Music, Culture, Morality and the Radical Woke
September 18, 2021
My guest David Eaton music director and conductor of the New York City Symphony discusses music and it's influence on our national values, morality and the attack of the radical left claiming the classical music genre is White Supremacy and needs to be shunned.
https://affirmamerica.com
marquis@affirmamerica.com
The settlement Project
https://sp12.org
David Eaton's book released soon on Amazon "What Music Tells Me: Beauty, Truth and Goodness and Our Cultural Patrimony"
This is the affirm America podcast where we stand up and speak out. Affirming American excellence coming to you deep in the heart of the Midwest, located in an undisclosed log cabin on the outskirts of town. Your host, Marquis Vandemark. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to the Affirm America podcast. I am your host, Marquis Vandemark. And yes, I am deep in the heart of the Midwest, in an undisclosed location in a log cabin on the outskirts of town. It's a beautiful day in the midwest.
I'm looking outside my window. It is blue skies, beautiful pre fall day. It's a crisp mhm nice football day. Lots of college games on today. The Ohio State buckeyes are playing today and we're glad that you're here with us. Thank you all for joining us. We have a excellent program for you today. I believe. We have a guest speaker here today with us. His name is David. Eaton. David is um good friend of mine and uh I think his content today is very important in our discussions about the things that we have been talking about the radical left and how the, the socialist ideas and woke ism that we see is affecting all different areas of our lives in one area that it's affecting is in the musical cultural area. And I asked David to come on today to talk to us a little bit about his experience in music and how he sees music's effect on our culture and how the radical left is attacking, especially the classical music. So let me tell you a little bit about our guest today, David Eaton David has been working as a professional performer, composer, conductor and arrangers since his college days at Ohio State University In 1976. He began working in New York City 1985.
He became the music director of the New York City Symphony and has conducted numerous concerts with the orchestra at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the United Nations, the Apollo Theater, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Manhattan Center. He is currently an artist and residents in Korea, serving as the co director of music at the huge in Cultural Foundation and conductor of the newly formed Yeojun Youth Orchestra. He has appeared as a guest conductor with orchestras in europe Canada Asia, Israel, Russia Ukraine and Central and South America. In addition to his conducting career. Mystery and has been a prolific composer, Arranger and producer with 80 original compositions And over 900 original songs and arrangements to his credit. He's also the author of a soon to be published book What Music tells me, Beauty, Truth and goodness and our cultural patrimony.
So, I'd like to introduce our guest today. Mr David Eaton. Hey, David, how's it going, Marcus, Very good. Thanks for the opportunity to be with you here today. So, David's actually speaking to us from South Korea right now and we're talking over zoom and technology? How's things out in Korea. David today, How's the weather? What's it like? It was a great day again? Nice fall day. Played a little basketball today and did a recording session yesterday with some Children work on some Children's songs here and been busy with things. And in spite of the Covid issues here, we have been able to mount a few concerts here and there and some productions and video productions recording sessions. So I have been busy. It's always good to be busy. Right. And uh, so the, especially the last few weeks have been putting the finishing touches on the book that you referenced. And uh, we're hoping that it will be ready for publication within a month or so. Great. Yeah.
So, um, that's going to be coming out on amazon, is that right, David? Well, we hope that's that's our goal where I'm working with several people about distribution and so once it's available, I'll let you know and then you let your listeners know about it. But it touches on some of some of these issues that you would already already reference. So, it's uh, uh, it's timely that we could have this conversation and again, grateful for the opportunity. So, David, we were talking before, let's talk a little bit about the arts and culture and how it affects are environment around us, especially here in America and also the history of music. And it's origins back back during Plato's time and and the beginning of music, how does that affect our environment and what is the moral implications of music and culture? How it affects us, how how we think, how we act, how it affects our young people. Let's talk a little bit about the morality of music and culture. Been reading my mind here or maybe reading my book, I don't know, but I start the book, the preface with a quote by Leonard Bernstein, the great american conductor and composer and Bernstein Lenny, as he was known said art can not change events, but it can change people, it can affect people.
So they are changed because people are changed by art, enriched. Noble encouraged. They can act in a way that may affect the course of events by the way they vote, the way they behave and the way they think so, that statement in and of itself is very much the idea of the premise that I write from in the book. And Leonard Bernstein was not a conservative, he was very liberal in his politics, but it points to the the what I we might call the the transcendent power of music or beauty in general, to transcend politics, to transcend race, to transcend the things that that keep us apart.
And that's part of the power of music because and beauty is because it can bring us together, right. And I think that's what Bernstein was alluding to and I came across a book that really influenced me quite a bit. This is late, late eighties by an author by the name of David tam ta m e I believe that's how you pronounce his name and the name of the book was called The Secret Power of Music. And but David Tame wrote about, he examined the ancient cultures of china Greece, hebrew culture, indian culture, early christian culture and found that in all those cultures, course music was used for various ritualistic and religious purposes. It also is used in various entertainment modes. But all those cultures had a very similar attitude about music from a moral point of view. And the title of my book references beauty, truth and goodness.
So there's in all art, there's the beauty aspect, the aesthetics, right? There is the truth aspect which deals with intellect and craft and technique, but then there's this third component, the goodness component. And when we started talking about goodness, we're automatically in the realm of morals and ethics, right? But what what determines what is good and not good? And in philosophical terms that's called ACSi Ology, the study of values. So the axial logical aspect of music, their art Is 1/3 of the component. Um and the chinese, the Greeks, the early christians, they all had a lot to say about this because they understood that music is under Bernstein said, it affects us, it can enrich us, it can enable us, it can encourage us, it can inspire us. So this this part this asked the goodness aspect of the beauty truth and goodness paradigm. It's an old concept, but all those cultures put a great deal of importance on the ethical aspect. Okay, and that's a big theme in my book. My book isn't It's a series of essays that I wrote over Many decades going back to the 1980s. So there isn't a linear pattern in the book where I'm going from part A and part B two, part B. But these are standalone essays, kind of stream of consciousness essays that had about certain topics about music and culture and politics and religion and philosophy at given points. But the grand narrative in all of this was the role that art plays in society and the effect of art on our psyche, who we are and the role of the artists? What is the role of the artist? What responsibility to artists have in the process of creating a culture of justice, of fairness, of peace, of harmonization.
