declared, “I have no time for any music which does not reflect pleasure in life, and more importantly, pride in life.” And Bernard Herrmann, the distinguished composer of symphonic, operatic, and film music, said, “Music is a beautiful art, if not the greatest of all arts. It’s the kind of beauty that lives in time and space and in each performance over and over again.” Yet the English scholar Sir Roger Scruton has rightfully suggested that composers, artists, and film directors are today in a flight from expressing beauty because beauty requires that we renounce narcissism.

            The self-proclaimed advocates of “social justice” preach tolerance and inclusion, but they practice total intolerance and exclusion. Who are those excluded in the name of social justice and progress? Typically gifted instrumentalists, composers, singers, writers, artists, and anyone who doesn’t toe a political or artistically ideological line.

           3. Mr. Jarema is quite correct in observing that jazz is an aural tradition and that there have been fine musicians that played jazz who didn’t read music. Pianist Erroll Garner famously said, “Nobody can hear you read.” But just because a number of celebrated jazz musicians couldn’t read music is no reason for everyone else to avoid musical literacy. A generation of music illiterates can try their hand at music none of them will play like Erroll Garner. Many of the best jazz musicians have been classically trained and as a result, they have a wide vocabulary. The Modern Jazz Quartet, for instance, was inspired by contemporary French composers. Charlie Parker was intrigued by Stravinsky. The learning process is never-ending. Oscar Peterson once told me that if he played the piano for another fifty years, he still had more to learn; he said this while being recognized as perhaps the world’s finest living jazz piano virtuoso.

          In fact, a musician can never have too much education, even if his approach to music is totally non-academic. Bobby Troup, a composer and jazz pianist whom Andy Jarema regards as a source of inspiration, is best known for writing songs like “(Get Your Kicks) on Route 66.” But he was also a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and he certainly read music. When I once visited Troup at his home and he asked me to sight-read a piece of music he had written, the score on his piano was notated, not passed along by ear.

          Yet Andy Jarema goes on to announce, “Tying jazz music to notated music is a very Western canon-centric (i.e. classical) approach to understanding jazz music, and I feel you make the same error when discussion pop music. All of these styles are vastly different and need to be analyzed with separate value systems and lenses.” Really?

          Music, all music, consists of melody, harmony, and rhythm. There are those who suggest that noise is music too. I will happily challenge them to debate at any time. In discussing the decline of 20th-century classical concert music, my eminent teacher, the world-renowned composer Roy Harris, once said, “Many composers abandoned melody, then harmony, then rhythm. What do they have left?” Yes, there are elements of jazz that can’t be precisely notated. Blue notes can’t really be notated when they sound between the notes on a piano keyboard. And yes, the melodies found in Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite” are different than those found in Duke Ellington’s inventive jazz version of the same music. but we can determine if a composer has written an inspired melody or improvised one. We can praise the technical virtuosity of Vladimir Horowitz and Art Tatum on the piano even though Horowitz played notated masterpieces and Tatum improvised with aplomb.

          I was privileged to study composition with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, one of Italy’s most important modern composers. He wrote exclusively concert music for such virtuosos as Heifetz, Piatigorsky, and Segovia, while his pupils (André Previn, John Williams, Henry Mancini, Nelson Riddle, Jerry Goldsmith, and Johnny Mandel, among others) were comfortable in the jazz world as well. The Maestro believed we couldn’t change the idea of dissonance and consonance not because of an arcane academic theory but because harmony grew out of the overtone series and the natural laws of acoustics. The overtone series is identical whether you’re playing a Mozart minuet or swinging your way through a Charlie Parker saxophone solo.

           4. Mr. Jarema asks “Do you truly feel that all pop music is really that valueless?” The word “all” is a debater’s trap, but let’s say “most” and “nearly all.” Since Mr. Jarema is concerned about applying “classical” criteria to criticism of popular music, let’s see what truly intelligent popular and jazz musical figures have to say on the subject.

