Tag: internet

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Pondering life before Google

This evening I stumbled upon an article about a young Gen Z woman who genuinely wanted to know, “what did you [old people] do before you could look something up?”

It was quite amusing but it also got me thinking…

…about how I recognize so many songs for which I never knew the name of the artist. I would hear something on the radio and enjoy it, but it didn’t trouble me that I couldn’t identify the artist. Now Shazam is helping me fill in the gaps of my knowledge.

…about how I would wait until the last three days to do the term paper for my music history class, then go to the library and walk out with a stack of ten or fifteen books. Because you had to deal with actual books — nothing online, nothing digital. And that meant actually reading (or — if you had only three days to read, analyze, organize, and write the paper — skimming) every book. Oh, and then I had to type the paper, marking the bottom page margin with a pencil so that I didn’t go too far.

…about how I freelanced throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and as far as Monterey, Modesto, and Santa Rosa with no cell phone and no GPS. I had directions, a map, and my intuition.

…about how a movie would come out and you either went to see it or — you missed it. And that was that.

So, yeah, I can see how this would boggle the mind of someone born in 1997. 😂

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Famous black conductors I never heard of

Dean Dixon

I happened upon a very interesting article today, titled: America’s Lost Generation of Black Conductors.

Of course, I knew of James DePreist (I once auditioned for his orchestra, Oregon Symphony, though I didn’t make it past the first round); Calvin Simmons (I was deeply affected by the news of his untimely death in 1982); Michael Morgan (who passed away just this past week); and Denis De Couteau (friends in the SF Ballet Orchestra raved about him; I always hoped I would get to sub there and experience him for myself).

But I only became aware of these conductors once I was majoring in music and freelancing as a classical flutist. In my high school and early college years I had no idea there were black orchestra conductors.

And until this afternoon, I had still never heard of Dean Dixon; Isaiah Jackson; Everett Lee; or Henry Lewis (who was married to opera singer, Marilyn Horne), each of whom was renowned in the 60’s and 70’s!

Marilyn Horne and Henry Lewis

But then I thought about it. When I was attending Milpitas High School in the early 70’s, the only way I heard about the wider world was from the newspaper and by sometimes watching the news with my parents. The local news — whether print or broadcast — probably didn’t place a lot of emphasis on black conductors from back East or in Europe.

And that brought home to me what an amazing difference the internet has made in the world. True, you can’t always trust it and the sheer volume of what’s out there is overwhelming, but my goodness, how it opens up our horizons!