Mark Simos of Berklee College Discusses Songs for Social Change Contest

Mark Simos, Berklee College of Music professor and facilitator for the annual Songs for Social Change Contest. Mark, along with three of the student songwriters, Goz Asai, Deven Kamra Lyons, and Preston Lydotes give their unique perspectives and insights about songs for social change.  

Episode Transcript

(00:03):
Welcome back to What's at Risk.I'm Mike Christian. Berkeley's Songwriting Department has
just released the twenty twenty four Songsfor Social Change Contest results. The awarded
songwriters, participants in the content showcase, and those featured on the SoundCloud playlist.

(00:25):
Selections come from twelve US states,in addition to Ukraine, Kenya,
Norway, China, Columbia, Israel, South Korea, Spain, and the
United Kingdom. Since two thousand andeight, this annual contest has inspired Berkeley
students to craft songs that reflect theirbeliefs on social issues and advocate for positive

(00:47):
social change. Mark Simos had thisto say about the student songwriters. A
unique aspect of this contest is thatit is open themed. Students write about
the topics that speak to them fromtheir personal lived experience or from engaging with
empathy for the situations and struggles ofothers. So each year's showcase offers a

(01:08):
kind of time capsule reflecting shifting currentsof issues and concerns, always approached from
a diversity of perspectives, songwriting styles, and personal voices. Hello everyone,

(01:29):
today we're talking about the Berkeley Collegeof Music. Twenty twenty four Songs for
Social Change contest, and our guestsare Mark Simos, songwriting professor and contest
facilitator, gaz A Si, DvinCamera Lyons, both second place in the
contest co Writers for Better for Worse, and Preston Lidotes songwriter for Glass.

(01:52):
We just want to be loved.Congratulations to all of you for doing so
well in songwriting contests, and welcome. Just start with you to get a
little bit about your background. Yourteaching is informed by your own creative experience
as a songwriter, and I sawthat you've written songs from Molly Tuttle and
Alison Krauss, among others. Maybetell our listeners a little bit about your

(02:13):
background. Yes, interestingly enough,since the songs that the students are going
to be talking about today have atheme about technology and AI and social media.
Before I started teaching at Berkeley,I actually did have a former life.
I spent twenty years in the softwaretechnology business and actually worked on in
earlier versions of AI, and thenall that background kind of stayed hidden.

(02:38):
I was told by people when Ikind of left that field and went into
songwriting, don't tell people about yourtech background, or they'll just assume that
you're a bad songwriter. Yeah,I made a mid career change and started
focusing on songwriting, went down toNashville for several years to try to write
and co write with folks, andthen I got an opportunity to do more

(02:58):
teaching and found a teaching in thesongwriting department at Berkeley starting in two thousand
and six, and actually only acouple of years after that. Two thousand
and eight was when the Songs forSocial Change Contest got started. Well,
I had done some writing as asongwriter myself about themes of social change and
social justice, but it was aninteresting shift to turn to trying to support

(03:23):
students in writing songs on those themes. Maybe you guys can tell us a
little bit about your majors, yourinterest in songwriting, how you ended up
getting into the contest. I ama songwriting major. Kind of got into
it because I got rejected from twoof the more production majors. But honestly,
one of the better decisions I madeat Berkeley and getting into the Songwriting

(03:46):
for Social Change Contest for me atleast, was I was also part of
it the year before this year,and it ended up being that my class
was our entire midterm was actually makinga song for this. So last year
I worked with a good friend ofmine, William Tiong, and we made
a song called Where's My Home,which is about the Asian having a culture

(04:09):
and having all of these like foodso like noodles and such that you brought
and it just didn't have value justbecause you know, lunchables are like diamonds
in like little kids playground, likethose little something about those imitation like ham
the crackers and cheese, really reallyAmerican kids excited. Then I'd bring my

(04:30):
like my mom's noodles that she madethe night before, and I would not
be able to like even trade itfor like doritos, and so like growing
up with that experience and then growingup into the real world where it's kind
of just a little bit higher stakesis like it was an experience. So
going into that was my song Where'sMy Home? Last year. Having had

(04:53):
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for likeeighteen years in a row when I was
a kid, I can like completelyYe. So David, how about you
can tell us a little bit aboutyour background and your major and interest in
songwriting. Yeah, So at Berkeley, I'm a dual major. I study
electronic production and design and songwriting,and a lot of the time I'm very

(05:18):
interested in how music actually sounds,So the sound design, the production process
behind music, all these things arereally important to me and they really fascinate
me. And when I'm writing songsfor other people, a lot of the
time the focus is on how doI tell this person's story the most effective
way, and how do I havethe entire song really push that message.

