Writings | Kyoko Kitamura

Archive for Writings

A Mistake or Implicit Bias?

03/08/2022 / Admin / Comments Off

Recently, I learned of an album review written by a seasoned writer, whom I did not know personally, published on an online platform frequented by music fans. The review itself was wonderful, but there was one error which I noticed. The author, referring to my nonverbal vocal improvisation, wrote that I sometimes sang in Japanese on the recording.

Nowhere on the entire recording do I sing in Japanese. My vocal improvisation used my usual method of combining consonants and vowels in my own way. Perhaps the author decided that I was singing in Japanese because of my ancestry. Perhaps he took a mental shortcut without fact checking. (Many writers already know about my reluctance to use pre-existing language since language can both unify and divide; I’ve mentioned this personally to writers or in interviews or press releases, and have posts about it on my website.)

It took me a while to think about how to deal with this, or if I should deal with it at all. Given all that the world was going through right now, calling attention to a seemingly small error in a music review did not feel appropriate. At the same time, given what many of us go through on a daily basis as we continue to be seen as hyphenated-Americans on a good day, I felt that I should at least attempt to rectify the error, however small.

There were three ways I could approach this. One, do nothing. Two, post the issue on a public forum like Twitter. Three, contact the writer and see if he is open to having a conversation. The first option, I had already abandoned. The second option, I abandoned as well because I didn’t want a public discussion about implicit bias and assumptions based on race. We live in a polarized environment. The author and I represented two races and two genders which could easily be framed in a more explosive narrative. I wanted this to be an opportunity to explore the why and the how – especially how to prevent these things from happening in the first place. A public social media forum, to me, was not always constructive for nuanced matters.

Fortunately, I was able to find his email address and wrote to him about the error. He emailed back two days later, apologizing and saying that he will rectify the error as soon as he could. Then I emailed him back with an invitation to have a more formal dialogue about what happened, to examine the reasons and see if we could both gain insight from this incident. I did this because we are all human and we all make mistakes. In fact, making mistakes is pretty much the only way we learn, as has been shown in neuroscience research. If every small mistake was blown up in a public forum, what would that do to us? In the fear of making a faux pas, will we stop making mistakes, and thus stop learning? Stop communicating with each other, listening and discussing? I think all these things are already happening. Had I been in the same position as the author, I would have liked for the musician to reach out to me in the way I reached out to the author. I would want to learn, correct my mistake, and use that knowledge to make the world a better place.

For this process to work, we also need to be open to being corrected, because that is one of the most important parts to learning. And it goes without saying that mistakes which create victims… That would call for a serious investigation and all that goes with it.

If the author wants to engage, this story can continue. If not, this post will hopefully provide one direction out of many, in the ways we can deal with bias and assumptions. This incident has already given me an opportunity to put my thoughts into words, and that is a positive thing. As Anthony Braxton repeatedly told me, “Making no mistakes is the biggest mistake of all.” Mistakes are key to learning. Next time we make a mistake, no matter who makes it, let’s take a breath and see what we can learn from it, together, before rushing to condemn it. Because the only way to make the world a better place is to learn to do it together. And if we are not learning, then we are not part of the solution. We become part of the problem.

[Update] The author sent me an email with a thoughtful apology, although he declined to engage in a discussion. I am happy to let this matter drop, and hope that this interaction added something positive however small.

Category: Implicit Racial Bias, Racism, Teaching, Writings /

PR strategy for a performing arts organization during the pandemic

02/23/2021 / Admin / Comments Off

The following is based on a presentation I recently did during a class visit at Dartmouth College.

When the pandemic hit, live in-person performances were suddenly cancelled, the phrase “force majeure” was thrown around to nullify contracts, and the organization had to quickly reevaluate its raison d’être as well as shift its PR strategy. In the beginning, we probably didn’t understand its severity, or perhaps we were in denial. What we had thought would be a few months became half a year, a year, and now we are hearing that normalcy, whatever that means, may not be back until perhaps 2022. It was, and still is, a terrible and difficult time for all of us. There will be no easy way out of this situation. Throughout it all, I had a job as the executive director of an arts organization. I looked at five criteria:

Visibility
Relationship with the audience
Community
Funding
Creativity

Visibility

Visibility today includes exposure in traditional mass media as well as social media where self-generated content can be disseminated to the masses. It is usually a symbiotic process on our scene; presenters or labels and artists work together to publicize events or album releases. For example, when I work with a festival, I will be in close communications with their communications team about when to announce (embargo), contents of the release including press photos, discuss press requests and promote the event to our networks.

