LISTEN TO THE MUSIC, MR. TRUMP
President Trump has called for the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities which offer financial assistance and encourage creative artistic expression. Why would he do this? Can this be a financial decision? Or is destruction of the democratic value of freedom of speech, exemplified by the arts, at the root of defunding the NEA?
Consider Mark, a young musician, who told me that his parents feared musicians did not earn decent wages and “did not want him to wind up eating cat food in New York City.” Indeed, as he prepared to move to the Big Apple, his parents’ proud support of their “talented little boy” escalated into worry and concern about their adult son’s future.
Mark’s personal and professional identity rested upon being a musician. He told me that if he followed his parents’ concerns and pursued a non-music career he would feel like a dependent child in order to maintain parental love. Mark simultaneously worried that if he did pursue music and asserted his independence, he would alienate his parents who would reject him. Yet Mark also was apprehensive about the difficulties inherent in a career in the arts - not without reason.
Musicians have a high rate of unemployment or under-employment after years of highly specialized training which typically begins in childhood. Data from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics illustrate that 65% of all artists (e.g., musicians, visual artists, architects, actors, dancers, writers, and photographers) are better educated than the overall labor force. Since 2009 there has been an 8-9% steady unemployment rate for musicians (2006 data already showed 21% unemployment for this population.). Job security and wealth are not the primary magnets for individuals pursuing careers in music and the arts.
Clearly, the federal budget will not be rescued by purging the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities. It costs more for Melania Trump’s security in New York City than the entire budget estimated for the NEA. The endowment’s budget for fiscal 2016 was $148 million, representing 0.00004 percent of the overall $3.9 trillion federal budget that year.
Not unexpectedly, arts groups are vocalizing and mobilizing.
Talking with Mark brought up memories of my own move to New York City in 1961 to attend The Juilliard School as a piano major. When I graduated with my BM degree in 1965 and MS degree in 1966, the music world was giddy with optimism about the future of the arts, cultivated by the Kennedy administration. President Lyndon Johnson just had signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act in 1965.
Hope and opportunity were abundant. Grants were awarded to large and small arts organizations; fellowships were made to individual performers and artists. Yet by 1968, ominous dark clouds formed on the NEA horizon, detailed by Mark Bauerlein with Ellen Grantham in “NEA for the Arts – History 1965-2008”.
By the late 1960s, concern by some Conservative lawmakers suggested that traditional art and music would be censored in favor of new works. One critic proposed by that the government should not financially support the arts at all. The Viet Nam War further separated doves and hawks around priorities. Caught in the headlights were federal grants made to individual artists.
Following my Juilliard graduation, I came to realize that the concert career I envisioned originally no longer held the fascination (or reality) for me. After fourteen years post-Juilliard teaching piano and performing, I returned to graduate school at the University of Michigan to pursue non music degrees. Curious about what prompted the pursuit of a career in the performing arts, the subject became the focus of my research. My analysis showed that career choice in music was more complex than the concrete variables of aptitude assessment and cultural economics. Luckily, in 1975, I discovered the NEA Research Division, headed by Harold Horowitz. Mr. Horowitz sent me valuable NEA data about artist employment and unemployment, community participation in the arts, artist income, and other topics that informed policy decisions. More recently, Sunil Iyengar, current Head of the NEA Research Division has done the same.
Over time, audiences were graying, attendance was dwindling at arts events, and public arts education diminished in schools. Conservative Republicans claimed there was moral corruption in purportedly “pornographic” works of artists Frank Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano, recipients of NEA grants. In 1989 Leonard Bernstein refused to accept the National Medal of the Arts in protest to defunding the arts. In 1997 Newt Gingrich called for the total elimination of the NEA. Important art and sculpture, housed in the Twin Towers, were lost in the 9-11 bombings. Not surprising (at least to artists and musicians), during this time of national and international devastation, people turned to the arts, music, and poetry in response to their grief. Music soothed the soul when words were unavailable.
Recent NEA and the Bureau of Census data illustrate continued erosion of the arts since the 2008 recession. 2010 census data show that unemployment rose faster for artists than civilians 2007-08. Artists left workforce more than general population. NEA data in 2014 show that all types of musicians earned less than typical U.S. workers (with exception of super-stars.) The job market for musicians and artists remains, regrettably, unstable.
Mr. Trump, why won’t you defend, not defund, the arts and NEA initiatives? Why won’t you support the intrinsic value of music and art? Try to understand that the arts provide financial resources for communities, tourism, income for businesses, and educational opportunity for children. Ironically, these arguments do not recognize the need for appropriate income for artists and musicians themselves who, as cultural ambassadors, enrich themselves and consumers alike. Mr. Trump, put this defunding fear to rest.
In our current arts-threatened environment, I think of my patient, Mark who moved to New York City. When he told me his parents feared he would wind up “eating cat food in New York City”, I experienced two reactions. One was the reality of how difficult it is to make a good, even modest, income in a music career. I also pondered the provocative thought: would Mark be more fortunate than many others if he could afford cat food?
I hope that citizens of America will follow the Italians who raised their voices successfully in 2011 to protest budget cuts to the arts. I also hope Mark is not eating cat food. And I hope that if President Trump attempts to commit cultural “soul murder” (a phrase coined by Dr. Leonard Shengold) to the NEA - that Congress will force him to eat his words.
The writer is author of “Melodies of the Mind” (Routledge Press, 2013) and “Managing Stage Fright: A Guide for Musicians and Music Teachers” (forthcoming 9/17, Oxford University Press). She is a contributing editor to Clavier Companion. Visit her blog at www.julienagel.net where she writes about stage fright, carrer choice, and music lessons as life lessons. She is a graduate of The Juilliard School, The University of Michigan, and The Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute and is in private practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan.