August 1, 2024 • 42 mins
How does music sustain us during difficult times? Why do we now realize why live music is so important? Our guest today is Lia Falco, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Arizona. She was central to the founding of a school based mental health program that provides free mental health counseling for students and families in public education, a program which launched just before the pandemic. Her research provides a context to the stories in this episode, about how music helped sustain and bolster people as they found ways to use music to provide solace for themselves during the pandemic. Musical memories by Andre Cota, Ariel Heinrich, and Hunter Del Rosario guide the conversation to a better understanding of how music supports us during those times we are in crisis.
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Episode Transcript
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I made it to the top man in the state of Arizona after just playing for a year.
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That music sort of solidified that period of time in my life.
No matter how long we've been apart, no matter where we are in life, we are connected by
that song.
Welcome to Lifetimes of Listening, a podcast that seeks to understand why music is important
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in people's lives.
Today's topic is music during the pandemic.
For many of us, music was a source of sustenance, of comfort, strength in the face of a three-year
COVID-19 pandemic.
As we were confined in our homes with limited face-to-face contact with others, music played
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a special and very important role for millions of people, and that's what we're going to
explore today in today's episode of Lifetimes of Listening.
So Dan, is there any music of special significance for you during the pandemic?
Yeah, there are actually several things.
I was thinking about this this morning.
There are three things I want to mention.
One is an occasion to, it's very memorable, to go to a concert of a local choral group,
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True Concord, which I'm sure you're familiar with, and because of what was going on with
the pandemic, they had the concert, but they had it outdoors on a huge patio with all the
singers in front of us, and there are probably a dozen, at least five or six feet apart from
one another, and us and the audience, and there were maybe 50 or 75, but again, sitting
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on this enormous patio and every chair was at least six feet from every other chair,
so it's this very unique kind of concert performance experience.
Another one, and I'll get through these quickly, another one is that one of my favorite jazz
pianists, Emmett Cohen, who's in New York City, started early in the pandemic a thing
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called Monday at Emmett's, where he just performs in his little apartment in New York City.
He on piano, his drummer, his bass player, and a guest artist, and this started during
the pandemic and it became a national phenomenon that this young pianist got this thing going,
and we listened to it, we probably watched it 30 or 40 times in the course of this.
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But the one other thing about the pandemic musically that I can really look to is that
I kind of got through the pandemic thanks to Bill Withers, okay?
There was a period of a year or year and a half where I swear every single morning I
would get up, go downstairs, and the first thing I do after pouring a cup of coffee was
listen to Bill Withers singing Lovely Day, if you know the song.
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Thought about that song, got me like, okay, it's going to be a lovely day, the world is
wacky, but this song will help me get off to a good start.
Now I really want to go listen to the song right this minute.
It became part of my daily routine, again, for like a year, year and a half, every day,
the same song.
So those are some parts of my experience about music during this whole episode.
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I impact a lot of my feelings about this in the TEDx talk that I did and one of the interviews
that I used in the TEDx talk about music and music making us better people, I also were
going to listen to in this episode.
But I had discovered there was a, in 2020, REM released a live album, a live concert
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album from 1989, I think it was, maybe 1990, right around then.
And this is at a time where I, back then, I went to several REM concerts, I'd seen them
multiple times in those years, the end of the 80s, early 90s.
And I listened to, according to Spotify, I was one of the people that listened to that
(04:01):
album the most in 2020, of all the people.
Just again and again and again, it was this wonderful live album that was released, limited
number on vinyl, and I snapped up a copy.
And listening to that as a live album, giving myself the treat of listening to that live
album is solace.
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I mean, it just, it's, I intentionally, when I sit down to listen to that album, I'm intentionally
doing a kindness for myself.
I feel the same way about some of my favorite music, that if things are challenging, whether
it's pandemic stuff during that time, or whatever, like, okay, I'm going to reward myself this
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afternoon by just sitting in my office and with my really good speakers attached to my
computer, listen to whatever.
And I've got a half a dozen things that do that for me.
So this is a really wonderful topic for us, Brian, and we're going to be exploring this
idea of music and the COVID pandemic.
Our guest today on this episode of Lifetimes of Listening is going to be Professor Leah
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Falco.
She's a professor of disability and psychoeducational studies here at the University of Arizona.
We'll talk with her in just a moment here on Lifetimes of Listening.
So stay with us.
This episode of Lifetimes of Listening is about music and the COVID pandemic.
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And we have a guest who we believe can meaningfully reflect on this topic, Dr. Leah Falco, associate
professor of educational psychology at the University of Arizona.
Dr. Falco is a certified school counselor in the state of Arizona and worked as a middle
school counselor in the amphitheater school district prior to completing her doctorate.
Her expertise is in the area of career development with research that explores how adolescents
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view themselves as future workers and how career issues are related to aspects of motivation
and identity.
Dr. Falco is a member of the American Counseling Association and National Career Development
Association.
And she works in a school-based mental health running Tucson Unified School District's Talk
It Out program set up just before the pandemic and utilizing a clinical training model to
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provide free mental health counseling to students and families year round.
Professor Falco, welcome to Lifetimes of Listening.
May we call you Leah?
Sure thing.
The casual name?
Yes, please call me Leah.
And thank you so much for having me.
So I am so impressed by the concept of the Talk It Out program and the idea of the Talk
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It Out program.
But I'm also aware you did most of this work in 2018, 2019 and launched it just before
COVID hit.
Can you tell us a little bit about the program and what that was like?
Sure, happy to.
So school-based mental health is a passion of mine because I really feel it's incredibly
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important to provide accessible mental health supports for students in schools.
So that was the idea that led to the genesis of the program.
And like you mentioned, it coincidentally happened that we launched the pilot part of
the program right on the cusp of the beginning of the pandemic.
So like so many things in recent years, COVID collided with that experience for me and for
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the students and families involved all around that same time.
So as we were implementing the program and doing our best to provide these amazing mental
health counseling services for students, they were experiencing school shutdowns and online
learning and everything that happened for them during the pandemic.
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So the timing was actually good in a way.
I mean, you're setting up a program that had some utility given the circumstances that
were happening in the wider environment.
Yeah, and COVID really shined a light on all the mental health challenges that students
and families and teachers and school systems were experiencing already and really amplified
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those.
So the timing was good.
It was still really challenging.
And I to this day, I spent a lot of time thinking about the emotional impact on students.
Was music a part of either something that you encountered a lot on the Talk It Out program
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or something that you personally used at the pandemic?
How did your listening change and are you aware of anything reported through Talk It
Out?
Yeah, both actually in reflecting on all of this as I was getting ready for the show today.
I mentioned earlier that I'm also a mom and I have two kids who are school aged.
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And so this affected me personally, the pandemic and school closures and our mental health
as well as professionally in doing this work.
And in thinking about it, I don't know how much I was aware at the time, but we did rely
on music a lot to help us feel better, to feel happier, to feel connected.
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And that is certainly the case for students that we work with in schools.
