Yumi Kendall:

Hello everyone, I'm Yumi Kendall.

Joseph Conyers:

And I'm Joseph Conyers.

Yumi Kendall:

And welcome to Tacet No More, a podcast where we are no longer silent, asking the questions that need to be asked and saying the things that need to be said about classical music.

Joseph Conyers:

Tacet No More is an optimist's playground and landing pad for positive discussions about our belief in the power of music to better humanity. And we will invite voices from all sectors to inspire us in the work we do on and off the stage.

Yumi Kendall:

Joe and I have been friends for nearly 25 years and have over 40 years between us as professional musicians. We've had the best of conversations. Would you join us?

Joseph Conyers:

Hey everybody. Hey everybody, we're here.

Frank Machos:

Hello out there.

Joseph Conyers:

We've got, we've got, oh, and this is a unique…

Yumi Kendall:

This is our first in person.

Joseph Conyers:

First in person interview. And we have two guests with us in the studio.

Michael O’Bryan:

I feel very special.

Yumi Kendall:

Welcome to the studio.

Joseph Conyers:

That's right.

Michael O’Bryan:

In the stew.

Yumi Kendall:

Yes, yes.

Joseph Conyers:

We're very, very happy to have Michael O'Bryan and Frank Machos.

Yumi Kendall:

Dr. Frank Makos.

Frank Machos:

Thank you.

Michael O’Bryan:

I would like to be his excellency.

Yumi Kendall:

That's his excellency. Michael O'Bryan. And Dr. Frank Machos. Here we are. Thank you, official.

Michael O’Bryan:

Here we go.

Joseph Conyers:

This is great, this is great. We have known each other for some time, given my time in Philadelphia, although I feel like maybe…

Yumi Kendall:

I've known from Project 440.

Joseph Conyers:

From Project 440, right.

Yumi Kendall:

We're all on the Project 440 board, disclaimer.

Frank Machos:

Everybody donate to the year-end annual campaign. Got a few months to get ready for it, but start now.

Joseph Conyers:

This is an unofficial meeting, we don’t quite have a quorum.

Michael O’Bryan:

And come to the college fair, come to the college fair.

Joseph Conyers:

College fair, that's right, that's right. Instruments for success, doing good. All right, good. Now that we got that out of the way, we're really happy to have them here, here with Yumi, as always. Why don't we do introductions first? Yeah. And then we can jump into our traditional podcast-y stuff.

Yumi Kendall:

So let's have His Excellency Michael O'Bryan. So tell us about yourself.

Michael O’Bryan:

Well, I was born the Duke of Sussex.

Yumi Kendall:

Oh, here we are in podcast territory, genuflecting and groveling at his feet.

Michael O’Bryan:

I donated it to Harry.

Yumi Kendall:

Oh, yes, of course. Well, that was very generous.

Michael O’Bryan:

Yeah, you know, he's a good guy. I appreciate what he stands for. No, jokes aside, well, that wasn't a joke. I do appreciate what he stands for. That part wasn't a joke. It's important to stand up for mental health and all the things. So, Michael O’Bryan, I am at Drexel University, where I started something really exciting. It's like a lifelong dream. I started a design lab and we look at issues around the future of work and the future of economic development and the future of wealth and asset building for historically excluded populations because saying the word Black has become a little intense these days?

Joseph Conyers:

It's too much.

Michael O’Bryan:

It's a little litigious.

Yumi Kendall:

Oh my gosh.

Michael O’Bryan:

Welcome to America, right? No. But I appreciate the gauntlet being thrown down in that area because it forces a reality of conversation that from an academic standpoint, I'm totally excited to have.

Joseph Conyers:

Yeah!

Yumi Kendall:

Wow, awesome.

Michael O’Bryan:

So we can get into the why around that. But historical exclusion is a fact. There are policies behind this and lots of data to go on. So I don't have to say Black. And I can still get to the same end. So I'm doing that. I'm about two years in on that. We're going public in May. I'm super excited about that. And then I also have my first baby. That's my second baby. My first baby is Humannature. We're in our sixth year, which is wild. I can't believe I have a six year old business. But yeah, it's management consulting with a focus on centering humanity in the context of leaders’ work, organizations’ work. That's our goal and it's not hocus pocus. We have literal systems and things we teach people to do and organize around in terms of metrics to make sense of that.

Joseph Conyers:

Centering humanity…

Michael O’Bryan:

Centering humanity in the context of your work is how we talk about it.

Yumi Kendall:

Did you write a book or some trauma-informed?

Michael O’Bryan:

Oh I wish, it's a tool kit.

Yumi Kendall:

To me that's a book.

Michael O’Bryan:

Essentially, I mean it's the same amount of writing. It was a ton of writing. It's just like, you know, a book is going to give you maybe a little narrative and some story. This is a train the trainer tool kit.

Yumi Kendall:

Amazing. Well that's how the change happens.

Michael O’Bryan:

Right. So it's manualized, right? It's a manual.

Joseph Conyers:

And Dr. Frank Machos.

Frank Machos:

How do I follow that? What's up everybody? I am not black. I am white for the listeners out there.

Michael O’Bryan:

Oh my god.

Frank Machos:

Making sure we get all that out on the table. Well, I’ll follow that by giving you my professional credentials. I currently serve as the School District of Philadelphia's Executive Director for the awesome Office of the Arts and Creative Learning. Been with the school district, this is now year 20.

Joseph Conyers:

No way. 20 years.

Yumi Kendall:

Wow.

Frank Machos:

I know. Nine in the classroom, eleven in central office.

Joseph Conyers:

You don't look a day over like 90.

Frank Machos:

I love you. I'm following the Joe Conyers workout plan on Instagram. I did it for about 15 minutes, and it's worked out great. I'm born and raised in central Jersey, Edison, New Jersey. Yes, I said central for anybody out there who wants to debate that. Between Route 22 and the Watchung Mountains and 195 and the rest of New Jersey. But Edison, New Jersey, proud graduate of JP Stevens High School and moved to Philly to attend the University of the Arts, spent a lot of years there in and out in different programs and started working with the school district right out of college. So saxophone player also, I often forget to mention that because I don't get to do it as much as I want to and I'm surrounded by some of the best saxophone players on the planet. So sometimes I keep that a little bit of a secret, but Philly's such an incredible music city. So I'm honored to be part of a very long culture and history of the wonderful musicians in the city.

Yumi Kendall:

Amazing, this is great, the vibe.

Joseph Conyers:

That's awesome. It's great to have you both. Thank you so much for joining us on Tacet No More.

Michael O’Bryan:

My last name is O'Bryan, but I am Black. I just wanted to put that out there.

Joseph Conyers:

Just for the record.

Michael O’Bryan:

And for the record. I also went to the University of the Arts. I tend not to talk about it too, too much. I did my undergrad in music, so you know.

Joseph Conyers:

That's awesome.

Michael O’Bryan:

I went out into other things, but music is at my heart.

Joseph Conyers:

Well, imagine that you're on a music podcast with a music background. What are the chances?

Michael O’Bryan:

To not talk about music? No, I don't know what we're talking about.

Yumi Kendall:

Oh my gosh.

Joseph Conyers:

That's incredible.

Yumi Kendall:

Shall we do one good thing?

Joseph Conyers:

Yumi, guide us, oh...

Yumi Kendall:

Okay, so... genuflect, grovel and genuflect, please. I mean, we have an excellency and a doctor, I mean. What should I be? Queen... Queen Yumi?

Michael O’Bryan:

Queen Yumi, I love it.

Yumi Kendall:

Um, yes, please bow down.

Michael O’Bryan:

Oh, no, what's the... Is it like the dowry empress? You gotta have like a good adjective or something before... Yeah, yeah.

Yumi Kendall:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, we gotta brainstorm that. Yeah. Well, in the meantime.

Michael O’Bryan:

I'm gonna look it up.

