“The kaval’s institution is the village, and that institution got destroyed long before the flute’s institution of the orchestra started to crumble.” -Dani Nutting in the Q&A following “Flutes as Time Shelters: Bulgarian Becomings and the Instrumental Past,” Nov. 1, 2023

                Where do we go to learn? Who do we go to, and what kind of community do we imagine finding there?
                My friend Dani Nutting studies Bulgarian flute traditions. Earlier today I got to hear her speak, and wrote down this line from her answer to an audience question. In her talk, she’d discussed a Bulgarian flute tradition that was rooted in folk music and traveling musicians who played the kaval by ear. She’d also discussed a Bulgarian flute tradition, more “classical,” that arose after the import of classical music from Western Europe. This tradition saw itself as competing on an international stage. It was housed in schools that worked toward prestige, and invested in creating orchestras. The changing shape of these institutions (Dani emphasized) changes how we learn and make art and relate to each other.
                For years now I’ve seen these advertisements from MasterClass. Learn chess from Garry Kasparov, or “The Art of Storytelling” from Neil Gaiman. And don’t get me wrong, I like Neil Gaiman. But my favorite harmonica lesson was from a high school student of mine, sitting at the little pond on our campus. My point isn’t that my student Bobby was a “good” musician. Or a bad one. Maybe I’m trying to say that Ted talks bother me because there’s only one person on stage, and there are so many more in the audience, and I wonder what they would say. Beyond that, though, Dani helps me consider the scale I think about when I think of learning. And about the different ways that different scales nestle “art” into our lives. Sometimes I think of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with 55,000+ undergraduate and graduate students. Sometimes I think of a little pond. Sometimes an orchestra, sometimes a village, and all these places go growing and changing and weaving into each other.