So certainly through the normal course of development, music plays a huge role in our
lives in thinking about who we are and who we connect with, who our friends are and our
identities, what we enjoy in that collective experience.
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But if one is experiencing a challenging situation like the COVID pandemic was for just about
everybody and there's emotion involved with that, music we have found in talking to people
and my own personal experience, music is a way of connecting with and processing emotions
in many, many important ways.
And I can share, you know, that experience has been mine many, many times that I'll have
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something on my plate that is challenging or emotionally difficult or a long-term issue.
Somehow connecting with music kind of helps that.
Can you as one with a psychological and counseling background, can you understand or explain
that in any way?
Yeah, I think it has to do with the way our brain processes stress and the coping mechanisms
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that we rely on consciously or unconsciously to cope with stress.
So we know that music is, there are, I'm not a cognitive psychologist, but I can say with
a certain degree of confidence that there is, there are neurological pathways in our
brain that are activated when we listen to music, especially with the association with
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experience and emotion.
So wherever we are located in time, the music that resonates with us at any given moment
can activate those emotions, whether they're happiness, whether they're sadness, you know,
the range.
I don't like to say negative or positive emotions because we don't want to valence emotions,
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but the full range of human experience can be experienced through that connection to
music.
Yeah, very true.
Very true.
Is there something that you're aware of that students, so you and I both teach here at
the U of A, we're dealing with students that spend either middle school or high school
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in part in COVID and in the lockdown.
And our older non-traditional students also had their own challenges.
What are the remnants of that for students today?
What are we still seeing?
What are the effects of the pandemic on this generation?
I think there's a universal agreement or at least widespread general agreement among educators
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and mental health professionals that the COVID experience, regardless of how old you were
when COVID was in its intense phase, really had a profound effect on the way we organize
social relationships.
And for kids in school, developmentally, that has had lasting consequences, the way that
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we form friendships, the way that we interact with others, even our ability to share physical
space with others was radically shifted during that time and maybe permanently.
And then in terms of sort of the emotional developmental piece, we saw and continue to
see just a really drastic increase in mood challenges.
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So kids and adults both experiencing much higher, much more intense rates of anxiety,
depression, worry about the future and those kinds of things.
And those are really lasting effects that we, I think, collectively still grapple with.
Well, it's great to have you with us today in preparation for this episode and earlier
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Brian and I have shared on a couple of occasions our own experiences with music during the
pandemic and that's the focus of this episode.
So in a couple of minutes, we're going to share with you, Professor Falco, several moving
musical memories that came out of conversations we had with some U of A students about the
role of music for them during the pandemic.
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And then we'll ask you to just respond to those in whatever way you can.
So that's coming up shortly.
Stay with us here on Lifetimes of Listening.
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Welcome back.
Now we have three musical memories about music in the pandemic to share with our guest, Leah
Falco.
The first is from a student of mine from a couple of years ago.
All three of these interviews were recorded in the fall of 2022 for context.
And the first is a student named Andre Cota.
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He'll introduce himself in just a moment.
So this is this is Andre Cota.
My name is Andre Cota.
I'm a music ed major with a jazz emphasis here at the University of Arizona.
Been playing saxophone for the majority of my life since fourth grade.
My high school had this indoor percussion ensemble and it was both marching marching
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groups and I loved it.
Though the marching band was kind of bad, it was still an enjoyable experience because
I got to hang out with my friends.
It was just an overall good time.
And then in indoor, we were good.
We were like top in the state.
We always got first.
And then my sophomore year, it was we were literally the best we got in the 80s.
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Our first competition, which is unheard of, and we were on track to make it to Dayton,
which is champs or world champs.
And but then COVID hit.
So that that kind of put a damp on everything.
And then that program started going downhill.
But right now it's kind of in its building blocks, trying to get back to the way it was.
I guess how I got into jazz was freshman year with there was two people that I kind of looked
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up to and they were in the Tucson Jazz Institute, some of the best players I knew.
And they were just there at my high school.
I wanted to be like that.
But obviously, jazz is a whole other boatload of knowledge that are just it goes.
It's a very big iceberg, to say the least.
So to say that I could have learned it all on my own that year, or even over the course
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of high school, it was not it's not really capable or wasn't capable.
But then obviously, COVID hit.
And then August of 2020, I started taking lessons online.
I reached out to one of my friends that his name was Joel.
My freshman year, he was one of the ones I looked up to.
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And I asked him if I could have the information of his teacher, Neiman Lyles, for lessons.
And he's like, Yeah, sure.
So he gave me and then I started taking lessons with Neiman from basically August 2020 until
August 2022 when I came here at the U of A.
Over the span of that first year from 2020 2021, I was just lesson upon lesson with Neiman
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every week every other week.
I was just practicing, practicing, practicing, practicing.
That was all I did.
And then that December of 2021, Neiman wanted me to go for Allstate, just because why not.
And obviously, telling myself I've only been doing this for a year, can't do it.
I'm like, screw it, I'm gonna do it.
And next thing I knew, I made it in.
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I made it past the first round, which that was big for me.
And then second round came, all right, this is where I'm gonna get kicked out.
But no, I made it into I was second alto, but I made it to the top man.
So I like to give myself that credit of being the second best alto player in the state of
Arizona.
After just playing for a year.
What a great story.
What are your thoughts?
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Yeah, so I a couple of things come up for me.
And I'm hearing hearing him describe his experience in marching band prior to the pandemic.
And the way that that being a musician and being able to participate in that activity
with others served several purposes for for him.
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You know, it's a it's an in group, so it gives gives him a sense of belonging and identity
and passion and purpose and achievement.
And all of those things are so healthy for for young people for all people.
And then COVID disrupted that in a major way.
And he's reflecting on the experience of really having to reorganize the way that music fit
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into his life, reemerging from the pandemic and and thinking about in a more real sense,
rediscovering that passion and that purpose in a different way.
A new genre, a new teacher and the teacher he mentioned, Neaman Lyles happens to be a
fellow I performed with, in fact, did in a couple of their jazz bands here at the university
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some years ago.
And Neaman is a wonderful instrumentalist, and I just also know him to be a very inspiring
person on a kind of a spiritual, emotional, social level.
So I can imagine there was a good fit for the two of them.
I think do you I mean, I remember distinctly that moment, you know, March of 2020.
Well, so I've mentioned elsewhere in this podcast that March 1st, 2020, my dad died.
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It was a whole was in a very different emotional place.
We with this project, we're supposed to go to South by Southwest to launch it.
So in March of 2020, so a lot of things were disrupted then.
But I do remember realizing that we were in for a long haul.
And I remember thinking, oh, this is a time to better myself.
You know, this, you know, and it sounds the his story feels to me like a story of, oh,
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I did that, you know, like, I'm going to become well, I've been wanting to be a better jazz
player for a while and jazz really is a steep mountain with, you know, a lot of no jazz
artist doesn't have a well for five years, I practiced eight hours a day.
So I can become mediocre.
That's the basic story of becoming a jazz musician.
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The pandemic could have could have been an excuse for a young man like this to say, okay,
it's too much.
I'll just take a little break.
