The avant-garde is relevant, alive, and well. And it needs to be.

You may have read my previous article in which I fear for the fate of music colleges and conservatories. Here I am going to argue for why the crazy music that permeates colleges and conservatories needs to keep being made, not just for music’s sake, but for society’s.

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One day after Easter, I started de-noising and re-mastering a recording of my Master’s thesis. It is one of my most daring works, in its fusion of the very avant-garde and the traditional. I will be releasing the remaster for free on Bandcamp soon; I will post when that is up.

Listening to this old “friend” of mine, I realized that this piece, although at the time quite “normal”, is very avant-garde to the public. I mean, who in their right mind writes a requiem in Latin for pets based around Gregorian chant, rock music, dissonant and atonal electroacoustic music, sound design, and features a live video show that reacts to the voices of the singer soloists?

This led me to realize that, were it not for my training culminating in this magnificently horrific (at times) and consonant (at other times) music, I would not be a decent composer at all. And, I can proudly say I am pretty decent–not putting myself down or raising myself up–I definitely know what I am doing, but I’m no master composer.

So, what about those who write music that really influences the masses? The John Williamses, Hans Zimmers, and Ennio Morricones? Or, what about The Beatles, Lady Gaga, or Daft Punk? But, more importantly, what about the music educators who teach our children music (hopefully–let’s fund those music programs, please!)? What about the parents who sing songs to their children? What about the video games that have countless hours of wacky soundtracks? What about all the thousands of niche genres on Spotify and Soundcloud?

To be honest, these all owe their very existence in large part to the avant-garde.

Let’s break this down form a Google Search of avant-garde (or you can go to a more reputable source):

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The avant-garde in music are many ideas, people, and pieces of music that include in my view:

• Early music (including Hildegard von Bingen) (yes, Medieval and Renaissance music are so old they’re new–and that is an insultingly simple summary that I will have to explain in a separate post)
• Musique Concrete
• The use of percussion instruments from found objects (in modern times) but also the adoption of cymbals from Janissary bands into European concert music
• Pierre Boulez’s and John Cage’s music (even to this day, despite how long it has actually been since their flagship works were created)
• The recording and cataloging of folksong by Kodaly
• Free jazz
• Kendrick Lamar’s album “DAMN.” (and also “To Pimp a Butterfly”)
• Childish Gambino’s song “This is America”
• Julia Wolfe
• Animals As Leaders
• Lady Gaga
• Caroline Shaw
• Nickelback

Oops. Just kidding about Nickelback.

So, what do these ideas, people, and pieces do? They do the following to the extreme:

• They deepen and hone their craft to the point of mastery
• They don’t just innovate–they invent
• They recognize, honor, and then destroy the past
• They warp the sense of who qualifies as a musician and who isn’t invited to the party (it’s music, not the “old, dead, white men” club)
• In doing these things to the extreme, they push past their contemporaries’ innovations and shape music by force

Also, and very importantly:

• They are NOT necessarily famous or noted for their achievements

Our world, our day-to-day lives, is not really under our control. And no, I’m not talking about some alarmingly popular conspiracy like the “deep state”. We are constantly shaped by external forces, and we shape those forces too. But, the avant-garde is a force that heavily influences the art of today.

And where does one primarily learn the avant-garde nowadays? In all the places you don’t hear about, but are vital to art and culture:

Music schools and conservatories.

Without music schools and conservatories, there are no basement concerts, no lofts blasting strange noise sculptures. No banging on wood and metal until the right sound is achieved. And as a result, without music schools and conservatories, no one learns about these things, puts them all in one place, and teaches countless others about them. The world would miss out on amazing art that we consider “normal” were it not for the tireless study of all things music–including the avant-garde–in music schools around the world.

Does that mean that the avant-garde only comes from music school? Of course not. But what it does mean, is that in order for experimental music to survive, and for our art as a society to keep evolving in new and even more beautiful ways each day, we need music schools.

As I have said before, I work in finance in higher ed and have a million creative projects on the side. But as much as I love crunching numbers all day, I also know that we each only have one life to live, and a life devoid of art and music is a living hell. I’m not saying we all have to be artists, but we all need art in our lives. It is a basic human social need. We are social creatures, and art is a primary method for us to be social. And I don’t mean art as a thing to decorate one’s house with–I mean that art is embedded into our social DNA. And by letting any music school fail, we are telling ourselves that our humanity is not worth the effort. We are telling ourselves that our existence as a species has a price tag. Money was invented, but the soul of our humanity is art, and that was given to us by our ancestors long before we created the global economy.

Life is short, and maybe humankind’s time on earth will be short too in the grand scheme of things. So, why deny who we are while we are alive? Why not accept that we are humans before we are workers, before we are money-makers, before we gained power over others? We owe it to ourselves and everyone else–and honestly to the planet–to embrace our humanity, recognize that music is not separable from society, and advocate for the importance of creation and invention. For music, that starts at the music school or conservatory.

We act as if art is a luxury, but art is not optional.

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P.S. bonus points if you know why this picture relates to the avant-garde.