Bob Gluck's Blog

The title of my forthcoming Pat Metheny, Stories beyond Words references one of the listening modes I explore within the book – metaphor. I use this term to mean listening in a suggestive, interpretive manner. It doesn’t mean searching for literal references or meanings (a topic discussed in the book) but rather, conceivable associations one may imagine while listening.

Each of us listens in this way all the time – our minds wander while listening, even when listening intently rather than casually. Sometimes a sound or melody, texture, or for music with lyrics, words, remind us of times, places, things, people we’ve known. More often, the experience is one of entering a state of unknowing, where what we hear seems to suggest something, but we can’t quite pin down what that is. This possibility is one of the powerful things about music; music defies concrete meaning while it can suggest, hint, refer, or simply cause changes in our perceptions that open us to thoughts and feelings.

Sometimes, a composer can bear a metaphor in mind while crafting a composition and “draw” a connection between an idea and a musical motif. The central track of Pat Metheny’s 2020 album From this Place, “America Undefined,” does just this. There’s an ascending melodic pattern that weaves through this work – something I write about at length in the book. It could conceivably suggest any number of thoughts or ideas. For me I connected the title “America Undefined” with the persistent upward movement of the motif, its directionality, to suggest a combination of struggle and hope. Other listeners might find other associations (or none) or maybe different ones upon separate listening experiences.

Let’s for the moment follow my association. We often mentally and emotionally connect upward movement with hope and possibility. After all, this motion often suggests that things can get better and better. Yet the ascending line never reaches a final goal. It just keeps striving to move upward, sometimes stumbling, sometimes seemingly collapsing into an abyss.

This is in fact the throughline of the history of American democracy. Maybe it is why America could be thought of as “Undefined” – not literally, but in the sense of not fully realized. Maybe a nation is never fully defined; a living, breathing culture is always in the process of unfolding. American democracy was crafted by its founders as a Constitutional framework by which its ideals might be realized. This made sense for a new republic whose founders imagined a country where all people are free and equal, while the reality, often unspoken, was that the first generations of political leadership held enslaved human beings and treated its indigenous population as collateral damage during westward expansion. Voting was substantially limited to certain groups but not others (such as women). America endured a civil war, multiple lengthy struggles for voting rights and non-discrimination, and multiple periods of pushback. Often, some longed for an imagined time before any of these advances in democracy had occurred.

For me, what “Undefined” suggests is the ongoing struggle through which ideals can be realized. Always on the horizon lies a manifestation of the goals of a democratic republic that treats all of its inhabitants as equally worthy of rights, resources, and opportunities.

The continued roller coaster ride of American democracy is of course highly relevant today. The album cover depicts an image of a tornado as viewed from across a body of water. I once had the experience of camping in the Midwest, only to wake up in the early morning to loud sounds of a twister. The funnel was fully formed but seemed to be holding in place on the other side of the lake. The scene felt menacing. My companion and I were terrified, not knowing whether the tornado was going to pick up speed and harm us in its wake. We turned on the car radio but there were no reports of storm activity. Nonetheless, the twister was clearly visible and audible, and not distant. We quickly packed the car and drove away. I don’t know to this day what became of the tornado; I suspect that it had only briefly touched down but then dissipated. What I do know was the fear we felt that everything could be have been destroyed in a flash.

As I write in the new book, the title “America Undefined” suggests to me that the promise of American democracy could become more fully realized. Yet while dire threats against it loom, they aren’t out of our power to overcome. This is not truly like a tornado although it may feel like it. American democracy is a human creation, shaped and reshaped by human beings. What threatens it can take on a tribal quality that seems like a force of nature. Such was the resistance to post-Civil War Reconstruction or the temporary, toxic success of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, or leaders of the anti-immigrant movements in the 1920s and again a century later. Each of these manufacture false enemies to galvanize anti-democratic political forces. We are in the midst of such a moment right now. “America Undefined” captures the fear and chaos created within what can feel like another menacing tornado. But it also suggests the ascending movement that always persistently upbuilds the promise of democracy.

The plotline of the 1957 Broadway musical (most recently revived in 2022) and 1962 film The Music Man comes to mind. In the show, Harold, a con man claiming to be a music professor, arrives in an Iowa town, River City lacks trained musicians; the idea of a musical life, particularly for young people, seems like a miraculous dream. Harold promises to create a marching band. He sells musical instruments and uniforms for the proposed band, which turns out to be a financial scheme. The town is taken in by the charlatan, imagining the uplift that he could bring. Harold creates a diversion by pointing his fingers at the evils of billiards. This being a musical show rather than reality, there are love plotlines and, in the end, the children manage to pull off a ragtag performance despite the lies and false promises of “professor” Harold. Hope is restored despite the havoc wreaked. “America Undefined” is a useful, suggestive work that is truly music for our time. It captures, at least for this listener, the long history of America’s democratic promises partially fulfilled, the power of movements to advance those promises, the tornado-like threats to undo them, and the hopeful, continual upward motion towards a distant horizon of their realization. Listen closely to the recording and see what it suggests to you, how you listen and, if you wish, interpret the music. I find the emotional qualities of Pat Metheny’s music to be evocative in ways that are ever changing, just as I myself change as a listener.

~ by bobgluck on June 1, 2024.

Posted in Crafting the text, metaphor, music and politics, musical content, musical perception, Pat Metheny, Reflections on musical context
Tags: America Undefined, bob gluck, From This Place, jazz, Pat Metheny, Pat Metheny Stories beyond Words, University of Chicago Press