Once the pandemic hit, the symbiotic relationship with presenters and their huge networks disappeared along with live in-person performances. However, new relationships quickly strengthened, namely arts organizations working with other arts organizations and amplifying visibility together. This was already going on before the pandemic because artistic collaborations are a natural part of our work, but I believe I am seeing an increase in number of requests our organization receives for collaborations, consultations and pedagogy. We are all searching for ways to maximize our new two-dimensional platform: the screen. Organizations working together meant a larger network and reach.

The focus of live performance is in the moment, with a medium length pre-event publicity often in the form of “what to do and see” articles, and a very short post-event publicity in the form of reviews. Now, events were live streamed or taped beforehand, and the post-event publicity has grown a very long tail. The International Contemporary Ensemble, NYPL and Tri-Centric collaborated to produce a Braxton75 event which was broadcast over Facebook and YouTube (I.C.E. was the lead organizer). That event produced the wonderful lecture on the music of Anthony Braxton and an interview with the ensemble Thumbscrew, both of which can be promoted independently. Tri-Centric’s Carl Testa and Belgian guitarist Kobe Van Cauwenberghe worked together for a live streaming EEMHM performance which was then written up in a wonderful interview article.

Basically, we moved to a two-dimensional digital platform sans geographical constraints, and an event format which could be synchronous or asynchronous. The more organizations work together, the wider our reach (and it’s usually more fun). We are definitely making more use of post-event publicity. I don’t see this as a replacement of the old; in-person live performances cannot be replaced. I see this as a branching off, with its own modest possibilities. We were also fortunate to be able to work with many artists and ensembles interested in performing Braxton works, of which a sample can be seen on this YouTube playlist.

Relationship with the audience

In-person events were where artists could interact with the audience, and we missed those moments terribly. Here, I had to rethink what it was that happened between audience and artists during a performance. I always felt that there was an exchange going on between the audience and artist, in the form of attention for experience. According to Wikipedia, “Attention remains a crucial area of investigation within education, psychology, neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and neuropsychology.” For me, attention is a finite gift, zero sum, as explained by Michael Goldhaber in a recent NYT opinion piece. A performance space is usually set up so that the finite attention won’t be taken away from the action on stage: a bright elevated stage with the audience sitting in the dark. So, could I somehow distill this essence and apply it in another way?

The out-of-the-box idea was a tote bag with a musical score. A score, from a communication perspective, is music trapped in ink, a message which can be transmitted to and decoded by someone other than the composer. During the pandemic, we can’t interface with the audience in person. The tote would be a way for us to reach the audience, to disseminate the music, and for us to hopefully still be present in their lives. This bag was used as part of the 2020 year-end fundraising campaign and performed remarkably well. We were also able to communicate with the supporters while mailing the totes. It was not a substitute, but it was something. Otherwise, we kept up our regular newsletters to inform our audience of any activities such as online performances of Braxton works. (As an aside, an activity such as making a tote bag can help boost intraorganizational morale. Communication strategies should also take into account issues of communication among the board and staff of a nonprofit.)

Community

Without the community of artists, we would not have a scene. There is no solution to what is going on now during the pandemic, with artists out of work, moving away, going back to school, etc. Marshall McLuhan’s global village has encroached on a scene which thrived on propinquity, the in-person full-body experience of playing music together in the same room. For the moment, all we can do is to try our best to support each other, and if we can highlight each others’ works somehow, e.g., a newsletter, that should count for something. It’s similar to ingredient branding except we have become the ingredients. This is an evolving situation. We probably will not understand the full impact for a few years. Although it is important that we do our best to keep the community intact, the reality is that the community probably has become dormant and will certainly undergo a change. A desert bloom waiting to happen, waiting to rebound.

Funding

Another difficult area, but if all of the above somehow came together, then there might be wonderful people and institutions who can see value in what an organization does and be inclined to support it. I am always so thankful for donors who generously support arts organizations. At the same time, I see it as a responsibility for those who receive the money to keep delivering the best. And what is the best during a pandemic? That is a key question that I have no answer for. I also applied to grants and loans; got rejected by two grants but did receive two forgivable loans for the organization. For the moment, things are okay, but there is no guarantee for the future.

Creativity

An arts organization can’t stay static. I have no answer to the current situation except to say that crisis situations will always bring about change. Whether that is positive or negative or both will depend on the organization. In my professional experience, the ability to navigate crisis situations depends largely on the ability for the people involved to be flexible. Also, whatever issues that existed prior to the crisis will most likely be exacerbated. In some cases, one crisis may have already been brought about by preexisting issues but were somehow hidden or tolerated, while another crisis pushes the organization over the edge so that those hidden issues would have to be dealt with. The crisis may be a way to tackle those issues head-on and resolve them once and for all.