Instead, use the opportunity to move ahead in some new ways that were very South.
They were very just very good for him personally, and here he's in a real different place with
music a few years later, which is pretty, pretty cool.
I that that that struck me and that because it resonated so much with that feeling of
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optimism I had, you know, I was I was trying to cling to and in the spring of 2020.
And also the sadness at all of the institutions that were crippled like his school, you know,
like this school is one of the best in the country for for wind ensemble music and and
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now it's floundering.
Yeah, I think that time was was profound for all of us in so many ways in that that sudden
stoppage that we experienced creates a sense of loss and opportunity.
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And a confusing sense of control, because there are things that are happening around
you that are out of your control.
And the way that you move forward through that could be passive, it could be, you know,
I am losing this moment, and I'm sad and there's nothing I can do about it, or it can be a
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chance to really reclaim your autonomy and decide to chart a new path.
And it sounds like Andre did that.
Yeah, great.
So we have another musical memory to share with you again, an interview conversation
we had with a U of A student in the fall of 22.
And Ariel Henrich really conveys and opens up in a very personal and vulnerable way about
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the role that music played in her life during the pandemic.
So let's listen to Ariel's story now.
My name is Ariel Henrich, and I'm a first year student at the U of A. And I'm initially
from Chandler, Arizona.
So I moved down here two hours down, but I'm also half Taiwanese.
So I was originally born in Taiwan and moved to the US when I was three.
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The way I tend to listen to music is I'll just listen to about two or three songs continuously
nonstop for like a month and then get tired of them, throw them out and then listen to
a set of like three new ones.
2021 fall, it was after the COVID pandemic when things were starting to open up again.
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And during the COVID pandemic, I went through like, just really bad mental health.
Pretty much as soon as the pandemic started, I had like, I started, I had OCD, and then
I had anxiety and depression and then an eating disorder.
And then those sort of like, cleared up pretty miraculously, like right around 2021 October.
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And during that time, I found this album called Plantasia, and it was, I think it was written
in 1970.
And it was written when music had first started becoming synthesized.
So instead of having orchestrals, it was mostly like a theremin moog situation.
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And it was written, the concept of the album was music written for humans, but also plants.
So you could like play the music to your plants.
It was called Plantasia.
And I listened to it and it was so innocently nice.
And it didn't have any pain associated with it.
It was just very like innocent, play it for your plants type of deal.
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And it was 40 minutes and I listened to it all the time when I was studying.
And then I also during that time listened to the Japanese Suite by Gustav Holst.
I listened to those two continuously and it was like, probably one of the best moments
of my life.
I think if I hadn't had those pieces of music, I would have still had the same experience,
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but that music sort of solidified that period of time in my life, in my head.
So what sort of brought me out of all the nasties of 2020 and 2021, the beginning of
it was like focusing more on the present moment than the past or the future.
So I think I listened to those pieces of music to remind me of the way I can get back to
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the present and not focus on the past or the future.
I love this for her.
I'm so happy that she recognizes all of, and her awareness, right?
The way she speaks about her awareness of the experience she had with her emotions during
that time.
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And it connects directly to what we were talking about earlier when I mentioned that so many
people experienced heightened anxiety and depression.
And I can relate to listening to the same song or a few songs over and over again in
a really obsessive way.
Me too.
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I think that's such a fun way to connect with music, but it allows you to connect in a really
intense way, right?
And explore every lyric, if it's a pop song or the contours, the arrangement in ways that
do become a little bit obsessive.
And to recognize that and then to maybe find a different style of music or a different
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way of connecting to music that creates maybe a more neutral space for you to be in your
head and in your body and in your mind.
I had that experience and just hearing you reflect on that now, it may have been, and
it occurred during the pandemic.
It's been about two years ago that I discovered a new band.
I happened to turn on the radio.
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A song was on by a band I had never heard before.
The song has been an obsession of mine for two years.
And I'm wondering if there was something about where I was in my head and in my heart two
years ago that this particular piece of music happened to show up in the midst of all that.
And it's the most persistent, what is called earworm, most persistent earworm I've ever
(26:32):
had in my life.
It's now two years later.
It won't go away.
It's not all the time anymore.
Now you have to tell us the song.
This is this band I told you about, a group out of Boston called Lake Street Dive.
Yes.
Do you know Lake Street Dive?
Yes.
Okay.
The song Hypothetical?
Yes.
Wonderful.
I just can't tell you.
This song swept into my life, completely took me over for a couple of months and it's still
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there.
It may have been because of what we had all been through together and my special relationship
to music during that time.
I think songs and music have such prominence in our episodic memory.
Like you're describing that whatever is salient for us at any given moment in time, if it
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collides with or intersects with a song that really resonates, it electrifies us in ways
that it might not otherwise if you were to hear it at a different point in time or if
you have a different association with that particular song.
I think this song electrified me, as you say, and it's a great term, lyrically and also
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musically because there's something about this particular band that takes me kind of
back to the mid-60s.
Yes.
Just the sonic.
Yeah.
There's a thing they do that they obviously have listened to a lot of music from the 60s.
You're one of the few people I know who knows about Lake Street Dive.
They're just amazing.
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Last time your kids are questioning your taste, it resonates.
I am always amazed at what music we do cling to when we find ourselves needing to cling
to music.
There is a sort of cosmic sense that the music comes into our lives in these various ways.
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Sometimes it's just the perfect thing.
Occasionally you bump into somebody else who's had that same connection to the music, but
often not.
Often it's sort of like, oh, that, that's... That's one of the things that I talked
about in the TED talk.
My pandemic listening was all over the map and it was very... I'm a music teacher.
(28:50):
I had expectations for what my music listening and experience was supposed to be, but what
it was was something else entirely.
I kept finding myself going back for different kinds of things and using music very... Music
was very utilitarian.
It was very useful for me for very specific moods.
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I am not, unlike both of you, it sounds like, and Ariel, I am not a person that likes to
listen on repeat.
There are albums, very, like 30 song albums that I'll listen to again and again and again
come back to, but once or twice and then I got to give it some time again.
(29:39):
So Leah, we have one more really interesting musical memory about music and the pandemic
that we're going to share with you in just a moment.
It's coming up next on Lifetimes of Listening.
(30:07):
Welcome back.
Our last story is by another student, Hunter Del Rosario, who told me the story and it
just landed.
It was such an impactful moment for him that I'm very grateful to share it with you and
(30:27):
I'll be curious for your take on it.
I'm Hunter.
I'm a sophomore.
I'm a business major here.
I did choir for eight years.
I was in men's ensemble, so it was all male voices at the time and it was a brotherhood.
You were all on, you were really close to one another.
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You were brothers.
You were more than just some guys singing together.
It wasn't about the music you made.
It wasn't about how you sounded together.
It was how you felt in that moment doing what you all share collective interest in.
There's a certain piece, Shenandoah, at the end of the year we have a candlelight concert.
It's our most intimate concert and our only one performed inside our rehearsal room, kind
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of like the one that we're in right now.
We'll turn all the lights off.
We'll string Christmas lights and have candles all around the room.
