"THIS MUSIC THING IS MORE THAN AN ART FORM" Stevie Van Zandt talks to Backstreets about his Rock and Roll Forever Foundation and having his mind blown in Europe '81 Now at the halfway point of the E Street Band's 2016 tour of Europe, it's worth reminding fans that you can support the music (and get choice tickets to these shows) another way: through the Rock and Roll Forever Foundation. Steven Van Zandt, who established the non-profit, has taken his mission to preserve "the greatest music ever made" into the halls of education, currently developing an interdisciplinary music curriculum for middle schools. Last month, Backstreets spoke to Warren Zanes, the group's executive director, and now we're pleased to talk with the founder himself. With the RRFF supported exclusively by private donations — no government funds or corporate sponsorship — Stevie raises money for his Foundation's work by offering meet-and-greet VIP tickets for each stop as the tour rolls on. Click here for more information and to reserve ticket packages, which are now available for the second half of the European leg, as well as the River Tour's return to the U.S. in August and September.
We heard from the man with many hats as he got ready to head to Europe, talking about the work of his Rock and Roll Forever Foundation as well as the significance for him of the original European River Tour. Our complete, River-heavy interview with Stevie Van Zandt will appear in the next print edition of Backstreets, issue #92, which we'll be publishing this summer.
SVZ on developing a rock 'n' roll curriculum with the RRFF: The Rock and Roll Forever Foundation came from a similar impulse as the [Undergound Garage] radio show. Which was basically thinking that the rock 'n' roll renaissance we grew up in would be around forever — followed by the sudden, shocking realization that it was not going to last forever. It wasn't carved in stone after all. And if action wasn't taken, the greatest music ever made was going to become really hard to find, and inaccessible, and just exist in museums. So that's why we started the radio show — that impulse to keep the music accessible and keep the standards up for new bands so they can actually experience greatness. How are you supposed to aspire to greatness if you don't have access to it?
And now we have the curriculum. At first it was simply a way of replacing the music classes that were all being cut, because of No Child Left Behind legislation. The music teachers of America asked me for my help, so I went to Congress and I spoke to Teddy Kennedy at the time, and Mitch McConnell, and I said, "Listen, I'm sure it's unintended consequences, but you really have caused quite a weird thing to happen in schools: all the arts classes are being cut to make room for the testing of math and science."
They were both very apologetic — and Teddy Kennedy gave me a whole two-hour rap on the Greeks [laughs] and how the arts were just as important as the sciences back in ancient Greece — but basically, in the end, they said this isn't going to get fixed any time soon.
So I came back to the music teachers. I said, listen, we're not going to get music classes back in school any time soon. But let's do something that we can get in, which is a curriculum. We can kinda go in the side door, keep people excited about music, let them learn about the greatest music ever made, the history of that, and make it cross-curricular so that English class can teach it, and History, and Social Studies. We make it as broad as we can, and as flexible as we can. We give teachers as much ammunition as we can give them, so they can add their own personality to it.
As we developed this thing, we also found out that there's an absolute dropout epidemic going on that no one's talking about. One out of two kids in the poor neighborhoods, and two out of five nationally, are dropping out of high school, which is incredible. But the statistics also showed that if the kids like one class, or one teacher, they will go to school. So we want to be that class. Their love of music — because every kid likes music — immediately establishes that most difficult of all things for students and teachers, which is the communication that comes from common ground or common interests. It's there already. Every kid is an expert on music. That immediately establishes a comfort zone for kids, no matter how inhibited they may be. So that really encouraged us to double our efforts.
I outlined 40 chapters, which each have five or six sub-chapters. So we're basically working on 200 lessons. We have about a third of them done. With the expertise of our lesson-writers, and their understanding of the standards that we wanted to meet, the state standards, this can be taught right in the middle of the school day — we didn't just want to be an after-school class. We decided to focus on middle school; we immediately realized that high school's going to be a challenge, with the "testing panic" going on there. But eventually we want to be in every single class, every single grade, every single school. We've got good people. And the bigger we get, the more people we can add, and the faster this can get done. I can't get to 200 lessons fast enough, believe me. — Steven van Zandt, as told to Christopher Phillips
SVZ on the original River Tour, and the impact of touring Europe for the first time in 1981: It changed my life. Oddly enough — and I wish it wasn't so, looking at it now —it was one of the things that led me to actually to leave the E Street Band for a while, so I could pursue this extraordinary revelation that I experienced on that tour, which was the universality of music, in a very real way. Your first trip to foreign countries is always a bit revelatory, but when they're all singing your lyrics, it really blows your mind. I mean, they don't speak English, but they're singing every word of your lyrics. It suddenly hit me: my God, what an ability to communicate we have! This music thing is more than an art form, more than self-expression, more than entertainment — it is an extraordinarily effective way of communicating person to person. Country to country. Without going through our government, with no sort of filter, no intermediary. And that was an absolute epiphany. — Steven van Zandt, as told to Christopher Phillips
"THIS MUSIC THING IS MORE THAN AN ART FORM"
ReplyDeleteStevie Van Zandt talks to Backstreets about his Rock and Roll Forever Foundation and having his mind blown in Europe '81
Now at the halfway point of the E Street Band's 2016 tour of Europe, it's worth reminding fans that you can support the music (and get choice tickets to these shows) another way: through the Rock and Roll Forever Foundation. Steven Van Zandt, who established the non-profit, has taken his mission to preserve "the greatest music ever made" into the halls of education, currently developing an interdisciplinary music curriculum for middle schools. Last month, Backstreets spoke to Warren Zanes, the group's executive director, and now we're pleased to talk with the founder himself.
