{"id":2369,"date":"2009-11-06T09:13:51","date_gmt":"2009-11-06T17:13:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=2369"},"modified":"2009-11-06T09:13:51","modified_gmt":"2009-11-06T17:13:51","slug":"the-quincy-jones-music-consortium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2009\/11\/06\/the-quincy-jones-music-consortium\/","title":{"rendered":"The Quincy Jones Music Consortium"},"content":{"rendered":"

Q told me he had to go to Israel, to meet with Putin and other heads of state.\u00c2\u00a0 He had to fix the Palestinian crisis before he died.<\/p>\n

Anybody else tells you a story like this and your eyes roll into the back of your head.\u00c2\u00a0 But Quincy’s on an airplane seemingly more than he’s home.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s trying to exact change.\u00c2\u00a0 And people listen to him.<\/p>\n

He hopes they listen to him about music education.\u00c2\u00a0 He thinks we need it.\u00c2\u00a0 That everywhere he goes people are listening to American music, but those in our country are woefully uninformed as to our heritage.\u00c2\u00a0 He believes this has got to change.<\/p>\n

Thus, the Quincy Jones Music Consortium.<\/p>\n

Actually, he’s not the only driving force.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s this guy Jeffrey Walker.\u00c2\u00a0 A money man, presently a teacher at Harvard Business School.\u00c2\u00a0 When he strode onto the dais and began speaking I was enthralled.\u00c2\u00a0 Some people have a way of drawing you in and closing you, wrapping a net around you when you thought you were standing on the outside.<\/p>\n

That’s why I was in New York.\u00c2\u00a0 For the second meeting of the Quincy Jones Music Consortium.\u00c2\u00a0 Mostly those in music education.\u00c2\u00a0 And Marty Albertson, CEO of Guitar Center, and Herbie Hancock, and me…<\/p>\n

There’s this organization, DonorsChoose.org<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0 Talk about the power of one.<\/p>\n

Charles Best was a social studies teacher in the Bronx.\u00c2\u00a0 Confronted with the challenges of the public school system.\u00c2\u00a0 Where you’ve got the will, but very few of the tools.\u00c2\u00a0 So, he created a site where teachers could put up their needs in plain English, and raise funds from the general public, seemingly instantly.\u00c2\u00a0 It was easy to ask for the money, and usually it came rolling in.\u00c2\u00a0 This is not a secret, Charles has been on Oprah, but watching him tell the story was inspirational.\u00c2\u00a0 He wasn’t about charisma, he wasn’t about self-aggrandization, he was about results.<\/p>\n

Wow.\u00c2\u00a0 A teacher needs crayons, art supplies?\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe only a couple of hundred dollars total?\u00c2\u00a0 Who wouldn’t give a couple of bucks.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s us helping us, in a world where there’s gridlock in D.C. and those with the big bucks seemingly want a pound of flesh for the cash.\u00c2\u00a0 Or require you to fill out so many forms and jump through so many hoops, you can’t bother.\u00c2\u00a0 Do you know how busy teachers are already?<\/p>\n

And Charles is not the only one.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\n
Watch Carmine Appice play with the kids from Little Kids Rock<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

David Wish was a first grade teacher in the Bay Area, in an underprivileged, undernourished urban school. He was also a fanatical musician.\u00c2\u00a0 He wanted to meld the two.\u00c2\u00a0 So he ran around to all his guitarist friends, told them they could either pay him the money they owed him, or give him one of their guitars.\u00c2\u00a0 And with the resultant axes, he started a school music program.\u00c2\u00a0 Where kids played the music they wanted to.\u00c2\u00a0 Rock, hip-hop, everything that could be performed with guitar, bass, keyboard and drums.<\/p>\n

It’s a raging success.\u00c2\u00a0 David went on about scalability.\u00c2\u00a0 He can instruct a teacher how to teach little kids to rock very quickly.\u00c2\u00a0 And the cost to each individual student is miniscule.<\/p>\n