Also, that that's a big theme in the book. So, David, what do you think about The culture and the arts here in America today in 2021. What's what's the what's your viewpoint on how music affects the american culture? I'm sure there's good and good music that inspires people. And there's also music that brings us down, I guess, or kind of tears down our morality. What what do you what do you think about the today's uh cultural influences on our society and our young people? Good question. But I'll go back to the Greeks here a little bit and the chinese because there's an interesting interesting connection Plato in his writing The Republic, he referenced a person by the name of Damon of Athens. Damon of Athens was the son of Damon Itis, who was another greek philosopher. But Damon of Athens was the first greek philosopher to study the effect of music on our psyche.
Right? In modern terms we call that psycho acoustics, the effect of of sound or music on our mindset or our hearts set. Okay. And in in the Republic, Plato says that Damon of Athens warns about the following. He said if you change the songs of a nation soon you will change the laws of a nation. Yeah. And the influence is small at first, but over time it becomes more and more pervasive and pernicious. So these are the Greeks thousands of years ago. And when I thought of that I remembered and you probably remember this old people like us remember this, right? The comedian George Carlin. Remember George? Yeah, great, great comedian George was funny but very intellectual, very satirist. He had a comedy routine called the seven dirty words you can't say on television. I remember that as a little kid. I couldn't wait to listen to what the seven dirty words were point is there was a time not so long ago uh, that if you use those words on television or radio or maybe in the cinema, the FCC the Federal Communications Commission would come after you find your big plan council you Yeah. Now those words are everywhere become normalized. Why? And the songs of the nation So Damon of Athens long ago said if you change the songs of the nation soon you will change the laws of the nation. Right? So he he was very precious in that regard. So there has been a normalization of a lot of of course behavior. Ah, of course lyrics words that have had the effect in my opinion of course inning our society, you know, you're in a free in a free society. We allow that we allow the sacred and the profane. That's the great thing about our society and why why advocating for freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of speech is important. We allow for things that we might consider to be, you know, uh, irresponsible and untenable to be in the conversation to be in the music. Okay. But then we have a choice and individuals have a choice either to listen to that music or not listen to that, to go to that movie or not go to that movie, whatever. Right?
So this, to me is a an important consideration. And even the chinese to, you know, there's a quote that you find on line all the time. It's usually it's attributed to Confucius and the quote is if if you wish to know if the kingdom is well governed, if its leaders are good or bad. If it's morals are good or bad, the quality of its music will furnish the answer. Well I went I started researching that quote. I could not find that quote from Confucius but I did find a very similar quote by one of Confucius, a contemporary of Confucius politician by the name of W Way. And he wrote this, he said the will of the people living in an area can be known by examining the customs prevailing there and their virtues can be no by examining their will, whether a state will become prosperous, prosperous or face its downfall. Whether it's leaders are sensible or or unworthy and whether it's a person, whether a person is honorable or corrupt can all be known by the music they enjoy.
So again, the Greeks and the chinese were onto this idea. Yeah. The moral component of music. And the yeah, in contemporary flash forward a few 1000 years because there's a music historian, musicologist that I read quite a bit by the name of Richard Taruskin who teaches out Berkeley University of California Berkeley. He's considered one of the top if not the top musicologist in the world, you know, uh and he pointed out and he said this as long as some music somewhere is considered treff, which means not kosher, we have not forgotten that music is a powerful form of persuasion that does work in the world as serious art that possesses ethical force and exact ethical responsibilities. Now, now Taruskin is not a conservative either. He's a bit of a liberal, but he nonetheless understands that music art, beauty in general aesthetics can affect us. So the question is as creators and I always say this as as as musicians, as composers or filmmakers or or photographers, whatever we create, we don't create a vacuum, what we put before the public has consequences.
The question is, what are we putting before the public and what will the consequences be? And do we even take that into account in our creative endeavors? Yeah, goodness aspect of the beauty, truth and goodness paradigm you bet and, you know, especially in music nowadays, it's not just audio, audio, right? I mean, now we have, you know, the advent of Youtube which has visual influences and also audio. So it's it's a whole immersion of our senses. And I think, you know, with uh with, you know, you were talking about the right to be able to listen to or not listen to particular music because we live in a free society. But what do you think about music and how it might affect, you know, a young person who maybe hasn't, you know, discerned between what's considered moral music or music that uplifts versus music that influences them to dress a certain way. Talk a certain way influence and, you know, without any real understanding of morally upright and what is destructive maybe to their to their nature and their future. Well, let me go back one step when you reference the video culture, which is huge. As you say, right?
Visuals are very powerful because they're very direct. Music is more ephemeral. And I make the analogy that site is more masculine. Sound is more feminine and our ears are receptive organs like a female genitalia. If you will, you know, sound is more it's vibrant ori it's invisible but it touches the heart. Whereas visuals is right, right in your face. Right. Right. And I you may know this person brian Hargrove, whose I worked with brian many years. He did a lot of recording with me. He was a bass player for a long time. He was the bass player in a public enemy with chuck D. And he said to me one time he said, David, the five words that killed the music industry are what does she look like?
You know, it all became about visual and look right the little book. And so the emphasis on visuals is very powerful. And so getting to your next question, what do we or how do we educate or inculcated certain values to our young people? Well that's part of what being a family is all about. Right that through through through parents acting in responsible ways. And if parents take making decisions that are considered morally upright and of course that even morals these days has become very it's all subjected to relativism, but the family is a key point in all this. And what's interesting to note is it's been the assault on family by certain elements, political elements, ideological elements, right? Um, there's a great book which I reference. I do one shelter in a book called Music and Sex. Okay.
There's one chapter in the book about this. What got me going on, this was Sting the lead singer from the Police. He's been he's been doing classical music, he learned to play the lute, which is the precursor to the modern guitar. And he was doing all this english renaissance music, but he thought he felt and he says I read this article, it was interview with him that meeting for him, classical music appeal to some higher consciousness. You know, not everyone feels that way, but he makes the point that not all music does that, as he says, some some music appeals to our lower chakras. I think that's the actual Yes, but but but but I take the view that sexuality in and of itself is not low, it can be high can be virtuous, but and divine in fact in the right relationship. That's right. That's right, That's right. It's all about the relationship. So the relationship that we have with our Children and in the attempt to inculcate them with certain values about sexuality, about appearance, uh, that appearance, I mean, is an external attribute. It it's not an internal aspect.
So, the relationship between the internal and external or the spiritual and the physical, however you want to characterize that it's very important that and this is where parents come in and I was going to reference, there's a great book by paul Kengor, I mean, if you know, called Takedown and the subtitle the book, I think is something like um how communists and progressives have worked to sabotage the marriage and family. But there has been an effort going back to Karl Marx to destroy the family. Yes. And and part of the reason and maybe this gets a little bit now into our world discussion later. But part of the reason was at the heart of this view is that religion and family become mitigating factors against hopelessness, against despair, against a lot of these problems in life. But the Marxist wanted to use the problems in life as a way to gain influence in power. Sure, so, marriage, family, god, religion, all of that was an obstacle to their their desire to create despair and then offer this other alternative. You know, the Marxist alternative here is how we can help you with your despair. Right. Right. Typical. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Oh, yeah, divisive wedge issue. That's right. It's been around a long time and it's not it's not and it's naive not to think that that has hasn't been going on. That's right, paul kickers book is a great book And one thing he cites in the book, I should just bring this out. President Obama when he signed legislation signed the legislation that made same sex marriage legal. He said that he had recently evolved into that position, but can anger in his book sites, David axelrod who was President Obama's longtime senior advisor. And that's a ride in his memoirs, which I think were published in 2011 or 2012, tells the story of how Barack Obama actually believed in same sex marriage In the 1990s when he was a community organizer in Chicago, but did not go public with his belief because he wanted to curry favor with the black churches and in Chicago. And if he made his views known about same sex marriage at that time, he would his political ambitions would be seriously curtailed. So, this idea that he he recently evolved in that position is a lie hanger points it out in his book.
Typical politician pandering to his base to get votes. Yeah, all politicians do that. And the pandering is not endemic. No, no, no way politicians want to be all things to all people. So whoever gets them their votes, then they'll pretty much say whatever they need to. Well, very good David. So, um I want to thank you for sharing your ideas on culture and music. And uh we'll make that his book information available to you in my description on this podcast. Once it becomes available if you'd like to pick that up. And okay, so we're going to take just a brief break here just for a moment. And when we come back, I'd like to discuss with David about the wokeness that has now been perpetrated on classical music and white supremacy. So uh let's talk about that, David when we come back on a short break here, it's mhm. . Yeah. Mhm. Mhm. Okay, welcome back to the affirm America podcast today.
We're talking with my guest Mr David Eaten about his book and we're taking a look at how music affects our culture, how it affects our thinking and how we vote and the way we act in the way that we live as a society and how it affects our morality, how it inspires us and how it also tears us down. And it's important that we understand the motivation behind the arts and culture. And this has been one of David's focuses in the music field as a conductor and as a producer, he's speaking to us from south Korea today. And um so David, let's talk a little bit about Woke is um you know, this is the sum of our topics here on a from America as how the radical left has been influencing our schools with critical race theory with the cancel culture, big tech censorship and now it seems to be attacking classical music and white privilege. So tell us a little bit about what you're seeing here with woke ISm and classical music and how we see the radical leftist now putting a target on classical music. Well, the first thing I should say that the target has been there going back 30 or 40 years, actually. Back in 1991, I believe 92, Camille Paglia, art historian, who again, is not conservative by any stretch. She she strenuously was objecting to the idea that art be assessed by what she called a priority abstractions that had nothing to do with the context in which the art was created.
The idea that we would examine art of 400 years ago according to today's standards. She she said, basically considered that I think the word she used was garbage, you know, and others going back around that time. Edward Edward rothstein, who was, I think at the time, the cultural editor at the new york Times. Again, not necessarily conservative. He wrote an essay in the New Republic. This was in 1991 called Roll Over Beethoven, the new multiculturalism and its mistakes. And this was going on in the eighties and nineties. Uh the idea that that Western art should be viewed from this ideological perspective, right? Uh specifically the the neo Marxist perspective. And there were musicologist and ethnomusicologist like Debra Wong and Jeffrey Cooley as I recalled, who's who Who back in the 90s, we're seeing the I think Deborah wang said it, she said in academia and these studies of music and multiculturalism, Marxism is alive and well. Okay, this again, this is in the 1990s, so it's not a new phenomenon, you know, it's been around and the so called long march through the institutions was was well underway, you know, and after the the Frankfurt school philosophers like Herbert, Mark Uwsa and Theodor Adorno and others came to the United States. They made inroads into academia of course, the television industry, the music industry, Theodor Adorno, who we're talking about a bit earlier was one of the key players in the Frankfurt school.
He was an amateur pianist and composer, he had a lot to say. He wrote several books on music and I read them, but he approached music from this neo Marxist critical theory uh uh what might be called pc oriented multiculturalism. That yes, we have to value all cultures equally, but that Western culture, we don't want to value that at all because it is the cultural residue of colonialism, you know, Christianity, the Judeo christian, you know, if those um so the so this this this zeitgeist Was has been around for 30 or 40 years or longer. Right, so what we're seeing now being manifested especially in the aftermath of the George Floyd tragedy, is there has been an increased vitriol against the Western classical tradition. And I should call your attention maybe your listeners attention to.
There were two essays just came out a week or two ago, which actually prompted me to write a new chapter in my book that's been working on last week Peter Mcdonald and she is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and she was writing for City Journal and of course she wrote the book, the war on cops and also the book of the diversity delusion. She is too provocative essays called classical music Suicide pact. Okay. And for those of you are interested in this particular aspect of how neo Marxism and critical theory is working in art music. Those are must read essays. She cites how educators going back decades and especially now again in the aftermath of the the George Floyd tragedy and the ascent of black lives matter. There's this this opprobrium directed towards white culture in ways that have really mm very troubling, right? But what she points out though there is, I mean, she points to the incongruities of the critics, right? It's easy to spot hypocrisy. Yeah, duplicity hypocrisy that on one hand, many of the educators, teachers, faculty of music schools, administrators of orchestras, ballet companies, opera companies, they're under pressure to hire more minority people and they actually want to hire more minority people. But the talent pool isn't that great, isn't that big. Right? Not in America anyway, Okay, now and I and someone asked me while a little while ago about this, we're talking so David, you really do think classical music is too white. Right. By my response to as well. I've conducted maybe 10 or 12 different orchestras in South Korea, Vietnam Taiwan.
There are no white people in those orchestras. I've conducted orchestras in central and South America. There are no white people in those orchestras. The most famous youth orchestra programme for the last 40 years has been in Venezuela, right? The Venezuelan Youth orchestra programme known as El Sistema is world famous and other nations are trying to have adopted their system to help young people uh learned the classical tradition and many young people are learning it and are very enthusiastic about it. And these are that many of them are latino blacks asians. So there's a lie here that that classical music only appeals to white people and and and this would be the adorno view or Michel foucault the french nietzscheans. Well, the reason that they were promoting classical music is because it helps them maintain their power structure, the status quo, right?