(05:41):
So when it comes to the songsfor Social Changed Contest, I think it's
a really good way of really liketelling these really impactful messages and also framing
these stories that really are deserving ofbeing told. And this year I feel
like I've highlighted some very important stories. Last year I also took part in
the contest and a friend of Ella, Elise, and I we really created

(06:02):
a song called My Body, MyChoice, which really just details a lot
of the struggles that female songwriters andjust women in general have to go through
with getting their work taken seriously.And then this year we did a song
on AI called for Better for Worse, And this is signing that personally,
Gods and I have been feeling alot recently, where the usage of AI

(06:26):
has all has been a benefit inour workflow and also a detriment at the
same time to our greater psyche assongwriters. Yeah, I mean I think
a lot of us are struggling withwhere AI fits into our lives. Right,
How did you guys write the songstogether? Guys and David? Did
you one do the lyrics and onedo the music or did you just collaborate
on both? So me and Davidactually run our own production duel, and

(06:46):
we do a lot of music outsideof this contest. We're also best friends.
I feel like a lot of theones that end up being submitted,
like, for instance, with allthe wars going on, there was a
huge issue that we had no rightto like really talk about. It felt
like. Then there was another partthat we started thinking about where, particularly
someone from our music business department hada bit of a scandal on Berkeley's main

(07:11):
Instagram page in which he promoted theusage of AI to some things that we're
little like concerning. We're like usingit for cover art, which can be
a bit strange coming from like amusic art institution. But I also understood
where he was coming from, andthis kind of like in between of just

(07:32):
the AI can help us get throughall of the stuff we don't want to
do and we're not good at tomake like the quality better. It can
do that, but we also haveto think about the people who we are
kind of cutting out of the equationbecause no matter what they're like, with
everything good, something like of theequal reaction happens, so for better or
worse. That's how we felt aboutAI, where it's kind of in this

(07:55):
gray area of it can be eitherjust know what you're doing, even anything
to add. Yeah, And Ithink as for the actual process of how
we got started on the song,a lot of the time when we sit
down and create something, the workflowusually ends up somewhat like I work on
a lot of the musical side,the instrumental side, God's works on a
lot of the lyrical alodic side,and then after we've worked a bit on

(08:16):
our own, just sort of likein the same room, we'll come back
have a look with everything we have, like start editing stuff, start doing
more of a deep dive on whatwe like, what we don't like,
start changing things, and then movingon from there. And so specifically with
this song, to me, italmost has an air of like corporate music
to it. It almost feels abit fake, a bit plastic to it,

(08:39):
and we try to have this almostuncanny valley feeling to it. In
a way, it's an amalgamation ofmusical works in a way, it's not
completely our own creative ideas in thesong, but it's a mixture of things
that are not necessarily like our ownideas, mixed with our own creative,
like wholly imagined ideas to sort ofsupport the song itself. I did listen

(09:01):
to your song and I listened toyours, to Preston, I liked both
of them. Preston, maybe tellus a little bit about your background and
your interest in songwriting. My name'sPreston lie Doties once again, and I'm
a dual major like Davin at Berkeley. Songwriting is one of my majors.
And also this new production major offeredat Berkeley called Independent Recording and Production,

(09:24):
which specializes in at home DIY studiorecording and production. So just in terms
of this contest, this was thefirst year that I decided to take part
in the contest, and I hadboth Mark Simos as a professor for a
guitar songwriting class, and I alsohad one of the other big supervisors of

(09:48):
the contest, Daniel Kantor, fora couple songwriting pro Tools classes as well,
and they both brought up how thiscontest is really special and meaningful and
give songwriters at Berkeley a big platformto talk about an issue that's meaningful to
them, and sometimes, similar towhat Goz was saying, I feel like,

