So I actually live in the DC area and in the Before Times™ I got to go to a small concert that was being put on ✨for free✨ by the Library of Congress. It was a classical music concert featuring some top hits from German and Italian composers. My friends and I lowered the average age of the audience by about 30 years just by stepping in the room, but I digress. Classical music isn’t always my jam but I love hearing strings live, it just hits different. The orchestra was quite small (14 people if memory serves?) and a broad mix of ages, and while I’m guessing like 70% of players were white, for a small chamber orchestra in what I understand is a very white field (please do correct me if I’m wrong) there were more non-white musicians than I would have guessed, but then again, I’m an outsider to the world of classical music.
ANYWAY the real magic of the evening was after they’d finished their main programming, one of the violinists stepped forward to thank everyone for coming and give a quick plug for how to support similar programming at the Library. He lauded the Library’s interest in music and thanked them for a private tour through their musical instrument collections earlier that day.
And then he dropped the absolute bombshell that this entire evening, we’d actually been listening to not one, but three Stradivariuses—a violin, a viola, and a cello, I think, which the Library had loaned to them for the performance.
THREE. OF 14 MUSICIANS ON STAGE THREE OF THEM WERE PLAYING STRADIVARIUSES. AT A FREE CONCERT. This violinist was holding one of them as he told us. When I tell you this geriatric audience fucking GASPED. He went on to play a solo to the most silent audience I’d ever heard. He got a standing ovation, and they all got a standing ovations for the next two pieces they played, because even though we’d been listening to them all night, knowing the history of the instruments made the experience much more special. As a side note, only one of the Stradivariuses was played by a white musician.
I know something as unusual as a crystal flute owned by the author of our constitution that survived the Burning of Washington in 1814 probably registers differently than a Stradivarius in the world of music, and I realize the audiences at a Lizzo concert and a small chamber orchestra concert are comically different. I’m just trying to highlight the fact that the LoC loans out their extremely valuable instruments with at least passing regularity, so this was absolutely not a stunt. These things were meant to be played, after all, and played by true masters. Lizzo is (aside from being the creator of some absolute bangers) an insanely talented flautist, classically trained. These musicians I got to see were insanely talented at their respective instruments. I never heard a single peep of complaint from the almost 100% white boomer audience. Some of them were crying just to see and hear such special instruments live, something I assume many of them had never thought they would get to do—I know didn’t!
People who are upset about Lizzo’s performance don’t give a shit about music or that flute. They’re racist gatekeepers of both history and of music. You only just now learned that James Madison had a crystal flute, and you’re upset you got to hear such a unique treasure played by a master???? That the Library of Congress is sharing, after 200 years, a small piece of our nation’s history that can bring people both joy and the chance to be included in an unexpected new bit of history?
If you get mad about that, you’re the asshole. You don’t care about history or about music, you’re just a racist asshole. Instruments are meant to be played. Music was meant to be shared. That Lizzo has the talent to play a crystal flute (like okay I played flute in middle/high school, how heavy and slippery must that thing be???) and a platform large enough to share that experience with viewers worldwide is the best debut that an obscure bit of history could hope for.