Beethoven wasn't Beethoven really wasn't a genius. He was just called a genius by those who use bait Homan as an example of quality. So it protected their power base. Right? That's the rationale. So so do I think there's classical music too. I don't think so, but Mcdonald points out another situation again, another incongruity on one hand, educators and administrators and faculty and college admissions administrators want more black people in their program or latino people or they want diversity, right? But at the same time, the art form itself is being besmirched, derided for being racist, you know, colonialist, oppressive. So why would any self respecting person of color? I want to be an organization that was so racist and reprehensible. Yeah, it's the incongruity again, sure, it's a typical divisive wedge issue to just divide people. That's that's all it's about. It has nothing to do with race. It's just anywhere they can get there that are wedge in there to divide us. You know, it's the old proletariat bourgeoisie, communist ideology, that's been is now postmodern critical theory is what it is. That's right.
And Mcdonald, She cites one educator who and and and and another issue that that is in her writing. And I've been talking about this for some time with my colleagues in new york. Some of some of my friends, high school friends and people have known for many years play in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, professional orchestras in new york. And I've been warning them, I said, you know, if you take this view, view your colluding in your own demise, you know, and the one issue that is that comes up is the issue of meritocracy, right? People may not know this, but for many years going back decades when, when the top orchestras in America had auditions or a job opening when they had auditions, they had what were called blind auditions that candidates for the position would play behind a screen jury interesting their value. Yeah, No one knew the name,
The race ethnicity, the gender, the age. It was all about, can this person play the music? Well, that was it. And women were told don't wear high heels to the audition because the clicking of the heels on the floor and tip the jury as to your gender. So there was a real attempt, in a sense to make it fair, you know, just to just to base a person's qualification, their skills and on their skill set. Right? Once that goes away, if it's not about skills anymore, right? And it's about diversity, there could be a drop off in quality. Uh, yeah, I think so. I mean, Yeah. Well, and if there's a drop of quality, there would be a drop off in audience participate who wants to pay big money to hear mediocrity. Absolutely. No, I think it was either Mark Twain or George Bernard shaw who said, I think George Bernard shaw said, hell is a place where everyone is an amateur musician, you know, so, but but here you have a couple of this with what we just saw out in Oregon. The governor of Oregon recently passed legislation to do away with test scores and reading and math, right?
You know, to kind of level the playing field. Right? So whatever happened to no child left behind, I mean, right. And john McWhorter, I saw an interview with john McWhorter, if you don't know who McWhorter is, used to find out who he is. He's a liberal, but he teaches comparative english and linguistics at Columbia University's Black. He cited that situation in Oregon and basically said, well, this kind of attitude that you have that maybe people of color cannot achieve high academic standards is in itself a racist kind of Sure, sure, right. And he, I think he referred to it as kind of the attitude that people would have in the unreconstructed south decades ago. He called the soft bigotry of low expectations. So in her. So I I thought, well, hey, well, maybe Governor Brown should just give everyone a bachelor's degree from the University of Sure, why not just pass them out that sure everyone's happy, but but, you know, but again, in music and sports, right? Music and sports, these are two areas where meritocracy matters.
We pay, we pay good money to watch great athletes, you know, and they get paid enormous sums of money, you know, like Lebron James or, you know, uh kevin Durant or somebody, yeah, they make big money and we happily pay that money to see excellence, You know, we're okay with the financial arrangement And it doesn't bother us so much that Lebron James makes 44 million a year, you know, and I make way less than that, you know, as long as he wins. But the point is there's economic disparity here, you know, but a lot of people don't object to that, you know, they're willing to pay good money to go to a basketball game or have a cable tv subscription because they enjoy seeing excellence same way with music.
We pay good money to go to a broadway show or a concert because the experience of excellence of beauty in art is satisfying. It say she hates us in some way and we we we pay good money to have that experience, right? And if that is again, if sports just became a vehicle for equity and we should just have equity and forget quality, you know, Right? Yeah. And and Heather Mcdonald Makes the point. She cites one administrator or professor at one school who says in music and the music conservatories, if if diversity replaces meritocracy, the game is over any session mediocrity is like carbon monoxide, you can't see it, you can't smell it. But when you kill dead one day you're dead. But I said, but I, I actually sent Heather Mcdonald to email and I actually made the point. You may not be able to smell it or see it, but in music you can hear it and you're not going to be so happy for sure, you know, some meritocracy matters and that and that that feels. But again, there's this takedown or attempted takedown of that. And by the way, there have been many great black african and latino performers of classical music. The anti christ Jessye norman Kathleen battle Denise graves, the conductor, James, Priest Michael, morgan conductor out in Oakland who just recently passed away.
These people were not bothered by the whiteness of the music course not. And the, the principal clarinet player of the new york, philharmonic, Anthony McGill after the George Floyd episode. He did a video of himself taking two knees and playing his clarinet. Uh, and he played amazing grace. Beautiful. Beautiful. Yeah. And, but then he was asked, well, why do you classical music? You know, he said I played classical music. It's beautiful. There you go. There you go. Has nothing to do with his races. Uh, that's right, that's right. And his brother, his brother is also an accomplished food player and I think in the Seattle symphony. So there are people out there who are not white, especially asians who again, they're great orchestras in japan China Vietnam. I conduct their concert in Vietnam like 7, 8 years ago.
They have a music conservatory there and an opera house is crazy, you know. Well, David, thank you very much for joining us today and sharing your perspective on music and the arts and how it affects our culture, our morality, our principles and also how absurd the idea that classical music is just a white person's supremacy and that only white people benefit from the classics. So I think, um, you're absolutely correct that there is no racial component to who loves music. Music is universal. It goes across all racial, political religious lines. It's it's a personal experience. Sure, Beauty. I mean, not just beauty. Beauty. Beauty. And no one very few people object to the beauty of nature. Yeah. You know, it doesn't matter your ideology. Your we appreciate beauty. It's a basic relativistic human desire to see beauty. Yes, absolutely. So, David's book is what music tells me. Beauty, truth and goodness and our cultural patrimony. So again, I'll make a link for that once that is available. So those of you that would like to pick up his book. Uh you can do so and again, we want to thank David for joining us today on our firm America podcast. And uh, God bless everybody have a great week and we'll see you on the next episode of the from America. This is the affirm America podcast with your host, Marquis Vandermark. And let's never forget, America is great and we affirm it
marquis@affirmamerica.com
The settlement Project
https://sp12.org
David Eaton's book released soon on Amazon "What Music Tells Me: Beauty, Truth and Goodness and Our Cultural Patrimony"
This is the affirm America podcast where we stand up and speak out. Affirming American excellence coming to you deep in the heart of the Midwest, located in an undisclosed log cabin on the outskirts of town. Your host, Marquis Vandemark. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to the Affirm America podcast. I am your host, Marquis Vandemark. And yes, I am deep in the heart of the Midwest, in an undisclosed location in a log cabin on the outskirts of town. It's a beautiful day in the midwest.
