Downloaded from YTS.MX
[bear roaring]
[dramatic music]
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
Read my lips, we're going to cut spending.
There is a problem, we're broke.
We're broke, we're broke, we're broke.
My, my very first thoughts as a child, uh, came from music.
Music has always been part of my family life.
I paint every day, and I sing every day.
Music is a huge part of my life.
I cannot imagine a world without music.
One of the most fun I ever had in school
was the day we got up in front of the, uh, auditorium.
When it comes to cutting funding for the arts in school,
I think that's a terrible, uh, way to go.
Imagining a life in school with no music.
Couldn't imagine a world without music.
You know, I think it's the most powerful form of, of magic really.
As a result of having to cut back in the short term,
we have cut the arts from public schools.
It's shocking to me that certain high schools don't have any arts programs.
Yeah, it's lack, definitely lacking and it's scary.
[upbeat music]
[gentle music]
Music definitely kept me off the streets.
I have few memories of going outside as a kid,
because there was so much gang activity
and the fear of mixing in with the wrong crowd of people
that didn't have my best interest.
Looking back, I can see that the world around me was a war zone.
Not necessarily a war zone for in the physical, but in the mental.
In the midst of all of this, I was fortunate to be introduced to the flute.
[upbeat flute music]
Music, like, definitely kept me from wanting to spend my time
doing other things with other people
that weren't constructive or, or beneficial for me.
We are engaged in an interesting project
that has to do with studying and really investigating
the effects of music training in the developing brain.
If you start learning music
and, actually, just even listening to music very early in life,
that is going to have a positive effect.
[upbeat music]
The fundamental things that we're seeing is that
the ma-- the maturation of the brain, in the sections of the brain
that are associated with auditory processes or the processes of sounds.
What happens is that it's accelerated,
so these children have,
for example, electrons holographic curves, the electric potentials
that are generated by sounds are proximating
the curves that you see in adults.
And quite different from the kids that are not having music teaching.
[upbeat music]
I was nine years old, and I was in Atlantic City,
I stood next to Gene Krupa, who was in the very back ballroom.
And there was a rope and I was just watching him
and he kept looking over at me and realizing that I was just into the music.
[upbeat music]
Anyone who knows about aphasia,
and how, um, a left-handed severe stroke and a right hander
will often effect speech perception or speech production.
It, it immediately begs the question,
well, what happens with music perception?
I think that young people are naturally interested in music,
and learning about how the brain works through music
and your own experiences with music,
facilitates the teaching of neuroscience to young people.
[jazz music]
Yeah, music is such an amazing outlet.
For myself, I feel like if I'm in a bad mood
or I'm cranky or something doesn't feel quite right,
I'm anxious, I'm like how long has it been since I've sang.
Because getting on a stage or even being in the comfort
of my own home or with a small crowd,
when I'm singing and projecting that out,
I'm getting out emotions, I'm relieving stress instantly.
All of these interventions that we are having as children,
will have a beneficial impact in the structure of the brain,
and in the way that brain is going to be prepared
to deal with many other things, uh, in, in, in society
in terms of the careers of this, uh, children.
[light music]
The universe is the transformation of vibrations
into matter, right matter is emotion.
That's what art is. Whether it be a dance piece or whether it be
a great melody or that lyric that you connect to,
that you identify with, that brings you back in time to that special place.
It's a connective tissue to our spirit.
It's what connects us to rhythm of the planet.
That's how we're all unified, is really through art.
[upbeat music]
[Martin] Music connects us cathartically to our emotions.
It's a constant healer, it's the common thread.
It's the international language that doesn't have to be explained.
And if you could bottle that,
there would probably be no war.
There's so much we don't know and music is all in that.
Because what did they say in The Bible?
"In the beginning was the word and the word was God, and the word was with God."
What does that mean, what is the word?
Well, according to some people, the word is that first sound.
[inhaling] Ohm.
The "ohm", the frequency, everything starts from one and zero.
There's a science to harmonics.
And it translates into society, because I want to live in harmony.
[humming]
Singing in church was, you know,
when you, when you sing in the choir,
there is a performance element of it.
But singing for God is, is, is a beautiful experience.
[Keith David humming]
[upbeat jazz music]
[Tony Bennett] Well, jazz is music that was invented in America.
Down South, by African Americans.
And it's their music and I just fell in love with it.
From, uh, New Orleans, Louisiana all that, here comes Wynton.
[upbeat orchestral music]
[laughing] Here comes Wynton Marsalis.
The difference between Wynton and everybody else for me,
is that he's been charged with
carrying this load called jazz.
[jazz music]
[Tony Bennett] Because it allows you to improvise,
and never... [stuttering] sing the same thing twice.
You, you just sing for whatever the moment is and react to that,
to communicate exactly how you feel at that moment.
And it's a wonderful art form that I love very much.
[audience clapping]
[Whoopi Goldberg] What I do, when I do my shows,
when I'm talking about different things is, it's all jazz,
because it's where it goes, it's how it flows.
It's, it's the rhythm and the rhyme of stuff,
you know, that you have in your everyday life. It's the walk that you do.
It's all of that. So we're all really musically inclined.
And it's also for us as Americans,
that's really our first form of music
that is particularly American.
You know, that is, that was born here.
That didn't come from anywhere else, that's ours.
[upbeat jazz music]
[audience cheering and clapping]
[dramatic music]
[Myka Miller] I would say that Harmony Project
was really founded because there is a lack of music education in the schools.
I can't say there's none, but
68% of public elementary schools in Los Angeles
do not receive music education. That's a lot of kids.
It's the arts. Whether it's music or painting or any kind of artistry.
Poetry, that teaches a child how to express
what's going on within him or herself.
So, if you cut funding for those programs,
you, you cut the access that kid have to express.
Because sometimes, especially young kids,
they don't have the vocabulary to express,
but you put a crayon in their hand
or you give them an instrument and they'll figure it out.
And that's a great tool for them for healing.
-One and two. -[upbeat music]
[Daniel Egwurube] I, immediately, when my teacher
in the first lesson, I remember he played
a flute excerpt from Peter and the Wolf.
And it's, it's a fantastic except.
And right then and there I fell in love with the flute.
He sounded incredible and I was like I wanted to be that,
I wanted to work hard at this and become just as good as he was.
I'm a hundred thousand years old and I still remember Peter and the Wolf.
[car humming]
In Nigeria, you have to have parents that have already made it.
If you don't have parents or somebody
that you depend on that is doing well,
then, uh, you just have to grow up,
you know, with your own struggles.
[solemn music]
[Daniel Egwurube] I was born in Nigeria.
I remember the friends I had in Nigeria.
I remember the, the difference in culture.
And, uh, when I came here, it was, everything just seemed so
non, non-family-like, non neighbor-like.
Everyone kept to their selves a lot more.
My, my dad thought there was, there was a lot more opportunity here,
and a lot more things you could do,
you could make something of yourself here in America.
One again, one and two.
[upbeat orchestral music]
My teacher, my current teacher today,
when I was 10 years old, Amy,
one of the first things I thought about when--
uh, after a few lessons with her, I was like, "No one can be this happy."
She had, she brought such an energy to the classroom always
and I'm like, "She can't keep this up."
