My side gig as a musician took off when I was 5 years old. That’s when I confidently sang “A Teenager’s Romance,” Ricky Nelson’s big hit of 1957, before about three dozen relatives at the annual family reunion. I think I must’ve killed it.
So while I’ve been wedded to my journalism career, music has remained my tender passion ever since. And for the past 22 seasons, that has led me to be a part of Albany Pro Musica, which I’d immodestly describe as a fine choral ensemble. It’s based at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.
There’s a lot to be learned in a shared artistic endeavor — whether it’s a chorus or an acting ensemble or a band of aging rockers. It requires a sense of unified purpose and responsibility. It’s not like being a great soloist: A good choral singer knows that listening, and hearing other singers, is key to the music-making.
This, by the way, is my favorite argument for the value of teaching music in our schools. While a child who sings a solo at a holiday concert gets to feel a sense of personal achievement, everybody in an ensemble learns the satisfaction that comes from joining together to make something of beauty.
You know, that’s sort of the opposite of the training you could get from watching our political system these days, There are a lot of players that the opera world would call “prima donnas.” And so we get a daily crash course in selfishness, suggesting that Americans really ought to think of themselves as one of 340 million solo performers.
Consider the current hullabaloo over gas stoves, which right-wing commentators and politicians say Democrats want to ban. So the U.S. House recently passed two bills aimed at blocking the Biden administration from imposing a gas stove ban – which is strange, because President Biden has said that he does not favor a gas stove ban. Doesn’t matter: Some California cities passed regulations limiting new gas hook-ups, and there you go: The issue became a huge talking point in the culture wars. Thank you, right-wing media. Another crisis fabricated by Fox News.
But, yes, there are some people who do want to scale back the use of open flames for cooking. You know why? Because the carbon emissions from gas stoves are heating the earth’s atmosphere – and climate change is killing us. Also, if you worry about such things, Stanford University researchers say the blue flame from gas burners emits benzene, which is linked to cancer.
But, you know, how important are cancer and climate change compared to the right of individuals to cook their supper however they want? To belong in certain right-wing circles these days, you have to stand against shared responsibility for each other’s well-being, and against those who argue otherwise..
With the effects of human-induced climate change apparent all around us, though – the heat records in the Southwest, the heavy rainfall in the Northeast – you’d think that there would be some greater recognition that we need to come together – to move in unison to save us all. Yet plenty of politicians eagerly fire up voters with warnings that fighting climate change puts their personal freedom at risk – and you can’t have that, right? It’s as though that solo voice – what I need, what I want – is more important than the whole.
It's not that we should expect our political leaders to be self-effacing. It takes a sturdy ego, after all, to put yourself in the public eye knowing that you’ll rarely convince more than a slim majority that you’re doing a good job. But political machinations have grown so brutal over the past 30 years, and so many successful politicians have emerged as so fully self-absorbed, that we’ve all but lost the sense of shared responsibility across partisan divides for the good of us all.
Nobody better exemplifies this reality, of course, than Donald Trump, who is surely the most selfish figure in American political history. His appeal is based on making people feel that they have been victimized, so that nothing is more important than getting what they want.
Yet governing is a shared experience, and our government exists to care for the needs of all the citizens, not to stand aside as either individuals or special interests take whatever they can based on their might.
Society is like a musical ensemble, really. We each need to play or sing our part for the good of the whole, creating great music — or a just society – that inspires and sustains us all. No more than choruses want singers who are loud and off-key, we don’t need public figures who intentionally sound discordant notes or assume that everybody has gathered in the hall to admire them. Our audience assembles to share the inspiration. There’s nothing selfish about any part of that.
Many of us hope to keep singing as long as we can because the shared experience of music brings us joy. We sing together, in unison and in harmony, and sometimes through dissonance that we know will resolve in the end. It’s like the great chorus that is America: We’ve often made beautiful harmony together. Just now, though, the voices sticking out are hard to tolerate, and we are straining to hear the sweeter notes.
Rex Smith, the co-host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.