The acclaimed cellist's interests in world music and education cross paths in The Silk Road Ensemble; a former policeman who's appeared multiple times on "COPS" says scripted TV has created unreasonable expectations for officers.
Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble aims to prove that music is a universal language
It’s impossible to think of Yo-Yo Ma and not imagine him positioned behind his cello, swaying to its dulcet tones.
After all, Ma first picked up the instrument at age 4, so Ma and the cello have been together for 56 years.
But Ma doesn’t just play classical music. He’s fond of bluegrass, folk music, Argentine tangos and Brazilian sambas, for starters. In the new documentary, “The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble,” you see him travel the world playing with musicians from a wide variety of cultures. The cross-cultural musical project began 16 years ago and continues to this day.
In the movie you learn that Yo-Yo Ma has spent much of his adulthood traveling the world playing music. Ma’s son actually thought his dad was a pilot because he spent so much time at the airport. The film, which was released on June 10, was made by Morgan Neville, the Oscar-winning documentarian of “20 Feet from Stardom.”
Ma joined The Frame to talk about the origin of the Silk Road Ensemble, the importance of exposing kids to the arts and how The Silk Road Ensemble is akin to a sort of cultural diplomacy.
Interview Highlights:
How did the Silk Road Ensemble get started and what was the initial thought behind it?
I have a friend who just opened up a MIT/Singapore alliance and they said that the people in that part of the world were at least as smart as anybody at MIT in Cambridge, MA and I thought, that must apply also to musicians. So we went on a fact-finding/talent-finding mission with a good amount of help from an ethnomusicologist, Theodore Levin, and gathered from his extensive experience musicians and composers to write music and then brought them to Tanglewood in 2000, which is the summer festival home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. We brought about sixteen musicians together and that was the beginning of the Silk Road Ensemble.
One of the purposes of this project is to awaken curiosity. Do you think that's something that the world needs more of?
What's very strange is that we live in a world of so much packaged information with quick sound bites, texts, and I love all of this. But, what happens is that while we do faster thinking, we also make faster judgements. This is what happens when I travel. Here in the United States, we make very quick judgements about people from other countries, but when I go to other countries, I experience their quick judgements about what they say about the United States. I think that just thinking for a split second longer before you make that judgement actually can lead you to magnificent worlds that are yet unexplored in your own mind. I would say that curiosity is step one to creativity. Step two would be imagination and empathy. Then, developing trust from which you can have a safety ground from which to innovate and to be creative. I think these steps are absolutely essential to the survival and continued prosperity of our nation so we can function with great pride and integrity.
That's the philosophical side behind it, but when you bring together a group of musicians who play different instruments and have different ways of orchestrating music, how do you make sure that you have a process that allows the individual artist to contribute, but you don't end up with a horse by committee or a camel?
You have to create a level of safety that nobody is going to be ridiculed, and that no stronger personality is bullying somebody else so that you have a partnership and overarching ideas. For us, it's generosity and virtuosity. Respect for somebody else's virtuosity means that's their strength. That means that everybody has weaknesses and you don't fault them for weaknesses. We all work on each other's weaknesses without criticism. We just recognize that and the generosity part is that, because you respect somebody, you really want to learn what they have to say and you give them time to lead, to teach you something. And other times you may have something to share that may be worthwhile to the rest of the group.
Would you say the Silk Road project is akin to a sort of cultural diplomacy?
We are strangers to one another until we become part of one community. I think the strength of our nation has always been our immigrant community. I'm proud and grateful, as an immigrant, to have come here to this country because I was given chances I think...only this country gives. I'm a grateful immigrant and I think that our strength comes from the myriad numbers of immigrants that have each contributed to the creativity and -- if you want to talk economically -- to the wealth and prosperity of this country. So our project is like a little microcosm of the United States. And I think, probably this project could only have happened in the United States because we have those values.
You've appeared on kids' shows like Sesame Street. Can you talk about what it means to you to be invited as a guest on these shows?
When people ask me, "what are you proud of to have done?" I say to people, one of the proudest things I've ever ever done is to appear on Sesame Street, on Mr. Rogers and on Arthur. It's because when I appear on those shows, I'm going into the child's home. I'm going into their territory, it's their show. So I'm a guest there and if they accept me as their guest, I'm theirs forever. To understand the world of the child. We were talking about culture and immigrants and whatever, no, a child lives in his or her own world view, that is expanding all the time. What we put into the child's mind, to me, if they accept you it's permanent. This was over 30 years ago that I did those shows and today I see 30-year-olds come to me and say you know I play this instrument because I saw you on Mr. Rogers or I saw you on Sesame Street or I saw you on Arthur. I loved it. That's that unconditional giving that is not about a transactional thing. I think its an incredibly powerful way to communicate with younger audiences.
Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble perform Aug. 21 at the Hollywood Bowl.
Cops on TV: The reality show 'COPS' is 'the best recruiting tool for policing ever'
This segment is part of The Frame's #CopsOnTV series about how police are portrayed in both scripted and unscripted television, and how TV can impact the public’s perception of law enforcement. Listen to our previous segments on this topic here.
