ABSTRACT
As a team, we had much to learn about the arts. True, each of us had our own connection to the arts and as adults we had a different relationship with the arts than we had when we were in school. In our youths, we had the usual but sporadic required courses in the arts-mostly visual art and music. For some of us, this led to some artistic inclinations that have extended over the years. In other cases, school art classes led to a sense that mastery would elude us forever. We did not experience arts classes that actually built capability over time or that were integrated with other content so we could see how the arts were a form of learning or representation or even a part of a well-lived life. All of us grew up knowing, however, that popular music was something attractive. Some of us played in bands and so on, while others just knew it was “their” music. Here is where we learned that some forms of arts were seen as dangerous. It was not just that some artists painted nudes, and that was clearly risqué if not outright forbidden. It was also that the music we grew up with was actually associated with strong beliefs about what is right and what is wrong. Rock and roll led to dancing that was licentious and thus should be avoided. Jazz, blues, rhythm and blues, and soul music was about black people and this was an association many adult, and not so adult, whites wished to avoid-even though they had danced to jazz bands in their days. Still later in our lives, these forms of music were explicitly attached to politics as we learned just how dangerous the arts could be when expressing ideas that others wanted suppressed.
