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• The International Music Products Association (NAMM)
• Support Music
• Interview with Mr. Lamond

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Tavis: Joe Lamond is the President and CEO of NAMM, the International Music Products Association that represents thousands of music retailers, manufacturers, and distributors worldwide. His love of music, however, is not just his profession. He's a passionate advocate for music education through a program called support music. The program aims to increase music awareness and education in schools and communities throughout the country. Joe, nice to see you.

Joe Lamond: Nice to see you too.

Tavis: Glad to have you on, man. I wrote a couple things down that I found really fascinating, first of all, about the benefits of music. I want to talk about a few other things that are a bit more controversial here in a second, but let me start with a few things I found fascinating about, again, the benefits of music education. One: high school students involved in music score 100 points higher on their S.A.T.s, so if you're involved in music--I wish I had known that--now you guys tells me, you know--

Joe: It's too late for us.

Tavis: Too late for us. Yeah. I could have picked up 100 points on my S.A.T. Unfortunately, that wouldn't have helped me trying to get into I.U., but anyway. Uh, number 2: the number one major accepted into medical schools are music majors. That blew me away. So if I'm gonna be a doctor, I should have studied music or something. Uh, too late for me on that as well. Number 3: with music instruction in schools, teachers find that students were less aggressive, so my teachers might have benefited from me studying music more. Fascinating stuff, though, about the role that music can play in the lives of young people. And yet the first thing to get cut in the budgets is always music.

Joe: Yeah. The ironic part is a lot of the stuff goes back to,

you know, Socrates and Plato. These are not new ideas. Uh, what our organization tried to do about a decade ago was trying to find--we saw that over the past number of years, there has been cycles of strength for music and arts and periods of weakness for music and arts. And always the arguments trying to advocate for it were generally about subjective things, so our organization tried to start, uh, the idea of saying, "Let's get some real strong, bullet-proof facts. Let's fund some research. Let's gather the information that when someone does want to go in and speak to a school board or the local decision makers, they're armed with the right information. They can change minds." So, that's what we've been doing. That's what supportmusic.com is all about.

Tavis: Music education, I suspect, like, any other political issue--and it is, for better or for worse, a political issue--sort of ebbs and flows. Everything kind of ebbs and flows in the political world. Tell me, um, when music education was at its high point, take me back to that moment, um, and what the environment was that--that--that caused music education to thrive, and then contrast that for me periods like now where it is not thriving and what the dissimilarities are.

Joe: Great question 'cause I'm not sure if the cycles are timed to those things in particular. I'll give you one example. Uh, in the late fifties when the Russians launched Sputnik, the U.S. Public Education System really turned away from a very general, well-rounded education to math and science. They were really trying to push those programs. And, uh, and music education at that point and arts really suffered. Uh, the sixties were a good time for it, so it ebbed and flowed. It's more often than not probably tied to the economic cycles. In good times, when budgets at state and local levels are well--well, uh, you know, served, then there's plenty of money to go around for these programs. As soon as the cycles, as they always do, dip, that's when school programs have to look really hard. And, unfortunately, music and arts is generally the first to be left out.

Tavis: These benefits of music education notwithstanding, we live in a society where we debate these cultural issues all the time, and there are those who argue that, um, in the main, it is more important to spend more time on math and science since we seem to trail consistently in the world.

Joe: Yeah.

Tavis: We're the most--you know, we are the world's last remaining superpower, and we can't get our kids to get this math/science thing right here. You are on my show saying, "We gotta spend more money on music." I mean, we live in a world where--

Joe: Yeah. That's a big...the argument of diminishing returns. The countries that have a strong music and arts program, you know--just look to Japan for an example. Uh, mandatory music education. They are at the top of the list. The countries that have a well-rounded music and arts education are at the top of the list of math, science, and reading, which is ironic that, you know, the powers that be that are trying to achieve these goals, uh, there's no data that suggests that spending more time on one particular subject like math is going to raise the test scores, but there is a lot of data to suggest that when you have a well-rounded education that involves other things like music and arts, test scores in math go up. So it's kind of ironic that, you know, we could--by achieving our goal of having, you know, a much more stronger general education, we may help achieve the big goal, which was higher test scores--

Tavis: Some nice by-products.