[everyone laughing]
[Amy Tatum] I met Daniel, I guess it would have been about nine years ago.
He started the program at Expo, and he wasn't in my class at the beginning,
he was in another class, but I, I heard him play a jury.
It might have been his first jury ever.
[Daniel Egwurube] But the thing about is, I found out, it just,
she had such a passion for teaching us.
And she enjoyed it so much and she brought a light
to the classroom every single day without failure.
[orchestral music]
[Amy Tatum] The Harmony Project does so much for these kids.
On the most basic level it gives them
something to do after school. You know, and it gives them
a community to belong to.
A community of peers and adults, um,
who all respect each other and are coming together to create something.
Which is kind of powerful.
[dramatic music]
You know, so a lot of our kids are going to college,
and they're finding out about college because they play music.
You know, they're finding out about all these other opportunities because of music.
It's not that they're going to be the next Yo-Yo Ma,
but that music has opened doors for them
that they would not otherwise have open.
[upbeat music]
[train humming]
[Daniel Egwurube] Music for me is a, is a sense of power.
Because the way I look at it, when I have my instrument,
I have-- I make my own world where I'm in control.
I can practice, I can know more about this world,
I can be able to manipulate it to what I want to do.
And being able to manipulate an inanimate object
to do something so beautiful is so empowering.
And I feel like that's what more people need in the world today,
to be more powerful, and feel more powerful.
I listened to a lot of classical music,
a lot of jazz, modern jazz, 40's jazz
from Wynton to Miles, from Beethoven to Philip Glass.
[orchestral music]
It's really sad they're cutting funding because
when I was a kid, that's where I went, you know,
during lunch time, recess time, was the music room.
You know, that was my, my place where I just, I felt free.
I felt like my, you know, artsy kind of friends would hang out there.
Whether it be actors or dancers or you know musicians themselves.
We'd all just hang out and create, you know,
then go back to the boring school work... [laughing] so.
[light music]
[Myka Miller] The Harmony Project is an after school music program.
It's not really about the music,
it's about youth development, empowering children.
We say it's a music program, I think music is the empathist,
but really it's about, you know, all the non-musical things that children experience.
[dramatic orchestral music]
Harmony Project was founded in 2001 with 36 students.
Fast forward to today, we have 2,053 students.
It's crazy. The demand in Los Angeles is just so big.
So we get very little government money
and what we do get is primarily arts funding.
Um, I've been trying to like kind of breakthrough
to, to show that this is really youth development and not arts, because I think arts
are kind of like this afterthought.
[dramatic orchestral music]
It's really, you know there's a lot
of private money that is picking up the slack.
But if we don't continue to advocate,
you know, it's going to be just a thing where
all those people, they're handling it.
And I think it has to be something that we're
constantly pushing and constantly fighting
because what would a world be like
without art. You know, I mean, I can't imagine school--
I can't even imagine growing up without music.
You know, for me that's impossible.
And so my thing is that a lot of families
that can afford it, or, you kwow, school districts that can afford it,
they, they're kind of working out deals and, um, you know, parents are paying for it.
It's a pay to play kind of thing.
Don't judge what the music is, is telling you to play.
It's like a feeling of we're here, like resolution.
[Myka Miller] What I really worry about is these really low income neighborhoods
where they don't have that wherewithal
and you know, obviously the schools are already struggling.
And so arts is going to be pushed back.
Yeah. It angers me.
Those particular areas have been cut.
Not really realizing the importance of music.
[jazz music]
[Myka Miller] And a lot of these kids just need opportunities, you know.
They just need doors to be opened for them.
You know, when I was a kid, uh, I, uh, we at least had
band at my school.
You know, I ended up, uh, I think I played the bass drum.
That was my big thing. [chuckling]
I wanted to be a trumpet player,
because I wanted to play "Reveille" in the morning, you know.
[scatting "Reveille"]
[upbeat rock music]
I'm starting a new charity, and it's called The Music Path.
And, uh, we're starting in Glendale at some of the high schools there.
And we're, we're getting, uh, we're te-- teaching teachers
how to teach kids to play in a group together.
Like a rock and roll or whatever kind of music they want.
[upbeat jazz music]
We are going to provide reading, writing, and arithmetic
come hell or high water. No matter what happens.
Why do we not have the same attitude
and commitment to the arts?
It is horrible, and they don't have access
to a vehicle that's going to bring them some joy,
you know, and, and maybe be a ticket to a, a life that they
would be passionate about.
[upbeat music]
There's a lot of kids that are going to turn into the next,
like, that have the potential to be the next
whoever that's going to bring a lot of joy to a lot of other people.
[upbeat rock music]
Well, we have a foundation called Keeping The Blues Alive.
And it's designed to give out money to schools.
And whether it be guitar strings, instruments,
you name it, and the thing about it is,
we give a kid a guitar or a piano or a music book.
Um, it changes their life or it could potentially change their life.
I mean, they, they could get so deep into it that they can't live without playing the piano,
and they go out and make a living playing the piano.
When you play a piece of music that you feel
so strongly about and connect with, and you can communicate that,
it helped me become a better communicator.
[upbeat flute music]
I usually practice in the bathroom,
because I feel like I can hear myself more,
the acoustics are better.
And it sounds like you're playing in an opera house
because it kind of echos a little.
So, even though you might not sound that great,
if you just play out you, you can feel really good
about yourself because you feel huge.
[upbeat flute music]
I don't remember a moment in life without music.
I usually, 95% of the time I have the Frank Sinatra station on.
Uh, I love Sinatra, I loved him, I did a film with him,
and I knew him, we were good friends for a while.
I loved him, I knew, I was confident he loved me.
And I listen to him, and I love the music of my generation,
uh, which is to say the 40's and 50's, 60's.
[jazz music]
My first memories of music were, uh, The Beatles
and Ray Charles on the radio.
I would listen to music constantly.
I went in and bought Meet the Beatleswith pennies.
I think it was $1.99 on an LP, but I used all pennies at the Woolworth's.
You know, a couple of dozen songs that will bring a tear to my eye.
I remember I flew in the, in World War II,
I flew a lot of missions over Germany.
I was a radio operator at Gunner,
but I remember on the way over,
we stopped in Gander, uh, the Gander Islands,
and I had the 12, uh, midnight to 2:00 a.m. shift
guarding the plane and the, my instruction is to march from wing to wing,
from wing to wing for two hours.
Anyway, so I'm doing that and I'm singing at the top of my voice.
And I remember particularly singing.
♪ We'll meet again
♪ Don't know where Don't know when ♪
♪ But I know we'll meet again
♪ Some sunny day
♪ We'll meet again
♪ Don't know where Don't know when ♪
♪ But I know we'll meet again Some sunny day ♪
I had tears pouring down... [laughing] my face singing those songs.
Uh, as sad as can be and as happy as could be at the same time.
♪ Far away
♪ And won't you please Say hello ♪
♪ To the folks that I know
♪ Tell them I won't be long
♪ They'll be happy to know
When I was maybe 11 years old,
I was in the street, we were playing stick ball.
I remember the names of the kids I was playing with. My mother leans out,
we're in the fourth floor, tenement building, my mother leans out the window
and says, "Norman, Norman, Norman!"
[lady] Norman!