With the RRFF supported exclusively by private donations — no government funds or corporate sponsorship — Stevie raises money for his Foundation's work by offering meet-and-greet VIP tickets for each stop as the tour rolls on. Click here for more information and to reserve ticket packages, which are now available for the second half of the European leg, as well as the River Tour's return to the U.S. in August and September.
We heard from the man with many hats as he got ready to head to Europe, talking about the work of his Rock and Roll Forever Foundation as well as the significance for him of the original European River Tour. Our complete, River-heavy interview with Stevie Van Zandt will appear in the next print edition of Backstreets, issue #92, which we'll be publishing this summer.
SVZ on developing a rock 'n' roll curriculum with the RRFF:
The Rock and Roll Forever Foundation came from a similar impulse as the [Undergound Garage] radio show. Which was basically thinking that the rock 'n' roll renaissance we grew up in would be around forever — followed by the sudden, shocking realization that it was not going to last forever. It wasn't carved in stone after all. And if action wasn't taken, the greatest music ever made was going to become really hard to find, and inaccessible, and just exist in museums. So that's why we started the radio show — that impulse to keep the music accessible and keep the standards up for new bands so they can actually experience greatness. How are you supposed to aspire to greatness if you don't have access to it?
And now we have the curriculum. At first it was simply a way of replacing the music classes that were all being cut, because of No Child Left Behind legislation. The music teachers of America asked me for my help, so I went to Congress and I spoke to Teddy Kennedy at the time, and Mitch McConnell, and I said, "Listen, I'm sure it's unintended consequences, but you really have caused quite a weird thing to happen in schools: all the arts classes are being cut to make room for the testing of math and science."
They were both very apologetic — and Teddy Kennedy gave me a whole two-hour rap on the Greeks [laughs] and how the arts were just as important as the sciences back in ancient Greece — but basically, in the end, they said this isn't going to get fixed any time soon.
ReplyDeleteSo I came back to the music teachers. I said, listen, we're not going to get music classes back in school any time soon. But let's do something that we can get in, which is a curriculum. We can kinda go in the side door, keep people excited about music, let them learn about the greatest music ever made, the history of that, and make it cross-curricular so that English class can teach it, and History, and Social Studies. We make it as broad as we can, and as flexible as we can. We give teachers as much ammunition as we can give them, so they can add their own personality to it.
As we developed this thing, we also found out that there's an absolute dropout epidemic going on that no one's talking about. One out of two kids in the poor neighborhoods, and two out of five nationally, are dropping out of high school, which is incredible. But the statistics also showed that if the kids like one class, or one teacher, they will go to school. So we want to be that class. Their love of music — because every kid likes music — immediately establishes that most difficult of all things for students and teachers, which is the communication that comes from common ground or common interests. It's there already. Every kid is an expert on music. That immediately establishes a comfort zone for kids, no matter how inhibited they may be. So that really encouraged us to double our efforts.
I outlined 40 chapters, which each have five or six sub-chapters. So we're basically working on 200 lessons. We have about a third of them done. With the expertise of our lesson-writers, and their understanding of the standards that we wanted to meet, the state standards, this can be taught right in the middle of the school day — we didn't just want to be an after-school class. We decided to focus on middle school; we immediately realized that high school's going to be a challenge, with the "testing panic" going on there. But eventually we want to be in every single class, every single grade, every single school. We've got good people. And the bigger we get, the more people we can add, and the faster this can get done. I can't get to 200 lessons fast enough, believe me.
— Steven van Zandt, as told to Christopher Phillips
SVZ on the original River Tour, and the impact of touring Europe for the first time in 1981:
It changed my life. Oddly enough — and I wish it wasn't so, looking at it now —it was one of the things that led me to actually to leave the E Street Band for a while, so I could pursue this extraordinary revelation that I experienced on that tour, which was the universality of music, in a very real way. Your first trip to foreign countries is always a bit revelatory, but when they're all singing your lyrics, it really blows your mind. I mean, they don't speak English, but they're singing every word of your lyrics. It suddenly hit me: my God, what an ability to communicate we have! This music thing is more than an art form, more than self-expression, more than entertainment — it is an extraordinarily effective way of communicating person to person. Country to country. Without going through our government, with no sort of filter, no intermediary. And that was an absolute epiphany.
— Steven van Zandt, as told to Christopher Phillips