(10:09):
as a straight white local male fromMassachusetts, I feel like I often
don't have a place to talk abouta lot of issues, even if I
am an ally and a lot ofthem. So I knew I wanted to
talk about something and write and singabout something that meant a lot to me
and that I felt passionate about.And pretty recently this past year especially,

(10:33):
I found myself going down the socialmedia rabbit hole super late at night for
hours on end, when that couldbe time well spent in bed and doing
literally anything else doing guitar guitar Therewe go classwork for Mark you. I

(10:56):
was trying to think of problems thatthat I I've been noticing or experiencing in
my life, and I knew thatI just had this insane dependency on checking
my phone, being on my phonehaving my phone control me, and it's
a problem that's not spoken about enough. I feel like we've all just accepted

(11:16):
it as the norm, as somethingthat's either normal or just not able to
be fixed, and we've become prisonersto this piece of technology. So I
kind of just got really fed upone night. I'm looking back at my
songwriting book and it's dated as Marchninth, when I started working on the

(11:39):
song. So I just tried toget out a barrage of all my thoughts
and feelings about it and then makeit into a song format. And I
submitted it and it worked out ato not jolly. I'd scram it from
the rooftops. Agree until the sunstops from mine the world like said,

(12:07):
Yeah, we've all be glued toglass. It tells us a little worth.
This takes away a purpose. Canwe finally catch a break? There's
a fever we just can't shake.Yeah, they have capitalized don't mind less
size and no we just wan andbelow. Because the topics can vary so

(12:33):
widely, and the approaches and themusical styles can vary so widely, And
because we're actually distributing a lot ofaward money, we actually give out more
than fourteen thousand dollars every year inawards to kind of more than twenty five
different writers. So we have tohave a process that we can really say,

(12:54):
you know, it's accountable and isn'tjust the subjective views of one teacher
or something like that. I'm reallyproud of the sort of a djunication system
we've built up over the years,and you know, our goal is you
can really hear that in just whatthe songwriters have already shared. For example,

(13:16):
we allow songwriters to submit one solowritten song and one co write and
we've thought about that will very carefullybecause, as Preston and Gozen David have
said, we know that one issuethat every writer that sits down to respond
to this contest faces is it's anissue I like to call standing. It's
like, who am I to writea song about this topic? And there

(13:39):
are many things that students feel deeplyabout care about as humans, as citizens,
But then when they think about tryingto write a song on that topic,
I think, especially younger writers now, are really aware of the issue
of do I get to grab themic on this? Is it really for
me to speak about this topic?And so I think anyone entering the contest

(14:03):
wrestles with that sense of what isit that's kind of within my scope artistically
to write about and to sing about. And I think that there are topics
you can approach through co writing withsomebody that you may not feel you could
really approach as a solo writer.And so we wanted to make it possible
for people to speak their own truthand write about something that they felt they

(14:28):
had direct kind of personal experience tospeak of, but also to reach beyond
that, as you know, ascrafts people, as developing artists, and
say, well, maybe I canactually tackle some subjects that feel a little
bit uncomfortable for me in that senseof standing, and co writing with somebody
is one way to approach that.So, David, you mentioned co writing

(14:52):
on My Body My Choice. Isuspect you would probably not have sat down
and tried to write that as asolo song yourself. Absolutely not. And
yet maybe there was something about cowriting that with you that gave the creators
who maybe felt a more personal stakein it, a little bit of perspective,

(15:13):
almost a little bit of artistic distance. So you need both those things,
and that's all built into the experiencewe hope students will have with the
contest. Yeah, I mean youmake a lot of great points, especially
the collaborative efforts. If it's trulycollaborative and each party is giving a little
to get a little, I thinkyou create something you know, greater than
you might have done on your own. So those are great points. You

(15:37):
know, there's no end of materialfor social change in the world today.
You could just go on and onwhere there's some common themes. David Gos
and Preston, you really hit onsome common themes that I would think would
exist, but mark where they're commonthemes across the spectrum of the songs that
were submitted. Yeah, I'm gladyou asked that, and I think this
is I was talking about this earlier. Before this started, there had been