Yumi Kendall:

While we think of my proper title…why, thank you, excellency. I will be going with One Good Thing. So as our listeners know that this is an activity we do here on our podcast to help create a positive, trusted shared space together. So I will start with sharing my One Good Thing and Joe, I'll ask you and then maybe we'll just go around to Frank. And when his excellency has my title figured out, he can share his One Good Thing. Let's see, something that's happened recently that – ah, it snowed. It snowed and my three-year-old daughter was outside playing in the snow and we created a little village of mini snow people, three stacks high, of just up to her knees height, but there was like a whole village out on the back porch. And it lasted for several days, but we would leave and she would say, hi, hi everyone. But it was just an adorable moment of just enjoying the snow. And I think that was the first snow that she would actually remember. So it was one of those, it was just a shared, a simple shared memory and activity that I'm still savoring. That's my One Good Thing.

Joseph Conyers:

That's awesome. Mine is performance related because it's one of those not once in a lifetime. Cause now we've done it a few times. We just finished a kind of a week's worth of activity, even though it was two performances, with the great John Williams and Yo-Yo Ma. Yo-Yo Ma played his Cello Concerto and John Williams conducted many of his orchestral scores from the movies that he did. The second half, we played the program here in Philadelphia to a completely packed house. Completely, I mean, I don't know if there's any of the seats.

Yumi Kendall:

Talk about vibes. That was amazing.

Joseph Conyers:

And same thing at Carnegie Hall a few days later. And that concert was very special because Yo-Yo Ma was, as he was for many, a huge inspiration for me when I was a young player growing up. I just loved his sound and his commitment to just line and music making, on display in his performance of the Williams Cello Concerto. And then John Williams, the music, of course, I grew up with, and here I am, like, I mean, having heard this music growing up, and listened to and being enamored with the music, and now I'm on stage with the Philadelphia Orchestra, playing with John Williams conducting.

Yumi Kendall:

In Carnegie Hall. And he’s 92.

Joseph Conyers:

It was amazing. I mean, it's really, really remarkable.

Yumi Kendall:

Almost as old as Frank.

Frank Machos:

A few years away.

Joseph Conyers:

Really just, it was just super special and the orchestra, I felt like the orchestra was playing not only for him, but for their own young selves. So there was just a heart in the playing that was just a lot of fun and I will remember for a long time. So that's my, my One Good Thing.

Yumi Kendall:

Yes. Beautiful. Dr. Machos:

Frank Machos:

Well as an avid listener of Tacet No More I've been anxious about making sure I don't mess up this. So I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go outside of music for a minute and outside of work but we just got back from the most magical place on earth – Trenton-Mercer Airport which took us to Disney World. If you have not been to Trenton-Mercer Airport, both baggage carousels really cool you get to walk out to the airplane. I’m going to use this opportunity, because I never get to publicly shine the amazing wife that I have and the amazing mother that Heidi Machos is but I begrudgingly agreed that we would go to Disney I thought this would be a terrible idea she said we were gonna go so we went I never take vacations during a work week and this is I think the first one in ten years so we have a nine and eleven year old two boys so I just want to make sure that any parents that are listening don't think this is go to Disney this is not a commercial it is incredibly stressful situation where you just go from minute to minute counting the dollars that are spent and explaining to your children why they can't go back to the hotel and watch YouTube. But my wife did this amazing job of setting up. We went on every ride. Twice on Guardian, three times on Tron, five times on all the other big ones. But what I know and I love about this show is the spiritual life lesson that I took. We agreed. We were going to filter out all of the breakdowns and arguments and tantrums and frustrations and just focus on what an amazing time we got to spend as a family. And we all had, my wife and I both had those moments where we rewound to both being young eight year olds with our families and to be able to do that for our kids and know that they'll have those memories and forget that they complained about the lines, even though we waved in like none, I'm telling you.

Joseph Conyers:

That's amazing, that's very cool.

Yumi Kendall:

Thank you for sharing. Love it.

Michael O’Bryan:

So really quick update, you are not a Dowager Empress because that's a widow.

Yumi Kendall:

Oh, yeah. Oh, I am not.

Michael O’Bryan:

And we don't want that for you.

Yumi Kendall:

No, no. We do not wish that.

Michael O’Bryan:

But I did find a couple of other titles.

Yumi Kendall:

Oh, please. Do tell. Should we take a vote at the end of this? So people listening, let's see what the choices are.

Michael O’Bryan:

There's a couple here that I thought were kind of cool. So there's Defender of the Faith.

Yumi Kendall:

Defender of the Faith. Okay, option A.

Michael O’Bryan:

Option B is Sovereign of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. Now, I don't know what a garter is.

Yumi Kendall:

That's long. Can we just say sovereign?

Michael O’Bryan:

I think Sovereign of the Most Noble Order.

Yumi Kendall:

How about the Most Noble? Sovereign of the Most Noble. Okay. And then um... What's option C?

Michael O’Bryan:

I don't know if there's option...

Yumi Kendall:

Oh, it's just two options?

Michael O’Bryan:

They're a little long.

Yumi Kendall:

They're longer than the other ones?

Michael O’Bryan:

Most High, Most Mighty, and Most Excellent.

Yumi Kendall:

As opposed to all of the other ones that are not so high.

Michael O’Bryan:

My other favorite is this is one whole title: by the grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of her other realms and territories queen.

Yumi Kendall:

Wow, that's a lot of colonialism in there too, so yeah.

Joseph Conyers:

Oh God, those are your people, Andrew, just saying.

Yumi Kendall:

Oh wow.

Frank Machos:

Okay, this conversation is my second One Good Thing.

Michael O’Bryan:

My One Good Thing – last night I got to catch up with one of my favorite humans, my buddy Anwar Marshall, who is, you know, we call him his premiership as an example. Because Anwar is one of the most humble and fantastic drummers on the planet. By far. He currently plays with Marcus Miller, but has played with a number of folks on a number of things. And when we were younger, we all used to make music together, 24/7. And Omar is the kind of drummer, he'll go to a session, he'll sit down, he'll do one take and then the folks there are like, well, I think we're done. Can you just do another one because? And like we had watched that happen so many times, we started making up names for him. So one is One Take, and then he was, oh no, first was Metronome, because this brother with a click track, like you lose that you're listening to a click track because he's so pocket, it's nuts. So he's going Metronome, then the One Take thing started happening. So he was Metronome One Take, and then it just kept growing over time. And then we ended with his premiership.

Yumi Kendall:

Yes, of course.

Michael O’Bryan:

Because it just had to get there.

Yumi Kendall:

This is how the titles happen.

Michael O’Bryan:

We were on the phone till like 2 in the morning catching up. Yeah, no, I love that guy. Touches my heart.

Joseph Conyers:

Sounds like Whitney. Wasn't that like Whitney's thing?

Michael O’Bryan:

Whitney.

Joseph Conyers:

Whitney Houston.

Michael O’Bryan:

You know who that is?

Joseph Conyers:

Go away. Not on my podcast Michael O’Bryan, not on my podcast. You may excuse yourself now.

Yumi Kendall:

Our podcast!

Frank Machos:

Oh wow.

Michael O’Bryan:

Score.

Frank Machos:

I didn't know I was brought on to be the mediator.

Michael O’Bryan:

His excellency.

Joseph Conyers:

Oh man.

Michael O’Bryan:

But Whitney used to be on the phone late at night?

Joseph Conyers:

No, she used to be known for doing like, they do a take and they're like, are we doing it?

Michael O’Bryan:

Oh yeah, no, no, that's a thing.

Frank Machos:

I see that.

Michael O’Bryan:

But just do another one, cause, cause we're here and I wanna hear you sing, right?

Joseph Conyers:

Pretty amazing. Cool, so brothers and sisters, we are gathering here today to talk about a lot of things.

Yumi Kendall:

It's so much fun.

Joseph Conyers:

Talk about a lot of things. And I mean, so I'm going to just give up for me, I'm going to speak for myself. Because there's so much we can talk about and this could be easily a four hour episode. So Tacet No More is looking, we like to look at the classical music industry. That's kind of an overarching theme, but it's not like the only theme. Does that make sense?

Frank Machos:

This feels like a Project 440 board meeting.

Joseph Conyers:

No, it doesn't. Y’all need to stop. I think I'm regretting this decision.