          I suspect that the requests for different value systems and lenses in evaluating popular music usually relate to a desire to avoid imposing musical standards on today’s rockers and rappers because they are usually committing acts of non-music. No one has expressed it better than Vincent Falcone, one of Frank Sinatra’s last conductors, who observed, “Half-the popular groups today could not play without four hundred watt lamps, strobe lights, confetti guns, and fog. If they showed up at a gig and the electricity was off, they wouldn’t be able to play.”

          Falcone isn’t finished. He says, “In my estimation, hip-hop, rap, and heavy metal have destroyed the tradition of great American music that depended on interesting melodies and sophisticated lyrics When I was young, music depicted love, romance, or the longing for a lost love. Today what passes for music often depicts violence, hatred, and sex. I have found that young people have only to be exposed to great art to recognize it as such.“

          Are only prudes, classicists,  reactionaries, and “squares” objecting to today’s great new sounds? Consider the view of bandleader Stan Kenton who spent a lifetime searching for new sounds and told me when he appeared on one of my radio programs, “I’m not into nostalgia.” But Kenton also said to jazz historian George Simon, “You compare some of the Beatles’ lyrics with those of some great writers like Johnny Burke, Jimmy Van Heusen or Sammy Cahn, are we kiddin’ each other?” And consider the view of trumpeter Wynton Marsalis who was the first jazz musician to win the Pulitzer Prize. A longtime critic of rap, he has said, “You can’t have a pipeline of filth be your default position and not have it take a toll on society.”

              5. This, of course, brings us to everyone’s favorite subject of the moment, the winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Music, rapper Kendrick Lamar. For the next twenty years, all critics of rap will be reminded of this unfortunate award. Many academicians, eager for approval by their peers, have been quick to indulge in sequacious applause.  Mr. Jarema has joined the parade. “A lot of my elementary school music students love Kendrick Lamar and love listening to the Black Panther soundtrack,” he says. “Perhaps we can talk about the age-appropriateness of a third-grader listening to Kendrick Lamar, but we at least have to recognize the pop world (and my very young class of students) is not completely averse to complexity.”

          Mr. Jarema is not alone in making a fatal mistake here. I would suggest reading my scathing commentary on the decision to award the Pulitzer to Kendrick Lamar, “An Award is Known By the Company It Keeps.” The committee, led by an employee of The New York Times, did not elevate rap with this award. They lowered the value of the prize itself for all time. Only a simpleton would fail to recognize that Kendrick Lamar’s award-winning work was recognized in part because it included a denunciation of President Donald Trump. Does anyone seriously believe the Pulitzer committee would have beaten a path to his door if he had released a rap recording praising President Donald Trump? I, for one, would have objected either way, on the musical, not political grounds. Regarding the presumed complexity in his work specifically or in rap in general, we can only remind ourselves that in a genre of four-chord wonders, he who happens to know five chords is considered a musical genius.

          As for third graders listening to rap, is Mr. Jarema serious? Third-graders, fifth-graders, or seventh graders, don’t need help being introduced to rock and rap. Nor do they listen to the “music” of C-Lo Green, nominated for a Grammy in 2010 for a recording the title of which could not be broadcast on television for fear of running afoul of the obscenity laws. Their ears will be assaulted by the puerile products of pop culture without help from naive, well-meaning academicians. They need to be introduced to good music of all kinds and the sooner the better. School teachers and university academicians at every level blissfully congratulate themselves on being open-minded. They fall prey to what the noted composer Dr. Ernest Kanitz called “Hanslickitis.” Afraid of repeating 19th-century critic Eduard Hanslick’s opposition to Wagner and to “musical progress,” they are willing to accept anything and everything in the name of tolerance.

          Of course, when I say “good music,” the predictable response will be, “Who are you to decide what is good music?” I have no desire to engage in what I call a stylistic argument with Andy Jarema or anyone else. There is no correct answer when someone says, “I like strawberry ice cream, so why do you like butter pecan?” Mortimer Adler declared that there is no good reason to argue about how things look, but there is every reason to argue about what things are. Students emerging from school unfamiliar with any music other than what they absorb through the ubiquitous pop culture are the problem. Ultimately, they will all know about Michael Jackson and refer to him as deferentially as “The King of Pop.” None of them will have heard of Calvin Jackson, no relation, musically or otherwise, an incredible composer, conductor, and pianist equally gifted on both sides of the classical and jazz fences. Both Jacksons happened to be African American, but the social justice warriors don’t care because they’re not interested in music, they are interested in using the celebrity culture to advance an agenda.