I'm looking outside my window. It is blue skies, beautiful pre fall day. It's a crisp mhm nice football day. Lots of college games on today. The Ohio State buckeyes are playing today and we're glad that you're here with us. Thank you all for joining us. We have a excellent program for you today. I believe. We have a guest speaker here today with us. His name is David. Eaton. David is um good friend of mine and uh I think his content today is very important in our discussions about the things that we have been talking about the radical left and how the, the socialist ideas and woke ism that we see is affecting all different areas of our lives in one area that it's affecting is in the musical cultural area. And I asked David to come on today to talk to us a little bit about his experience in music and how he sees music's effect on our culture and how the radical left is attacking, especially the classical music. So let me tell you a little bit about our guest today, David Eaton David has been working as a professional performer, composer, conductor and arrangers since his college days at Ohio State University In 1976. He began working in New York City 1985.
He became the music director of the New York City Symphony and has conducted numerous concerts with the orchestra at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the United Nations, the Apollo Theater, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Manhattan Center. He is currently an artist and residents in Korea, serving as the co director of music at the huge in Cultural Foundation and conductor of the newly formed Yeojun Youth Orchestra. He has appeared as a guest conductor with orchestras in europe Canada Asia, Israel, Russia Ukraine and Central and South America. In addition to his conducting career. Mystery and has been a prolific composer, Arranger and producer with 80 original compositions And over 900 original songs and arrangements to his credit. He's also the author of a soon to be published book What Music tells me, Beauty, Truth and goodness and our cultural patrimony.
So, I'd like to introduce our guest today. Mr David Eaton. Hey, David, how's it going, Marcus, Very good. Thanks for the opportunity to be with you here today. So, David's actually speaking to us from South Korea right now and we're talking over zoom and technology? How's things out in Korea. David today, How's the weather? What's it like? It was a great day again? Nice fall day. Played a little basketball today and did a recording session yesterday with some Children work on some Children's songs here and been busy with things. And in spite of the Covid issues here, we have been able to mount a few concerts here and there and some productions and video productions recording sessions. So I have been busy. It's always good to be busy. Right. And uh, so the, especially the last few weeks have been putting the finishing touches on the book that you referenced. And uh, we're hoping that it will be ready for publication within a month or so. Great. Yeah.
So, um, that's going to be coming out on amazon, is that right, David? Well, we hope that's that's our goal where I'm working with several people about distribution and so once it's available, I'll let you know and then you let your listeners know about it. But it touches on some of some of these issues that you would already already reference. So, it's uh, uh, it's timely that we could have this conversation and again, grateful for the opportunity. So, David, we were talking before, let's talk a little bit about the arts and culture and how it affects are environment around us, especially here in America and also the history of music. And it's origins back back during Plato's time and and the beginning of music, how does that affect our environment and what is the moral implications of music and culture? How it affects us, how how we think, how we act, how it affects our young people. Let's talk a little bit about the morality of music and culture. Been reading my mind here or maybe reading my book, I don't know, but I start the book, the preface with a quote by Leonard Bernstein, the great american conductor and composer and Bernstein Lenny, as he was known said art can not change events, but it can change people, it can affect people.
So they are changed because people are changed by art, enriched. Noble encouraged. They can act in a way that may affect the course of events by the way they vote, the way they behave and the way they think so, that statement in and of itself is very much the idea of the premise that I write from in the book. And Leonard Bernstein was not a conservative, he was very liberal in his politics, but it points to the the what I we might call the the transcendent power of music or beauty in general, to transcend politics, to transcend race, to transcend the things that that keep us apart.
And that's part of the power of music because and beauty is because it can bring us together, right. And I think that's what Bernstein was alluding to and I came across a book that really influenced me quite a bit. This is late, late eighties by an author by the name of David tam ta m e I believe that's how you pronounce his name and the name of the book was called The Secret Power of Music. And but David Tame wrote about, he examined the ancient cultures of china Greece, hebrew culture, indian culture, early christian culture and found that in all those cultures, course music was used for various ritualistic and religious purposes. It also is used in various entertainment modes. But all those cultures had a very similar attitude about music from a moral point of view. And the title of my book references beauty, truth and goodness.
So there's in all art, there's the beauty aspect, the aesthetics, right? There is the truth aspect which deals with intellect and craft and technique, but then there's this third component, the goodness component. And when we started talking about goodness, we're automatically in the realm of morals and ethics, right? But what what determines what is good and not good? And in philosophical terms that's called ACSi Ology, the study of values. So the axial logical aspect of music, their art Is 1/3 of the component. Um and the chinese, the Greeks, the early christians, they all had a lot to say about this because they understood that music is under Bernstein said, it affects us, it can enrich us, it can enable us, it can encourage us, it can inspire us. So this this part this asked the goodness aspect of the beauty truth and goodness paradigm. It's an old concept, but all those cultures put a great deal of importance on the ethical aspect. Okay, and that's a big theme in my book. My book isn't It's a series of essays that I wrote over Many decades going back to the 1980s. So there isn't a linear pattern in the book where I'm going from part A and part B two, part B. But these are standalone essays, kind of stream of consciousness essays that had about certain topics about music and culture and politics and religion and philosophy at given points. But the grand narrative in all of this was the role that art plays in society and the effect of art on our psyche, who we are and the role of the artists? What is the role of the artist? What responsibility to artists have in the process of creating a culture of justice, of fairness, of peace, of harmonization.
