Season 2 Episode 8
Ben Binversie:
00:05
From backseat baby to a career at National Public Radio and the spaces in between, Anya Grundmann '89, the Grinnellian shaping the sound of NPR.
Ben Binversie:
00:31
This is All Things Grinnell. I’m your host, Ben Binversie. On today’s show, we talk with Anya Grundmann from the class of 1989. She’s the vice president of programming and audience development at NPR, but once, she was just a wide-eyed, angsty college student listening to the radio and writing scathing editorial in The Scarlet and Black.
Ben Binversie:
00:51
From Grinnell to the world of public radio and back, we’ll also talk with Eric McIntyre, professor of music here at the college about the musical compositions he created in response to the new exhibit in the museum of art. We’re talking music, art, creativity, listening and the spaces in between. That’s coming up next after I remind you that the information and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals involved and do not represent the views of Grinnell College.
Ben Binversie:
01:29
I see a lot of overlap between the values of National Public Radio and Grinnell, especially the drive to learn about things far and wide. Really spread your liberal arts wings and explore the world of ideas and people. Anya Grundmann has been able to sip from that cup of eternal learning that is NPR, and now plays a big role in shaping those learning possibilities for the listeners of public radio. That same spirit of exploration which informed so much of the NPR ethos can also be traced back to her time at Grinnell.
Anya Grundmann:
01:57
Well, one of the things about Grinnell that was great in retrospect is that we didn’t have to take as many courses for our major as people at most other schools do. So there’s a lot of room to explore. I think that was the whole point is that we’re there to learn and explore. My tutorial was the comedies of Aristophanes. For one semester, I thought I was going to be a classics major, which was really fun, and I got to hang out with some really cool people.
Anya Grundmann:
02:31
I even went to emeritus professor’s house, and we had a Latin reading night. We had popcorn, and it was fantastic. I basically couldn’t translate anything, and they all laughed at me. That was a fun club to be in. Then I became an English major, but I also spent a summer studying biology at the wilderness field station. Basically, I got my biology credit. We called it canoeing for credit, but it was very experiential, which I loved.
Anya Grundmann:
03:04
I did music and tried to throw myself in experientially into the different facets of academic subjects, but also in terms of the extracurricular things like editing the newspaper, being in music ensembles, going on wilderness field station activities. I really appreciated the freedom and flexibility of that.
Ben Binversie:
03:32
Being able to spread your liberal arts wings and fly in all the directions you choose.
Anya Grundmann:
03:38
Exactly. I definitely did that.
Ben Binversie:
03:40
That’s good. What experiences, obviously, maybe working at the newspaper, but what other experiences at Grinnell can you point to as being formative in leading you down your path towards NPR?
Anya Grundmann:
03:53
Well, at NPR, I actually was really focused on music at the beginning. I was an English major at Grinnell, but I also spent just as much time doing music. I was in the Grinnell singers. I studied piano. I was in the general choir also. I also was in the Collegium Musicum, so all over the place with the music stuff and really always focused on that. So the combination of that with my English major and wanting to writing.
Anya Grundmann:
04:25
I brought with me into my public radio career right away because I was always from the beginning very music focused in terms of connecting people with great music, the ideas and issues around music, that creative experience of music, that communal connectivity that music brings to us that’s beyond the spoken realm, that’s really important to all of us, the great connective tissue that music brings, and figuring out ways to have that add value to people’s lives and engaging with that.
Anya Grundmann:
05:04
That spirit comes from also being someone who loves to play music with others. I love being in places where new music happens because of the combination of people in the room, and that spirit of fun and not necessarily the performance but actually the act of being together and making something, the creativity and craft and connection that that creates. Also, it’s a great way to get together with people and not have to talk, but you connect with people in another dimension.
Anya Grundmann:
05:41
I’d say the same thing about why I love dancing too, also another way to connect with people beyond the word.
Ben Binversie:
05:50
I certainly feel that. I think even just thinking about my most memorable concerts that I’ve attended, they always entails some connection with the artist. I don’t know if you know either of these bands, but Low Cut Connie and War and Treaty. They start the show by basically saying like, "We love you. We want to be here. We want this to be a very connective experience," which is something that I think just sets me up in a very good framework to just enjoy the music in a way that is so beyond what we normally experience in life and talking to people and things like that.
Anya Grundmann:
06:28
Right, and feeling isolated in certain ways, and having another dimension to connect with people is really fantastic and important. I spent a lot of time thinking about.
Ben Binversie:
06:44
How did you get interested in radio specifically?
Anya Grundmann:
06:48
We have something at NPR called backseat baby, which is a lot of people who are now listening, actually, their parents dropped them in the back seat, and they had to listen.
Ben Binversie:
06:58
Yes.
Anya Grundmann:
07:00
They thought that was fine. Then they were like, "Turn that off. That’s horrible."
Ben Binversie:
07:03
Horrible.
Anya Grundmann:
07:05
"Give me my music." Then around mid-20s, they’re like, "Hey, that wasn’t so bad." I’m commuting to work, and I need something. I want to make sure I can talk to people about what’s going on in the world, and I need to understand what the heck is going on in the world, and that actually, NPR is pretty good for that.