          6. Finally, I have what Mr. Jarema might regard as an unfair advantage. I grew up in the music department of a large Hollywood movie studio. When I wrote my recent book, “Our Musical Heritage: From Yankee Doodle to Carnegie Hall, Broadway, and the Hollywood Sound Stage,” I was often writing about people I’d been privileged to know as teachers, mentors, colleagues, and even competitors. When I wrote one of my earlier books, “Mark! My Words: How to Discover the Joy of Music, the Delight of Language, and the Pride of Achievement in the Age of Trash Talk and MTV,” I was speaking from experience.

          As a self-proclaimed fugitive from the Hollywood rat race, I know what the rock and rap and pop moguls say when the microphones are off and they can safely reveal their true feelings. To put it bluntly, they’re laughing all the way to the bank. I’ve often heard them boast of making stars of untalented people and making fools of a gullible public too concerned with fads and fashion to admit that the Emperor has no clothes.

          Jon Henschen is quite right in his concerns about the future of music in our schools and homes. I founded an organization, Cultural Conservation, to address this problem. We must not be led astray by vague slogans about tolerance, inclusion, and “new standards.” All good music can be judged by the same standard. I have met people in virtually every walk of life, many of whom have listened to my broadcasts or my music. These include people of all ages and cultural backgrounds. When I ask how they developed an interest in classical music, jazz, film scores, The Great American Songbook, or other music of value, the answer is always the same. Someone, a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, sibling, teacher, or friend, introduced them to great music at a young age. You’re never too old to start appreciating the best music, but it helps if you start early. And parents, grandparents, and teachers who think they are being progressive by encouraging students to limit their outlook to today’s pop culture are doing them no favor. We still have the opportunity to preserve the best of our musical past and present and in the process, ensure a creative and dynamic musical future. Present and future generations will benefit greatly as a result.      

       In every field of human endeavor, awards and prizes are often the yardsticks by which we measure success and achievement. Inserting “Nobel Laureate,” “Academy Award winner,” or “Pulitzer Prize-winning,” before an individual’s name brings prestige and credibility to the person so honored. But over a period of years, the validity of such awards and prizes has declined sharply. Efforts by those making such awards have been tainted by overt politicization and worse, by an effort to follow the trends of the ghastly, ubiquitous pop culture. Those who challenge such attitudes are likely to be unfairly vilified and even demonized. Usually, critics and self-proclaimed members of the intelligentsia think such criticism is an effort to denigrate the award-winners. But in reality, the cultural importance of the award-winners isn’t magnified; instead, the value and significance of the awards and integrity and judgment of those presenting the awards and prizes are greatly diminished.

The 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Music has been awarded to Kendrick Lamar for his rap recording, “Damn.” This award has generated praise among some, but outrage among others. I stand with the latter. To understand why it may be helpful to take a brief look back at what has happened to awards in recent years.

                There was a time when the Academy Awards for music were given to nominees who wrote splendid film scores. Musical colleagues might disagree as to who should win, but there was agreement that certain standards could be used to judge film scores.  Much of this comity collapsed in the pop revolution of the 1960s and 70s.

                By 2008, the Los Angeles Times was providing an example of the taste which governs the Oscars by approvingly declaring, “In 1971, when Shaft was all the rage, Isaac Hayes’ funky title tune won the best song at the Oscars shaking up the movie industry. Isaac Hayes’ theme song to the hit detective flick was the “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” (“Hustle & Flow”) of its day—in short, that kind of ‘tude-heavy, soul-powered hip urban tune you don’t expect to win the top golden prize bestowed by the hoity-toity Hollywood crowd.”

                But everyone wasn’t pleased with the pop-score revolution in Hollywood.                        