"We're having dinner early tonight because Kate Smith
-is singing the musicals round and round." -[clicking]
[announcer] And now we take great pleasure in presenting to you,
the star of our program, Ms. Kate Smith.
[audience clapping]
♪ You
♪ Something to me
♪ Something that Simply mystifies me ♪
When I was about 14, I started writing music. So I wrote like 60 songs.
I filed myself with... [laughs] the Library of Congress.
One of them was called "When I Was a Boy."
And it was about a guy that goes to war, and, uh, you know, it was in the 60s.
Now, I write comedy music and, um, I'm very happy
with how I've evolved to that way and found a niche for what I do.
Uh, a niche is a small knish that you give to your niece.
Music is one of the most important things that gets us through life.
It really, you know, does soothe the savage beast.
[upbeat music]
♪ This kind of temptation
♪ Swore I wouldn't give in
♪ Because once you Felt your heartbreak ♪
♪ You find yourself saying
♪ You're never going to Fall again ♪
♪ So, go on your comical lie
♪ I don't need to be wrong
♪ If you want to Make me believe ♪
[Justin] My, my first music teacher in school
was elementary school, and his name was Mr. Gaines.
And he's actually the only teacher's name
that I can recall from elementary school, which is horrible.
But, it's just that he had a pretty profound impact on me
and, um, you know, I remember him so fondly,
because he would let me stay after school
or after class, you know,
if I didn't want to go to math or something.
-[both laughing] -[upbeat guitar strumming]
[?÷} I was able to actually have a lot of music and arts
involved in my school, my family.
My dad growing up, he played in pit orchestras
for all the musicals that would come off of Broadway
when they would to town into Philly.
And we had a repair shop in my basement,
so there's always different kinds of instruments,
all kinds of stuff laying around.
So, I started playing clarinet at second grade I think and
my mom was a singer and my stepmom
was in the Philadelphia Orchestra, so I was very, very blessed.
-[Justin] That's hard to say what would... -[Sarah] Yeah.
...what would happen, uh, if we weren't
exposed to, to music in, in school
when we were coming up because it might have been a talent
that we just might not have tapped into.
-Yeah, totally. -Because we might not have known
it was there.
I'm a luthier, uh, called an old world luthier.
Because of the way I build still. It's very traditional,
and I'm third generation luthier.
The business started in 1928
with my grandfather and my great-uncle.
And, uh, my grandfather, uh, started working in a furniture shop,
um, but they were both musicians.
And, uh, musicians started bringing them broken instruments
and asking him to repair them.
Somebody kind of challenged him one time to build a guitar.
They eventually started getting a reputation
for what they were doing, and they started the business.
Because I still do everything old-fashioned
or old world, you're not going to find a lot of power tools.
This is a... a guitar with wood that came from a fence
that was on the property at Graceland.
And, uh, even the forest got a little, a little crown on there for the King.
Two, here we go. In two, out two.
[Laurie Schell] Nashville is music city.
Music is fundamental to everything that is Nashville.
[teacher] Three, four, five.
[Laurie Schell] Music city has a message to the world
that music is important to all of us.
♪ Love you, baby
♪ Let me love
I got an email from Laurie asking me
if I would be interested in being involved,
and create quality music programs
in all of our schools here in Davidson County.
There's a lot of great research out there
about music and students and student success.
But we wanted to see what happened
when we asked those same questions
of our students here in Nashville.
And we found that there is very strong correlation
between participating in music
and student attendance, grade point average.
Coming to school every day is, is a great thing
and it, it enables students to be happy
about being there, and wanting to learn.
They're more likely to be successful.
[upbeat music]
[Manuel Delgado] Our goal is never to
take away band, choir, and orchestra.
We want to keep those traditional disciplines in the school.
But a lot of kids kind of fall through the cracks
that might be interested in other genres or styles of music.
So they talked about, you know, bringing in hip hop
and world drumming and lead guitar,
song writing, and, uh, mariachi.
[upbeat music]
♪ Ah, twist and shout Shake it up, baby ♪
♪ Twist and shout
♪ Come on, come on Come on, baby, now ♪
♪ Come on, baby
♪ Come on, and work it on out
♪ Work it on out
[Gabriela Fuentes] If there is scientific research saying
"Hey, this builds up your cognitive skills.
Hey, this builds up your test scores."
And that's what every school wants,
why is that we don't have it then?
I remember the music that, um, that I listened to as a kid,
the Latin music, the salsa music,
I didn't like it as a kid.
I thought it was bringing us down,
because a lot of the hoodlums in the neighborhood, they loved it.
[humming Latin music]
And I was like... [scoffing] and I was trying to say, "Come on,
we're not all the same, we're not all like that."
And one cat came up to me and said,
"Yeah, you don't like it now, but when you get older, man, you're going to love it."
I'm like, "Yeah, right."
And sure enough... [laughing]
...in like my early 20's,
19 and 20 years old, I heard one album
by Willie Colon and Ruben Blades called Siembra.
And it just, oh.
♪ Ah
[Gabriela Fuentes] The kids come from broken homes,
and they come with self-esteem issues.
And a lot of that is building that up first.
I don't know if they'll all become musicians later on,
but I just hope that they enjoyed it while they're here.
♪ La, la bamba
You start to give them this confidence
that it's like you can do anything.
♪ La, la bamba
♪ Mariachi
[kid] You ask anyone in that class,
they'll probably say this one is like their favorite.
-[orchestral music] -Up.
Again, again, air not face. One, two, ready, again.
[Susan] I had an interesting home life.
I was not a wealthy kid. I had maybe two outfits.
I wore the same clothes to school every day.
And I was one of those kids that could have very easily been lost.
But I had a great band director who happened to be female.
[orchestral music]
She influenced me. She gave me a place to be.
And she... I felt like I was valued and I was talented and I, I could do something.
And I was more than the bank account that my parents didn't have.
It saved me, I, I could have been very easily lost and could have been a statistic.
And then I ended up going into that profession,
because I wanted to be, wanted to be that for someone else.
-[boy] Mrs. Waters, she's amazing. -Oh, I love Ms. Waters.
-She's one of the best teachers in this whole entire school. -[girl] Yeah.
She makes sure that we understand what we're doing
and what we're playing, and she's just, she's just a nice person overall.
Music and art are the reason
so many of our kids come to school.
Freshman year, I was very shy and I was very quiet,
and I would just prefer to stay out of people's way.
But then when I got to mariachi, and then I got really good at it,
and we'd just go out and perform,
it kind of snapped that out of me.
It was just like very powerful, I was like, wow.
[Dr. Nola Jones] So, we have a really unique situation in Nashville, Tennessee,
because we're Music City, USA.
The reality is, the public school systems can't do it alone.
The fact that we are a collective is very important to our work.
Uh, the mayor's office is standing by us, the c-- the music community,
the CMA Foundation is standing by us.
And in fact, has made over, uh, ten, 11 million dollar
commitment to music education over the past decade in Nashville.
Uh, we couldn't do this work without them.
School is hard enough. You know, when you're a kid, and you know,
I mean there's bullying and all these things going on,
I, I really thing music is a great escape for kids
and I think it's quite unfortunate
that those programs are being cut.
You're cheating the children out of, uh, an experience.