Today, we hear more about the long running reality TV series, “COPS.” Created by John Langley, the show debuted in 1989 and spent 25 years on Fox before moving to the Spike cable network four years ago.
Yesterday, we heard about the history and the backstory of the creation of the show, but there’s still a lot more about “COPS” to cover.
The father-and-son team of John and Morgan Langley (who is an executive producer on the show) and retired Las Vegas Police sergeant Randy Sutton, who appeared on several episodes of "COPS," spoke on The Frame about the impact the show has on viewers.
Interview Highlights:
On whether it's difficult to get people to sign release forms to appear on "COPS":
MORGAN LANGLEY: It's the Andy Warhol thing: Everybody wants their 15 minutes of fame. People sign up and they sign up enthusiastically.
JOHN LANGLEY: It's au contraire. We have people that say, Get that news camera away from me! We say, We're not with the news, we're the "COPS" TV show. They go, Oh! Cool! My cousin was on the show last season. I'm not kidding you. That has happened on many occasions. We've had guys that have been on the show more than once. We had one guy in Las Vegas who stole a car. Two years later, the same guy is arrested for the same offense and he has the same excuses. And he talks to the cop ... I think it was a different cop. It shows the recidivism issues in crime. Most crimes [are] committed by [a small] percentage of people [who] commit the same crimes over and over again.
MORGAN LANGLEY: Yeah. We had one guy in two different states.
JOHN LANGLEY: Yeah. [He] was arrested in Alaska and then ended up in Tennessee! I mean, these are the repeating cast members I guess.
Retired Las Vegas Police sergeant Randy Sutton on how the show impacted him personally:
Being on "COPS" altered my life. It literally had a profound effect on my life in ways that I had never expected — some very poignant ways I might add. First and foremost, it's how my film career started — if you want to call it a film career. I was approached about doing the movie "Casino" based on somebody seeing me on "COPS." It is absolutely a very powerful show. I've had no less than 50 police officers tell me that the reason they became a cop was because they saw me on the show and they said, That's what I want to do. It's the best recruiting tool for policing ever.
John Langley on which cities' police departments won't allow "COPS" to shoot:
One is Chicago and the other is Honolulu. The Hawaiian visitors bureau wouldn't allow us. They had tourism concerns. We pointed out that we filmed in Las Vegas a great deal and it doesn't seem to have altered any tourist activity whatsoever. The issue with Chicago is it's a cultural issue. I think the department itself is just so opposed to any kind of transparent scrutiny. That's my opinion. I'm not dissing Chicago, that's just the fact of the matter. My argument to departments is always, If you want to be a transparent department, why shouldn't we film with you?
John Langley on what viewers can learn by watching episodes of "COPS":
I've often said that we don't want to editorialize. I don't want to be inserted in the show. I want to watch what happens as purely as I can see it. Frankly, I'm all for legalizing pot and always have been. I've never hidden from that or even with my police officer friends, I tell them the same thing. We disagree about it many times. And some do agree with me. It's not about my politics, it's about what goes on in the world and are we trying to give an accurate representation of it. You draw your own conclusions about our laws. If you watch the show, you can see laws that aren't working. Many officers know that certain laws don't work and maybe don't require the attention — and I'm talking mostly about drug laws — various and sundry iterations of drug laws.
On whether the show reinforces stereotypes:
JOHN LANGLEY: Well, I think the stereotype is that if you're dealing with crime and punishment, you're going to be dealing with the people that are involved with crime and punishment for whatever reason. Now, it's no secret that the majority of crime takes place in disenfranchised areas and ghettos. That's just a fact and always has been a fact. It's an economic issue among other things, not just a cultural issue. You're going to see people where the have-nots are going to commit more crimes than the haves. That's just a fact no matter where you are in the world. We're not consciously seeking to stigmatize any group or any culture. We're only doing an observation of street crime, not white collar crime. God knows I'd love to do that. But in order to show the misdeeds of Wall Street, I would require a computer degree from MIT and then it would be very difficult to explain to the average viewer what the hell is going on and how they're getting ripped off.
Randy Sutton on the media's power to influence viewers' perception of law enforcement:
I think the media — both television and movies and reality [TV] — in some instances have done policing a great disservice. Much of the fictional television shows have painted police in a light that's irresponsible, that's negative. The medium is so powerful that people believe what they see on the screen no matter how outlandish it is. They expect to see, when someone gets shot, that they fly back four feet and crumple to the pavement. That's nothing close to the truth.
People get an unrealistic expectation of law enforcement and it becomes their reality. I don't mean to say that about all police portrayals. I think there have been some very good police shows that have been out there. But they make caricatures out of cops. Cops are very human. They have the same strengths and the same weaknesses. They're not supermen. They're trying to do a job. They're family people. They have often been portrayed as crooked, corrupt, violent. And while those things do exist, the vast majority of police officers are just hard working folks that are doing an ever increasingly difficult and dangerous job.