Also, that that's a big theme in the book. So, David, what do you think about The culture and the arts here in America today in 2021. What's what's the what's your viewpoint on how music affects the american culture? I'm sure there's good and good music that inspires people. And there's also music that brings us down, I guess, or kind of tears down our morality. What what do you what do you think about the today's uh cultural influences on our society and our young people? Good question. But I'll go back to the Greeks here a little bit and the chinese because there's an interesting interesting connection Plato in his writing The Republic, he referenced a person by the name of Damon of Athens. Damon of Athens was the son of Damon Itis, who was another greek philosopher. But Damon of Athens was the first greek philosopher to study the effect of music on our psyche.
Right? In modern terms we call that psycho acoustics, the effect of of sound or music on our mindset or our hearts set. Okay. And in in the Republic, Plato says that Damon of Athens warns about the following. He said if you change the songs of a nation soon you will change the laws of a nation. Yeah. And the influence is small at first, but over time it becomes more and more pervasive and pernicious. So these are the Greeks thousands of years ago. And when I thought of that I remembered and you probably remember this old people like us remember this, right? The comedian George Carlin. Remember George? Yeah, great, great comedian George was funny but very intellectual, very satirist. He had a comedy routine called the seven dirty words you can't say on television. I remember that as a little kid. I couldn't wait to listen to what the seven dirty words were point is there was a time not so long ago uh, that if you use those words on television or radio or maybe in the cinema, the FCC the Federal Communications Commission would come after you find your big plan council you Yeah. Now those words are everywhere become normalized. Why? And the songs of the nation So Damon of Athens long ago said if you change the songs of the nation soon you will change the laws of the nation. Right? So he he was very precious in that regard. So there has been a normalization of a lot of of course behavior. Ah, of course lyrics words that have had the effect in my opinion of course inning our society, you know, you're in a free in a free society. We allow that we allow the sacred and the profane. That's the great thing about our society and why why advocating for freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of speech is important. We allow for things that we might consider to be, you know, uh, irresponsible and untenable to be in the conversation to be in the music. Okay. But then we have a choice and individuals have a choice either to listen to that music or not listen to that, to go to that movie or not go to that movie, whatever. Right?
So this, to me is a an important consideration. And even the chinese to, you know, there's a quote that you find on line all the time. It's usually it's attributed to Confucius and the quote is if if you wish to know if the kingdom is well governed, if its leaders are good or bad. If it's morals are good or bad, the quality of its music will furnish the answer. Well I went I started researching that quote. I could not find that quote from Confucius but I did find a very similar quote by one of Confucius, a contemporary of Confucius politician by the name of W Way. And he wrote this, he said the will of the people living in an area can be known by examining the customs prevailing there and their virtues can be no by examining their will, whether a state will become prosperous, prosperous or face its downfall. Whether it's leaders are sensible or or unworthy and whether it's a person, whether a person is honorable or corrupt can all be known by the music they enjoy.
So again, the Greeks and the chinese were onto this idea. Yeah. The moral component of music. And the yeah, in contemporary flash forward a few 1000 years because there's a music historian, musicologist that I read quite a bit by the name of Richard Taruskin who teaches out Berkeley University of California Berkeley. He's considered one of the top if not the top musicologist in the world, you know, uh and he pointed out and he said this as long as some music somewhere is considered treff, which means not kosher, we have not forgotten that music is a powerful form of persuasion that does work in the world as serious art that possesses ethical force and exact ethical responsibilities. Now, now Taruskin is not a conservative either. He's a bit of a liberal, but he nonetheless understands that music art, beauty in general aesthetics can affect us. So the question is as creators and I always say this as as as musicians, as composers or filmmakers or or photographers, whatever we create, we don't create a vacuum, what we put before the public has consequences.
The question is, what are we putting before the public and what will the consequences be? And do we even take that into account in our creative endeavors? Yeah, goodness aspect of the beauty, truth and goodness paradigm you bet and, you know, especially in music nowadays, it's not just audio, audio, right? I mean, now we have, you know, the advent of Youtube which has visual influences and also audio. So it's it's a whole immersion of our senses. And I think, you know, with uh with, you know, you were talking about the right to be able to listen to or not listen to particular music because we live in a free society. But what do you think about music and how it might affect, you know, a young person who maybe hasn't, you know, discerned between what's considered moral music or music that uplifts versus music that influences them to dress a certain way. Talk a certain way influence and, you know, without any real understanding of morally upright and what is destructive maybe to their to their nature and their future. Well, let me go back one step when you reference the video culture, which is huge. As you say, right?
Visuals are very powerful because they're very direct. Music is more ephemeral. And I make the analogy that site is more masculine. Sound is more feminine and our ears are receptive organs like a female genitalia. If you will, you know, sound is more it's vibrant ori it's invisible but it touches the heart. Whereas visuals is right, right in your face. Right. Right. And I you may know this person brian Hargrove, whose I worked with brian many years. He did a lot of recording with me. He was a bass player for a long time. He was the bass player in a public enemy with chuck D. And he said to me one time he said, David, the five words that killed the music industry are what does she look like?
You know, it all became about visual and look right the little book. And so the emphasis on visuals is very powerful. And so getting to your next question, what do we or how do we educate or inculcated certain values to our young people? Well that's part of what being a family is all about. Right that through through through parents acting in responsible ways. And if parents take making decisions that are considered morally upright and of course that even morals these days has become very it's all subjected to relativism, but the family is a key point in all this. And what's interesting to note is it's been the assault on family by certain elements, political elements, ideological elements, right? Um, there's a great book which I reference. I do one shelter in a book called Music and Sex. Okay.
There's one chapter in the book about this. What got me going on, this was Sting the lead singer from the Police. He's been he's been doing classical music, he learned to play the lute, which is the precursor to the modern guitar. And he was doing all this english renaissance music, but he thought he felt and he says I read this article, it was interview with him that meeting for him, classical music appeal to some higher consciousness. You know, not everyone feels that way, but he makes the point that not all music does that, as he says, some some music appeals to our lower chakras. I think that's the actual Yes, but but but but I take the view that sexuality in and of itself is not low, it can be high can be virtuous, but and divine in fact in the right relationship. That's right. That's right, That's right. It's all about the relationship. So the relationship that we have with our Children and in the attempt to inculcate them with certain values about sexuality, about appearance, uh, that appearance, I mean, is an external attribute. It it's not an internal aspect.
