good evening so as you heard I’m a
musicologist and that’s a fancy way of
saying that it’s my job to think about
talk about and write about music it’s
amazing and I love it but when I went to
college I had no idea it was the thing I
could do literally no clue that
musicology was a thing but whenever I’d
go to my piano lessons I would always
spend the first 15 minutes annoying my
professor with questions who was this
composer why is this music important
today why did we play it like this
instead of like that after a couple of
probably exhausting years my teacher SAT
me down for a talk and I remember it
vividly he said you know until now I
just thought you were killing time so I
wouldn’t know you didn’t practice but
now I think you might really be
interested in this stuff so we told me
what musicology was and he suggested
maybe I should go to graduate school for
that instead of her piano which now that
i think about it is actually a little
bit insulting but luckily for me he was
absolutely right so after college I went
off to graduate school for six years six
years and not that I thought about it
pretty much every day during that time
or anything but six years is longer than
people spend in business school and law
school put together so why did it take
so long because I had to become an
expert here are a few of the things that
I learned how to compose a fugue in the
style of the composer jsbach how to
recognize drumming patterns in
afro-cuban music how to read and
understand books of music philosophy in
French and German I studied the impact
of cassette tapes on music culture in
1980s india and the meanings of
illustrations in 14th century music
manuscripts
and I spent months searching archives
for missing letters unpublished
manuscripts and obscure newspaper
articles experts are important every
field from quantum physics to auto
repair has experts and that’s a good
thing because we need experts experts
make the world a better place but right
now we’re on the cusp of a future where
experts don’t matter and we have to try
to fix that a startling number of people
today either don’t trust experts or are
simply unaware of what experts are
saying climate science happens to be one
good example because we have a lot of
good polling data on that recent data
from the Pew Research Center indicates
that among PhD holding members of the
American Association for the Advancement
of science ninety-three percent believe
the earth is warming as a result of
human actions ninety-three percent
that’s pretty good that’s been a that’s
an a-minus may be right that’s what we
call a solid consensus now the
percentage of Americans who believe
there’s consensus on this topic is
twenty-seven percent that’s not good
that means there’s a disconnect between
what experts are saying and what
non-experts are hearing now climate
change is just one example we can find
something similar in almost every field
from medicine to economics to literary
criticism there are a lot of reasons why
faith and experts seems to be eroding we
can blame the media the educational
system social media bubbles
opportunistic politicians and more but I
think as experts and experts in training
we have to be willing to take part of
that blame on ourselves too because we
often do a terrible job of communicating
about the same subjects we’re so
passionate about I learned so many
things while becoming an expert but one
thing I never
was really taught was how to communicate
with people who aren’t also experts and
I’m not alone in fact not only are we
not sure how but a lot of experts seem
unclear about whether we even should try
to communicate across a broad spectrum
of people we often make the mistake of
acquainting complexity of expression
with complexity of thought for me
somewhere in grad school I started
believing that to be successful I had to
make everything pretty much as
complicated as it could be i would
literally write a paragraph and then go
back and rewrite it to be less
understandable how messed up is that I
wanted more jargony buzz words more
references to trendy scholars more words
and phrases that no one would actually
ever use in conversation like these be
honest raise your hand if you’ve ever
used one of these words in a paper I
knew it now that kind of communicating
can sometimes help you be taken
seriously among your expert peers it’s
like a secret handshake that only the
really cool kids know with cool being
highly subjective in this case but
somewhere in the course of learning to
walk talk think and write like an expert
we can lose track of the fact that in
some context that same language can be
off-putting or alienating now I want to
be one hundred percent clear I am not
advocating for dumbing down what it is
that we do I’m not even arguing against
discipline specific language we just
have to know when and how to use it
believe me I love a good debate about
thorny issues that come up in my own
research on video game music so if
anybody wants to talk with me after the
talk about let’s say deconstructing
paradigms of Ludo narrative dissonance
please feel free but if I’m not
advocating for dumbing down what am i
advocating for I think we have to become
better at what linguists call code
switching we have to understand how to
change the way that we communicate
based on who it is that we’re talking to
those of us who are educators need to
teach those skills and all of us need to
work on developing and refining them
constantly it’s not always easy take it
from me I’ve given talks in front of
some of the leading figures in my field
and I’ve published hundreds of pages of
scholarly books and articles but
communicating with non-experts that’s
tough stuff for the last few years I’ve
really dedicated myself to getting
better at it and it’s taken me way
outside my comfort zone sometimes I
write articles for magazines or blogs
instead of for academic journals or I
give informal pre-concert talks before
music concerts in my area like the fort
worth opera or the Dallas Symphony
earlier this week for example for the
second time i sat on stage in a packed
concert hall and gave commentary for a
program of video game music for the
dallas wins one of the world’s leading
wind bands it’s been terrifying and you
should do it too because it’s also been
unbelievably rewarding so how do we do
that there are so many different ways
and we each have to find our own path
because we’re all good at different
things but let me give you just three
sort of simple tips to help you get
started first edit edit edit when you
write something for a non-expert
audience it’s going to take a lot of TLC
especially when you’re used to writing
term papers or academic articles every
single sentence that I right I say does
this help people understand this better
and does it help get them as passionate
about this subject as I am and if not it
gets cut even if I think it’s great to
ask for help ask everybody and I mean
everybody I send things to my friends to
my colleagues to my former teachers
basically anybody I could corner in a
hallway or guilt trip with an email
truth time I’m the tenured professor and
I still send a lot of what I write to my
mother so she
tell me if it makes sense to a non
musicologist there is no shame in asking
for other people’s advice three practice
communicating every chance you get when
you run into a friend from high school
and they ask you what you’re up to maybe
don’t just say I’m working in a lab say
I’m working to develop new medical
treatments or I’m researching new ways
to clean up the water use that time to
open up space for discussion talk with
that old lady at church about how you’re
directing a play that deals with civil
rights or tell that friendly stranger on
the bus all about your term paper on
Bollywood films or bond with your
cousins at Thanksgiving about that great
class you’re taking on income inequality
in Appalachia it feels weird it really
really does it takes hard work and it
takes courage to communicate outside our
comfort zones but it’s essential that we
put in that effort and we learn how to
do it the world needs experts now more
than ever before and it needs you all to
be those experts it needs you to make
breakthroughs in the labs and in the
concert halls and in the classrooms but
it also needs you to be experts who can
break through to other people we have to
do our best to engage with the many
different types of people that are all
around us because only then can we help
them see the value in the things that
we’re so passionate about it’s a tall
order i know but you can do it trust me i’m an expert thank