                 When Isaac Hayes was nominated for the “Best Dramatic Score” Oscar for his theme song from the film Shaft and won the “Best Score” Golden Globe award the same year, distinguished pianist and composer for films and television Harry Sukman quipped, “What score?”

                Sukman’s observation was inspired by the realization that award presenters in Hollywood couldn’t tell the difference between a song and a score. This was true in 1963 when Henry Mancini’s “Moon River,” a fine song, led to Mancini winning the “Best Score” award for Breakfast at Tiffany’s over Miklos Rozsa’s dazzling score for El Cid.  When the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided to combine the awards into a single honor, composers of dramatic background scores were forced into competition with composers of popular songs written for Hollywood musicals. Ten composers, including Miklos Rozsa, Bronislaw Kaper, and André  Previn, resigned their memberships in the Academy in protest. Bernard Herrmann went further, returning his torn-up membership card to the Academy with a declaration that he preferred to be judged by his peers, not his inferiors.

                The Grammy Awards followed a similar trend, culminating in 2010 with the nomination of C-Lo Green for a “Best Recording,” award. The title of  Green’s recording could not be spoken out loud during a television broadcast for fear of running afoul of the obscenity regulations. Green’s performance demonstrated what the recording industry now considered an outstanding lyric:” I see you driving around with the girl I love and I’m like F*** You. I guess the change in my pocket wasn’t enough. I’m like F*** You and F*** Her Too.” In the mind of the Awards presenters, the lyrics of such brilliant craftsmen as Oscar Hammerstein II, Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, Alan Jay Lerner, and Johnny Mercer, among others, have been consigned to the ash heap of history by a “composition” littered with assorted profanities and racial epithets.

                The Nobel Prize, widely perceived as the most prestigious such award, does not honor musicians, but Nobel Prizes are given for Peace and Literature as well as the sciences. Barack Obama’s 2009 Nobel Prize for Peace was awarded not for what he had done, but for what the Norwegian Nobel Institute thought he might do.  Former Secretary of the Institute, and by the way, an amiable guest on my television program, Mark! My Words,  Geir Lundestad later admitted that the award in advance of achievement was a mistake, but those who determine the award recipients thought it might strengthen him. Attorney and law professor Jonathan Turley observed,” It is a maddening admission that the committee bypassed a list of worthy candidates with proven contributions to humanity to give a boost to someone that the Committee simply liked. That would seem grossly unethical, but Lundestad merely acknowledged that it did not seem to work.”

                As for pop star Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, Kyle Smith, writing in Acculturated, commented that “The Nobel Prize for Literature, once awarded to such household names as George Bernard Shaw, Pearl Buck, John Steinbeck and Saul Bellow, long ago devolved into obscurantist gesturing and signaling of radical bona fides.“  Ernest Hemingway, another Nobel Laureate, reacted to his prize for literature by emphatically stating, “No writer who knows the great writers who did not receive the Prize can accept it other than with humility. There is no need to list these writers. Everyone here may make his own list according to his knowledge and his conscience.” So we now have the journey from Winston Churchill (who won the prize for literature) to Bob Dylan touted as progress.

                The devolution of awards from meaningful to meaningless has infected nearly every human activity.  Children participating in sports are given participation trophies so “everyone wins” and “no one loses.” The children aren’t fooled by this nonsense; they know who is best and instinctively realize that if everyone is a winner, no one is. Schools and colleges are now considering abolishing the role of valedictorian so that students not invited to speak at graduation won’t have their feelings hurt. As a former valedictorian, I can attest to the pressure to achieve a goal and be the best. But real life isn’t always fair. The entertainment industry certainly isn’t a meritocracy.  Iconic football coach Vince Lombardi, often misquoted, told his players that “Making the effort to win is everything.” Eliminating standards of excellence doesn’t help those who don’t achieve, especially in preparing them for a commercial world in which profit and politics usually trump excellence.

