Category: Articles

What Do the Presidential Candidates Think About Music? George W. Bush

George W. Bush
George W. Bush

“America has always played home to the greatest minds in all professions. Not just in the sciences or in sports or in business, but also in writing, and in music. Our children must be taught take pride in America not only as the home of Tommy Lasorda and Dinesh D’Souza, but also Clint Eastwood and Howard Hanson.”

Real or fake?


“America has one national creed, but many accents.  We are now one of the largest Spanish-speaking nations in the world. We’re a major source of Latin music, journalism and culture.”

Real or fake?

What Do the Presidential Candidates Think About Music? Al Gore

Al Gore
Al Gore

“National Public Radio has been indispensable to its local listeners across the country. Each station across America tailors its programming to meet local needs. For example, when school funding for classical music training was cut, it was KUER in Salt Lake City that produced a series introducing elementary school students to classical music.

Real or fake?


“I think that the Internet has wonderful potential to bring diverse kinds of music to new audiences. Schoolchildren in Georgia may, before long, have the opportunity to hear orchestra concerts in New York without having to leave the classroom, and university students in Japan may have the chance to experience their first fiddling contest without having to get on a plane. At the same time, like any new frontier, the Internet poses dangers, as well. Napster is a useful tool, a great idea, but we need to find a better way to protect the rights of the musicians whose music is, in essence, being stolen. And it is becoming far too easy for our children to stumble onto websites promoting music that contains explicitly violent lyrics; we need to find an appropriate way to shield their eyes.”

Real or fake?

What Do the Presidential Candidates Think About Music? Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader

“With hundreds of radio stations owned by a single company, it comes as no surprise that the programming reflects the economic desires of that company, not the greater interests of its listeners. Instead of challenging programming, we get mind-numbing mock analyses of non-stories crafted solely for entertainment value. Thanks to the 1996 Telecommunications Act, poets and musicians and scientists and free-thinkers around the nation are finding that it is becoming harder and harder to get heard.”

Real or fake?


“Well, if you look at modern merchandising it is extraordinarily sensual – whether it’s junk food, music, entertainment, you name it, addiction… That’s the genius of the modern corporate marketing is that it is enormously sensual in both “good” and “bad” ways. I mean, just look at modern packaging, the stuff inside may be junk but the packaging is beautiful.”

Real or fake?

What Do the Presidential Candidates Think About Music? Patrick J. Buchanan 1

Patrick J. Buchanan
Patrick J. Buchanan

This is the real quote!

“Everyday we see new evidence of the corruption of our popular culture: Filthy art financed with tax dollars. Television steeped in raw sex and romanticized violence. Movies that mock religious faith. Music that extols social chaos.”

From Patrick J. Buchanan, “PJB On the Issues: Culture,” Tuesday, March 02, 1999

What Do the Presidential Candidates Think About Music? Patrick J. Buchanan 2

Patrick J. Buchanan
Patrick J. Buchanan

We made this one up!

“There’s the American music that the elitists at the universities want you to believe is American music, and then there’s the real stuff, the music of the American people, the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ and ‘God Bless America.’ And there are new songs, there’s a new one by Steve Vaus, ‘Take America Back,’ something like that. A good, proud, American song.”

What Do the Presidential Candidates Think About Music? George W. Bush 1

George W. Bush
George W. Bush

“America has always played home to the greatest minds in all professions. Not just in the sciences or in sports or in business, but also in writing, and in music. Our children must be taught take pride in America not only as the home of Tommy Lasorda and Dinesh D’Souza, but also Clint Eastwood and Howard Hanson.”

This one’s FAKE, but wouldn’t it be nice if he listened to Howard Hanson?

What Do the Presidential Candidates Think About Music? Al Gore Real 1

Al Gore
Al Gore

The REAL quote

“National Public Radio has been indispensable to its local listeners across the country. Each station across America tailors its programming to meet local needs. For example, when school funding for classical music training was cut, it was KUER in Salt Lake City that produced a series introducing elementary school students to classical music.

From Vice President Al Gore’s Remarks on Public Broadcasting, March 2, 1995, American University

What is your favorite tuning system? Why? Joe Maneri, Composer and Saxophonist

Joe Maneri
Joe Maneri
Photo courtesy of Joe Maneri

I was always interested in microtonal music. Over 40 years ago I started playing Turkish and Albanian music which includes quartertones and other intervals as many folk musics do. And then, in 1972, I was moved to write a microtonal piece. I had a cousin who was unable to speak all he could do was make different sounds. I had to be dutiful to God because I didn’t believe in God, so I made a piece that was microtonal. I had some India Pale Ale. I saw it broke down my defenses. I bought a six-pack and had three of them, and I wrote the piece!

I started to make my own system because I had no choice. I lived on Speen Street which was named after an American Indian so I was inspired to use a variety of arrows to show the different intervals. A man came to visit me one day named Ezra Sims. I didn’t understand anything he said, so I said, “Can you talk to me on my level?” But when I finally learned from him, I immediately wrote a book on microtones.

I’m sorry for all you just people, but I’m un-just. I use equal-tempered intervals. My mind doesn’t understand all that mathematical stuff. And I don’t use specific scales.

When my son Matt was 9, he was on the computer and showed me all these buttons and said, “They could be used for microtones. We oughta make an instrument.” I was playing at a wedding and I had to get an accordion because the piano didn’t work. (All these churches have pianos that don’t work!) One side of an accordion has a keyboard, but the other side has all these buttons. So I thought if we put a lot of buttons on here, we can reach all the notes. So we made a plan. We called Wang and Schmang and all these other companies and they said, send us what you want and send us the money and we’ll make it. But, fortunately, in good old Brooklyn (I live near Boston but I’m from Brooklyn), we walked by a brownstone and found a guy who said “Sure I can make that!” It plays 72 notes to the scale, five octaves of it.

But five years ago I gave it up. I wanted to sing.

I went to Salzburg and saw all these things that people were doing, but I didn’t hear any melodies that knocked me off my feet! I had no papers to give out. I improvised with my saxophone and I sang. With all your machines, you forgot mankind. It’s not a human thing from the heart, from the brain, from the blood and from the spit! I have it in my voice and my heart. I just wrote a new piece that’s an hour long called Holy Land, Part 1, it’s a double saxophone concerto about Cain and Abel and it’s all microtonal. Everybody sings. Even the orchestra’s going to be singing while they’re playing…

Microtones can give us melodies, new melodies. Microtones are going to take over. We’re all going to be singing again. I believe that we are in a new Renaissance and the Renaissance is here in America.

What is your favorite tuning system? Why? Lois V Vierk, Composer

Lois V Vierk
Lois V Vierk
Photo by Kurt Ritta

Many of my pieces use glissandi, but only a few of my works are actually microtonal. Of these, my favorite tuning is in “Go Guitars” for 5 electric guitars. Each guitar is tuned as follows: lowest string is low E, next string is middle E quarter tone down, next is middle E normal, next is middle E quarter tone up, next is high E quarter tone down, highest string is high E normal. I love the richness of the sound and how powerful it is, especially when all six strings are strummed together. A lot of the piece uses slide, glissing between different “chords“, sometimes with strums (16th or 32nd notes) and sometimes without.