So, the relationship between the internal and external or the spiritual and the physical, however you want to characterize that it's very important that and this is where parents come in and I was going to reference, there's a great book by paul Kengor, I mean, if you know, called Takedown and the subtitle the book, I think is something like um how communists and progressives have worked to sabotage the marriage and family. But there has been an effort going back to Karl Marx to destroy the family. Yes. And and part of the reason and maybe this gets a little bit now into our world discussion later. But part of the reason was at the heart of this view is that religion and family become mitigating factors against hopelessness, against despair, against a lot of these problems in life. But the Marxist wanted to use the problems in life as a way to gain influence in power. Sure, so, marriage, family, god, religion, all of that was an obstacle to their their desire to create despair and then offer this other alternative. You know, the Marxist alternative here is how we can help you with your despair. Right. Right. Typical. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Oh, yeah, divisive wedge issue. That's right. It's been around a long time and it's not it's not and it's naive not to think that that has hasn't been going on. That's right, paul kickers book is a great book And one thing he cites in the book, I should just bring this out. President Obama when he signed legislation signed the legislation that made same sex marriage legal. He said that he had recently evolved into that position, but can anger in his book sites, David axelrod who was President Obama's longtime senior advisor. And that's a ride in his memoirs, which I think were published in 2011 or 2012, tells the story of how Barack Obama actually believed in same sex marriage In the 1990s when he was a community organizer in Chicago, but did not go public with his belief because he wanted to curry favor with the black churches and in Chicago. And if he made his views known about same sex marriage at that time, he would his political ambitions would be seriously curtailed. So, this idea that he he recently evolved in that position is a lie hanger points it out in his book.
Typical politician pandering to his base to get votes. Yeah, all politicians do that. And the pandering is not endemic. No, no, no way politicians want to be all things to all people. So whoever gets them their votes, then they'll pretty much say whatever they need to. Well, very good David. So, um I want to thank you for sharing your ideas on culture and music. And uh we'll make that his book information available to you in my description on this podcast. Once it becomes available if you'd like to pick that up. And okay, so we're going to take just a brief break here just for a moment. And when we come back, I'd like to discuss with David about the wokeness that has now been perpetrated on classical music and white supremacy. So uh let's talk about that, David when we come back on a short break here, it's mhm. . Yeah. Mhm. Mhm. Okay, welcome back to the affirm America podcast today.
We're talking with my guest Mr David Eaten about his book and we're taking a look at how music affects our culture, how it affects our thinking and how we vote and the way we act in the way that we live as a society and how it affects our morality, how it inspires us and how it also tears us down. And it's important that we understand the motivation behind the arts and culture. And this has been one of David's focuses in the music field as a conductor and as a producer, he's speaking to us from south Korea today. And um so David, let's talk a little bit about Woke is um you know, this is the sum of our topics here on a from America as how the radical left has been influencing our schools with critical race theory with the cancel culture, big tech censorship and now it seems to be attacking classical music and white privilege. So tell us a little bit about what you're seeing here with woke ISm and classical music and how we see the radical leftist now putting a target on classical music. Well, the first thing I should say that the target has been there going back 30 or 40 years, actually. Back in 1991, I believe 92, Camille Paglia, art historian, who again, is not conservative by any stretch. She she strenuously was objecting to the idea that art be assessed by what she called a priority abstractions that had nothing to do with the context in which the art was created.
The idea that we would examine art of 400 years ago according to today's standards. She she said, basically considered that I think the word she used was garbage, you know, and others going back around that time. Edward Edward rothstein, who was, I think at the time, the cultural editor at the new york Times. Again, not necessarily conservative. He wrote an essay in the New Republic. This was in 1991 called Roll Over Beethoven, the new multiculturalism and its mistakes. And this was going on in the eighties and nineties. Uh the idea that that Western art should be viewed from this ideological perspective, right? Uh specifically the the neo Marxist perspective. And there were musicologist and ethnomusicologist like Debra Wong and Jeffrey Cooley as I recalled, who's who Who back in the 90s, we're seeing the I think Deborah wang said it, she said in academia and these studies of music and multiculturalism, Marxism is alive and well. Okay, this again, this is in the 1990s, so it's not a new phenomenon, you know, it's been around and the so called long march through the institutions was was well underway, you know, and after the the Frankfurt school philosophers like Herbert, Mark Uwsa and Theodor Adorno and others came to the United States. They made inroads into academia of course, the television industry, the music industry, Theodor Adorno, who we're talking about a bit earlier was one of the key players in the Frankfurt school.
He was an amateur pianist and composer, he had a lot to say. He wrote several books on music and I read them, but he approached music from this neo Marxist critical theory uh uh what might be called pc oriented multiculturalism. That yes, we have to value all cultures equally, but that Western culture, we don't want to value that at all because it is the cultural residue of colonialism, you know, Christianity, the Judeo christian, you know, if those um so the so this this this zeitgeist Was has been around for 30 or 40 years or longer. Right, so what we're seeing now being manifested especially in the aftermath of the George Floyd tragedy, is there has been an increased vitriol against the Western classical tradition. And I should call your attention maybe your listeners attention to.
There were two essays just came out a week or two ago, which actually prompted me to write a new chapter in my book that's been working on last week Peter Mcdonald and she is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and she was writing for City Journal and of course she wrote the book, the war on cops and also the book of the diversity delusion. She is too provocative essays called classical music Suicide pact. Okay. And for those of you are interested in this particular aspect of how neo Marxism and critical theory is working in art music. Those are must read essays. She cites how educators going back decades and especially now again in the aftermath of the the George Floyd tragedy and the ascent of black lives matter. There's this this opprobrium directed towards white culture in ways that have really mm very troubling, right? But what she points out though there is, I mean, she points to the incongruities of the critics, right? It's easy to spot hypocrisy. Yeah, duplicity hypocrisy that on one hand, many of the educators, teachers, faculty of music schools, administrators of orchestras, ballet companies, opera companies, they're under pressure to hire more minority people and they actually want to hire more minority people. But the talent pool isn't that great, isn't that big. Right? Not in America anyway, Okay, now and I and someone asked me while a little while ago about this, we're talking so David, you really do think classical music is too white. Right. By my response to as well. I've conducted maybe 10 or 12 different orchestras in South Korea, Vietnam Taiwan.
There are no white people in those orchestras. I've conducted orchestras in central and South America. There are no white people in those orchestras. The most famous youth orchestra programme for the last 40 years has been in Venezuela, right? The Venezuelan Youth orchestra programme known as El Sistema is world famous and other nations are trying to have adopted their system to help young people uh learned the classical tradition and many young people are learning it and are very enthusiastic about it. And these are that many of them are latino blacks asians. So there's a lie here that that classical music only appeals to white people and and and this would be the adorno view or Michel foucault the french nietzscheans. Well, the reason that they were promoting classical music is because it helps them maintain their power structure, the status quo, right?