                This brings us to Kendrick Lamar and his 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Music. This is by far the worst example of the cultural decline in the presentation of awards.  Beginning with William Schuman’s prize in 1943, the Pulitzer music award was given to a widely diverse group of composers for many different genres of works created in many styles. Awards were given for symphonies, operas, ballets, chamber music, even a film score (Virgil Thomson for Louisiana Story.) The names of the winners are among the giants of contemporary classical concert music, including Howard Hanson, Aaron Copland, Leo Sowerby, Charles Ives, Gian-Carlo Menotti, Douglas Moore, Ernst Toch, Samuel Barber, Roger Sessions, Morton Gould,  and Leon Kirchner.  Of course, there has been controversy. In 1965, the Pulitzer Prize advisory board rejected efforts to confer a special award on Duke Ellington. The official reason was that the award was supposed to be for one work, not a lifetime of achievement. Ellington’s identity as a jazz icon may have also been a factor.  Ellington handled the rejection with grace and style. Eventually, the Pulitzer was awarded to people with jazz credentials, including Wynton Marsalis and Ornette Coleman.

                But the award to rapper Kendrick Lamar represents a sea-shift as the first such prize for a non-classical or jazz work. I would argue that it makes the Pulitzer Prize for Music irrelevant, politicized, and a vestigial absurdity that is now a colossal embarrassment to the pretentious, pseudo-intellectuals who award it. In a self-congratulatory, virtue-signaling, and vainglorious declaration, the administrator of the prizes, New York Times journalist Dana Canedy, proclaimed, “The time was right. We are very proud of this selection. It means that the jury and the board judging system worked as it’s supposed to—the best work was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. It shines a light on hip-hop in a completely different way. This is a big moment for hip-hop music and a big moment for the Pulitzers.” With the humility and hubris expected from rock-pop-rap promoters in the recording industry, Terrence Henderson, described in the New York Times as a record executive known as Punch from Top Dawg Entertainment, wrote that from now on, no one should “speak with anything less than respect in your mouth for Kendrick Lamar.”

                Well, Mr. Henderson, get ready for a few words that you may assume are disrespectful. The Pulitzer Prize board, voting unanimously for Kendrick Lamar, described his album, which has sold over three million copies, as “A virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life.” The lyrics of Kendrick Lamar are, like so much rap, laced with profanities and racial slurs. So I respond to you, to the Pulitzer board, and to Kendrick Lamar himself with a word that may shock you. Let’s call it the “B” word-BALDERDASH!

                The fourteen track album contains contributions by stars Rihanna and U2. There are no melodies worthy of praise, but the so-called lyrics are highly politicized, with politically correct attacks on Donald Trump and Fox News. Kendrick Lamar’s so-called lyrics are simplistic and reflect the type of inane doggerel that could be produced by any teenager on any high school campus. Here is a sample from a selection called “Lust.”  

“We all woke up, tryna tune to the daily news
Lookin’ for confirmation, hopin’ election wasn’t true
All of us worried, all of us buried and the feeling’s deep
None of us married to his proposal, make us feel cheap
Stealed and sad, distraught and mad, tell the neighbor ‘bout it

And is this the best the world of music has to offer?

                In the interest of candor, I make the following disclosure. I am a composer and pianist; I have interviewed winners of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes and have eminent teachers, friends, and colleagues who may never have won the prizes they deserved.  But with the success of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop musical Hamilton and now the hip-hop Pulitzer, rap, like rock before it, is now all music. Other genres of music can expect the same type of displacement that occurred when the rockers of the 60s and 70s assumed control of and ultimately destroyed the market for anything that couldn’t sell a million recordings.

                It does not require skill, talent, or ability to fill lyrics with profanities, slurs, and bad rhymes, or to accompany this twaddle with over-amplified, pulsating noises that appeal to an audience which glories in its own ignorance of real music.  It does require a certain cunning to wrap such offerings in political statements that ensure an endorsement from those who seek to be “with it,” never defining what “is” is supposed to be. The acquiescence of elite cultural arbiters can only lead to the triumph of the vulgarians.