Yumi Kendall:

We also like to talk about titles, so I appreciate that.

Michael O’Bryan:

No problem. I'm like in the game.

Yumi Kendall:

Thank you.

Michael O’Bryan:

You're welcome. Did you pick one?

Yumi Kendall:

Not yet. We're waiting for the vote. When we air this, we're going to vote between – whether I should be defender of the faith or sovereign of the most noble. And then there's a really long one I lost track of all the words. So it's just the first two that we're going to do.

Frank Machos:

We should have a plug for Noble. Everybody vote.

Joseph Conyers:

So, getting back to the task at hand. So that's globally, but there are all these themes that are parallel to what we do and in our space. And you know the things that I'm passionate about and things Yumi’s passionate about having listened to the podcast. And I'm trying to figure out where's the best place to start because with these two, I want to talk to you about education in general. Education in general. Will you forget the woes? Let's just get to the nitty gritty. Like talk to me about arts in education. Go.

Frank Machos:

Why is everyone looking at me?

Michael O’Bryan:

You're the district head.

Joseph Conyers:

Arts in education.

Frank Machos:

Okay, so first and foremost, it's critical. It should be front and center of all education for all humanity everywhere on this globe. And if there's life forms outside of this globe there as well. Just make sure that that is on the record. You know. We joke that I'm a doctor. I have a PhD in creativity and a lot of my research was looking at the history of arts education, particularly in this country, but really in humanity and education and public education. And so there's too many years to go over the whole thing. But when you look at American education from the very earliest blueprints, arts were right there front and center. Right. Benjamin Franklin wrote about in Pennsylvania, Horace Mann, when public education became systematized in this country, and so it’s nothing new. So when you look at this 150 plus years of arts education advocacy, the one thing that has been consistent is this pendulum swing of arts for aesthetic or arts for technical development. And you could read quotes from them. My favorite quote from Ben Franklin, he says, “the arts are critical, but time is limited. So which arts and how much of it?” And then gives the example of let's teach drawing because it helps with writing and penmanship. And so you have this poll from day one of education in this country of do we teach arts for all the benefits of arts or do we teach arts because it does something else? Right and I think most of the audiences, especially the artists that are listening would understand the role that the arts played, but especially, you know, the parallels of talking about classical, that aesthetic versus technical argument is something that has really played out and I think is in recent times re-emerged. And so we look at our programs in schools and arts education, music education is always front and center, but it's insulated, right? Because we go to all these conferences and we're around our people, then we have our debates about which arts and the innovative, the traditional, all these different things, but the rest of education is just kind of moving along while we do our own infighting. So we've been...we've done ourselves this bit of a disservice instead of all just saying, okay, listen, in this room, we're going to argue about it. But as soon as we walk out of here, we're all going to just big old ARTS. And let's all talk about the same thing. So that's where we are today. I think society is obviously moving into place with all the conversation about technology and AI. The arts keep emerging at the forefront of that arts will save humanity. And I firmly believe that. But so it's been exciting. I've said for many years, as I said earlier, I’ve been 20 years in public education professionally and we've always waited for creativity and arts to be the thing, the movement in education. And it feels like that's been brewing for a little bit and it feels like we're on the verge of that really starting to take hold. And yeah, I'll pause there because there's other brilliant minds in this room.

Yumi Kendall:

So much to unpack there. That's awesome.

Joseph Conyers:

That's great.

Yumi Kendall:

Should we hear from His Excellency?

Michael O’Bryan:

Thank you.

Yumi Kendall:

I'll stop calling him…Michael.

Michael O’Bryan:

I don't mind. No, I actually agree fundamentally for sure. I'm gonna kind of take this maybe in a little bit of a different direction. We're still fundamentally trying to figure out what is public education. It's not that old. This is a newer thing. It's been contentious since its beginnings, right? Like the idea, the wealthy did not wanna educate everybody. The idea of taking tax dollars and using tax dollars to provide a bed of access to a sense of standardized learning. Yeah, nah, they didn't want to do that in the UK. They didn't want to do that here. Like it was not a thing that people were very excited about in terms of the people with power.

Joseph Conyers:

I think a lot of people still are not excited about it.

Michael O’Bryan:

But this is the point, right? Under Ronald Reagan, there was a promise, if I'm not mistaken, to dismantle the Department of Education, right? Partly because a major function of the Department of Education at the federal level is to address issues of civil rights in the context of education, right? And access, right? When we put it in that context, at least for me, I'll talk for myself, when I put it in that context, totally understand why arts education is always getting a like, oh that's stupid, take it out, blah, blah, blah, because education wasn't built to educate whole humans, right, the design of the thing was never humanity or human centered, it was industry centered. And a couple of them had that, right? And so. And I don't want to go too deep and negative here, but the reality is the origins of how we even get to the place of utilizing testing to determine who should learn what, who should get pipelined to what jobs, has its basis in eugenics. It's a really ugly part of American history, right? And the gentleman who did that is a guy named Lewis Terman. He took the Binet IQ test, it was in France. He was tenured at Stanford, updates it, it becomes known as the Stanford Binet IQ test, and essentially, literally is the archetype for every sense and ideology we have around a standardized test in public education. This gentleman also fathered the gifted child movement. So at the same time that he's creating the gifted child movement, he's created this other form of tracking that is purpose to help figure out who should be sterilized. Right, quoting from his book, The Measurements of Intelligence, there are those among us destined.

Joseph Conyers:

Ironically.

Michael O’Bryan:

There are those among us destined to be the bearers of wood and the drawers of water.

Joseph Conyers:

Wowzers.

Michael O’Bryan:

This is the roots of what we're talking about. So again, when we started talking about arts education, it's just kind of like, I don't even know that they want education at all. Right, right, right.

Yumi Kendall:

It's industry driven, like you said, it's cogs in the wheel and more hamsters to turn the wheel.

Michael O’Bryan:

I do think there's an opportunity though. Well, that's the sunlight.

Yumi Kendall:

So many questions.

Joseph Conyers:

No, yeah, I know. That's actually a perfect segue because I mean, I love how you went into that and there's much to continue on what both of you said. But let's go to some of these funding issues because in our state, it was decided that our Pennsylvania's funding structure for education was deemed unconstitutional. And according to a Penn State University professor, Philadelphia should receive 1.6, oh, we receive 1.6 billion less in funding than it needs to adequately educate its 200,000 students in the district. Further, I'm reading from an article that was in The Inquirer about a year ago. We can put a link in the description with more information, but advocates have called for running more money through um, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yes, yes. So this is similar. An analysis presented at trial by Penn State professors said an additional $4.6 billion to adequately fund school sets for the whole state, a figure challenged by lawyers for Republicans during the trial. Their defense also included a suggestion that the state's academic standards did not matter for students entering certain professions. With one lawyer asking a rural superintendent, what use would someone on the McDonald's career track have for Algebra 1?

Frank Machos:

I want to respond to this one.

Michael O’Bryan:

I love that quote because I said, baby, make it plain.

Joseph Conyers:

That's plain as day. Absolutely.

Frank Machos:

Listen, I'm going to get personal with it for a minute and give a little autobiographical context. I’ve often joked that the working title of my autobiography will be, Do You Want Fries with That Music Education? Right? But let me explain, right? So since I was born, my father worked in fast food. As a kid, he worked for McDonald's. And then when I was getting into high school, he moved over to Checkers. His boss from McDonald's brought Checkers to New Jersey.

Joseph Conyers:

We loved Checkers growing up as a kid, just for the record.