I always felt like I came into the world loving music.
I was exposed to music at a very young age.
Everyone in my family loved music.
♪ Hey, love, why can't you be More like that? ♪
♪ Hey, love, why can't you be Made to last? ♪
♪ Hey, love, wish I could find Some comfort there ♪
♪ Hey, love Wish you were like
♪ This old t-shirt
I think that music is extremely valuable.
I have five kids and they've all had experiences with music in school.
Three of them became musicians,
and I think that, uh, the music had a lot to do, like my, my--
We forget about the self-esteem issues that,
that it's a time where a kid needs to have
a strong sense of self to survive.
And music can help develop that.
The main, like, impact was in junior high.
I had a teacher who, I still remember her name,
Mrs. Rumple was her name, and she was so cool.
She actually introduced me to, uh, Motown music for the first time.
That was like, sort of that age when I was petrified
to sing on stage, but I have this gift
and I didn't really know what to do with it and
she really was a big encourager of me being a solo artist.
She was such a, a great influence to every kid in my school.
And I'm, I'm from a small town in, in Iowa, and she made a big impact. It was really wonderful.
[Dr. Nola Jones] Our citizens believe that music is, is vital to a well-rounded curriculum.
And so when the public education system can't provide everything...
they're committed to making it happen.
And they've stepped up, our city leaders,
our administrator, our upward administration,
they've all stepped up to make this a reality.
Never have I seen so many people coming together
to make this happen as I do right now.
[Dr. Nola Jones] I believe that while every city may not have
the music industry as a resource,
every large city has a resource that they can tap.
And I feel like we can really be a model
for the rest of the country for urban education and arts education.
[upbeat music]
[crew member] Yeah, what you can, you're off a little over here.
-You think so? -Yeah.
-We're just going to-- -Okay, you got it.
Michael is nine years older than me,
and so, uh, aside from the music that we got, uh, from school,
he pretty early on started putting bands together
with my sister, who was also a musician.
[blues music]
I remember sitting on the steps of our basement,
and hearing him rehearse with their band
and looking at that, looking at the music that
they were creating and later on, the music that he was writing.
And I would hear a song being created upstairs.
And my sister was like kind of a folky,
you know, uh, Joanie Mitchell type singer and,
and, uh, so that was like hugely kind of influential.
And even though I think I was already really interested
in acting probably before I even knew what being an actor was,
I also simultaneously had melodies in my head,
and lyrics in my head, and it generally came.
I was a very romantic child, so it generally came from heartbreak,
like way too early. You know, like ten year old heartbreak.
I would say well I got to write, I got to write a sad song, you know.
[upbeat music]
♪ Between the ides of March
♪ The midnight songs we made
♪ You're world turns From black and white ♪
♪ Gray on gray on gray
♪ Here it comes
♪ And it feels like love again
♪ Here it comes
♪ Screaming up Like a downtown train ♪
♪ Like broken glass
♪ Here it comes
♪ I love
♪ Watching it pass
[Michael] We, uh, grew up in a family of six kids
that, uh, valued creativity and self-expression above all else.
Grades, sports, money.
So, um, it was about acting lessons and dance lessons
and music lessons and art lessons.
I think we grew up in a very kind of creative house
where expressing yourself in some kind of artistic way was very natural for us.
Uh, we both when through the Philadelphia Public School System.
Uh, I remember, I guess maybe they gave you a recorder.
That would be the first thing that'd give you,
and then at one point they came and said, "You can choose something."
I think it was violin or, you know, I think I played a trumpet for a little while. [laughing]
The things I find out in these interviews.
You never knew I played the trumpet?
Yeah, I, I got a trumpet.
I loved it, I loved opening it up
and, uh, putting it together.
I loved the, the smell of the, of the instrument
and, uh, the, the velvet in the box, and the way it all fit there.
I was a terrible trumpet player. I couldn't,
couldn't get anything out of it, but it was fun.
[dramatic music]
[guitar strumming]
I got a call recently, in the last couple of years that
my high school and the schools, all across where I come from
were having to cut budgets, and cut music programs.
And I... I was just heartbroken by that.
♪ It won't be that song
♪ Gets you high Makes you dance ♪
♪ Makes you fall
♪ That melody rewinds you
♪ Wants to disappear
♪ Makes time stall
♪ Be those words fill you up
♪ Roll your windows down
♪ Keeps you young
♪ Makes you believe Right where you belong ♪
♪ Won't be that song
♪ It won't be Won't be, won't be ♪
♪ Won't be that song
♪ Yeah, yeah
[soft music]
[upbeat music]
[students chattering]
[slow piano music]
-You remember that? -Allegro is a school designed to infuse music
into all areas of the curriculum.
[Rebecca Darling] There was a need for more music schools
to serve the Greater Charleston area.
Um, particularly those students who don't have access
to private music lessons or may have the skills
but not the means to be able to become a musician.
[upbeat music]
So the charter was built around the idea
that students could come here without having to audition.
So they don't really need to have any prior experience,
they just need to like music.
During the chorus just play the rift.
[Rebecca Darling] We operate on a lottery system.
So any child in the district has the opportunity
to come here and be a part of Allegro.
[upbeat guitar music]
[Daniel Neikirk] We take the music component and we use that
to engage students, draw them into the educational process
and use music to teach them instead of just
teaching them music.
We're not training professional musicians,
we are training professionals using music.
♪ You should have came
♪ An easy morning but things
Fifteen percent of the kids had experience with an instrument.
Meaning they might have played the violin back in elementary school,
but they really didn't have an indepth understanding of the instrument.
Really didn't know much of anything about music or the fabric of music.
So we started from point A
in terms of treble clef and bass clef.
So not only do we want reverb on our voice,
every single instrument is going to want reverb.
And you're going to hear why, okay?
So, if I just go like this, check, check, check, check.
That's reverb, right, right?
-[students laughing] -Okay?
What's special about this school
is that we see them five days a week.
I taught at an elementary school locally
and I only saw those students one time a week for 45 minutes.
Here, I see my students every single day
for an hour a day.
So that has given us so much leeway
in terms of what we can study,
the pace at which we can study.
So the things we've been able to accomplish
in the past year has been really incredible.
I believe that if you understand music,
the math kind of flows as well and vice versa.
You can intertwine all that, the math and the music.
With a lot of the fractions, the most difficult thing for kids, fractions.
But if they understand that,
it seems like a lot of kids kind of move,
with, move through fractions without a problem.
So first thing, we got to figure out a patter.
We have this interesting, unique concept that other schools can't offer.
We have a whole bunch of music
and you can play any instrument with private lessons.
Uh, and you can work on anything that you like musically.
Work on your talent and your strengths and improve that.
Compared to other schools, you know, you're kind of just settling on a sport.
Music affected me, I mean, I guess when I was like six years old.
The first time, uh, when I heard, it was like Jimi Hendrix
and the Beatles and Elvis.
And I just wanted to play guitar.
My dad's a guitar player, so he gave me my first guitar,
and I picked it up and I was hooked from, from then on.
You know, I couldn't put it down, I was obsessed with it.
So, and I turned to electric when I was about,
I think I was about 11 years old
because I studied classical for a minute,
and it got really boring and I just saw like
Santana perform and that was a turning point.