It's a very dark and intimate setting compared to our other concerts in our performance area.
At the very end we sing the song Shenandoah and it represents that no matter how long
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we've been apart, no matter where we are in life, we are connected by that song.
Alumni of our high school will come back to watch candlelight and they're invited back
up to sing with the current members.
I think I've gone back twice now.
I think two years ago, two, three years ago we had the pandemic.
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It was kind of iffy going back and we didn't do it in the choir and we did it outside.
That's one that was memorable in the sense it was one of our first in-person performances
was our last.
It was just like, whoa.
That was the whole thing.
We also just couldn't do it inside.
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We had to do it outdoors.
Our junior year it was canceled because pandemic.
That's about the time I was in high school.
That March and then everything after was closed.
I think it was around May.
Around March we get the okay, you can come back on campus, but everything's very limited.
You had cohort A and B, all this stuff.
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You'd only have half of the choir come one day, half of the other choir come the other
day.
Because we're performing arts, you can't really sing with a mask on.
It's difficult like how a lot of the bands had to play with the filters on the bells
or they just couldn't play at all.
One thing that our director pushed really heavily for and he wanted at least one last
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performance because we were also his graduating class.
He was new when we were freshmen.
Us as freshmen grew with our current director.
It was just very sentimental and meaningful to him to see how much we've all grown together
and not only as a group, but individually and the way he's seen all of us interact.
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He wanted us to be able to perform together for the first time and the last time.
It's another story that I love and it feels sad in a lot of ways and just feeling a sense
of loss and regret.
I don't know if that's just me projecting onto the story, but I hear a student whose
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experience in choir was such a chance for community and the experience of creating something
in community was so profound and intimate for the student, he even uses those words.
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The pandemic disrupted musicians and singers in ways that were pretty unique.
The way he describes singing as something that suddenly becomes dangerous and playing
an instrument suddenly becomes something that becomes dangerous.
(34:46):
That stands in such stark contrast to the way that most of us typically think of singing
and playing instruments.
Him thinking about what it was like to try and reclaim some of that and how that felt
sentimental and really important probably in ways that he might not have prior to any
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of that happening.
His description too of the lights being down, the words that he used, the intimacy of the
performance, how much of an impact that had on the singers and the people who were in
attendance.
Yeah, you can imagine being in the audience, but you can also imagine being in the choir
and how special that must have felt.
(35:32):
The idea that you're so connected to these people in your choir and you're doing this
thing that you love and it's connected to the past and to the future in a way that you
can tangibly see in this one experience and the one song at the end of the year.
Then to have that be his last moment, his first time to sing as a choir chorister for
(35:56):
a year and a half and it also to be his last time.
The ways that that affects his experience of it.
When he told me that story and it was just one of those like-
Yeah, I think Brian and I often feel very privileged to sit and talk with people about
(36:17):
these things.
Somebody observed in the course of this project very early on that if you approach somebody
on the street, a complete stranger and said, would you tell me some really interesting
deeply personal story about your life?
They'd say, of course not.
But if you said to the same person, would you tell me about a moment in your life when
music was especially important?
What they have to share may well be as it was for this young man, a deeply personal revelatory
(36:42):
experience.
That's why I think Brian and I, that's the thrill that we get out of doing this project.
That's how this project got started.
That awareness of that.
Do you have anything that we've brought up that you'd like to share to bring to a close
or your wisdom about dealing with the disruption of the pandemic and music?
(37:07):
No wisdom at all.
But to your point, I was trying to imagine where I could fit into this conversation,
not being somebody who has any expertise in music and emotion or even the COVID pandemic.
(37:27):
But I really realized that music is transcendent.
And Dan, when you said about asking a stranger on the street to share their experience with
music, I was like, oh, I can do that.
I mean, I can think about my own experience with music.
I can think about how I relate to others through music, how I desire to connect with others
(37:54):
and with myself through music.
And then it felt less intimidating and really kind of exciting and wonderful to think about
music and how it connects to the lived experience.
I wonder also, this is a whole new podcast episode, but I also wonder if the pandemic,
(38:15):
because we had to go into silos and our listening became very internal and individual.
If that's going to have longer effects about music.
And then, I mean, in some ways, when you meet somebody that listened to you, you just discovered
(38:36):
that you both love this one song and this is one of your pandemic songs.
I wonder if that's going to make those resonate all the more because you realize, oh, this
person has had a deep dive with my artist and my album.
And I wonder if that's going to carry.
The other thing too, as I recall after the pandemic, when it was getting to its second
year and of its second year or so, and people were starting to go back out in public again,
(39:00):
that the overwhelming demand for performance opportunities to witness music live again
was just huge.
It was.
And that may be the reason that concerts today cost about three times what they did in five
years.
It's insane.
But there was just this huge built up unmet demand for communal experiences with music
(39:23):
coming out of the pandemic.
And it did that for us.
Well, this has been a wonderful conversation.
Professor Leah Falco.
Leah, thanks so much for being with us here.
I feel like I've learned a lot just by talking with you and whatever your thoughts were coming
in, you had some really wonderful things to share with us.
(39:44):
Oh, that's so kind.
And I feel the same way.
Thank you so much for having me.
Well, thank you, Leah, for being our guest today on Lifetimes of Listening.
(40:06):
Well thank you for listening today to Lifetimes of Listening.
Now, if you haven't done so yet, please do follow or subscribe to this podcast on your
favorite podcast app.
We hope you'll also consider participating in our project maybe by telling us your story.
We are extremely grateful for the more than 200 people who've recorded a story for the
(40:27):
Arizona Musical Memory Archive.
It's allowing us to better understand the ways people value music.
If you haven't visited our website at musicalmemories.music.arizona.edu, please do so.
There you'll find full length interviews of the ones that we've posted here.
And you can also, if you like, submit a musical memory of your own via a sound file, if you
(40:51):
like, an essay or a poem or even an illustration of some sort.
Or if you like, suggest someone to us who you know, who you think might like to share
their musical memory with us and this project.
So take a look.
It's musicalmemories.music.arizona.edu.
I'm Dan Cruz.
And I'm Brian Moon.
(41:11):
Thank you for listening.
The executive producer of Lifetimes of Listening, the Arizona Musical Memory podcast is Brian
Moon.
The program is produced and edited by Dan Cruz.
The Lifetimes of Listening website was created by Cynthia Barlow, principal information technology
(41:33):
manager with the University of Arizona School of Music.
Music is from zapsplat.com and from pixabay.com.
Special thanks to the University of Arizona School of Music and the UA College of Fine
Arts for their continued support of the Lifetimes of Listening musical memory archive and this
podcast.
(41:54):
For more information and to get involved in our research, visit musicalmemories.music.arizona.edu.
This is Lifetimes of Listening, the Arizona Musical Memory podcast.
I made it to the top man in the state of Arizona after just playing for a year.
(00:09):
That music sort of solidified that period of time in my life.
No matter how long we've been apart, no matter where we are in life, we are connected by
that song.
