Note: Next month I will be migrating the stuff I’ve been doing on Patreon over here, so I will be way more active on Substack, and in different ways, very shortly. More explanation later, for I am very tired.
I just want to say, for the record, that I am not sure why I am writing an essay about Lizzo Flute Discourse. I am already sick of the takes, I am weary from people texting me “What’s with the stuff people are saying about this flute?”, and I am resentful that social media is demanding that I think this much about flutes, when most flautists I have worked with have been insufferable enough that I typically like to pretend the instrument doesn’t exist for my own sanity. And yet here I am, having thoughts, and writing them down! Twitter truly has rotted my brain.
Here’s what happened on Tuesday: a famous musician walked on stage and played a 200 year old instrument of historic value lent to them by a respected organization. Nothing went wrong and the instrument was returned, undamaged, to the facility where it is stored and preserved.
This is, of course, something that happens every day in the world of classical music, but the specific combination of Mad Libs that was this particular instance is what set people off. Because the musician was Lizzo, and the instrument was a crystal flute once belonging to Founding Father James Madison, author of 34% of the Federalist Papers.
The cries sprung up online. What sad times we live in, that we have so little respect for history now! How could a priceless, valuable relic be flung around so carelessly!
Putting aside the fact that most people, myself included, did not know before Tuesday that “crystal flute belonging to James Madison” was a thing that existed outside of a rejected National Treasure screenplay, I found it extremely difficult to understand what the outrage was about. I am so used to going to the symphony and watching a musician much less famous than Lizzo do honestly terrifying things to a Stradivarius or Guarneri, instruments hundreds of years old and worth millions of dollars, and which often belonged to luminous historical figures like Paganini, who one could argue contributed just as much to history as the Founding Father who was only featured in Act II of Hamilton. I myself spent my summer studying abroad in Austria practicing the Prokofiev Third Concerto on an antique piano that was either owned or played by Liszt—both my German and my memory are faulty—which frankly should be some kind of a crime.
It’s odd, this tension between “anything of historical value should lie untouched behind glass” and the fact that classical music—and art in general, really—demands tangibly interacting with the past, which currently involves regular usage of artifacts as we still haven’t finessed time travel. There are no laws restricting these things; if there were, billionaires would not be allowed to buy 16th century oil paintings and put them on their yachts without temperature or humidity control.
But that is all besides the point. I could talk all day about how I, a not famous musician, was allowed to bang away at the old fortepianos and clavichords at the Beethoven Center, or how a middling trumpeter friend dropping their instrument off for repair was allowed to pick up and play Wynton Marsalis’ own trumpet for fun, or how the Bruckner organ is still used for regular church services. But the issue is not really about whether old and valuable instruments can be played (they can).
The question hanging in the air is: who is allowed to make art with precious things?
Here are the facts: Lizzo is classically trained and presumably knows how to handle and respect her instrument. (Given that my own conservatory training taught me little else—not how to negotiate a performance contract, or get an agent, or become a world famous pop star—I am fairly confident this is the case.) The Library of Congress—the entity that lent her the presidential flute and was present the entire time—presumably had rules, protocol, and reams of liability and insurance waivers in place. And the behind-the-scenes footage the LOC released showed that Lizzo was not only respectful of the history she was allowed to engage with, she was actively excited about it, which is more than I can say for most of the people I see plodding through museums on a regular basis.
In fact, the video reminded me of my own similar experiences: the mind-blowing revelation I had when a docent let me discover on a replica of Beethoven’s piano how the different registers unlocked a new dimension to his writing; the hours-long bender of giddy excitement I went on through the Museum of Music in Paris.
Once again, we have to ask ourselves to whom we automatically confer respect when it comes to situations like this. I have never, ever, ever! heard anyone indignant that 300+ year old violins are routinely handed off to people—sometimes teenagers!—to be whipped through warhorse concertos. (Said violins are often left in cabs or on trains, and when the inevitable sad “airline damages priceless instrument” headlines surface, anger is typically directed at the surely culturally ignorant handler, and not the musician nor the owner who lent a precious artifact out.)