(16:00):
some themed contests, so someone hadgiven some money for us to run a
substance abuse awareness contest and that wouldchallenge students to write about addiction or alcoholism
or drug addiction issues. But whatwas unique about Songs for Social Change when
it began is that the original foundersof the lu Ango family created it as

(16:22):
an open themed contest. They reallywanted the contest to leave up to the
students the question of what subject orwhat topic to write about, and I'm
not sure they realized what a kindof complex but a rich structure that was
going to set up. Because I'venow been involved in the contest for fifteen

(16:44):
years and so year by year,it's been really fascinating to watch certain themes
kind of rise up, and inany given year we'll see a number of
different songs on particular topics. Goes, I know you were a showcase performer
in and was it last year ora year before with a song about kind

(17:04):
of your immigration experience? Right,yep, that was last year, and
that was the song I was talkingabout, Where's my Home? Where's my
Home? And again that was asolo written song, I believe correct,
No, actually that was I had. My solo song for last year was
a song called History He Waits,Doesn't Wait for the Dead or something similar

(17:26):
to it. It was my experienceas a school right in my district was
the victim of a school shooting andthere was one kid that was taken out
by that and he sacrificed himself asa hero, Kendrick A. Stile,
And I just started realizing that peoplehas slowly started or stopped remembering it.

(17:49):
And there's been so many more likeschool shooting, so many more people who
have died from all like different causes, not just like these like grim ones,
and actually we stopped remembering them.And so it was just kind of
that memorial song of like there arein these people whose stories are happening and
finishing and they are very beautiful storieswere very like good and bad ends,

(18:14):
and we should remember it not toexist. I've had the good fortune to
be associated with the Folk Americana RootsHall of Fame, which is located in
the Wang Theater, and as aconsequence of that, recently for this show,
I got to interview Joan Bias,Peter and Paul tom Rush all the
all the the sort of folk heroesof my era. You know that my

(18:36):
generation growing up in the sixties andseventies, and you know, talked a
lot about the process of songwriting,and they were all very focused on social
issues. And you guys probably knowwere who were your Were you influenced by
any of them? And I askedthis question across all of you, including
you, Mark, who were yourinfluences when you were writing these types of

(18:56):
songs? You're obviously influenced by thesocial issues of today. Did you have
any reference back to those songwriters backin the sixties and seventies? For me,
as an elderly faculty member, Icertainly have that frame of reference,
you know, in terms of beinginspired by a lot of those writers.
When I was developing as a writer, I got to meet Pete Seeger one

(19:18):
time. I remember played him asong that he had mixed feelings about.
He had a rigorous way of kindof listening to songs. From this standpoint
as a teacher, one interesting thingis that this contest there is a class
in songwriting and Social change, andthat's a subject of several other classes,

(19:38):
But the contest itself is not directlylinked to one class experience. It's open
to all students, all majors inthe college. And so one point of
frustration for me is that I wouldlove to have a better way of connecting
younger writers to this kind of theseother traditions. Some of them may know

(20:00):
that from the genres or styles thatthey work in, but for a lot
of them, I think there isn'tnecessarily a strong sense of continuity between the
protest songwriting of Dylan and the sixties. I think there were a lot of
things that came in between. Therewas punk music, there was hip hop,
and in some ways kind of hiphop grabbed a lot of the sense

(20:23):
of the urgency of social change writing. And so I think for a lot
of younger writers to reach back tothose older writers that were really consciously working
with social change can feel stylistically alittle bit ancient and distant. But I'd
be curious to hear from the studentsif you feel like in participating in the

(20:45):
contest you feel like you're stepping intoa tradition or sort of having to figure
all of this out for yourself.Yeah, I can. I think I
can talk a little bit about this. I think the first year I did
the competition last year, when wewere my co writer and Ila, when
we were looking at what we wantto write about, we were definitely like
going back to a whole bunch ofdifferent songs inspirations that we loved. I

(21:08):
was raised on the Beatles. Mydad's a big Beatles fan, a big
Simon and Garfunkle fan, and soI was taking from like Blackbird and a
lot of other things like that.We were also going to Marvin gay things
like that, and then also moremodern inspirations we were pulling from, just
like the the ideas of Kendrick Lamarand artists like Sophie who are like pushing