Welcome to Lifetimes of Listening, a podcast that seeks to understand why music is important
(00:31):
in people's lives.
Today's topic is music during the pandemic.
For many of us, music was a source of sustenance, of comfort, strength in the face of a three-year
COVID-19 pandemic.
As we were confined in our homes with limited face-to-face contact with others, music played
(00:51):
a special and very important role for millions of people, and that's what we're going to
explore today in today's episode of Lifetimes of Listening.
So Dan, is there any music of special significance for you during the pandemic?
Yeah, there are actually several things.
I was thinking about this this morning.
There are three things I want to mention.
One is an occasion to, it's very memorable, to go to a concert of a local choral group,
(01:19):
True Concord, which I'm sure you're familiar with, and because of what was going on with
the pandemic, they had the concert, but they had it outdoors on a huge patio with all the
singers in front of us, and there are probably a dozen, at least five or six feet apart from
one another, and us and the audience, and there were maybe 50 or 75, but again, sitting
(01:39):
on this enormous patio and every chair was at least six feet from every other chair,
so it's this very unique kind of concert performance experience.
Another one, and I'll get through these quickly, another one is that one of my favorite jazz
pianists, Emmett Cohen, who's in New York City, started early in the pandemic a thing
(02:00):
called Monday at Emmett's, where he just performs in his little apartment in New York City.
He on piano, his drummer, his bass player, and a guest artist, and this started during
the pandemic and it became a national phenomenon that this young pianist got this thing going,
and we listened to it, we probably watched it 30 or 40 times in the course of this.
(02:23):
But the one other thing about the pandemic musically that I can really look to is that
I kind of got through the pandemic thanks to Bill Withers, okay?
There was a period of a year or year and a half where I swear every single morning I
would get up, go downstairs, and the first thing I do after pouring a cup of coffee was
listen to Bill Withers singing Lovely Day, if you know the song.
(02:47):
Thought about that song, got me like, okay, it's going to be a lovely day, the world is
wacky, but this song will help me get off to a good start.
Now I really want to go listen to the song right this minute.
It became part of my daily routine, again, for like a year, year and a half, every day,
the same song.
So those are some parts of my experience about music during this whole episode.
(03:10):
I impact a lot of my feelings about this in the TEDx talk that I did and one of the interviews
that I used in the TEDx talk about music and music making us better people, I also were
going to listen to in this episode.
But I had discovered there was a, in 2020, REM released a live album, a live concert
(03:38):
album from 1989, I think it was, maybe 1990, right around then.
And this is at a time where I, back then, I went to several REM concerts, I'd seen them
multiple times in those years, the end of the 80s, early 90s.
And I listened to, according to Spotify, I was one of the people that listened to that
(04:01):
album the most in 2020, of all the people.
Just again and again and again, it was this wonderful live album that was released, limited
number on vinyl, and I snapped up a copy.
And listening to that as a live album, giving myself the treat of listening to that live
album is solace.
(04:22):
I mean, it just, it's, I intentionally, when I sit down to listen to that album, I'm intentionally
doing a kindness for myself.
I feel the same way about some of my favorite music, that if things are challenging, whether
it's pandemic stuff during that time, or whatever, like, okay, I'm going to reward myself this
(04:43):
afternoon by just sitting in my office and with my really good speakers attached to my
computer, listen to whatever.
And I've got a half a dozen things that do that for me.
So this is a really wonderful topic for us, Brian, and we're going to be exploring this
idea of music and the COVID pandemic.
Our guest today on this episode of Lifetimes of Listening is going to be Professor Leah
(05:06):
Falco.
She's a professor of disability and psychoeducational studies here at the University of Arizona.
We'll talk with her in just a moment here on Lifetimes of Listening.
So stay with us.
This episode of Lifetimes of Listening is about music and the COVID pandemic.
(05:36):
And we have a guest who we believe can meaningfully reflect on this topic, Dr. Leah Falco, associate
professor of educational psychology at the University of Arizona.
Dr. Falco is a certified school counselor in the state of Arizona and worked as a middle
school counselor in the amphitheater school district prior to completing her doctorate.
Her expertise is in the area of career development with research that explores how adolescents
(06:01):
view themselves as future workers and how career issues are related to aspects of motivation
and identity.
Dr. Falco is a member of the American Counseling Association and National Career Development
Association.
And she works in a school-based mental health running Tucson Unified School District's Talk
It Out program set up just before the pandemic and utilizing a clinical training model to
(06:26):
provide free mental health counseling to students and families year round.
Professor Falco, welcome to Lifetimes of Listening.
May we call you Leah?
Sure thing.
The casual name?
Yes, please call me Leah.
And thank you so much for having me.
So I am so impressed by the concept of the Talk It Out program and the idea of the Talk
(06:47):
It Out program.
But I'm also aware you did most of this work in 2018, 2019 and launched it just before
COVID hit.
Can you tell us a little bit about the program and what that was like?
Sure, happy to.
So school-based mental health is a passion of mine because I really feel it's incredibly
(07:09):
important to provide accessible mental health supports for students in schools.
So that was the idea that led to the genesis of the program.
And like you mentioned, it coincidentally happened that we launched the pilot part of
the program right on the cusp of the beginning of the pandemic.
So like so many things in recent years, COVID collided with that experience for me and for
(07:38):
the students and families involved all around that same time.
So as we were implementing the program and doing our best to provide these amazing mental
health counseling services for students, they were experiencing school shutdowns and online
learning and everything that happened for them during the pandemic.
(08:02):
So the timing was actually good in a way.
I mean, you're setting up a program that had some utility given the circumstances that
were happening in the wider environment.
Yeah, and COVID really shined a light on all the mental health challenges that students
and families and teachers and school systems were experiencing already and really amplified
(08:27):
those.
So the timing was good.
It was still really challenging.
And I to this day, I spent a lot of time thinking about the emotional impact on students.
Was music a part of either something that you encountered a lot on the Talk It Out program
(08:48):
or something that you personally used at the pandemic?
How did your listening change and are you aware of anything reported through Talk It
Out?
Yeah, both actually in reflecting on all of this as I was getting ready for the show today.
I mentioned earlier that I'm also a mom and I have two kids who are school aged.
(09:13):
And so this affected me personally, the pandemic and school closures and our mental health
as well as professionally in doing this work.
And in thinking about it, I don't know how much I was aware at the time, but we did rely
on music a lot to help us feel better, to feel happier, to feel connected.
(09:41):
And that is certainly the case for students that we work with in schools.
So certainly through the normal course of development, music plays a huge role in our
lives in thinking about who we are and who we connect with, who our friends are and our
identities, what we enjoy in that collective experience.
(10:02):
But if one is experiencing a challenging situation like the COVID pandemic was for just about
everybody and there's emotion involved with that, music we have found in talking to people
and my own personal experience, music is a way of connecting with and processing emotions
in many, many important ways.
And I can share, you know, that experience has been mine many, many times that I'll have
(10:23):
something on my plate that is challenging or emotionally difficult or a long-term issue.
Somehow connecting with music kind of helps that.