So I picked up the electric and never put it down.
[upbeat rock music]
I think it's therapy, I think that listening to it
is therapy, creating it is, as well.
Um, because it's like, you know, you're writing your diary,
that's like lyrics, you know what I mean?
So you're putting it out there,
and other people can relate to it.
A song comes on the radio
and just brings your spirits up.
I remember when I moved out from Philadelphia
to Los Angeles in 1978.
Um, I packed up my stuff, I started to drive across country
and I hit Springsteen's "Independence Day".
And it, uh, and it literally was exactly what I was doing.
If you look at life as a movie
and music is the soundtrack, there's not a day that goes by
where I am not in the middle of doing something
and a song pops into my head.
[upbeat music]
[Gabrielle Bailey] Music is within everybody in some type of way.
I definitely do believe that music
is within every single last person in some type of form.
[dramatic music]
[orchestral music]
[Davey Yarborough] The purpose of Duke Ellington School of the Arts
is to prepare young budding artists for college.
Gabby is a senior, so this'll be our fourth year, uh, working together.
[orchestral music]
Gabby has always been, uh, assertive,
so in, in her audition when she found out
that she really didn't know everything that she did,
she got, it really hurt her.
Um, but I explained to her, I said,
"But that's why you go to school. You know,
to, you know, you'll learn, you'll pick this up.
Don't, you know, life's not over, you're just getting started."
And she took that to heart.
[horn blowing]
[Gabrielle Bailey] Mostly it was a challenge, like they basically
treated us like we was in college, basically.
Like with due dates and deadlines, and
you had to do this to meet up to these expectations.
It's kind of like a college preparatory school, so it's very useful.
Even in academic side, it's helpful in some type of way
because even though they give you tons and tons
of work, it's like that's what you're going to get when you got to college.
[upbeat music]
The School of Arts is my second home.
I'm here all day, every day.
Even on the weekends I'm here doing work, uh, working on my music and
I, I have faith in my generation when it comes to jazz.
[jazz music]
Well, basically I grew up on jazz and gospel.
My mom, she listens to a lot of like blues, like soul, jazz, a lot.
My family is full of musicians,
so I was kind of like born into it.
It was kind of like a gift, I guess.
♪ Good morning, heartache
♪ You old gloomy side
♪ Good morning, heartache
♪ Thought we said goodbye Last night ♪
♪ I tossed and Turned until it seemed ♪
♪ You have gone
♪ But here you are With the dawn ♪
[upbeat music]
When you emphasize math and science...
at the expense of music and the arts,
what is left is a terribly imbalanced person.
Less means more.
You can do all of the slick stuff in the world,
but if you don't know how to do something
organized and simple, you're not a good musician.
[audience cheering]
It's like this, if you, if you give a kid STEM research,
in other words you can teach them science,
you can teach them technology,
you can teach them math, and anything you want,
but if you take arts away from that child,
it's like you only have a half a child.
[Keith David] I think music is just as academic as anything else.
You know, I, I'm a firm believer in STEAM. [laughing] Instead of STEM.
[blues music]
[heart beating]
We carry with us, two native instruments.
The human voice or drumming in our chest, you know.
Because we have a hollow cavity.
We're very natural and able to make music.
[upbeat music]
Artists speak to our humanity.
And an art education enlarges that humanity
of what our young people should have and possess.
We're going to start with attention,
so we can show the new kids how attention is done.
-Drums, attention! -[teacher clapping]
-[drums banging] -There you go.
Well, I, I believe that we have already seen
and now we're seeing the acceleration of
if you look at test scores in, in the basics, in, in math and science,
those kinds of things, we've gone from being the perennial number one,
to literally being in the high 20's and low 30's across the board.
Suzuki one said that education isn't complete without music.
-[teacher clapping] Attention! -[drums banging]
-Here we go, attention. -[drums banging]
[Dez Dickerson] So the, the elimination of music,
it's not just about music and learning to play instruments,
it impacts intellectual capacity and capability across the board.
What is music?
There are a lot of things to describe it,
um, but never get down to the real definition.
The two words, "Organized Sound."
[upbeat piano music]
[people chattering]
She taught me about the importance of music education.
It's such a wonderful thing to teach kids.
History, the meaning of things in a very painless fashion.
Rituals of courtship, so many things come through music.
You don't think of organized, and, and jazz is a perfect example of that,
because there were saying, "Oh, that's just spontaneous.
There's no, no rhyme or reason to what it is, which is not true.
It takes a certain dedication
to be able to translate it and speak well.
[jazz music]
And often times, uh, nobody really wants,
like, to go back to the past and, like, really try and see,
oh, that's what people were doing back then,
maybe I can, you know, see what they were doing back then
that was killing, let me add that to what I'm doing.
Like in pop music, you can hear like different changes
that you probably recognize from like, a standard jazz tune.
You're like, "Oh, I remember that."
Especially with like little licks or something
that they play in between, you definitely hear it.
[upbeat music]
It is so crucial for us as a culture
to continue to fund the arts.
And it's very disappointing, the direction that, uh,
many markets have treated arts funding, uh, as a third wheel.
The arts and jazz, especially is our history.
It's our culture, you know, what this country is all about.
[Whoopi Goldberg] At this point in time, we have to get together
with whatever schools we can find,
who are interested in having music and say
let's, how do we rebuild this into the curriculum?
Because the teachers are there, they want to do it
and GoFundMe campaigns.
And teachers, music teachers who say this is what I need.
You know, I'm going to start, uh, a page that says
if you can help me get four trumpets
and five pairs of drums. It's going to, it's going to be up to us.
I remember taking choir my senior year.
I didn't give a shit about choir,
I just wanted to be in a class that was in some way
related to music. So I could, you know,
to sort of escape the rest of that whole reality. From that I took a guitar class.
Get out there and, and, and play what's in your heart, sing what's in your heart.
I mean it's, it's waiting to come out of you.
If you want to play guitar, the most important thing that
you need obviously is the guitar.
If you want to play trumpet, same thing, you know, so,
it is horrible that kids, if kids have this yearning, this desire,
to do something and don't have access to the, you know, to the tool.
I mean, imagine if no one ever bought Stevie Wonder
a piano and he had no access to one.
-[teacher] Don't be afraid. -[student] I'm not afraid, I just don't want to.
Come on, there's no reason for you not to want to.
If you can, there's no reason. There's no reason, because you can.
There's a lot of people that can't, that want to, that can't. You can.
[upbeat music]
[scatting]
The reason I like that is because the bassline is moving.
And when the bassline is moving, it gives you the opportunity
to create stories that exist in space.
The process is different for everyone.
I, as I said, I hear it in my head
and put it, pick it apart and see what happens.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, you know.
-[man scatting] -Uh-huh.
That's good. Some kind of whatever, you know what I mean?
-[upbeat music] -Uh-huh, uh-huh.
[audience cheering]
[audience member] Alright, hey.
[audience member] Alright.
[audience clapping]
[man] Well, complaining about all the different problems we have,
it's time that we look at culture
and begin to understand, if you don't know who you are,
you have absolutely no idea what you're supposed to be doing.
To support these education programs,
there's nothing more crucial than important
to the cultural life and the life of our nation at this time.
