Saturday, October 25, 2008 View Source Talk History Diff ?

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Music and Social Capital

For never having been a trendy sort of person, amazingly, I seem to be plugged into the Zeitgeist this month. Oh, it's not just my post for Blog Action Day, and having decided, quite fortuitously, to call my example piano student Joe, given the almost simultaneous occurence of "Six-Pack Joe" and "Joe the Plumber," which would be spooky enough . I had decided to start a series on various kinds of capital, and Wednesday's post on human capital was quickly followed by an appearance the next night of Marian Wright Edelman discussing the importance of human capital with Tavis Smiley.

OK, two instances in eight days wasn't really all that spooky, but today's post was going to be about music and social capital already, when to my surprise last night Mark Johnson appeared on Bill Moyers' Journal. Now social capital, in case you didn't know, is the value of our connections. Playing music enforces social capital, since one of the first prerequisites for joining a performing group is the ability to, as a kindergarten teacher might say, "play well with others." This is an ability not to be disparaged; this ability is what enables us to keep good business relationships, good family relationships, and good friendships, throughout decades and across distances. The more interconnected we are, the more social capital we have.

Mr. Johnson's film, Playing for Change: Peace through Music, and his project, which involves building music schools, are astounding works. A few minutes into his film, I was literally breathless with the headiness of this documentary. This is social capital at its finest and if you can't understand why learning to play music is so life-changing after seeing this film, I don't know how else to help you understand it.

I literally had chills watching the film. If I'm lucky, I can smile and tell myself Hallowe'en is next week!