Can you as one with a psychological and counseling background, can you understand or explain
that in any way?
Yeah, I think it has to do with the way our brain processes stress and the coping mechanisms
(10:47):
that we rely on consciously or unconsciously to cope with stress.
So we know that music is, there are, I'm not a cognitive psychologist, but I can say with
a certain degree of confidence that there is, there are neurological pathways in our
brain that are activated when we listen to music, especially with the association with
(11:12):
experience and emotion.
So wherever we are located in time, the music that resonates with us at any given moment
can activate those emotions, whether they're happiness, whether they're sadness, you know,
the range.
I don't like to say negative or positive emotions because we don't want to valence emotions,
(11:32):
but the full range of human experience can be experienced through that connection to
music.
Yeah, very true.
Very true.
Is there something that you're aware of that students, so you and I both teach here at
the U of A, we're dealing with students that spend either middle school or high school
(11:53):
in part in COVID and in the lockdown.
And our older non-traditional students also had their own challenges.
What are the remnants of that for students today?
What are we still seeing?
What are the effects of the pandemic on this generation?
I think there's a universal agreement or at least widespread general agreement among educators
(12:19):
and mental health professionals that the COVID experience, regardless of how old you were
when COVID was in its intense phase, really had a profound effect on the way we organize
social relationships.
And for kids in school, developmentally, that has had lasting consequences, the way that
(12:41):
we form friendships, the way that we interact with others, even our ability to share physical
space with others was radically shifted during that time and maybe permanently.
And then in terms of sort of the emotional developmental piece, we saw and continue to
see just a really drastic increase in mood challenges.
(13:06):
So kids and adults both experiencing much higher, much more intense rates of anxiety,
depression, worry about the future and those kinds of things.
And those are really lasting effects that we, I think, collectively still grapple with.
Well, it's great to have you with us today in preparation for this episode and earlier
(13:31):
Brian and I have shared on a couple of occasions our own experiences with music during the
pandemic and that's the focus of this episode.
So in a couple of minutes, we're going to share with you, Professor Falco, several moving
musical memories that came out of conversations we had with some U of A students about the
role of music for them during the pandemic.
(13:52):
And then we'll ask you to just respond to those in whatever way you can.
So that's coming up shortly.
Stay with us here on Lifetimes of Listening.
(14:19):
Welcome back.
Now we have three musical memories about music in the pandemic to share with our guest, Leah
Falco.
The first is from a student of mine from a couple of years ago.
All three of these interviews were recorded in the fall of 2022 for context.
And the first is a student named Andre Cota.
(14:41):
He'll introduce himself in just a moment.
So this is this is Andre Cota.
My name is Andre Cota.
I'm a music ed major with a jazz emphasis here at the University of Arizona.
Been playing saxophone for the majority of my life since fourth grade.
My high school had this indoor percussion ensemble and it was both marching marching
(15:03):
groups and I loved it.
Though the marching band was kind of bad, it was still an enjoyable experience because
I got to hang out with my friends.
It was just an overall good time.
And then in indoor, we were good.
We were like top in the state.
We always got first.
And then my sophomore year, it was we were literally the best we got in the 80s.
(15:25):
Our first competition, which is unheard of, and we were on track to make it to Dayton,
which is champs or world champs.
And but then COVID hit.
So that that kind of put a damp on everything.
And then that program started going downhill.
But right now it's kind of in its building blocks, trying to get back to the way it was.
I guess how I got into jazz was freshman year with there was two people that I kind of looked
(15:52):
up to and they were in the Tucson Jazz Institute, some of the best players I knew.
And they were just there at my high school.
I wanted to be like that.
But obviously, jazz is a whole other boatload of knowledge that are just it goes.
It's a very big iceberg, to say the least.
So to say that I could have learned it all on my own that year, or even over the course
(16:14):
of high school, it was not it's not really capable or wasn't capable.
But then obviously, COVID hit.
And then August of 2020, I started taking lessons online.
I reached out to one of my friends that his name was Joel.
My freshman year, he was one of the ones I looked up to.
(16:36):
And I asked him if I could have the information of his teacher, Neiman Lyles, for lessons.
And he's like, Yeah, sure.
So he gave me and then I started taking lessons with Neiman from basically August 2020 until
August 2022 when I came here at the U of A.
Over the span of that first year from 2020 2021, I was just lesson upon lesson with Neiman
(16:57):
every week every other week.
I was just practicing, practicing, practicing, practicing.
That was all I did.
And then that December of 2021, Neiman wanted me to go for Allstate, just because why not.
And obviously, telling myself I've only been doing this for a year, can't do it.
I'm like, screw it, I'm gonna do it.
And next thing I knew, I made it in.
(17:19):
I made it past the first round, which that was big for me.
And then second round came, all right, this is where I'm gonna get kicked out.
But no, I made it into I was second alto, but I made it to the top man.
So I like to give myself that credit of being the second best alto player in the state of
Arizona.
After just playing for a year.
What a great story.
What are your thoughts?
(17:39):
Yeah, so I a couple of things come up for me.
And I'm hearing hearing him describe his experience in marching band prior to the pandemic.
And the way that that being a musician and being able to participate in that activity
with others served several purposes for for him.
(18:04):
You know, it's a it's an in group, so it gives gives him a sense of belonging and identity
and passion and purpose and achievement.
And all of those things are so healthy for for young people for all people.
And then COVID disrupted that in a major way.
And he's reflecting on the experience of really having to reorganize the way that music fit
(18:29):
into his life, reemerging from the pandemic and and thinking about in a more real sense,
rediscovering that passion and that purpose in a different way.
A new genre, a new teacher and the teacher he mentioned, Neaman Lyles happens to be a
fellow I performed with, in fact, did in a couple of their jazz bands here at the university
(18:53):
some years ago.
And Neaman is a wonderful instrumentalist, and I just also know him to be a very inspiring
person on a kind of a spiritual, emotional, social level.
So I can imagine there was a good fit for the two of them.
I think do you I mean, I remember distinctly that moment, you know, March of 2020.
Well, so I've mentioned elsewhere in this podcast that March 1st, 2020, my dad died.
(19:17):
It was a whole was in a very different emotional place.
We with this project, we're supposed to go to South by Southwest to launch it.
So in March of 2020, so a lot of things were disrupted then.
But I do remember realizing that we were in for a long haul.
And I remember thinking, oh, this is a time to better myself.
You know, this, you know, and it sounds the his story feels to me like a story of, oh,
(19:43):
I did that, you know, like, I'm going to become well, I've been wanting to be a better jazz
player for a while and jazz really is a steep mountain with, you know, a lot of no jazz
artist doesn't have a well for five years, I practiced eight hours a day.
So I can become mediocre.
That's the basic story of becoming a jazz musician.
(20:03):
The pandemic could have could have been an excuse for a young man like this to say, okay,
it's too much.
I'll just take a little break.
Instead, use the opportunity to move ahead in some new ways that were very South.
They were very just very good for him personally, and here he's in a real different place with
music a few years later, which is pretty, pretty cool.