Frank Machos:

Started working there when I was 14. And then my sister went to college for a year and decided she was gonna come back and right to work at Checkers. She had started in high school and so my entire life has been funded on the cliche of do you want fries with that right? I learned about how to upsell. I learned all these things but those upsells paid for my first car, it paid for my college, it helped me buy my house. I mean, to this day, my dad's 81 years old, just retired a few months ago and still helps, right? And so, and there's so many life lessons I got from being around him and his leadership style and that's, you have to buy the book. But for me, I was around some of the brightest minds, but public education wasn't their thing. And while going through this, right, it's really important that I always tell this part of my story. I tested in the gifted program, we talk about gifted in second grade. By fourth grade, the teacher said he has to be retested because there's no way. And I will never forget, the report card says, has ability shows poor effort, right? That stigma stuck with me. I failed my first class in seventh grade. And what I learned, the sun came up the next day, right? Because you're so afraid of failing for all these years. And then the more classes I failed, the easier the classes they put me in were. And so here I am sitting here for, and this carried into college, I failed out of my first major. And not until grad school did I finally make honor roll again since fourth grade, right? And then I start teaching and I'm around all these students who are like, I don't really like this, this kind of stinks. And I'm like, yeah, it does. You know, this book’s boring. But I was a substitute. But what I realized was I can build personal connections with these young people and then help them figure out what they were passionate about. Yes. And the craziest part is I'm doing all this. And it wasn't until a few years into it where I had just accepted I'm lazy. I procrastinate all these things that I'm having a conversation with someone. I'm thinking I’m just lazy. And he pointed you’ve got three jobs and you're playing gigs and you're doing these things and so it took till in my 20s to shake that self-efficacy that public education had pushed astray that I can't learn, I can't study, I can't get work done. And I flipped that, right, into an asset in the world that I live in now. I'm often reminding my colleagues who, for a lot of them, the public education system, as it's designed, worked well enough. One of my often used quotes is, public education in a lot of places is not broke enough, right? When we look at schools that are recognized as successful. Believe me, I could bring in a battery of people that will point out all of the things that we would rather see happen for humanity. But as far as, you know, Mike talked about it, the way we measure schools, the measurement of success, the matriculation of certain populations to higher ed, is not broke enough, right? And so we as a society, even though we see other countries starting to outpace us, have not had that drastic conversation that says we have to do something very differently. And you know, I'll go back to where I started. I've been surrounded by all different people in my life that have learned all different ways and have all different aptitudes for different things and public education may or may not decide whether they're successful or not.

Yumi Kendall:

Right, right.

Michael O’Bryan:

I think for me the issue with the fast food comment is really based on wages and wage suppression issues.

Yumi Kendall:

Yes.

Michael O’Bryan:

Right, so in Pennsylvania minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Just to be clear here, $15 an hour roughly gets you to a little over $31,000 a year in an annualized salary. You cut that in half, and essentially that's what we're talking about with $7.25 an hour. When we think about the dollars being spent on wages, so yeah, maybe McDonald's is starting you at $12 an hour in Pennsylvania. And it seems benevolent because it's $5 higher than $7.25. But that's why I go to like, well, what is a $15 an hour salary look like annualized? And it's a little over $31,000. So the problem that I have is that those are not minimum wages. Like that language is misleading. Those are harmful wages. Those are dangerous wages. They are accosting and affronting the index of your potential and the index of your well-being as a human being. And we need to be clear about that. And we need to be honest about what that means and what that does for developing brains and bodies who are coming to a classroom, right, when they're in a household where that's happening. Now, if your parent happens to be a manager, that might be a little different. Salary’s a little higher, health insurance involved, yada, yada, yada. But that's not the average worker in a fast food restaurant. And the idea that we should organize tax dollars around a job that legitimately is paying harmful wages to people is wild to me. What are we talking about? That should be, to me, that's like a criminal comment. It's like a crime against humanity to organize and think like that. I know the folks that, there were some of us that worked on that case. I remember when it started 10 years ago.

Frank Machos:

The one safe quote I could always give was, “we're all advocating for a fair funding formula at the state, right?” I always knew I didn't have to get communications approval. Right? That was something that was pretty consistent. We always agreed.

Michael O’Bryan:

Rural or urban areas of the city, where like everybody pretty much rallied around this cause we all knew this is the pit. What are you supposed to do? It's not – because the other part of the reality of all this, it's not as if there aren't jobs that have whatever we want to call it, right? Life sustaining, family thriving wages. It's just, do you qualify for them? Do you have the skillset for them? Do you have the social network and social capital that helps you get there and be sustained in the role?

Frank Machos:

And that's where I take issue with the quote, as you read it, right? Because yes, I do want the student who's just gonna go flip burgers to take classes on food management, on sanitation, on all these different things. I don't want anybody to ever believe this is what you're gonna do, so this is where your learning stops. And that's what's wrong with that. And there's CEOs of every one of those chains. There's finance people everywhere. So that, and we, this is a big thing and there's a real big shift right now. And that quote is aligned to it in work-based learning, right? And career, technical education has been growing in our country. And I have this conversation with my colleagues all the time around…Often we want to know what skill will we teach them, what certification will they get, and then what job can they do with that, and what's the hourly wage, right? And to Mike's point, it's really about exposure to an industry, right? If I get a certification in automotive, maybe I love working on cars and that's what I want to do, and maybe I'm gonna open my own shop, maybe I'm gonna go engineer cars, right? And so the conversation has to shift away from the, all they need is this and then they can that, right? There's no human on this planet that has a limit of what they can learn. What they do have is a problem with the way we're trying to get them to learn, sitting in a room, right? And even with some of the more hands-on approaches to it, it's still a very institutionalized approach where – I have the benefit of having a neurodiverse son. Kid learns everything on his own. He doesn't absorb when he sits in a classroom. He's amazing teachers who are helping him acclimate to some of the societal norms of doing that. But his learning, I mean, he decided he liked classic cars. I learned a lot about classic cars from him. And then we have a very neurotypical son. And he equally is independent in what he seeks out and how he learns. And that, you know, that's the dad brag, but that's humanity. That's all of the kids in all of our schools. That's the 200,000 kids sitting in Philly public schools. Yes, a lot of them will adapt and learn the way we're saying they should, but a lot of them need us to do better and create environments where they can thrive.

Michael O’Bryan:

So what I love about that. So take dyslexia, right? I got a friend who is dyslexic, tells his story in a performance show called One Pound, Four Ounces, because that's what he was born as. My buddy Khalil Munir. And he talks about his story so openly, which I appreciate. Like, Khalil didn't learn to read until he was like 16, for real, for real. But nobody was paying enough attention because his oratory skills are great, and he could regurgitate information, he could absorb it. It just wasn’t in, to Frank's point, the exact formula that we were pushing everybody through. And I remember the day I sat down and like, I felt bad for you, bro. Because if the world was a little kinder. And if we weren't so literate in this alphanumeric sense, like what if we were pictographic? You'd be fine. There's a ton of people who would be dyslexic at that point or whatever language we would use to try to organize for the way you can't or are not enabled to neurologically make sense of a picture in the way that someone else could, right? Who is functionally reading in that kind of a system, right? Like if we were reading hieroglyphs, there are a lot of people that probably couldn't do much with that and couldn't hold to that. So I totally agree with it and think like, I think this is the moment where like the volatility is an opportunity. So thinking about college, right? I always used to get annoyed like hell when people would say, well, some people just aren't built for college. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. College is built for only some type of people. We could re-imagine what that looks like and then it's something different. And now, because of what they call the enrollment cliff, colleges are trying to figure out, well, what about professional studies and what about this and new certs? Because there's a profit motive, you know, a budget motive to try to figure out how do you diversify learning for a variety of learners that go beyond the typical learner in your business model that gets their butt in the chair, right?

Yumi Kendall:

What would it actually look like? You know the budgets, you know how things are working, you know what the obstacles are, but set those aside or dream pie in the sky. But what would actually, what could public education look like as a success story here? What could that be?

Michael O’Bryan:

I think Germany has a really great model. Finland has a really good model. Like, there are places on the planet doing education well. They're connected to industry well. Like, there's nothing wrong with being connected to industry. They just don't make that the total summation of like, you're going to fast food, we organize your education around that. You're going to C suite, we organize your education around that. It's not built that way, even though there's a deep industry connection and focus. Again, Germany probably arguably has the best apprenticeship program in the world, for at least what we would call the Western world. Right. Probably has the top version of that, arguably. So there's plenty to learn. I think a lot of it's just built around hyper coordination, a massive investment from government. Right? Like that's, that's a real thing. But I think the problem for us here is that we've never been in a situation where we were so decimated as a nation that being wealthy actually didn't matter that much because what's like, ooh, I have more dirt than you. Like we, our country was leveled. So actually to get back to a basis where we're okay and to hopefully towards a future be competitive, we have to actually do things like, everybody gets healthcare, college is gonna have to be free because we gotta build a real workforce. There's all these things that folks invested in that have a legacy and still exist that way. And you fast forward 70, 80 years and look at the benefits. We're the...I was going to use unkind words. Yeah. We've messed up.