Category: PR and Communications, Recent Posts, Writings / Tags: arts admin, arts organization, PR, publicity

Voice and information – 5

02/01/2021 / Admin / Comments Off

The reason I first became interested in this topic was actually not musical. I speak three languages of which two, Japanese and French, contain levels of politeness. Japanese is especially complex, with many tiers of honorifics and politeness. It’s embedded in my being and attitude even when speaking English which is a very equalizing language. But when I enter a studio to improvise, I noticed that all of my attitudes were completely gone, almost as if I had shut it off, which led me to wonder how music-making, and specifically improvisation, affected the person (at that time, I didn’t specifically relate it to the brain), and possibly interpersonal relationships between ensemble members.

At the same time, I was also conscious of the difference in my own improvisation depending on what I was concentrating on: consonant/vowel combination or pitch/rhythm/volume combination. The latter took much more work. It was also difficult to try to combine both at a level I felt was 50/50. I also noticed that after every intense improvising session, I seemed to encounter a brain fog, as if parts of my brain needed rebooting.

Some of the answers to my questions came in the form of a surgeon, neuroscientist, and musician named Charles Limb. I highly encourage everyone to watch his TED talk, which explains the relationship between music improvisation and the brain. The brain is activated in certain areas and shut off in others.

As Mr. Limb says, this research is just the beginning. But it is an important step in thinking about improvisation. I wonder which areas of the the brain are activated when we improvise vocally, i.e., creating consonant/vowel combinations and pitch/rhythm/volume combinations in real time.

This thought process will also put into context one’s own strengths and weaknesses in improvisation, and how that might be related to certain areas of the brain. Ear training may be a misnomer. It’s all brain training.

Now that we’ve arrived at the discussion of the brain, please go back to the first post and reread some of the material. Perhaps the reference to a vocal long tone conjuring emotion will now have a different significance. What the research seems to show is that music is indeed perceived as a form of communication, often nonverbal, and that we humans have the ability to both send and receive these messages. The implication of these researches are enormous, from understanding human emotions to community-building through collective musical activities. That’s it for this series. Thanks for reading!

Category: Teaching, Writings /

Voice and information – 4

01/31/2021 / Admin / Comments Off

In the last post, I wrote about speech, and how pitch/rhythm/volume carries expression. Now let’s examine this in the context of speech and music.

Let’s take the following sentence as an example. “In their quest for Republican backing, Democrats say they missed opportunities for a stronger response to the Great Recession.”

Straight read:

Let’s slow this down to 40% of its speed and think about pitch and rhythm (volume is not as much a factor in this reading).

It’s pretty amazing to hear how much pitch and rhythm is contained even in a straight read. Just for fun, let’s octave-shift higher, which helps smooth over the consonant/vowel combination and gives it more of an instrumental quality:

Let’s now speak the first six words, slowed down, trying to use the same pitches and rhythm as in the straight read:

Does it sound more like singing? If so, what is the difference between speech and singing?

There are probably many answers, and I have seen studies pointing at sound frequency differences, enunciation differences, and all sort of other differences pertaining to the production of sound. But the best answer for me isn’t about how the vocal sounds are produced; it’s about where. Speech and singing originate in the different parts of the brain! Speaking involves the left brain, and singing involves the right brain. Emotion too is expressed and recognized by the right brain. When we are vocalizing with pitch/rhythm/volume in mind, rather than just consonant/vowel combinations, we are probably engaging areas of the brain that are not always used for speech. And that effort…perhaps that is one essence of music.

References:

Brookes, G. (2014, June 19). The science of singing: how our brains and bodies produce sound. The Guardian.

Hamilton, J. (2020, Feburary 27). How The Brain Teases Apart A Song’s Words And Music. NPR.

Category: Teaching, Writings /

Voice and information – 3

01/30/2021 / Admin / Comments Off

Over the past two posts, I wrote about the various ways in which information is carried via the voice, with a short detour into copyright law.

Now, back again to voice and information, and specifically which part of the voice conveys what information.

“I have a pen.” Common sentence, especially in English as second language text books (some of you may know the song PPAP). There are many ways can you say “I have a pen.” If you are surprised to have found a pen, you can add an exclamation mark. If it’s a question, add a question mark. You can be loud, soft, determined, happy, horrified, everything else and everything in between.

Note that the words stay the same. What changes is the pitch, rhythm, volume. Without having to explain to someone that you are surprised to have found a pen, you can convey all that information with “I have a pen!” Pitch, rhythm and volume carry expression.

Now let’s take a look at the sentence “I have a pen.” You are the sender of the message. The person listening, or the receiver, needs an understanding of basic English as well as the definitions of the words used in order to decode the message. This may not be as obvious as it seems, even for English-speakers. If someone says “I like slimeheads”, depending on how familiar you are with fish names, you may not understand that they are talking about roughies (or you may not understand this entire sentence).