(21:30):
new boundaries sonically while also like havingthis core idea of just wanting to change
things in the world for the better. And so I think we were just
taking examples of like what does asocial change song sound like? What could
it sound like? How does itexist just in the context of these artists
discographies in general. As you said, there's definitely like all these original folks

(21:52):
songwriters, their entire focus was socialchange in a lot of cases, and
I think it was interesting seeing howthe idea of like a social change song
has changed now where it's almost likea specific thing that you write about instead
of just being everything that you writeabout. In my own lane of work,
I work with a lot of differentpeople doing production and songwriting work,
and I'm usually telling other people's stories. A lot of the time. What

(22:15):
ends up happening is I'm speaking throughtheir voice, and it's not always even
a truthful song. It's more ofwhatever the writing session takes us to great
insights. Guys are pressing anything toadd, I'll say that for me personally,
I'd never really focused on writing anykind of protest song or social justice

(22:36):
song. And given that I alreadyfelt pretty inexperienced, I knew that I
had to listen to some of myfavorite artists who at least were conveying some
kind of emotion that affected people atlarge, and like convinced people to make
a change at any sort of degreeor level, or feel like they're capable

(23:02):
of making any kind of change.So I'd say an artist that comes to
mind with my song that got performedin this contest would be Noah Khan,
because he's a current artist who alot of people regard as a speaker of
our generation and songwriting, particularly touchingon themes of mental health. That's a

(23:22):
common topic in his music, andI listened to a lot of his work
to see how he was able toform poetry around touching upon these themes.
And also I listen a lot tothis folk rock group called Pine Grove,
and they're catching a bit more steamright now, but they've been going on

(23:45):
for a decade or so, andthey have the song called Orange, which
is about the climate crisis and howthere was a I don't know if I'm
getting story right, but I remembersometime in twenty eighteen or twenty nineteen,
there was a forest fire that washappening on the West coast and the skies

(24:08):
of Portland, Oregon were like completelyorange, and the choruses today, the
sky's orange and you and I knowwhy. So I feel like calling an
issue out as blatant as that andmaking it seem so obvious too and simple
and capable of being changed was somethingthat I tried to channel into my own

(24:30):
song That's anything, Yeah, frommy side of things. Contrary TODs too,
I don't really have social justice referencesfor me. A big thing is
actually that a lot of social justicesongs I find end up being kind of,
for lack of a better word,cringe, as in, you think

(24:53):
of like imagine, for instance,it's a great song. I love it,
and it's like it's a timeless likepeace song, just because of what
it is and the time it cameout. But if you think of a
random artist like Selena Gomez dropping thattoday, you probably wouldn't get the same
reaction. And so I end upgoing to the darker side of things.
And so for both of or actually, all four of the songs I've submitted

(25:15):
for the show or for this competition, they've ended up having a more melancholic
feel, and I feel like thatends up being my favorite place to write
a social change song, in particularto cross the phase to phase again.
You look so much like me.I swear it like you stole myself.

(25:40):
Did I use you? Wou youuse me? I know if I gave
consent. Thank you very much forall those insights, mark An any last
words, I learned a lot justfrom getting a chance to hear these writers
talk a bit more about their processand who they listened to. I loved
what Ghos just said about acknowledging thesort of melancholy side as also a legitimate

(26:03):
emotional space from which to be writinga song that has social intent. And
we've struggled as contest organizers and describinghow we draw the boundary around these songs.
We often are struggling with evaluating doesthis song feel like a great song
the system, more personal song,or does it have this kind of call
to action in it which may notbe Hey, everybody go out on the

(26:25):
streets and protest this, but justsomething to change the listener's relationship to the
topic. Through that artistry, we'vebeen talking about the Berkeley College of Music
twenty twenty four Songs for Social Change, and we've been talking about much more.
Thank you all for your insights.Guys, Davin Preston Mark really really
wonderful conversation. Thank you very much. Can you feel well? That's all

(26:49):
for this week. I'm Mike Christianinviting you to join us again next week
on What's at Risk. Also checkout our podcast at WBZ News Radio dot
iHeart dot com What's on your mind? Send us your thoughts, comments and
questions to What's at Risk at gmaildot com. That's one word, What's

(27:11):
at Risk at gmail dot com.Thank you,