Yumi Kendall:

Yeah. Well, it's exciting that from Penn and my positive psychology studies, there were several studies done in actually implementations of positive education in the public sphere in Mexico, Nepal, thousands of students with the data backing it up that showed successful implementation of public systems that really did cultivate the whole human being from neurodivergence to all athletic types. I mean, every kind of human, we're all, you know, the human spectrum of experience. And so it was so exciting to see that. And for me personally, I'm a Waldorf educated child from K through 12, which is private school. And what was exciting for me is, Waldorf school does not measure, we don't grade.

Michael O’Bryan:

Oh, interesting. I didn't know.

Yumi Kendall:

And so that's one of its quote unquote problems is because it can't be measured. The success of it. However...

Michael O’Bryan:

Well, Yumi, I guess you're not successful.

Joseph Conyers:

She's a fraud!

Yumi Kendall:

And I love it!

Frank Machos:

So you've never failed a class, huh? Rub it in…

Michael O’Bryan:

We're stripping your title!

Yumi Kendall:

We have to go to the third really long title then. Okay, we have to do that one. But what I loved it was that so many of the education systems that we were studying that had done really well in this Mexico situation and Nepal, so many of their classes and their approaches and the outdoor and the nature and the studies and move like how important it is to move your bodies in school like, and the benefits of that, the circadian rhythms of the in and out, like being outside, get your energy out and then do something breathing in, studying something that is interesting to you. But they were able to measure this and so much of it was similar to my personal Waldorf education experience. And it was really wonderful to see that sort of validation of just from a personal perspective. We need to be looking outside of ourselves in this country to see what other models have worked and kind of hearing you talk earlier reminded me of the train system in the country like we like industry we're so behind that you can't overhaul the New York subway system.

Frank Machos:

And that's the problem.

Yumi Kendall:

And China’s like Maglev, like they're so new and they can just, of course, they have an entirely different political system that needs to be acknowledged. And so their power to be able to implement things in a matter of weeks, basically, is a very different humanitarian situation here. But there are other countries that do manage to have successful train systems put in place because they're sort of, they're newer.

Frank Machos:

So starting over instead of trying to undo or repair. And then I think in this country, right? And this is, you know, my career has been in urban-based education. Yes. We've constantly struggled to try to replicate what happens around us, what has been measured and deemed successful. But we serve a population of society that has evolved beyond many of the things that schools are designed to do. So, you know, that's like...Hey, I brought a carburetor to put it in my Tesla.

Yumi Kendall:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Frank Machos:

Our kids need other things because the world that they have been brought up in has pushed them so far into other things that we don't measure and that we don't talk enough about. And post pandemic, a lot of that is on the table. You know, the scary part is we as humans like to default to comfort. And so, you know, we've tried a few things, but everybody and it's a scary proposition. Let's experiment on this group of kids and try new things, but we really need to say, okay, new model, new trains, flat land, where can we start all over? And we struggle, we try to do it right, there's a lot of innovation that happens. And you know, to answer your question earlier, for me, it's about being student centered, right? My utopian education system is student centered. I often wish we could go back to the one room schoolhouse because at the core is a great educator in front of a group of willing or intrinsically motivated students. And then different things might have motivated them in different times in society. But, you know, today's young people have so much access to the answer. And so you have to change the question, right? It's not, we don't need to go back to antiquated. I was just talking about this. I mean, there's a time in our life where this podcast would, after we finish, somebody would have to sit there and cut the tape and edit it out. And Mike said something he wasn't supposed to. So let's, you know, take that together. You know, and now we'll hit a few buttons. You know, that's an art form that was lost. And at the time when digital took over in film and television and music, there were the purists that didn't want see it go away. And then there were the people that were at the risk of losing their trade, you know? And now we look at people who can do that as artists because that's something that you're doing just for the beauty of it, not for the technical level, right? And there's that technical aesthetic swing.

Yumi Kendall:

Right.

Frank Machos:

And so we have to look at education that way. Right.

Yumi Kendall:

Right.

Frank Machos:

There are things that still matter and still count, but there are things that are coming so fast that the kids are, they're coming into our space and sitting on, oh, here we go. Back me up. I'll wait until you can catch up with me. And we can't quite understand why we've lost them, right? But we never had them and they can get the information So we have to change what schools role is and I think you know Has to be around their interests

Michael O’Bryan:

And I think that's so poignant as AI is on the rise clearly here to stay so many people are obsessed with – they can get the answer and I'm like right, teach them how to think that's right. You still have to partner with the technology. This is an opportunity to stop regurgitating shit…stuff.

Frank Machos:

Somebody's gonna have to cut that. Take that.

Michael O’Bryan:

I know, right? But that, I think it's really... I'm excited by it, right? There's a couple of things that AI is doing for us that really makes me excited. One, it's holding a mirror up. Because everyone's like, oh, we're gonna kill ourselves, but AI is gonna help us kill ourselves. I was like, key word is help. Because it's us. Bad data going in, bad data going out, right? Or bad results going out. Harmful data going in, harmful results coming out. It is just doing what it's doing with who we are and who we've been. If we want different data going in, we have to behave differently. We have to produce different data sets through our behavior and through the outcomes and outputs that we want to see the world or see in the world. And that's just, it's fundamentally showing us we are not who we said we are. And that's why we're going to kill. So we might still die fast because of AI, but let’s been clear, it is not the technology, it's not the tools' fault. It literally is not the guns' fault.

Yumi Kendall:

Right. Who's holding it?

Michael O’Bryan:

Right. Too much access to guns. There's a whole lot around the gun that makes the gun the problem. But actually, the literal gun is not the problem. The proliferation of how many guns are there, there are, rather, now available there. But it's not literally the gun that is the problem. Doesn't mean we shouldn't regulate it. We're going to regulate all the things that are in relationship to the thing. And that's the same with AI. It's not the AI that is going to kill us. It's us.

Joseph Conyers:

Yeah. Yeah.

Frank Machos:

And then there’s the preservation of the arts, right? I think the most fascinating thing that I'm following is how are we gonna protect artists rights and derivative works and how are we gonna get cited, but you know for as much as that seems like this big splashy thing, rewind the last ten years of streaming and royalties and the arguments in Congress, right? There's a lot that needs to be sorted every time technology evolves, so there's not something new. And we get caught up in the preservation of the old, you know, and in that case it's really about making is about, oh no, we can't change, but we're changing. And so we're either, and this is what I talked about earlier, the artists are either gonna all sit here and argue about what to do while the rest of the society moves on, or we're gonna say, all right, it's going, come with me and we'll talk as we walk, right? Because we're getting there, we have to figure it out.

Michael O’Bryan:

That's right. Yeah.

Joseph Conyers:

So this leads to, I guess for me, my final question for the time that we have, because again, this could go on for a while.

Yumi Kendall:

With great, great joy.

Joseph Conyers:

No, I love this. I literally could do this for hours. These are the conversations that go through my head, I mean, nonstop.

Yumi Kendall:

All the time.

Frank Machos:

Well, I just want to let the listeners know if they would like to do that, all they have to do is travel to Italy with you for 10 days and not expect to sleep. You can have hours and hours and hours of pontification with Joseph Conyers.

Yumi Kendall:

When was that tour?

Frank Machos:

2015.