It's like if we just introduce music and art to people,
then it's up to them to move forward.
It's up to everybody to find their own path.
But if you don't inspire people from the get go,
uh, I think we've lost the battle.
Cutting back on the arts, taking music out of the schools,
so that those kids who are born into circumstances
where the schools have been deprived of music,
attention must be paid.
It brought tears to my eyes.
When I was graduating high school, I was surrounded by
very competent people in the arts,
dance, visual arts, music, acting,
that I've known for three years.
I graduated with a group of people that I've known for nine years.
And there was a sense of comradery that I saw.
[upbeat music]
[Gabrielle Bailey] Here is like a second home.
It's a centered, it's a centered place.
Like, I will come here, you know, if, if I'm mad
I will come in this room, and I'll get it all out
with my instrument, because that's like the only place
I can really do it. At home I can't do it,
because, you know, I have like four other brothers and sisters.
And they don't want to hear all that.
So here is like a good place to
really, like, bring out what you feel
and just do whatever you need to do to take care of you.
I think it's a no brainer that music funding
for programs in schools should be on a federal level.
If you leave it up to a state level,
it's just not going to get done
because it's an easy thing to cut.
PBS would be cut, Meals On Wheels would be cut,
the National Endowment for the Arts would be cut.
The guy who has three oil painting of himself in his bathroom wants the cut
the National Endowment for the Arts.
-[audience laughing] -♪ Keep smiling, keep shining
♪ Knowing you can Always count on me for sure ♪
♪ That's what friends are for
When I was coming up, music was an automatic part of arts in our school.
It, it's not only music that's been taken from us,
all facets of art have been just discarded. And why?
It's a mind boggling situation,
when in fact that's, that's a part of our educational values
that have just been taken away from us. And why?
There's really no reason.
The question is where do you get the instruments
and, and you don't know where they've been,
so the mouthpiece on a trumpet, you want to boil that damn thing
before you give it to your kid.
I've had the honor and the privilege
to work with organizations like Mr. Holland's Opus
and the Mancini Foundation, Friends of Music,
groups like that, that really inspire me
because they gift instruments to kids and students
and individuals who really want to learn
who don't have the wherewithal to get an instrument.
In this family, our philosophy is you got to try
every instrument until you find your grove.
It's just a thing that comes out of you and I, I think you're born with it.
And I think about four you go, "Oh, I really like this."
And I think about about nine, when everything start to violate you
and turn you into a person that you don't want to be,
you maybe even dive further into listening
and, and absorbing everything that can keep you away
from the things by the time you're a teenager
that could destroy you, and destroy your viewpoint,
because there's so much negative feedback
of how you should behave or what you should do,
and music for many has been a rebellion
and allowed them to have a voice.
They'd have nothing if it wasn't for music.
[upbeat music]
[Mark Bryan] We are in the Caroline Studios mobile bus
and we, uh, thanks to Dennis Gallagher and STA,
have a space where kids can come and make beats.
We can drive to you, we can drive right to the schools, churches, summer camps, and
provide a space where kids can some to a safe environment to make, to be creative.
Let's click right here. It's been a lot of
low income neighborhoods uh, that we've been able
to service, but we're not limited to that. We want to,
uh, the, the goal for this is to be able to reach kids,
of any demographic that want to this expe-- want to have this experience
and want to learn this craft. I know when I was a teenager,
I would have killed for something like this.
Because of that, if that happens,
if you drop, drop it in the wrong place
or anything like that, Apple,
hold down Apple and hit Z.
It let's them know that this is, uh, a real craft,
a real profession, a real career that you can go into
at, at, at a young age if you're interested in something like that
and, and you maybe have no idea how to start,
this gives you a place to start. It gives you
the idea of like, "Wow,
I can actually get in there, make something my own,
I can learn to be for, on the artist side,
I can learn to be on the engineer side."
You can loop that right, to what, like, what you just played,
we can play that all over again.
I-- I don't know where else you'd get that from at that age
unless your parents are working
for a studio or something like that.
It's just hard to get a grasp
of how that can be a career for you.
So these, we're doing digital tracks here
and then, in here's the audio booth.
After you've made your digital tracks
in there with drums and whatever else,
if you want to rap or sing over that track,
you make a new track in there
and then you come in here and use this mic
to lay those tracks down.
Alright, buddy, here we go.
[upbeat music]
♪ Russel Wilson Has the victory ♪
♪ Everybody tell him They discovery ♪
♪ South during Mississippi University ♪
♪ Across the country
♪ He was the quarterback Even he put that on the map ♪
♪ Russel Wilson had a team Southern Mississippi University ♪
[Denis] Well, actually Mark and I were working together
on our own joint, uh, uh, charities together
and we got together, and he was explaining to me what Carolina Studies did.
And I said to him, "Geesh, you're going form building
to building, it sounds like you need a bus to get there."
And he looked at me and he said, "That's great, how do I get a bus?"
We were able to get the bus, we were able to do the build, the initial build out for them.
We have a corporate responsibility to help p-- programs like this
that literally now need funding.
So we've created an absolutely unique opportunity
for Mark and his team to be able to literally go
to schools and have afterschool programs for music programs.
[dramatic music]
This is their album, Man Plans God Laughs,
here to slam the door shut in Brooklyn, Public Enemy.
[audience cheering and clapping]
[performer] And many of us by the way we act.
Fuck the goddamn government, man.
♪ Here it is, bam
♪ Can you say goddam This the dope jam ♪
♪ But let's define The term called dope ♪
♪ And you think it mean Funky now ♪
♪ No, here is a true tale
♪ Of the ones that deal Are the ones that fail ♪
♪ Yeah, you can move If you want to move ♪
♪ What it prove
I grew up in Hollis, Queens,
which is, uh, a very creative part of New York.
A lot of big names come from Southern Queens.
We went to school in a newly integrated series of schools
for elementary, junior high, and high school.
The music programs in those schools
were fairly thin when we got there,
but there was something.
By the time I graduated high school,
there was a, there was a clear shift, a clear shift away from the arts.
And I didn't know it then and in retrospect
I realize that's when it was starting to happen.
The power of music is so astounding
when it's truly connected to the right vehicle
that you don't want to not give every student
the opportunity to connect with it.
[Kristen] PS Arts was founded 25 years ago
in direct response to budget cuts, uh, in California
that nearly decimated arts programs in schools.
I personally as a dancer, feel like hip hop
is a great connector, because there is music, there is poetry,
there is politics... [laughing] there is obviously dance.
So I feel like it's a way to teach
from a historical perspective and tolerance.
It's a way to teach all kinds of, of different ideas
in the world kind of coalesce into hip hop.
Mark it one time, so you don't have to do it
on the ground part, just without we can get sense
of the musicality, the rhythm of it,
and then we'll do it full out on the ground, okay?
So the class that I have today
is Ms. Quinn's fourth grade class,
um, which has been with me since last year.
They're a fun bunch of individuals behind me
and we just like to enjoy coming in,
doing our warmup and stretch,
and learning different styles of dance
from contemporary to some jazz, to hip hop.
In particular, in urban schools in Los Angeles,
it's going to be a genre that they're familiar with,
that they've heard, that they've heard all their lives and that they connect with.
And there's as you know, we can't transform lives without connecting.