                Having made the observations, I stand ready to take the slings and arrows from those who are infuriated by statements of truth. As they ready their bows and quivers (and perhaps a few brass knuckles,) I know what to expect. Their responses are as predictable as a thunderstorm following a cloudy sky. They think their responses are original, but they are vapid clichés which have been uttered time and again. To save time, I offer the following responses in advance.

1. Because Kendrick Lamar is black and rap is perceived as the expression of African American culture, any criticism of him specifically or rap, in general, is likely to be described as racist. It is unfortunate that this discussion is even necessary. But in this time of identity politics, this puerile charge must be dismissed. The alternative is to cower before an effete mob of twitter bullies, a prospect I reject out of hand.

        As a long-time advocate of long-neglected musical figures, many of whom are African American, I remind rap’s defenders that the black community is a diverse community of individuals who do not look, think, or act alike. Ask any rap fan or promoter what they know of Florence Price, the first African American woman to have a work performed by a symphony orchestra, or her pupil, Margaret Bonds, a distinguished pianist and composer in her own right. Ask them about William Levi Dawson. Ask them about the literary figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Ask them what they know about jazz, primarily African American in origin. Do they only know about Michael Jackson, proclaimed in the media as “The King of Pop,” but not about Calvin Jackson, an often overlooked musical genius, or Donald Shirley, a brilliant musical figure with three doctorates who spoke eight languages?

          I assure you that they know little or nothing of the real heroes of African American cultural history. They are too busy making money and crying all the way to the bank.  Somewhere there is a young black composer dreaming of being another William Grant Still, an African American composer worthy of the respect Terrence Henderson demands for the latest winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Somewhere else there is a young man playing the saxophone and hoping one day to succeed Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Johnny Hodges, and Charlie Parker. What should these young musicians think about Kendrick Lamar? Should they continue to study and persevere when the rules of the game have suddenly been changed? 

                Not everyone has been quick to jump on the rap bandwagon. Wynton Marsalis was the first jazz musician to win the Pulitzer Prize for Blood on the Fields, a musical reflection on slavery. Marsalis has been a lifelong advocate for the music he writes and performs, jazz.  As for rap, he has been an outspoken critic of the entire hip-hop subculture since the 1980s.  “You can’t have a pipeline of filth be your default position and not have it take a toll on society,” he told Jonathan Capehart of The Washington Post on a podcast they did together.  It is a position he took early during the rise of rap and one which he steadfastly repeats today.

           Rap’s defenders will quickly point to the Broadway show Hamilton and of course, Kendrick Lamar, to suggest that hip-hop expresses values beyond racial slurs and profanity. But a simple comparison between the creative output of rappers and musicians and lyricists of accomplishment in jazz and in Broadway’s historic legacy yields an unflattering verdict.  The rappers, despite whatever prizes they win, aren’t in the same league and they never will be.

Because Damn, reflects hatred toward Donald J. Trump, anyone criticizing it is likely to be accused of being just a Trump partisan. Though it may shock those cheering the Pulitzer fiasco, criticism of this award has nothing to do with political positions, but obviously, the award itself has everything to do with politics. Minimal political awareness suggests that Kendrick Lamar was given the prize for two reasons, neither of them having to do with the quality of his work, but both of which have everything to do with the people making the decision. Of course, giving the Pulitzer to someone preaching Trump hatred is supposed to legitimize Trump hatred. But of greater importance is that in its desire for ingratiation with the creators and promoters of rap, the Pulitzer board thinks it is proving that it is hip, trendy, fashionably diverse, and worthy of the praise of like-minded colleagues who secretly hope no one declares that the Emperor wears no clothes.

2. The Pulitzer board could have given the Prize for Music to someone who expressed views that were critical of Donald Trump or in praise of him, but with a manifestation of talent, musicality, literacy, and taste; Damn offers none of these qualities. Are we to seriously believe that a musical work with a similar paucity of musical virtues but an alternate political view would have been considered? Pulitzer Prizes for Music are supposed to be awarded for musical excellence, not the political view of a work’s creator.