Joseph Conyers:

2015, it's very possible that Frank Machos and I were roommates on a tour for 10 days. And Frank Machos heard a lot of Joe Conyers that week. It's just a two layered question that's pretty simple, based on what you said, because I think the realization of the depth of the issues within the educational system make me step back even further in my larger thinking, and that is, how does one advocate for change? And what role do the art institutions that feel this work is so important in our communities, what role do they play in advocating for that change? I want to know for myself, do I need to start going to school board meetings? What can I do personally? Can I write to someone? And I want my listeners, our listeners, I want our listeners to know and to maybe be inspired to do something. What can we do? Because I think this feeling of helplessness, particularly in the way the world is functioning right now, is actually helping to suffocate so many of us because we feel like we have zero agency. That's one. Two, again, going back to these institutions, powerful institutions connected to powerful people of influence, powerful connections. What can these institutions do to push these conversations forward so it's not just a can that's kicked down the road? Because for those people in the C-suite, the can being kicked down the road works out perfectly for them. But for those who are not there, it is, it is generation after generation after generation of kids who are not getting the access and the resources that they need. And it needs to change, I'm done.

Michael O’Bryan:

So, I wonder if we state it, I think what's interesting about the moment we're in though is that the C-suite actually, there's some trouble in paradise. This is your workforce. You don't get to make up a new one. This is the one you got.

Joseph Conyers:

That's true.

Michael O’Bryan:

We're reshoring more jobs that were offshore.

Joseph Conyers:

Yep.

Michael O’Bryan:

And we're reshoring at a very fast rate. You have under invested in educating decades of people. And now we have a human capital crisis, is what they call it. So C-suite might have been inoculated at one point, but now the bottom lines, there's some problems there. The other problem is now the federal government's got a problem. There are bills that they need paid that they can input part of the bills for, but they need an operating private sector to help offset that. The need for infrastructure, the need for parts and things to be made. There's a big problem on the table that is a workforce issue. And so we have got to figure out quickly, how are we reskilling and upskilling folks? How are we skilling young people towards the future and all the things? There's a whole lot to figure out. And this is, again, the volatility of the moment is actually, it's scary, but it's also our ripest opportunity for change. If you think about resilience, I'm a nerd, if you think about resilience theory, it's at these moments that the systems are most ripe for change in ways that could be really beneficial to lots of folks, but it's also, it's most ripe space for utter collapse, right? Like it's a very volatile space.

Frank Machos:

Yeah, I mean, oof.

Michael O’Bryan:

I'll loop around to what we can do.

Frank Machos:

Well, I was there, but there's so much there, but I'll go back, because time is limited. I think building on that and going back to the institutions kind of working reverse order. Because there's so much that's happening now, right? I think what I would love to see, what I've seen the successes that we've had, right? In 11 years of building arts education, obviously in this context, music education specifically, it was done with a lot of partners. It was done with a lot of the ecosystem, as we talk about it, the ecosystem map and the community and a lot of collaboration. We use shared delivery in our terminology and public education, or at least in Philly. But I think the thing that we really tried to impress upon our partners was be great at what you're great at, collaborate on all the other things, right? And this goes from the large institution level down to the teacher in the classroom. Again, I use myself. I'm an okay saxophone player who has an incredible network of some of the greatest musicians on the planet. And for the first time I set foot in a classroom, I was calling them on the regular. Not just like, what do I do? But hey, can you be here Wednesday? Cause I've got this drummer and I don't know what to show them, right? And so when I think about our institutions, a lot of the challenge that we saw when we started looking at the map was everybody wanted to be everything, and everybody wanted to save all the things. And because of that, there was so much noise. And when we were able to streamline some of the conversations into, you're really great at this, you perceive yourselves as good at this, but have you met this organization who's actually doing that really well? Collaborate, right? And so that gives the organizations an opportunity to focus in on what not only they do well, but what they're really passionate about, right? And we see this a lot of times in nonprofit where we talk about mission drift. But in cultural community organizations, I’m more comfortable when the motive is we need an audience. We're not gonna have a future audience. We are orchestral music. We need people who appreciate orchestral music or we can't sell tickets in 20 years. Great, let's focus on that problem. In that conversation, let's not try to solve, we need music education in every school, right? We need to focus on where we already have capacity and let's build on that and enhance that, proof of concept, and then slowly and gradually build it and start as a school district of Philadelphia. For us, it was, now we start to have the equity conversation because now we figured out the what. Now the conversation is who doesn't have it, right? And that's on us and that's our responsibility and that's been the work. And so to your other piece about in terms of the advocacy and support, you know, everybody has a different approach. And for me, what worked is quietly in boardrooms, you know, those conversations, there are mechanisms that are available to sign up for a school board meeting. You can get your three minutes and you can say your piece real quick. But, you know, when you look at the impact of that, there’s a lot of other people with a lot of other problems, right? Versus using the engagement of influencers at the district or at the city level or all these different places that collaborate to design and implement education. Having those conversations when you can in a closed, be like, look, what are you passionate about? What are you funding? What is that working, right? Let's have some things. What we've seen as success is when we can get focused conversations around pointed issues and get people thinking clearly about how we can collaborate and being honest, like, wow, okay, that sounds like a real big problem, but I have nothing to offer in this situation. Let me use my intellect and resources over here where I can have that impact.

Michael O’Bryan:

I think one of the major problems, like, I totally understand the answer about... It's about building your audience, etc., from the end of, like, organizing around a problem so that they're not trying to do 800 things that they legitimately, A, don't want to do and can't do, and then it's messing you up, right? It's like, oh, this is your box, stay there. We're gonna partner with the people over there that can do that. Totally understand that. I just question whether or not we even need to be bothering with the people whose job it is to further their audience. That's a personal choice that has more to do with like me as a taxpayer, me as, you know, a young Black business owner in the city, me as a guy in the nonprofit space, and I'm on the board of the cultural fund. Like I do plenty of work and do national work, whatever, around the arts, around the future work, around blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the more I think about, I don't wanna be offensive, but the more I think about the time and energy put into audience development where people do not care about folks that look like I do. I mean, I've been in meetings where I've heard people say, well, we do outreach to the folks that we believe will be our future paying customers. And I'm like, that is so poignant and so specific. What are we saving here? It's funny to me when we love capitalism in this country and when we don't.

Frank Machos:

I'm feeling myself tacet. I'm not supposed to be. You're 100% right.

Michael O’Bryan:

I'll just say it like this, right? Too big to fail, right? It's funny to watch that happen with art institutions. And I say that with love, but like we let certain things fail and go that's how the market works and it's gonna rectify itself and yada yada yada – other things were like oh, no, no, no, we can't possibly and I'm like well, that's it, that's interesting because – I'm gonna go there: Freedom Theater goes bankrupt people say it needs to close. It's the oldest Black owned and operated theater company in the state, one of the oldest in the nation, what it has done for Black people across this state, but definitely in this city. Decades of artists being educated going – Leslie Odom Jr. is a Freedom Theater alumni. He loves those people. He talks about them all the time. He comes to Philly. People from Philly go up and visit. He's gonna sit with them, take pictures with them. They have produced tons of people. They go bankrupt and the literal comments are, it should close. The orchestra goes bankrupt and everybody rushes, California rushes to bail it out. If that isn't a clear example, of classism. We're gonna name it as racism. It is, because capitalism and racism go hand in hand. Racialized capitalism is a thing. Your folks are going to hate me, Joseph, and I'm fine with that. But this is the reality, because I worked at Freedom Theater when that was going on. You had a group of 20-something, barely, we were 22, Black artists coming out of UArts, trying to save an institution that meant so much to us. Because if people don't get it, I did professional theater from 14 to 18 when I was at my performance arts high school in Connecticut. Very few times I could be Black on stage and not incarcerated, a slave, an indentured servant, or colorblind casting. Here's a place investing in arts education for young Black kids, starting with you are an asset and not a deficit, and nobody sees it as valuable, but then wants to scream, why don't they care about their neighborhoods? But let's bail out the orchestra. That is wild.

Yumi Kendall:

Hallelujah.

Michael O’Bryan:

That needs to be named and organized around and we won't. And so for me, I just kind of go like, if your only goal is to grow your audience, you figure it out with the people that write you the checks.

Joseph Conyers:

I understand.

Michael O’Bryan:

And don't, you shouldn't get tax money for that. Now I'm on the cultural fund board, people probably gonna get mad at me, these are not the views of the cultural fund board, these are the views of Michael O'Bryan.