[teacher] Take it down.
We take things for granted
and then when it's gone we see, we see problems.
So I would say maybe looking back into
when did music get introduced into schools and why,
I think that might uncover why it's out of schools.
At some point someone saw a value in it,
and that's why it ended up there.
At some point someone said this has no value, and that's why it's out.
Understanding why it's not there is the only way you're going to get it back in.
[dramatic music]
I think it's incredibly important.
I think that when you're young, you have, when you're a child,
your, your brain is so big and you have an opportunity
to really become a complete person.
So in America there's, you know, been a lot of cuts in the arts in high school.
And, and you know, to me, it's so hard to conceive of
coming out of school as a whole person without having had the arts.
I love music so much,
I think I was a musician in another life.
And so I am going to be damn sure that my children
have a musical foundation in their life no matter what.
You have to know the language first
in order to know what you're going to play.
Because, you know, you have to speak the language to play it,
because if you just play whatever is on the paper,
then you're not really telling the story.
Because you're supposed to tell a story
when you play your music, so.
When you look at Prince or you look at Lenny Kravitz
and he's standing there and he's playing the guitar
and he's contorted himself because
if he could make that sound with his body, he would.
But he is making that sound with his body with this instrument.
This tool that allows him to... [whining]
♪ Why don't you turn me loose
Talk to about the power. [laughing]
I might as well talk to you about the power of nature
or the power of God or the power of, uh, living.
It's just what music does to you,
because I think it follows the flow of blood in your body
the, the way that the ocean does.
You know, the tides come in and they, you know, roll out
and I feel like music does the same thing.
It connects to whatever, you know, vein it is in
and that's what keeps you grooving.
You have to have considerable power along these lines,
I've learned over a long... [chuckling] lifetime and music.
And they go together. Love of country.
Love is music and dance and song and laughter.
[gentle music]
I've stood... [laughing] so many times,
standing behind an audience that is about to enjoy a belly laugh.
This here is the struggle of the races.
Man's inhumanity to man.
Yet through it all, the shiny hope of a new brotherhood, see?
[audience laughing]
You know, When an audience are laughing from what I call the belly,
the belly laugh, they have a tendency to come up
out of their chairs even, some a little bit
and go forward with that laugh and then come back.
[lady laughing]
It's a human way of, of, uh, common appreciation
or love of the moment.
Or you know, not to mention the joy of laughter.
And, uh, it's as spiritual a moment as any
I have ever seen in a church or a synagogue.
[gentle music]
[upbeat music]
[Tony] Well, what you said is they think,
they think they want to cut the arts,
they should lose their jobs for saying that.
You should never take the arts away.
That's beyond, that's the first thing.
Yeah, my father, he had the reputation in Italy
of singing on the top of a mountain
and the whole village would hear him.
It made my brother go, go into classical training.
And I felt being ten years old, I felt a little left out,
you know, because he was getting a trainer.
Even though we were very poor, my mother found a way
to get a... a teacher and he did very well.
He was very successful, but he didn't like it.
He didn't like being popular.
♪ I've got the world On a string ♪
♪ I'm sitting on a rainbow
♪ I've got the string Around my finger ♪
♪ What a world, what a life
♪ I'm in love
[interviewer] What was the first music that you heard?
Um, probably something on "Hee Haw."
[upbeat country music]
Hee, Haw.
Like watching TV with my grandfather or, um...
[clicking tongue] whatever was in his truck or my mother's car at the time.
I remember very vividly early impressions
from seeing musical performances on "Hee Haw"
and watching that with him.
And he would say, he liked to tell me which characters
were actually playing instruments.
Which now I know looking back, none of them were.
It was all tracks, but, uh, everybody loves music.
I don't really trust anybody that doesn't... [laughing] you know.
You know, musicians don't necessarily care about color.
If you have the groove, you're in.
[upbeat orchestral music]
And it's the only thing that unites us
without having to speak.
Because you can go to any country
and hear the music and be moved by it.
You don't have to know what it says.
You don't need to know what the words are.
I, I wasn't an athletic kid and we didn't really have
very much theater to speak of.
But, um, the music was just like the most fun thing.
That was a chance to, um, be, be good at something
outside of, um, sports and math.
[jazz music]
The difference is, if you play sports,
you're going to be too old at a very young age.
If you play music, you can just keep going till you get to old to go.
[upbeat violin music]
Your whole life you can enjoy that.
I suppose you shouldn't play that with a hat on.
-[everyone laughing] -[man] If you can play it, why not?
♪ Don't open The door to heaven ♪
I never dreamed that my career
would last as long as it has. It's just amazing to me.
♪ Don't touch me
♪ If you don't love me Sweetheart ♪
I absolutely love what I do.
It's so great when you can reach people, and make them feel something.
[man] We're not different. We're the same.
And the things that motivate us and
move us and, and create emotional responses,
if I can express my own emotional reality,
I, I will touch the nerves of many, many people,
because we're all essentially working with the same stuff.
[man] How you been?
Use more of those?
And my mom talks about that I was dancing before I was walking.
That she things the only reason why I stood up was to dance.
The first song I learned was "Take Me Out To The Ballgame."
And hearing Harry Carey sing it, you know.
So that was the first vocalist I ever knew
was Harry Carey at the Cubs games.
"The National Anthem" and "Take Me Out To The Ballgame"
were songs that I just, like, I had this big voice
that wanted to come out of me and I would literally shake when I would sing. I would be like.
♪ Oh, say can you see
And it's not just republicans or democrats,
it's folks who have no connection to the arts,
who don't understand why the arts are important.
If I didn't have somebody to encourage me
to, to play music, I wouldn't be the same person I am today.
I mean, look at my dad, you know.
My dad missed four days of work in 35 years.
Mm-mm, there's not a lot of money for a high school teacher.
And the amount of people that came out of, of adults that I see now,
who've gone on from his classes to become successful
writers, directors, set designers, all of these things.
Lighting, uh, designers... [sniffling] they come from him and he got paid so little.
These are the people who are supposed to influence us
the most and prepare us for the world
and they get paid so little.
[slow guitar strumming]
[Davey] When you decide that we want to, first thing we're going to cut in our budget
is going to be art and music and phys ed,
which again... [stuttering] why would you do that?
We're talking about developing brains and bodies
and, and, and getting the fluids to run through the body
and making, keeping you healthy.
Music connects us all because the arts don't say no to you.
They say if, uh, you don't know what you want to be,
try a piano, try, try, uh, recitation,
try a timbale, try a drum.
You know, the arts say, "Come on and try me."
I might be, I could be anything you want me to be for you.
That's what they mean to me.
They are an open invitation to change.
Music is incredibly healing.
It is a tremendous healer.
You know sometimes we'll go to a Spotify,
SPA and relaxation channel.
Or you'll be laying there going,
"oh, my God, I need to be taken to an ethereal place, where Enya when I need her?"
Well, music is magical.
And, uh, when you're communicating on stage,
there's a lot of things happening.
There's a conversation, uh, among
your band, within your band.
And when everything clicks, uh, it's, it's a blast.
Just listen.
Like when I hear some of these songs,
I'm like there was empty sound,
there was just silence,
and then someone put that horn in there
and that piano beat, and then like, and then like was off the beat,
and then scratching the, like, and then that suddenly became.