I that that that struck me and that because it resonated so much with that feeling of
(20:28):
optimism I had, you know, I was I was trying to cling to and in the spring of 2020.
And also the sadness at all of the institutions that were crippled like his school, you know,
like this school is one of the best in the country for for wind ensemble music and and
(20:48):
now it's floundering.
Yeah, I think that time was was profound for all of us in so many ways in that that sudden
stoppage that we experienced creates a sense of loss and opportunity.
(21:12):
And a confusing sense of control, because there are things that are happening around
you that are out of your control.
And the way that you move forward through that could be passive, it could be, you know,
I am losing this moment, and I'm sad and there's nothing I can do about it, or it can be a
(21:36):
chance to really reclaim your autonomy and decide to chart a new path.
And it sounds like Andre did that.
Yeah, great.
So we have another musical memory to share with you again, an interview conversation
we had with a U of A student in the fall of 22.
And Ariel Henrich really conveys and opens up in a very personal and vulnerable way about
(22:02):
the role that music played in her life during the pandemic.
So let's listen to Ariel's story now.
My name is Ariel Henrich, and I'm a first year student at the U of A. And I'm initially
from Chandler, Arizona.
So I moved down here two hours down, but I'm also half Taiwanese.
So I was originally born in Taiwan and moved to the US when I was three.
(22:24):
The way I tend to listen to music is I'll just listen to about two or three songs continuously
nonstop for like a month and then get tired of them, throw them out and then listen to
a set of like three new ones.
2021 fall, it was after the COVID pandemic when things were starting to open up again.
(22:45):
And during the COVID pandemic, I went through like, just really bad mental health.
Pretty much as soon as the pandemic started, I had like, I started, I had OCD, and then
I had anxiety and depression and then an eating disorder.
And then those sort of like, cleared up pretty miraculously, like right around 2021 October.
(23:09):
And during that time, I found this album called Plantasia, and it was, I think it was written
in 1970.
And it was written when music had first started becoming synthesized.
So instead of having orchestrals, it was mostly like a theremin moog situation.
(23:31):
And it was written, the concept of the album was music written for humans, but also plants.
So you could like play the music to your plants.
It was called Plantasia.
And I listened to it and it was so innocently nice.
And it didn't have any pain associated with it.
It was just very like innocent, play it for your plants type of deal.
(23:51):
And it was 40 minutes and I listened to it all the time when I was studying.
And then I also during that time listened to the Japanese Suite by Gustav Holst.
I listened to those two continuously and it was like, probably one of the best moments
of my life.
I think if I hadn't had those pieces of music, I would have still had the same experience,
(24:17):
but that music sort of solidified that period of time in my life, in my head.
So what sort of brought me out of all the nasties of 2020 and 2021, the beginning of
it was like focusing more on the present moment than the past or the future.
So I think I listened to those pieces of music to remind me of the way I can get back to
(24:41):
the present and not focus on the past or the future.
I love this for her.
I'm so happy that she recognizes all of, and her awareness, right?
The way she speaks about her awareness of the experience she had with her emotions during
that time.
(25:01):
And it connects directly to what we were talking about earlier when I mentioned that so many
people experienced heightened anxiety and depression.
And I can relate to listening to the same song or a few songs over and over again in
a really obsessive way.
Me too.
(25:22):
I think that's such a fun way to connect with music, but it allows you to connect in a really
intense way, right?
And explore every lyric, if it's a pop song or the contours, the arrangement in ways that
do become a little bit obsessive.
And to recognize that and then to maybe find a different style of music or a different
(25:48):
way of connecting to music that creates maybe a more neutral space for you to be in your
head and in your body and in your mind.
I had that experience and just hearing you reflect on that now, it may have been, and
it occurred during the pandemic.
It's been about two years ago that I discovered a new band.
I happened to turn on the radio.
(26:10):
A song was on by a band I had never heard before.
The song has been an obsession of mine for two years.
And I'm wondering if there was something about where I was in my head and in my heart two
years ago that this particular piece of music happened to show up in the midst of all that.
And it's the most persistent, what is called earworm, most persistent earworm I've ever
(26:32):
had in my life.
It's now two years later.
It won't go away.
It's not all the time anymore.
Now you have to tell us the song.
This is this band I told you about, a group out of Boston called Lake Street Dive.
Yes.
Do you know Lake Street Dive?
Yes.
Okay.
The song Hypothetical?
Yes.
Wonderful.
I just can't tell you.
This song swept into my life, completely took me over for a couple of months and it's still
(26:57):
there.
It may have been because of what we had all been through together and my special relationship
to music during that time.
I think songs and music have such prominence in our episodic memory.
Like you're describing that whatever is salient for us at any given moment in time, if it
(27:18):
collides with or intersects with a song that really resonates, it electrifies us in ways
that it might not otherwise if you were to hear it at a different point in time or if
you have a different association with that particular song.
I think this song electrified me, as you say, and it's a great term, lyrically and also
(27:41):
musically because there's something about this particular band that takes me kind of
back to the mid-60s.
Yes.
Just the sonic.
Yeah.
There's a thing they do that they obviously have listened to a lot of music from the 60s.
You're one of the few people I know who knows about Lake Street Dive.
They're just amazing.
(28:02):
Last time your kids are questioning your taste, it resonates.
I am always amazed at what music we do cling to when we find ourselves needing to cling
to music.
There is a sort of cosmic sense that the music comes into our lives in these various ways.
(28:27):
Sometimes it's just the perfect thing.
Occasionally you bump into somebody else who's had that same connection to the music, but
often not.
Often it's sort of like, oh, that, that's... That's one of the things that I talked
about in the TED talk.
My pandemic listening was all over the map and it was very... I'm a music teacher.
(28:50):
I had expectations for what my music listening and experience was supposed to be, but what
it was was something else entirely.
I kept finding myself going back for different kinds of things and using music very... Music
was very utilitarian.
It was very useful for me for very specific moods.
(29:14):
I am not, unlike both of you, it sounds like, and Ariel, I am not a person that likes to
listen on repeat.
There are albums, very, like 30 song albums that I'll listen to again and again and again
come back to, but once or twice and then I got to give it some time again.
(29:39):
So Leah, we have one more really interesting musical memory about music and the pandemic
that we're going to share with you in just a moment.
It's coming up next on Lifetimes of Listening.
(30:07):
Welcome back.
Our last story is by another student, Hunter Del Rosario, who told me the story and it
just landed.
It was such an impactful moment for him that I'm very grateful to share it with you and
(30:27):
I'll be curious for your take on it.
I'm Hunter.
I'm a sophomore.
I'm a business major here.
I did choir for eight years.
I was in men's ensemble, so it was all male voices at the time and it was a brotherhood.
You were all on, you were really close to one another.
(30:49):
You were brothers.
You were more than just some guys singing together.
It wasn't about the music you made.
It wasn't about how you sounded together.
It was how you felt in that moment doing what you all share collective interest in.
There's a certain piece, Shenandoah, at the end of the year we have a candlelight concert.