Yumi Kendall:

His excellency.

Michael O’Bryan:

And if you want me off the cultural fund board, I am fine for it. We can fight it out and argue there. I'd happily step down way of the work of that important institution, but we have to name what is happening and what has happened and what has transpired because it's real and it took place.

Joseph Conyers:

For me, it's recognizing our privilege in this space. And we have to recognize that privilege. Literally, as an institution that has so much privilege, we have to recognize that privilege and name that privilege, acknowledge that privilege, and then use that to figure out a way so that what happened in Freedom Theater…which happened I think when I joined the orchestra. How long ago was that? I sort of remember...

Michael O’Bryan:

2008 or nine or something like that.

Joseph Conyers:

Yeah, I came in 2010. So I remember hearing whispers before I came to Philadelphia. It's horribly upsetting.

Michael O’Bryan:

And the things people said about the leadership, they don't know how to run things, they don't know how to manage money, can't trust the Black institutions and orgs.

Joseph Conyers:

Michael O’Bryan, I hear you loud and clear.

Michael O’Bryan:

It's like, well, wait a minute. How do you...

Yumi Kendall:

Yep

Joseph Conyers:

Loudly and clearly.

Yumi Kendall:

Absolutely.

Michael O’Bryan:

What are we talking about? I'll be quiet.

Frank Machos:

The other piece that that brings up, right, there's still. And the piece that I said earlier, it's gotta be transactional, it's gotta be two-way. It can't just be this is what we have and we're giving to you.

Yumi Kendall:

Right, right.

Joseph Conyers:

Correct, right.

Frank Machos:

It's gotta be, we're also learning from you.

Joseph Conyers:

Correct.

Yumi Kendall:

Yes. Humility.

Frank Machos:

And I mean, when I took this role as the director of music ed, I'm a saxophone player that failed at a jazz school. Like my options for performance are pretty limited. Thank you, Ska Music, and some friends from R&B and funk that throw me a bone every now and then. But it was kind of a joke in my house. Like I was afraid every meeting those first couple years, I gotta meet with the orchestra, they're gonna realize I don't know anything. I'm a fraud. I'm out. I can meet with the opera company. This is it, honey. We're gonna find a new job, right? But every conversation immediately went to how do we engage with students? How do we get them intrigued? How do we get them to love what we do, right? And I always had this big sigh of relief and then I was like, okay cool. I've been around, you know the kids piece that piece we could do and so, helping organizations understand right? Well, maybe what you think you're offering isn't engaging them. Let's revisit it. What other assets do you have within what you're doing? You know and I perfect example not to belabor the orchestra point but one of the first things you know in a midst of a financial crisis one of my first priorities was making sure that for the first time under my leadership since 1928 we didn't not have an all-city high school music festival and an all-city orchestra and you know, there was no money we were negative $300 million as a district and I started with and positions were eliminated and then restored right before school but only funded until January of that year and then you know was…and so then I get a budget of $50,000 and I get an expense sheet that this festival and all the pieces of it cost $75, right? What do we do? And so there was a lot of great partners that stepped up but a lot of it was addition by subtraction But more importantly, right and you know credit you deserve your flowers on this you were there day one, you and Don Liuzzi looked at me like, oh, the guy that taught music tech and ran hip hop and R&B ensembles in middle schools is running the orchestra. We're all in trouble. It was all, what can we do? How do we step this up? And, you know, for me, it was like, okay, thank goodness you're here because I don't know any of this stuff. And, you know, to have not only experts in the field, but you being the unicorn of, you know, you're young, you're energy, you're a Black male, we can put you in front of a group that sees themselves in all the things that you're doing. Good Lord, I mean, I don't know what I did in a previous life that was so pivotal in how I was able to be successful. And for me, it was get out of the way. What do you need? And the team was all told, just to be happy. Joe quits on us. We're all in trouble. So make sure he's here. But it undersells a lot of other important people. And I don't want to start naming names because then too many will look. But everybody rallied around that. And after a couple years, because I was ready to go, yeah, let's just do recording studios and hip hop ensembles, right? But I heard the community terrified about this orchestra program. So we paused and we built that. And when that was sustaining itself, then we could start slipping in some recording studios at schools that didn't have orchestra programs anyway. And now we're able to offer this comprehensive approach. But every partner had to do their part. And all of the individuals had to come into this space with the humility of, I bring so much expertise, but Lord, there are a lot of things I don't know. And I'm going to be open to what comes at me. And that's the hours and hours of conversation that we had because we think we know a lot of things and then when we start talking to each other we're like oh wait but this I didn't think of that, somewhere in that is how we help the people that we care so much about.

Joseph Conyers:

I hope we can keep having these conversations because I mean I appreciate this so much it's why I asked the advocacy piece because I feel like in the position of privilege one has to figure out how does one help in the advocacy, how does one aid in making for the change? I call it leadership capital as an institution, as these major arts institutions, how do you use your leadership capital for good, for change? Because to your point, Michael O'Bryan, and you don't realize how much I've quoted you without quoting you, because I don't know if you actually want to be quoted, but now you just put it on the airwaves. So now people know.

Yumi Kendall:

Here we are.

Joseph Conyers:

But because that's truth, and those are hard words for our institutions, all institutions that are in the sphere at this caliber to hear.

Yumi Kendall:

It’s the truth.

Joseph Conyers:

But it's an important point that at the very least must be discussed. And what we should be doing is actively looking for ways to come to solutions to change that perception. Right. So it's not about this self-preservation. It's not which is why all the work I've done, and I'll shut up after this, all the work I've done, particularly in music education, it hasn't been about classical music, because I didn't want to focus on classical music. Classical music is one of the benefits of what I've studied in my life. But it's not the end all be all, it's not the whole thing. And the more we can talk about this larger conversation about the arts, what the arts can do for young people, the same skills that y'all both have spoken about tonight about making kids who think, you need people who can run the AI, putting good information – I mean all these things stem to me from the arts and at the core of this conversation, Yumi I'll stop.

Yumi Kendall:

No, no, this is – folks listening. If you could feel the vibes in this room right now, we are on fire. It is so energizing to hear everything and be a part of this conversation. We might want to have some if we can have closing thoughts.

Joseph Conyers:

Yeah, let's do it.

Yumi Kendall:

I mean, it'll be because this is obviously one we could go on for hours or days. It might be 2 a.m. right now. It might be 8:30. It might be tomorrow. Yeah, I don't know. But time flies with this group and the vibes are incredible and the think tank that is happening and the energy that's happening and flying is..

Joseph Conyers:

Because it's so for me and y'all y'all tell me if I'm Pollyannish because it will save me a lot of heartache at night, tell me if I’m Pollyannaish – but what is it about getting the right people in the room what the type of conversations like I, because I want it so badly. I want us, I mean, we don't have to do it for the country. Let's do it for Philadelphia. I love the city. Let's do it for the city.