[upbeat jazz music]
It's, um, difficult to maintain arts programs
because it's so expensive, uh, tuition wise.
The cost of New York City and housing and food and transportation.
I don't really have the answer.
I mean, I'm in this program, I'm directing this program,
I see the issues with finance and student loans.
And it's, and it's, it's way out of control.
[upbeat music]
Miles Davis was our hero.
Um, we didn't want to just play with Miles Davis,
we want to be Miles Davis, because he was so cool.
And so if this is taken out of the schools...
and young people and old people
are not exposed to the arts, it becomes a problem.
[John Burk] A music education, I think, can help someone.
Well, there's been studies that shows, that, uh,
it, it seems to help mathematical abilities and other reasoning abilities.
You know, for example for a kid who's not a,
a great athlete, it's another team sport.
And, uh, and it really is a team sport for the most part.
Yeah, because the melody is kind of like,
it's a lot of space and bassline is a lot of space,
so you, you have a lot of room for, for color.
It's got to sound, um, organic.
[man] This is how the creative mind works.
And these are some of the great artists
in the world and this is how they think.
And none of them would be happy
if they had to pursue another path.
[upbeat music]
[Antonio] And it's not about selecting prodigies.
Uh, it's not to have a Yo-Yo Ma at age seven
presented at the White House by Leonard Bernstein.
Uh, it's a different, it's a different sort of thing.
[dramatic music]
[Carl Schafer] One of the things I do is supervise student teachers
at California State University-Fullerton.
Uh, this last year, where normally there's a dozen,
fifteen instrumental music student teachers, there were three.
[upbeat music]
A good music teacher, uh, is many way a, a hard thing to describe.
There this thing we call passion
the, to, to share this, uh, music with, with, uh, students.
-[student] It's a quarter note. -That's a half note.
-[teacher] Tell him again, Joe. -It's a half note.
-[teacher] How many beats does it receive? -It, it receives two beats.
So we play on one and three.
-[teacher] Two and four is what? -Silence.
[teacher] That's what I'm talking about.
[Carl Schafer] My involvement
with the issue of compliance
really began four years ago.
I have been working in advocacy all my years
as an educator, and the approach that I've taken
and, virtually, everybody else, has been,
is to try and persuade the decision makers
that arts are important and should be a part of the curriculum.
[jazz music]
Unfortunately, governing boards throughout the state
have been treating the arts as an optional part of the curriculum.
What we've been doing in the, in the Recording Academy
is, uh, through some of our advocacy efforts,
we learn that there is a law in California
that specifies that every school in the state
has to have a music education program.
It, it was kind of a revelation. [laughing]
That, wow, here it is in the California Education Code
and no one has taken the initiative
to, to, uh, have districts comply with it.
51050, uh, essentially says, and I'll read it.
"Governing board of every school district
shall enforce in its schools the courses of study."
I took a look at the ed code and it suddenly occurred to me,
well, wait a minute, this is in the education code,
this is the law, then why is it not being enforced?
My goal is that, ultimately, all school districts
will comply with the education code.
[dark ominous music]
[people chattering]
[man] Maybe, we can have people do all those.
[Neve] Yeah, I mean, I went with The Creative Coalition and
to The Capital to talk about getting more money
for the National Endowment For The Arts, and
keeping that money going even, because they're talking about
even cutting it, which is shocking.
It's crazy. I mean, it's
to be on The Capital and sitting in these rooms
and trying to convince politicians
of why the arts are important, and then to look at the rooms
that we were actually sitting in...
even the mosaics, the tiles, the ceilings,
the paintings on the walls, it was stunning.
Architecture was stunning.
And then to be trying to convince these people
of why the arts are important was just, just strange.
[upbeat music]
[man] On the train.
This is so like weird. [laughing]
[people chattering]
[Constance Zimmer] Doesn't everything stem from jazz?
You know, it's, it's interesting because we have
always on in our house at all times of the day,
music, jazz, classical music.
Because we have an eight year-old in our house
and I feel like silence is deadly.
-I'm like the tiny child in the front. -[everyone laughing]
[woman] And you look good, you know.
[Constance] And it feels like whenever we have
all of these rhythms and sounds,
it's, it's an incredibly easy way to kind of get the brain
to engage without even realizing it's being engaged.
[upbeat music]
Scientists are predicting that there's probably
not many jobs that can't be replicated by machines
in the future, except, maybe, for the creative arts.
It's so uniquely human, it's so uniquely expressive.
It's so embodying what we are as individuals
and as a society, and as a culture, uh, that we have to support it.
Being able to see the faces of kids that I knew
when I was nine, with those red cap and gowns,
was a really sentimental moment for me.
And it made me think about how important music has been in my life.
When I'm working and I'm traveling, I dance.
I dance at night by myself.
I put my headphones on and just listen to music
and just dance and just be in the song.
I think that's what we love about musicals,
it's like you really believe like someone.
♪ The hills are alive With the sound of music ♪
Like that's what you would want to do in a beautiful place like that.
[man] It is just amazing to recognize and realize
the importance of what that arts experience
does for young people.
[upbeat music]
[Deletra] I am very, very excited about her future.
To my surprise, I thought
she was going to go into music performance and jazz.
Even though she still will do that,
she decided to be a music educator.
She's going to get a degree in music education.
I want to spread my knowledge to the other generations.
They call it the universal language for a reason, music.
It almost mirrors everyday life.
The soundtrack of my life has been, um, a companion.
I have to play music to get out of the house.
Music as a whole, changes lives, it saves live.
I mean, people, we're getting people off the streets.
Instead of choosing dark, you know, road that they could go down
they choose music. And, um, it really, it really changes everything.
Cutting funding is not just about cutting music programs,
what you're doing is you're cutting an avenue, a voice for these kids.
And that, I think is tragic.
It's just been a friend, and a love,
and a lover, and just it gets in my body.
Music and art connects all our four IDs.
It connects our physical to our emotional
to our spiritual, and to our intellectual.
And that's how it creates inner peace.
The vibrations of music does that.
That's the cocktail. It's a legal drug.
Music transcends your life, and it can enhance your life.
How is that we learn in the first place when we begin in life?
"The Alphabet Song?"
Did you learn your alphabet just by reciting the letters
or did you learn it through song?
With broad based back city support
and corporate support and district support,
we can give students the education they deserve.
[upbeat music]
[Daniel Egwurube] Galileo once said that you could never teach a man
anything, you can only help him to find it within himself.
And what Harmony Project has taught me in my life, is exactly that.
That young people everywhere are ready to explode
by giving them something to channel
that magma of creativity out of their core
as you can unleash ambition chasing initiatives that can carry them in life.
[dramatic music]
[upbeat music]
And I like vinyl, because that's what I understand.
And that's how I know if I have indulged too much,
because my hand would shake trying to put the needle down on the record.
[upbeat music]
♪ Music goes round and round Whoa ♪
-♪ Oh, and it comes out here -[men laughing]
A, a world without music is just Twitter.
[upbeat rock music]
Hey, I love rock and roll.
[upbeat jazz music]
♪ Yeah
♪ Don't say
♪ Oh, yeah
[vinyl crackling]