So what is a lifelong lover of music to do to proselytize for their passion?

Sometimes having a passion for something is not enough to win over others. I was reminded of this when a friend and fellow music lover recently sent along a link describing a Japanese Kissa, which is a bar serving coffee or drinks where the  main attraction is a first-class audio system playing jazz or classical music. The recordings are usually from a library curated by the owner. And the vibe is to focus on listening rather than socializing.

The idea is wonderful, and reminded me that my first year at Colorado State University where a room in the student center room was set up with the same goal. The space had comfortable couches, a reasonably good stereo system, acoustical separation from the rest of the building, and a free jukebox selector from which anyone could select a range of mostly classical recordings. The point was to quietly listen and read in a space much nicer than any dorm space. Granted, a visitor tended to hear Beethoven’s Fifth too many times; it was the only classical music some students recognized. But for some of us the atmosphere beat the beer halls on College Avenue that we visited too often.

So what is a lifelong musicophile to do to proselytize to others for this kind of space? Since I became a friend of the Chairperson of the Music Department at my campus, it was only a matter of time until I was advocating for the same kind of room in a new addition to our own student center. I correctly sensed that I needed a professional ally with the credentials to make the pitch. My busy and productive colleague seemed to be the perfect ally. But this lover of opera and musicals was not interested, and began to avoid me. (To be fair, faculty in the performing arts get lots of off-the wall requests.) I also had no other easy pathway to influence campus building plans: a fact that is usually true for the faculty that will have to spend time dealing with the results. A humanities professor trying to persuade a college architect is a David and Goliath kind of thing. I should have enlisted a phalanx of performance majors to make some noise. In the end I never got close to getting our own version of a Kissa. Other campuses have probably been luckier.

I also made a second unsuccessful campaign that also fizzled, but had the right language.  Put simply, I thought we should push for an organ transplant. Many campuses are fortunate to have one of the most complex but also rewarding musical instruments within their performance spaces. The King of Instruments is enormously complex and expensive to maintain. Most contain several thousand parts. Their compensation is that an organ may be the ultimate tools for creating acoustic music. As it happens, many strapped churches are willing to give up their instruments in favor of synths and 50-dollar guitars. There is even a clearing house listing organs ready to be donated and hauled away.

The pipe organ is forever tied to church music and musty hymns. But pipe organs in the hands of a master are awesome. There is even a tradition in English and a few American universities to recruit “organ scholars,” some destined to be future choir directors. In addition, exotic pipe organs in concert spaces are now often considered essential. The repertoire is vast, and can include music such as the score from Christopher Nolan’s film Interstellar (2014), which was mostly created by Hans Zimmer on an pipe organ in London. The music soars, with segments of it going viral on  YouTube and TikTok. British organist Anna Lapwood even has groupies growing out of collaborations with Zimmer and Banobo. 

Could I again enlist my wary music colleagues to the cause of an organ transplant for our new concert hall? I naively thought so. The wonderful circular 320-seat space in the Mayo Concert Hall at TCNJ would be perfect for a smaller baroque organ. It could be an acoustical asset set in the gallery at the rear and above the stage. Chamber groups often perform Bach or Handel on these instruments. We just needed to tap into the database of abandoned instruments to find the right one. I envisioned being part of a committee to help arrange a transfer and find the donors needed to pay for installing it.

You probably know where this is going. I was greeted with more stares by the busy music faculty, as if I had just proposed a ukulele major. They were also investing their energies in securing several new concert grand pianos. Those were expensive enough, and a sign the faculty might lock the doors if I showed up again in the Music Building conference room.

I had probably seen too many Andy Hardy movies (“I have an Idea! Let’s put on a show!”).  It was too much to believe I had a chance at saving some unloved instrument rotting away in a church. Then again, I taught Theories of Persuasion to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of students over 47 years. Didn’t I have the power to make it happen? But professors often make the mistake of taking their subjects seriously.  And, at best, my attempts were half-hearted.

There’s a lesson in this. We often think it is enough to say what we want, as if our ideas were nuggets of gold free for the taking. But that is a fatal overestimation. What we count as our special insight may be dismissed by others as completely hairbrained. Persuasion benefits from having a target who is already halfway there. Then, the goal is to activate what may be latent but pre-existing interest. I just needed to take the time to find those folks.