The Musical Alliance seeks to unite existing organizations, performers at all levels of ability, music students, and music supporters, in order to enlist music as a positive force in community building, cross-cultural communication, and reconciliation. It will seek to undermine no existing programs, but instead, to build consensus and unity among those representing traditions long considered to have dissimilar and even opposing interests, by providing a flexible structure that enables collective advocacy without curtailing a diversity of views.
Creating music helps us communicate our individuality; listening to music can help us see ourselves in each other. Because of this music can help the many different elements of American society speak to each other and forge “a more perfect union,” at times bringing together people who otherwise might never encounter each other, thus bridging divides between myriad competing groups.
Technology has democratized music, but also—for most Americans— it has eliminated the need for its creation, and transformed it into a commodity that is passively consumed. Well-meaning efforts in the past to counter this trend by promoting music education sometimes elevated particular musical styles over others. This rubbed against the grain of an American society that continues to maintain powerful associations between musical genres and class, and recoils from intellectualism and elitism. The result is a status quo in which average Americans assert their inability to master simple musical skills that come easily to average people in many other countries.
The alliance hopes that its efforts to open channels of communication between Americans of many different backgrounds will also promote individual growth and mindfulness, and to enable more Americans to participate in creating their own music, by helping erode and eventually dissolve perceived barriers built up by assertions and counter-assertions about musical value over many years.
For information: info@musicalalliance.org