Ben Binversie:
07:28
I certainly had that same experience.
Anya Grundmann:
07:30
I grew up in Baltimore, and so I listened to a station called WJHU, which no longer exists, and I really felt a connection to that. Then when I came to Grinnell, I remember my last semester, I was living in off campus house, and I was wondering what the heck I was going to do with myself. I was listening to Fresh Air with Terry Gross. She was talking to such interesting people. I just all of a sudden had the sense of like, "Wow, this..."
Anya Grundmann:
08:05
I mean, listening to somebody having a really smart conversation with somebody about something I never even thought about and feeling like, "Wow, there’s so many interesting people out in the world, and I feel really connected to this, and it’s speaking to me." So it’s a very powerful medium, which is a human being talking and breathing right in your ear about really important things or funny things or meaningful things. and making and helping you maybe readjust your thinking.
Anya Grundmann:
08:38
It’s a very intimate connection, and so there’s something really profound about that. That’s one reason
Ben Binversie:
08:47
After you graduated from Grinnell, you ended up moving to Flagstaff with the whole gaggle of Grinnellians, I think eight of you in all.
Anya Grundmann:
08:54
Basically, one of our friends is very... She was very persuasive, and she convinced us all to move there. I came five months later because I stayed for an extra semester to study music. I was also working at a liquor store downtown.
Ben Binversie:
09:08
Nice.
Anya Grundmann:
09:11
I went, and we moved into a big house together. We all did different things, and because I had no idea what I was going to do.
Ben Binversie:
09:19
It was like first year all over again living in the dorms.
Anya Grundmann:
09:24
Exactly, but I started taking classes at the university for a master’s in music. I kept walking by the radio station. It was in the music building. I just kept walking by. I was like, "One day I’m going to walk right in there," and I did. Then I walked in and I was like, "I’m interested in volunteering." I’m sure I don’t remember this right, but it seems to me like the news director happened to be standing there. He was like, "Oh yeah, we need someone to go out to the Navajo Reservation, and cover this press conference. Why don’t you go do it?"
Anya Grundmann:
09:59
Then they gave me some equipment. I drove out there, and I did. I had no idea what I was doing. Then I taped it, and I asked people questions. I came back. Then one of the guys helped me make a radio piece out of it, a short radio spot. I thought that was magic. Then I did a little bit of that. Then the music head of the radio station was also a classical music station. He was like, "We need another music programmer. Why don’t you come up here?" The station had basically created another level. So there was this second floor that was barely a person’s height.
Anya Grundmann:
10:33
I went up there, crouched over and looked it up, and there are all these CDs. Then I started programming the music for the station. Then I started their first music database. Then they actually put me on the air Friday and Saturday nights.
Ben Binversie:
10:46
Nice.
Anya Grundmann:
10:46
I was not that good, but it was enjoyable. I also was teaching 20 piano students at that time and also teaching writing to high school students in special programs. I was doing a lot of stuff. I didn’t have a car, and I rode my bike everywhere.
Ben Binversie:
11:06
You were learning.
Anya Grundmann:
11:07
Yes.
Ben Binversie:
11:07
I mean, I feel like especially with radio, I don’t think everybody’s born comfortable doing that. You have to learn.
Anya Grundmann:
11:18
That’s why historically in public radio, internships have really been a great pathway, because it gives people a real exposure to the craft. Back then, we were using reel to reel tapes and razorblades. I have scars to prove it.
Ben Binversie:
11:36
Wow.
Anya Grundmann:
11:37
Then in order to make things that were beautiful and complicated, you had five different reels, and you had to sync them up. You had to have basically direct... It was like directing some kind of movie or something. Now, we just have digital editing, which makes it a lot easier. A little of the craft has gone from it of the, "Let’s put on a show and being ready to perform a mix we called it," but it’s been fun to see the technology evolve.
Ben Binversie:
12:08
I certainly take that for granted. I can’t imagine doing anything like this without having a computer. How did you then end up in Washington D.C. working at NPR?
Anya Grundmann:
12:24
I applied for an internship. That seems classic. I was an intern, and I worked in the cultural programming department. I was the second choice intern, which meant the first choice intern had to do all of the boring internee things, and the second choice intern, which they didn’t normally have, but someone decided they wanted me to come, gave me some space to try to be helpful. I made up things to be helpful with, which turned out to be a great opportunity.
Anya Grundmann:
13:03
There was a part of the show that people thought was a pain to write, and it was short. I was like, "Hey, you want me to try my hand at that?" Sure. I convinced the show to do a national contest about how people fell in love with music for the first time. Then people wrote essays, and then we judged them. Then I got to book the winners, five winners, at the studios and have them what we called track their essays, which are short essays. I got to do that whole process. Then we put them on the air.
Anya Grundmann:
13:36
That was a fun project. I still have one of the reels.