Even though pop music is studded with people who survived the crucible of classical training—Lady Gaga is a classically trained pianist who was accepted to Juilliard’s pre-college program—the widespread assumption persists that pop is a low-skill environment for the sell-out wannabes who can’t string more than three chords together. There is an entire cottage industry of Youtube content creators proclaiming that because of the Laws of Music Theory, the lack of “complexity” in pop, rap, and hip-hop music means those genres are objectively of lower “quality.” (This is, of course, why no one venerates the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose embarrassingly simple melodies and repetitive chord progressions contribute little cultural value, whereas everyone knows that a serialist six-part fugue is the absolute pinnacle of artistic expression. [I have been counseled by a friend to note that this last statement was sarcasm, given Classical Music Twitter’s track record.])
Never mind that “classical > popular” is a myth, a nonexistent hierarchy. Never mind that rap involves intricate and clever mastery of language equal to anything you would analyze in the libretto of Italian opera and rhythmic complexities that would make Bach’s head spin. Never mind that Lizzo’s “Phone” has echoes of Steve Reich. Never mind that her singing talent (my kingdom for the vocal support on “Cuz I Love You”!) and songwriting chops make her a legitimately formidable artist even when you don’t account for her classical training. Samantha Ege notes that Lizzo follows in a long, glorious tradition of “resist[ing] the false dichotomy of classical music vs. popular culture and its high-brow vs. low-brow connotations.”
The indignant anger I saw coalescing on Twitter seemed to focus on the vague insistence that if someone were to be allowed to publicly play an old flute, it shouldn’t be Lizzo. The question of who could be a more worthy alternative to wield a Founding Father’s crystal flute (a phrase that still sounds ridiculous) was never answered, as the hive mind’s suggestions for other world-famous and sufficiently patriotic flautists were curiously scant.
In a society that, for all its recent advances (which are, of course, immediately challenged by those clinging to nostalgia for a false idyllic past), still venerates a very narrow definition of ideal femininity, we are guilty of falling back on unchallenged archetypes. The Western association with the flute—an instrument that evokes the simplicity of ancient times and pastoral bliss—predominantly conjures a fantasy of a waiflike, mild-mannered maiden, preferably white. Lizzo is none of those things, to our great benefit. The fact that she has become enough of a cultural powerhouse for an institution to ask her to play the instrument of a man who would have deemed her 3/5ths of a person and seen more value in her labor than her inherent worth as a person says something. It means that allowing her to engage with history throws in sharp relief all that history—and current society—is lacking.
As Ege wrote, “Black women (from [Nora] Holt to Lizzo, and those who came before and between) have orchestrated their liberation by reclaiming and finding harmony in the aspects of themselves deemed dissonant in the white mainstream, such as their bodies, skin, hair, intellect, talent, and ambition.”
(But while I have you here, reading my take: I have been seeing a segment of the Discourse focusing on the idea that since James Madison owned slaves and authored the 3/5ths Compromise, a Black woman wielding his flute is therefore a great symbolic victory, a tilting of the scales back in favor of justice. I agree that this image is very nifty and satisfying indeed! However, I humbly caution people from declaring this the dominant narrative, for two reasons: the first being that the Library of Congress, which makes a habit of inviting notable musicians to play the instruments in their collection, truly meant for this to be a moment of esoteric musical nerdery and did not intend for this to have the political overtones that people are projecting onto it. The second is that the scaffolding of American life—and Western culture in general—has historically been so inhospitable to and exploitive of marginalized people that our daily lives and careers require us on a regular basis to engage with practices, objects, and institutes that once excluded or oppressed us, and often still do in a myriad of insidious ways. To paint this moment, and others like this, as a defiant “taking back” of the mantle of power is to place an impossible burden on the shoulders of people just trying to live their lives in this ridiculous world. This symbolism, no matter how delicious, does nothing to change Madison’s actual legacy perpetuating the systemic harm that slavery wrought, which continues to affect every American today.)
I don’t think the strong feelings people are having about this non-incident are really about the flute, or even James Madison. I think the videos stirred up a lot of specific knee-jerk reactions that said a lot more about people’s personal insecurities than anything to do with Lizzo, or old flutes, or Founding Fathers. Classical music defenders, used to being outsiders, chafe at the perception of Lizzo not being “classical enough” (in training or demeanor) to be worthy of a nerdy artistic opportunity. People who have bought into hierarchical systems of power are justifying their visceral tendencies toward exclusion and control by projecting protective instincts onto the flute, just as they defend otherwise indefensible political views by rationalizing that they are “protecting” helpless beings or objects.
That’s why it matters that we ask these questions: Who is allowed to interact with history? Who is allowed to make art? Who is allowed to be part of the story? Because it comes back to the root question, which is: Who do we allow to have power?