Beethoven wasn't Beethoven really wasn't a genius. He was just called a genius by those who use bait Homan as an example of quality. So it protected their power base. Right? That's the rationale. So so do I think there's classical music too. I don't think so, but Mcdonald points out another situation again, another incongruity on one hand, educators and administrators and faculty and college admissions administrators want more black people in their program or latino people or they want diversity, right? But at the same time, the art form itself is being besmirched, derided for being racist, you know, colonialist, oppressive. So why would any self respecting person of color? I want to be an organization that was so racist and reprehensible. Yeah, it's the incongruity again, sure, it's a typical divisive wedge issue to just divide people. That's that's all it's about. It has nothing to do with race. It's just anywhere they can get there that are wedge in there to divide us. You know, it's the old proletariat bourgeoisie, communist ideology, that's been is now postmodern critical theory is what it is. That's right.
And Mcdonald, She cites one educator who and and and and another issue that that is in her writing. And I've been talking about this for some time with my colleagues in new york. Some of some of my friends, high school friends and people have known for many years play in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, professional orchestras in new york. And I've been warning them, I said, you know, if you take this view, view your colluding in your own demise, you know, and the one issue that is that comes up is the issue of meritocracy, right? People may not know this, but for many years going back decades when, when the top orchestras in America had auditions or a job opening when they had auditions, they had what were called blind auditions that candidates for the position would play behind a screen jury interesting their value. Yeah, No one knew the name,
The race ethnicity, the gender, the age. It was all about, can this person play the music? Well, that was it. And women were told don't wear high heels to the audition because the clicking of the heels on the floor and tip the jury as to your gender. So there was a real attempt, in a sense to make it fair, you know, just to just to base a person's qualification, their skills and on their skill set. Right? Once that goes away, if it's not about skills anymore, right? And it's about diversity, there could be a drop off in quality. Uh, yeah, I think so. I mean, Yeah. Well, and if there's a drop of quality, there would be a drop off in audience participate who wants to pay big money to hear mediocrity. Absolutely. No, I think it was either Mark Twain or George Bernard shaw who said, I think George Bernard shaw said, hell is a place where everyone is an amateur musician, you know, so, but but here you have a couple of this with what we just saw out in Oregon. The governor of Oregon recently passed legislation to do away with test scores and reading and math, right?
You know, to kind of level the playing field. Right? So whatever happened to no child left behind, I mean, right. And john McWhorter, I saw an interview with john McWhorter, if you don't know who McWhorter is, used to find out who he is. He's a liberal, but he teaches comparative english and linguistics at Columbia University's Black. He cited that situation in Oregon and basically said, well, this kind of attitude that you have that maybe people of color cannot achieve high academic standards is in itself a racist kind of Sure, sure, right. And he, I think he referred to it as kind of the attitude that people would have in the unreconstructed south decades ago. He called the soft bigotry of low expectations. So in her. So I I thought, well, hey, well, maybe Governor Brown should just give everyone a bachelor's degree from the University of Sure, why not just pass them out that sure everyone's happy, but but, you know, but again, in music and sports, right? Music and sports, these are two areas where meritocracy matters.
We pay, we pay good money to watch great athletes, you know, and they get paid enormous sums of money, you know, like Lebron James or, you know, uh kevin Durant or somebody, yeah, they make big money and we happily pay that money to see excellence, You know, we're okay with the financial arrangement And it doesn't bother us so much that Lebron James makes 44 million a year, you know, and I make way less than that, you know, as long as he wins. But the point is there's economic disparity here, you know, but a lot of people don't object to that, you know, they're willing to pay good money to go to a basketball game or have a cable tv subscription because they enjoy seeing excellence same way with music.
We pay good money to go to a broadway show or a concert because the experience of excellence of beauty in art is satisfying. It say she hates us in some way and we we we pay good money to have that experience, right? And if that is again, if sports just became a vehicle for equity and we should just have equity and forget quality, you know, Right? Yeah. And and Heather Mcdonald Makes the point. She cites one administrator or professor at one school who says in music and the music conservatories, if if diversity replaces meritocracy, the game is over any session mediocrity is like carbon monoxide, you can't see it, you can't smell it. But when you kill dead one day you're dead. But I said, but I, I actually sent Heather Mcdonald to email and I actually made the point. You may not be able to smell it or see it, but in music you can hear it and you're not going to be so happy for sure, you know, some meritocracy matters and that and that that feels. But again, there's this takedown or attempted takedown of that. And by the way, there have been many great black african and latino performers of classical music. The anti christ Jessye norman Kathleen battle Denise graves, the conductor, James, Priest Michael, morgan conductor out in Oakland who just recently passed away.
These people were not bothered by the whiteness of the music course not. And the, the principal clarinet player of the new york, philharmonic, Anthony McGill after the George Floyd episode. He did a video of himself taking two knees and playing his clarinet. Uh, and he played amazing grace. Beautiful. Beautiful. Yeah. And, but then he was asked, well, why do you classical music? You know, he said I played classical music. It's beautiful. There you go. There you go. Has nothing to do with his races. Uh, that's right, that's right. And his brother, his brother is also an accomplished food player and I think in the Seattle symphony. So there are people out there who are not white, especially asians who again, they're great orchestras in japan China Vietnam. I conduct their concert in Vietnam like 7, 8 years ago.
They have a music conservatory there and an opera house is crazy, you know. Well, David, thank you very much for joining us today and sharing your perspective on music and the arts and how it affects our culture, our morality, our principles and also how absurd the idea that classical music is just a white person's supremacy and that only white people benefit from the classics. So I think, um, you're absolutely correct that there is no racial component to who loves music. Music is universal. It goes across all racial, political religious lines. It's it's a personal experience. Sure, Beauty. I mean, not just beauty. Beauty. Beauty. And no one very few people object to the beauty of nature. Yeah. You know, it doesn't matter your ideology. Your we appreciate beauty. It's a basic relativistic human desire to see beauty. Yes, absolutely. So, David's book is what music tells me. Beauty, truth and goodness and our cultural patrimony. So again, I'll make a link for that once that is available. So those of you that would like to pick up his book. Uh you can do so and again, we want to thank David for joining us today on our firm America podcast. And uh, God bless everybody have a great week and we'll see you on the next episode of the from America. This is the affirm America podcast with your host, Marquis Vandermark. And let's never forget, America is great and we affirm it