It's our most intimate concert and our only one performed inside our rehearsal room, kind
(31:14):
of like the one that we're in right now.
We'll turn all the lights off.
We'll string Christmas lights and have candles all around the room.
It's a very dark and intimate setting compared to our other concerts in our performance area.
At the very end we sing the song Shenandoah and it represents that no matter how long
(31:41):
we've been apart, no matter where we are in life, we are connected by that song.
Alumni of our high school will come back to watch candlelight and they're invited back
up to sing with the current members.
I think I've gone back twice now.
I think two years ago, two, three years ago we had the pandemic.
(32:06):
It was kind of iffy going back and we didn't do it in the choir and we did it outside.
That's one that was memorable in the sense it was one of our first in-person performances
was our last.
It was just like, whoa.
That was the whole thing.
We also just couldn't do it inside.
(32:26):
We had to do it outdoors.
Our junior year it was canceled because pandemic.
That's about the time I was in high school.
That March and then everything after was closed.
I think it was around May.
Around March we get the okay, you can come back on campus, but everything's very limited.
You had cohort A and B, all this stuff.
(32:50):
You'd only have half of the choir come one day, half of the other choir come the other
day.
Because we're performing arts, you can't really sing with a mask on.
It's difficult like how a lot of the bands had to play with the filters on the bells
or they just couldn't play at all.
One thing that our director pushed really heavily for and he wanted at least one last
(33:14):
performance because we were also his graduating class.
He was new when we were freshmen.
Us as freshmen grew with our current director.
It was just very sentimental and meaningful to him to see how much we've all grown together
and not only as a group, but individually and the way he's seen all of us interact.
(33:36):
He wanted us to be able to perform together for the first time and the last time.
It's another story that I love and it feels sad in a lot of ways and just feeling a sense
of loss and regret.
I don't know if that's just me projecting onto the story, but I hear a student whose
(34:01):
experience in choir was such a chance for community and the experience of creating something
in community was so profound and intimate for the student, he even uses those words.
(34:22):
The pandemic disrupted musicians and singers in ways that were pretty unique.
The way he describes singing as something that suddenly becomes dangerous and playing
an instrument suddenly becomes something that becomes dangerous.
(34:46):
That stands in such stark contrast to the way that most of us typically think of singing
and playing instruments.
Him thinking about what it was like to try and reclaim some of that and how that felt
sentimental and really important probably in ways that he might not have prior to any
(35:10):
of that happening.
His description too of the lights being down, the words that he used, the intimacy of the
performance, how much of an impact that had on the singers and the people who were in
attendance.
Yeah, you can imagine being in the audience, but you can also imagine being in the choir
and how special that must have felt.
(35:32):
The idea that you're so connected to these people in your choir and you're doing this
thing that you love and it's connected to the past and to the future in a way that you
can tangibly see in this one experience and the one song at the end of the year.
Then to have that be his last moment, his first time to sing as a choir chorister for
(35:56):
a year and a half and it also to be his last time.
The ways that that affects his experience of it.
When he told me that story and it was just one of those like-
Yeah, I think Brian and I often feel very privileged to sit and talk with people about
(36:17):
these things.
Somebody observed in the course of this project very early on that if you approach somebody
on the street, a complete stranger and said, would you tell me some really interesting
deeply personal story about your life?
They'd say, of course not.
But if you said to the same person, would you tell me about a moment in your life when
music was especially important?
What they have to share may well be as it was for this young man, a deeply personal revelatory
(36:42):
experience.
That's why I think Brian and I, that's the thrill that we get out of doing this project.
That's how this project got started.
That awareness of that.
Do you have anything that we've brought up that you'd like to share to bring to a close
or your wisdom about dealing with the disruption of the pandemic and music?
(37:07):
No wisdom at all.
But to your point, I was trying to imagine where I could fit into this conversation,
not being somebody who has any expertise in music and emotion or even the COVID pandemic.
(37:27):
But I really realized that music is transcendent.
And Dan, when you said about asking a stranger on the street to share their experience with
music, I was like, oh, I can do that.
I mean, I can think about my own experience with music.
I can think about how I relate to others through music, how I desire to connect with others
(37:54):
and with myself through music.
And then it felt less intimidating and really kind of exciting and wonderful to think about
music and how it connects to the lived experience.
I wonder also, this is a whole new podcast episode, but I also wonder if the pandemic,
(38:15):
because we had to go into silos and our listening became very internal and individual.
If that's going to have longer effects about music.
And then, I mean, in some ways, when you meet somebody that listened to you, you just discovered
(38:36):
that you both love this one song and this is one of your pandemic songs.
I wonder if that's going to make those resonate all the more because you realize, oh, this
person has had a deep dive with my artist and my album.
And I wonder if that's going to carry.
The other thing too, as I recall after the pandemic, when it was getting to its second
year and of its second year or so, and people were starting to go back out in public again,
(39:00):
that the overwhelming demand for performance opportunities to witness music live again
was just huge.
It was.
And that may be the reason that concerts today cost about three times what they did in five
years.
It's insane.
But there was just this huge built up unmet demand for communal experiences with music
(39:23):
coming out of the pandemic.
And it did that for us.
Well, this has been a wonderful conversation.
Professor Leah Falco.
Leah, thanks so much for being with us here.
I feel like I've learned a lot just by talking with you and whatever your thoughts were coming
in, you had some really wonderful things to share with us.
(39:44):
Oh, that's so kind.
And I feel the same way.
Thank you so much for having me.
Well, thank you, Leah, for being our guest today on Lifetimes of Listening.
(40:06):
Well thank you for listening today to Lifetimes of Listening.
Now, if you haven't done so yet, please do follow or subscribe to this podcast on your
favorite podcast app.
We hope you'll also consider participating in our project maybe by telling us your story.
We are extremely grateful for the more than 200 people who've recorded a story for the
(40:27):
Arizona Musical Memory Archive.
It's allowing us to better understand the ways people value music.
If you haven't visited our website at musicalmemories.music.arizona.edu, please do so.
There you'll find full length interviews of the ones that we've posted here.
And you can also, if you like, submit a musical memory of your own via a sound file, if you
(40:51):
like, an essay or a poem or even an illustration of some sort.
Or if you like, suggest someone to us who you know, who you think might like to share
their musical memory with us and this project.
So take a look.
It's musicalmemories.music.arizona.edu.
I'm Dan Cruz.
And I'm Brian Moon.
(41:11):
Thank you for listening.
The executive producer of Lifetimes of Listening, the Arizona Musical Memory podcast is Brian
Moon.
The program is produced and edited by Dan Cruz.
The Lifetimes of Listening website was created by Cynthia Barlow, principal information technology
(41:33):
manager with the University of Arizona School of Music.
Music is from zapsplat.com and from pixabay.com.
Special thanks to the University of Arizona School of Music and the UA College of Fine
Arts for their continued support of the Lifetimes of Listening musical memory archive and this
podcast.
(41:54):
For more information and to get involved in our research, visit musicalmemories.music.arizona.edu.
This is Lifetimes of Listening, the Arizona Musical Memory podcast.
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