When the message and the expression do not match, the sender can be perceived as “deadpan” “drama queen” “ham”, etc. Think of the voice has having two channels: one which speaks words, and the other which transmits nonverbal information conveying expression.

That robot voice from old sci-fi movies? By removing pitch, rhythm and volume, the voice would lose its nonverbal information channel which transmits expression, thus dehumanizing the voice. Today’s robots are very different, and some would undoubtedly fall into the region of the uncanny valley. By the way, nonverbal expression has been a huge success in the unlikeliest domain of text: the emoji 😀

Category: Teaching, Writings /

Voice and information – 2

01/11/2021 / Admin / Comments Off

In the previous post, we explored the ways in which the voice can transmit both verbal and nonverbal messages. Although my interest is primarily in the nonverbal musical use of the voice, it is worth exploring some aspects of verbal vocal messaging in music.

There are many ways to categorize verbal vocal messaging, but here, we will take a look at just one: oral and written.

Think about what kind of songs are learned orally. What was the very first song you learned? Songs used in childhood games? Lullabies sung to a child? Learned from watching a TV show (or these days, YouTube videos or TikTok)? What about a mnemonic songs?

The oral transmission of a song is usually a social activity. By definition, it must be passed on from person to person, directly or indirectly as in the case of a YouTube video. It will usually require repeated listening, memory and practice, alone or in a group. The message of the song may or may not be important, but the purpose of what the song will be used for is: calming your child, belonging to a group, playing a game, memorizing the periodic table, etc. The act of singing is personal to the singer, or a common objective for the community, and a public audience is usually not a factor (we usually never perform Ring Around the Rosie for the public).

On the other hand, written words for a song, commonly referred to as “lyrics,” is a message from one or several writers, usually for the purpose of a performance or recording with an audience in mind, regardless of if the song is actually utilized in that context. Written lyrics for a written song can be copyrighted since it is a tangible expression of an idea, and thus bring money to the rights holder if it is not already in the public domain.

Here, we should briefly touch on the copyright law. Modern copyright law traces its roots to 15th century England, when those in power wanted to regulate what was being printed (or “copied”), both to keep an eye on the content as well as to protect the rights of the owners of the writings. This has now evolved into the copyright law we have today in the U.S., which also governs music royalties, creating the multi-billion dollar music industry. There are many issues with music copyright including how the royalty is determined and collected, but that is a topic for another workshop.

What I want to underscore is how Western music copyright is based on the music having been written, coming from a print culture, creating a monetary hierarchy vis-à-vis orally-transmitted culture and music. This split has also trickled down to how the performance rights organizations deal with classical music (notated) and jazz (partially notated with a portion improvised), with classical music often being paid more. I have no real input in this matter other than to make these observations, but felt that it was important to point out how the system we live in may be prioritizing certain genres without us ever being conscious of it, thus distorting the value of said genres.

Category: Teaching, Writings / Tags: communication, copyright, information, vocal music, voice

Voice and information – 1

01/03/2021 / Admin / Comments Off

Imagine hearing a flute, but not seeing the player. Then imagine hearing a voice, perhaps a song, but not seeing the person or being able to work out any words of the song if there are any. Compare the amount of information one can glean from these two situations. The voice would probably give us some information about the performer: age (child or adult), gender assigned at birth (male or female) and possibly even health, because the voice innately contains personal information the listeners understand. It will be hard to figure out the age of a flautist without seeing the person, and the age of the flute… well, someone will have to supply us with that information.

Next, imagine hearing a scream, cry or laughter. A scream usually signifies an intense emotion. If it is in the middle of the night, perhaps the person is in danger. If the scream is followed by laughter, perhaps it was a joyous occasion, or someone played a joke. Whatever the case, these wordless vocals, or nonverbal messages, will elicit some sort of response in the listener because they carry meaning the listener would understand. It is a sort of a biological code. The voice can express that which cannot be expressed in words.

Instrumentalists are often interested in the vocalist’s ability to sing words, the bringing-to-life of written texts within the musical sphere. But the voice already carries so much information, and add to this the inputs from lyricists and composers… and the listener is bombarded. That moment when the vocalist holds one powerful note and the crowd goes wild? Someone once told me that the emotion resides in the vowels. Perhaps when nonverbal message is strongly projected within a musical context, we also vibrate in ways we cannot explain. There is much room to explore in the realm of wordless vocals in the context of musical compositions, which we can start by using very simple tools such as long tones, crescendos and decrescendos, and emotional content which is rarely discussed except in relation to words.

Category: Teaching, Writings / Tags: communication, information, nonverbal, verbal, voice