But it is about teachers.\u00c2\u00a0 He first roped in his aforementioned music friends.\u00c2\u00a0 They didn’t show up, they made excuses.\u00c2\u00a0 They could play, but they couldn’t instruct, they let the little kids down.<\/p>\n

David now has 45,000 kids enrolled in Little Kids Rock<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And it is about teachers.\u00c2\u00a0 Marty Albertson wants to train music teachers to do what music schools do not.\u00c2\u00a0 How to interact with the community, to raise funds, to keep their music programs alive.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s willing to put up serious Guitar Center coin for a program called "All In" that creates multi-day gatherings to help these teachers learn how to do it.<\/p>\n

And what do we want these kids to learn?<\/p>\n

That’s Q’s passion.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve created an entire curriculum.\u00c2\u00a0 Encompassing the history of American music. Screw kids taking lessons in order to raise their math and English scores, kids need to learn music for music itself.\u00c2\u00a0 They need to know about their culture, where they come from, how they fit in.<\/p>\n

But there are side benefits.\u00c2\u00a0 There was this principal from the Bronx who told about the power of music.\u00c2\u00a0 It kept kids in school.\u00c2\u00a0 Students come to play.\u00c2\u00a0 Otherwise, it’s hard to keep their attention, they stay home, they join gangs.<\/p>\n

Personally, I’d follow the wedge opened by David Wish.\u00c2\u00a0 A simple program with results that can be easily understood.\u00c2\u00a0 Use the excitement and passion to get kids playing contemporary music in all schools and then bring in history and orchestra behind it.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to start with success.<\/p>\n

But the consortium is fighting on all fronts.\u00c2\u00a0 They want some of that government money.\u00c2\u00a0 And Quincy opens doors.<\/p>\n

As for ultimate success…<\/p>\n

I heard something brilliant from a fundraising expert.\u00c2\u00a0 She said: "You don’t need leadership if you have certainty."<\/p>\n

Voila!\u00c2\u00a0 That’s it!\u00c2\u00a0 People are always looking for the answer. Usually, the answer comes after the start.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to begin in order to find out where you’re going.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you never begin, you never get to the destination.<\/p>\n

This is what has been lacking in the music business.\u00c2\u00a0 It has historically been run by the labels, by the RIAA. Which are about protection of their present business model as opposed to any kind of vision, any kind of leadership.\u00c2\u00a0 I wouldn’t follow Mitch Bainwol anywhere.\u00c2\u00a0 Nor the heads of any label.\u00c2\u00a0 Because they’ve got their heads up their asses.\u00c2\u00a0 Does Daniel Ek at Spotify have the answers?\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not sure.\u00c2\u00a0 But he’s trying to lead in this uncertain world.\u00c2\u00a0 Even Irving Azoff and Michael Rapino too.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re in search of answers. \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

When things are bad, we need to be led out of the wilderness.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve got to get behind somebody.\u00c2\u00a0 Funny, in the music industry, the acts used to be the leaders.\u00c2\u00a0 Some still are.\u00c2\u00a0 Trent Reznor is a prime example.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s trying to do it without sacrificing his integrity, without selling out to the man, because music, when done right, must be pure.\u00c2\u00a0 Shawn Fanning created a platform where all people could have all music.\u00c2\u00a0 Was it economically flawed?\u00c2\u00a0 Of course.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you think restricting access to copyrighted material is the answer, you’re unaware of how many sites hosting copyrighted material have sprung up since the crackdown on the Pirate Bay.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re multiplying like crazy.<\/p>\n

So, will Quincy and Jeffrey and Marty succeed in their mission?<\/p>\n

The answer is unclear.\u00c2\u00a0 But they’re leading.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re laying down their money and their time.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s where you start.<\/p>\n

\n
Quincy Jones Music Consortium<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Q told me he had to go to Israel, to meet with Putin and other heads of state.\u00c2\u00a0 He had to fix the Palestinian crisis before he died. Anybody else tells you a story like this and your eyes roll into the back of your head.\u00c2\u00a0 But Quincy’s on an airplane seemingly more than he’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-Cd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2370,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2369\/revisions\/2370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}