Frank Machos:

I couldn't agree more. And listen, there was a point, you know, I talk about my time in administration as an arc. When I came in, I told you what I started with. I couldn't really screw it up too much more, right? And I was leaving money on the table at the position that I took at the time, so I was fearless. We did what I believed, what I was surrounded by, the input that I was getting, right? And we haven't said it, but if you wanna help people, ask them what they need, right? We start there. And so I did that for a few years. And then a couple years into it, salaries go up and budgets start coming around. And so then there's a little bit more stakes on the table. But then you do it long enough and you're like, okay, now I'm leaving money on the table again, and there's so much other opportunity, right? And so back on the arc of we're doing what we need to do for these students, for this population, for this city. And I say that because there was a time in that middle arc when I was like, let me get on all these national panels and travel and present. And it was really just as the pandemic was coming, I was growing frustrated with some of the conversations I was having with people. And then to see, I sat on quite a few panels where the same four experts were, how to clean your instruments, now how to do social emotional, right? And I'm like, why is, and I pulled back and I was like, forget the national conversation. And there's a whole other part two around just what happens nationally and how you advocate versus at the state level. And this is part of the answer to your question, right? It has to, advocacy has to be as localized as possible. And I would be on calls around, you know, there's COVID funding and Title IV funding and how are we doing this? But there are all these stipulations that when it goes from the federal to the state and then the state to the district and then the district across the offices, if you're not hyper-focused locally and having the right ears and the right players having the conversation, none of it matters anyway. And so it was really the charge at that point became let's do it in Philadelphia, and then we'll start to show everybody else what worked. And that's where we are now. And so I think, to your point, it's really about reevaluating who those key players are and getting those, the smaller the conversation, the better, right? Because you don't need 100 people to hear your mantra. You need three people who can then tell five people who then get seven people. And a lot of the people who are really the influencers wanna do it quietly. And so it's really just about making sure that they have the right information and that when you have the audience and the ear to have those conversations, you're super pointed on, oh, well, I wish we had this and you know what else would be great and this and that. It’s one thing at a time. Right now we need to focus on whatever the thing is and you know I'll close that by saying I do believe creativity will save the world. I do believe we will see that in our next generation through the arts and you can use the arts with a capital A and a big S and a very broad stroke of what's included in that and that's part of what we need to start doing as arts educators is stop defining what we accept and don't accept as arts and creativity and start finding the beauty in everything that our young people are doing in arts spaces.

Yumi Kendall:

Yes, yes.

Michael O’Bryan:

Yeah, no, I agree. I think, so we suffer from a certain kind of sickness here in America that I think is actually fully demonstrated in how we saw a large group of people think about solving school gun violence issues. It was, oh gosh, give them, give the teachers guns. We need, it's violent, we need guns, we need more guns and more violence. This is like, wow, that is nutty. But one of the things that we are struggling with, I'll give it as an example, there's something called the availability heuristic. And to make it a little simple, it's a way of describing how, essentially, how elements of creativity work, right? A lot of people like to think creativity is in a vacuum, right, like I go to my blank canvas and from the depths of my blank mind, I make something, right, or I have the blank sheet and I'm gonna go to the blank part of my mind and pull from nothing and make a thing. That's not how creativity works, that's not how art works, that's not how making anything works, right? In fact, what the availability heuristic points out is that essentially, paraphrasing a bit, you create with touch points. Anyone that studies improv, wait. You think you're gonna go in an improv class, I'm like, well, I'm about to make up, I'm about to skate, I'm about to. And one of the first things they're doing after like, okay, try it out, okay, great, now you don't know much and you sound bad, you're gonna do aural transcriptions by ear and then you're gonna do these written transcriptions and you're gonna come in and just perform that, I don't wanna hear no boopa doopa doop, I don't wanna hear nothing, I just wanna hear what you wrote and what you transcribed, and you're like, what? And I remember my teacher being like, y'all don't have no vocabularies. That's right. You're trying to like write a book. You can't even write a sentence. Let alone you don't have letters, right? And then I got it. I was like, I know you're right. I am just gonna get up here and be like, be-bo-bo-bo, and not have any context of how to do anything. And it was one of the best moments of my life. I was like, yeah, that's right. But that's a huge part of how the brain works. So if I were to say to you, hey guys, I use this example all the time when I do talks, so I feel like I just quote myself sometimes. It's getting really awkward. That means I'm getting old and I talk too much. But if I were to say to you, hey guys, we're gonna redesign this room with the color Tibetan mirage, go. What can you functionally do right now? The moment I say Tibetan mirage is like yellow, even if the three of you have a separate idea of the shade of yellow, you are actually enabled to do so much with this room. Right? Going back to our touch points of like, what is Germany like? What is Finland like, et cetera? Our biggest problem with arts education is that art has been so freaking utilitarian in this country, that all we can do is pretty much either think of capital pursuits related to art, or like how do we get kids a break from arithmetic and class and I get a teacher break. Like that's it, right? And it's just like, what is happening? So we've actually really over industrialized art to the point where it's almost lost its human developmental value. But luckily this isn't that old. It's not going to take that long for us to fix because we haven't been doing art this way this long. Right? Like this, these are newer things that we can challenge. So as an example, if a kid can't read, this goes back to – it's violent. We got gun violence. Get more guns. If a kid can't read, giving them more worksheets is not going to help. And sticking them in the corner. So I will never forget when I worked there. I used to work in family homeless shelters. At a family homeless shelter. I was there for seven years. In my almost eight, in my twenties. And I'll never forget I had a young man really struggling to read. And then I also, when test time came around, this was 2008, test time came around. And I'm like, they're home with all these packets. And I'm just like, well, what did y'all do all day? We had an hour of reading, an hour of corrective reading, and an hour of English, literature, or language arts. I said, wait, wait, you had three hours of literally the same class. And what did you do? They just kept giving us worksheets and workbooks. And I said, what mind are we creating at that moment? And these are sacred roles, let’s get beyond taxes and my anger, these are sacred things. We are developing and shaping brains and humans and their experiences and I'm like, this is wild. And so I always go, if I have a young person that is struggling with reading, I think my first goal is to get them to fall in love with stories and narratives. And theater is great for that. Music and songwriting activities are great for that, right? And getting them used to using words and language in particular kinds of ways towards certain kinds of ends. Like the arts can be beautifully vehicular. Yes. But not if we're not intentional. So I get back to, if you want to advocate, well, first thing we got to do, you got to open up the index of what you understand the arts to be, what it can be. So you can advocate very specifically and you can advocate with context. Stop shoving those books in my kids' face and they like YouTube, they like pictures, they like narrative. Figure out how to use that to help them become more literate. If it's scaffolded, well, we can figure this out. And it does not have to be in ways that keep young people in worlds that don't connect to a future index of their well-being. Right? But these are choices we have to make. And I'm definitely down to work with all of you. Let's get that room together. Let's go. Let's do it. I got thoughts. Absolutely. I got some folks I'd love to call.

Yumi Kendall:

To be continued. Also, there was the, we still have to vote on the name and I didn't get to hear more about the Trauma Informed Toolkit and there's institutional well-being. So part two, three, four, five, six plus, oh there's the whole education conference.

Joseph Conyers:

Thank you both so much. Thank you. Thank you for, first of all, for what you do for the city. I mean, it's just, it's reassuring to have leaders like y'all working behind the scenes trying to make things better in the city and then reverberating throughout the country as a model. And thank you for agreeing to speak with us and be on our podcast.

Yumi Kendall:

And commit to another time too. On air. So we got that.

Frank Machos:

Anytime.

Joseph Conyers:

It's really a huge honor. And I will say some of the most joy I get in all of my work that I do in Philadelphia is part of these conversations. I mean, I love the orchestra with all my heart. I play, it's great, it's wonderful. But it's just, having these conversations about these possibilities just excites me more than anything because then it gives a home for the love that I have now to have a home in the future. But if we don't address these now, it's for me now, and then I leave it to someone else in the future, and that to me is scary. Not even just for classical music's sake, it's for the arts, sake of the arts. So I'm so happy.

Yumi Kendall:

The sparks are flying, the fireworks are going, so to be continued.

Joseph Conyers:

Absolutely. Thank you.

Yumi Kendall:

Thank you.

Joseph Conyers:

Thanks for listening. Let's stay in touch. Email us your comments and suggestions to info@tacetnomore.com.

Yumi Kendall:

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Joseph Conyers:

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Yumi Kendall:

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Joseph Conyers:

Tacet No More is produced by me Joseph Conyers, Yumi Kendall, Andrew Mellor, Lindsay Sheridan, and Brenda Hernandez-Jaimes of Ellas Media.

Yumi Kendall:

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Joseph Conyers:

In our next episode…

Dacher Keltner:

It's still a scientific mystery why you hear a piece of music, why you like Brahms, Joe. And it's like, this is it, right? This, I know my purpose in hearing, feeling this music. I understand the point of my life or my work, and I want to share it with people. I want to be, as Yumi said, in community, experiencing this together. And, and that's the pathways to awe of dance and music and contemplative practice like prayer or meditation have these properties to them where you're like, I feel like I know why I'm here, right? And what like, you know, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say right now we need this more than ever.