        In the 1950s, playwright Arthur Miller and director Elia Kazan were friends. They parted company forever over Kazan’s decision to name names during the Congressional investigations of communism and internal security. Miller’s play The Crucible, is widely perceived as an allegory for what he believed to be witch hunts; Kazan’s film, On the Waterfront, is widely regarded as a defense of a man who has to turn in his friends to do what is right. Miller and Kazan were friends no more and their political views were totally opposite. But it would be hard to make the case that either Miller and Kazan didn’t deserve acclaim for their artistic and literary skills, regardless of, not because of, their differing political views.

3. Critics of this award are likely to be accused to disdain for freedom of expression, although this is nonsense. The argument is stated in this manner: “This is a free country. I have the right to like whatever I like and who are you to criticize my taste?” This argument is just silly. Of course, anyone is free to like what he or she likes, but everyone else is free to observe the failings of their judgment. As William F. Buckley said, in response to the vacuous utterances of an opinionated Hollywood actress, “She has the absolute right to advertise her ignorance in public.” The notion that no book, or work of art, or musical composition is better than another is just nonsense. It is the basis for cultural anarchy and ultimately, the replacement of civilization with the age of the ignoramus.

4. Wrapping themselves in anti-establishment rhetoric, advocates of this award will be quick to declare that criticism of rap is just bitterness from the establishment. At the risk of disillusioning Terrence Henderson and his friends, the rap promoters and the so-called artists they promote ARE the Establishment. There are no risks in the entertainment industry in promoting rock-rap-pop. Those of us who choose another path, who opt for the road less taken, are the ones taking risks. Composers of real music, whether classical or jazz, whether for films or musical theater, whether for the concert stage or not, face struggles throughout our lifetimes. Often this requires surmounting all kinds of financial, political, and artistic barriers. It is the upholder of tradition, the cultural conservationist who is challenging the utterly corrupt musical entertainment establishment.

                The Pulitzer Prize for music now has a new standard. It is the standard of Hollywood, the standards of profiteers, the standards that declare the most important requirement in art is a healthy balance sheet. Judge Robert Bork, though not a musician,  summed up the case regarding rap well. He wrote, in his book, Slouching Toward Gomorrah, “The difference between the music and Tin Pan Alley and rap is so stark that it is misleading to call them both music. Rock and rap are utterly impoverished by comparison with swing or jazz or any pre-World War II music, impoverished emotionally, aesthetically, and intellectually. Rap is simply unable to express tenderness, gentleness or love. Neither rock nor rap can begin to approach the complicated melodies of George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, or Cole Porter. Nor do their lyrics display any of the wit of Ira Gershwin, Porter, Fats Waller, or Johnny Mercer. The bands that play this music lack even a trace of the musicianship of the bands led by Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, and many others of that era.”

                So what do we say of the foul-mouthed stars of rap and their billionaire’s industry that trivializes and demands the best of our culture while their promoters demand our respect? And what of the once prestigious Pulitzer Prize for music? Should those of us who write music aspire to awards that are given for the wrong reason and social-climbing gratification of their presenters? It will be said by all, the Terrence Hendersons of the world, that the Pulitzer Prize for music has elevated rap to a new respectability, to a new place in our culture. I disagree. The awarding of this prize doesn’t elevate rap-rock-pop, it diminishes the award and those, including its presenters, who are busy sounding their own trumpet.

                The best expression of this sentiment may not come from high culture, but it is entirely accurate. It comes from one Benjamin Hapgood Burt in a song popularized by Frank Crumit and Rudy Vallee and heard on record, on radio, and in the music halls of another time. This is a brief excerpt from the lyrics of a song which didn’t win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, but tells us something about it.

One evening last October, when I was far from sober
And dragging home a load with manly pride
My feet began to stutter and I fell down in the gutter
And a pig came up and parked right by my side.

Then I mumbled, “It’s fair weather when good comrades get together”
Till a lady passing by was heard to say,
“You can tell a man that boozes by the playmates that he chooses.”
Then the pig got up and slowly walked away.

            So much for the once honorable Pulitzer Prize in Music, RIP.

             A prize is known by the company it keeps.