Joe: Yeah. Transfer effect they call it.

Tavis: Exactly. I like that.

Transfer effect. Tell me what it says, you think, about our country that we don't value and appreciate the arts in the way that we should. I was in a conversation with, uh, with Quincy Jones, as a matter of fact, the other day, and the "Q" was lamenting the fact that there was a particular establishment here in town, in Los Angeles, that they were just gonna bulldoze. They were just gonna tear down this structure that should've been preserved, he thought, as an historic monument. His point to me was, "Tavis, we don't value the arts. We don't value preserving the kinds of things like they do in places like France. And there's something wrong with us as a result of that." You buy that argument?

Joe: I think that a country can afford what it values. I think the idea that the American public values art and music, I think it's there. I think the Gallup polls really suggest when you see 93% of the public thinks that music should be a part of the school day, 95% thinks it's really an important part of the whole education curriculum, there's a gap between what we're actually doing and what we feel. I think we're trying to close that gap. Arming the average citizen--whether it's an urban setting or a rural setting--arming the local people in the communities with this type of information, you know, the statistics, the research, it's really compelling. And if they have that information, they can go and they can make these changes within their community, and I do believe a society will and can spend on what it values, and it can afford everything it values. There's plenty of money for music education if we just look at it the right way.

Tavis: Give me your thoughts on 2 or 3 rather controversial topics with regard to your business and the world we live in. First of all, this debate that continues to wager, will for years, I suspect, about music availability--let's put it that way--on the internet.

Joe: From a music education standpoint, now, that's where we come--there's a lot of different partners involved in the whole music--you know, the whole music education side of things. Our part of the--we've tried to think, OK, what can we do best? You know, what can our industry offer that would be the most beneficial? And in our world it was really trying to create access, you know, and we've been accused--there's an analogy of if you have a great tennis racket, you need a tennis court. And in our world, in our industry, one of the great companies we have, they make wonderful tennis rackets. You know, their guitars and pianos, they're so great. State of the art, you know, beautiful finish. I'm a drummer. There's enough beautiful drum sets out there that I can spend a whole life in a music store. But what we're not very good at is creating tennis courts--using that analogy--the places to play. So developing the desire for it. We did a lot of research on teens. Teen music is pretty strong, you know. It's just one of those things that, at that age, it really identifies-- it's almost the fabric of their existence for a lot of kids that age. And we thought that they weren't sure that they wanted to play instruments, and research was showing with these kids...you know, here's where I really feel like a dumb 40-year-old-- "You don't get it, you guys, it's not that we don't like music or want to make music. We just don't have any place to play." And that led us to this great partnership with the boys and girls club. What they needed was a tennis court, a place that they could go where there's equipment set up and they could play. And so that's what we're looking at. How can we, you know, first get information out so parents can have it in schools, but also, how can we create more tennis courts given the setting that the kids are after school, they need some place to go. An after-school program at a boys and girls club is an answer to that. So here can we be most effective? It's getting the facts out, getting information so people in any setting, just your average citizen, can go in front of the school board and say, "You know what? Did you know da da da da?" And then also providing access points for people to play.

Tavis: Final question: what's your sense of what the greatest danger is for our society if we don't get this particular generation of young people--generations past have had the opportunity--to, as you say, get to the tennis court and to do what they want to do and do what so many of them have done well for years? What's the danger in this generation not being afforded that opportunity long-term?

Joe: The point is that the people making these laws did have music. That's a particular point that should not be missed. We were on Capitol Hill last month, and we had Isaac Hayes with us. Wonderful spokesperson and a really passionate advocate for music making. And we were meeting with various lawmakers, and his point was--I'll never forget--he said, "You talk about can you picture a society that didn't appreciate music and art. There was one. It was Afghanistan under the Taliban." Powerful. That's it. That's the alternative.

Tavis: That's scary. That's really scary. Nice to see you, Joe. Thanks for coming on. Pleasure's mine. For more information about Joe Lamond's terrific music education program, go to the web site supportmusic.com. That's our show for tonight. As always, you can catch me on the radio on NPR. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from Los Angeles and keep the faith.