Ben Binversie:
13:39
Nice. I’m sure the path from intern to the head of NPR music and where you are now was a long grinding path that took a lot of work in innovation and creativity and putting yourself out there like you just talked about, but that innovation really came into fruition as you spearheaded the launch of NPR music back in 2007. How did you make that happen?
Anya Grundmann:
14:08
Actually, the organization was looking for a way to do something in the digital space on the web that was innovative, and they thought we have so much music content across public radio that they thought there was an opportunity there. I was running the music division at the time, and so we spent some time creating a plan for what it would look like for us to do a big music site for public radio. Originally, we thought that we’d just take all the stuff we were doing on the radio, and put it on line, and we would organize it by interviews and concerts and recommendations and live streams, and that the website would be an aggregation collection.
Ben Binversie:
14:56
Just a repository.
Anya Grundmann:
14:57
Right, and that we would foreground that. Then it was pretty soon obvious to me that we’re in a new space, where it’s a different experience for people to click on something and engage on the web. It’s very visual. So just taking the things we were doing on the radio and putting them online felt like a half measure. We knew it would always be the backbone of what we did because people are really interested in like, "I heard that thing. I want to share it with friends, or I want to find something."
Anya Grundmann:
15:29
So our content, which was always ephemeral and never searchable, and once it was out there, you never heard of it again, it became much more able to be part of the conversation, and people be able to engage with it. That’s not going to be enough, and so we thought about what are some things we could do that were really web burst. So we created, I hope, I feel like it was a culture with a bunch of really creative, smart people, a little bit of a playground exploring what we could do.
Anya Grundmann:
16:02
When we launched NPR music, we started with three initiatives that would show that we are doing something special. One of them was a video series called Project Song, where we basically did a little documentary of somebody creating a song based on prompts that we gave them. Then we started a blog with Carrie Brownstein from Sleater-Kinney. We had a music recommendation list from Yo-Yo Ma. Now, some of those things were easier to make than others, but when we put them all out there, it helped tell the story of like, "Yeah, we’re doing some cool stuff, and we’re thinking outside of the box."
Anya Grundmann:
16:47
All those things got equal attention, and it gave us confidence that, yeah, we were on the right track. We should be doing something interesting that made sense for the medium. There weren’t people really doing music programming for web first at the time. That wasn’t a big thing, so I think we were pretty early. That’s the environment that the Tiny Desk came out of, a sense of adventure and play and experimentation, and like, "Let’s try things." That’s one of the wonderful things that came out of that.
Ben Binversie:
17:26
That really exploded in a good way.
Anya Grundmann:
17:29
It just keeps growing, and we’re just thrilled with it. It’s such now an iconic part of what NPR does. At the time, we had no idea. I remember the first times we did it, we even tried to do live webcasting, but of course then the musicians were laid. Then Bob had a James Brown doll that he would sing if he pressed the button. So we were to put things on the live stream that would be distracting. So we put the James Brown doll on there.
Anya Grundmann:
17:54
We did other things. We were like, "That’s not going to work." There was definitely a process, but it’s so gratifying to see how that’s expanded and exploded and also pushed us in terms of genres, and is a great thing also for NPR staff who work here could get to come to the shows.
Ben Binversie:
18:16
Absolutely. I look around my office here at Grinnell, and I’m like, "Hmm, how could I have a concert in here?" I don’t think it’d be the same. Ours is a very corporate cubicle-ly. It’s not very open. I don’t think it would work very well, but I don’t know if you know this, but there were a group of students and it’s continued here that have adapted Tiny Desk into a tiny dorm series, and they put on concerts in the dorms.
Anya Grundmann:
18:43
I didn’t know that. I guess I should come visit.
Ben Binversie:
18:45
You have to come for a tiny dorm. Music has obviously been a huge part of your life, and it was your job for a while not playing, but engaging with it. I’m curious if you can put into words what music makes you feel and the role that it’s played in your life.
Anya Grundmann:
19:08
Those are big heady questions.
Ben Binversie:
19:10
I put on my headphones and put on songs, and go long board around Grinnell at night at 2 in the morning, and I am completely or it feels like alone but yet connected to so many feelings by the music that I’m listening to. It’s an emotion that I cannot tap into unless I’m listening to music, if that makes sense. I was wondering if there’s anything like that for you, times where you have just felt totally different by listening to music, or what kind of feelings music lets you access, or what experiences it lets you partake in that are not available to you in the rest of the world?
Anya Grundmann:
19:55
I remember when I was playing piano as a teenager, which emotionally rough period in most people’s lives. I think it’s not a stretch to say. I feel like I really worked through a lot of my feelings and the nuances of that by playing music and by playing the piano and playing phrases over and over again and thinking about the interplay of the voices, and that there are different characters., and that I felt like there was this engaging in the music this way as a personality that you’re connecting with was incredibly satisfying.
Anya Grundmann:
20:46
It was a great release for me in terms of just dealing with stuff that felt hard. I do think music can change your mood. Obviously, it can change the way you think about things. I think it can...you know, our brains process information in ways that are unique to each of us that are structured in certain ways, and music pushes beyond the habits of our own brains instead of allows different patterns to be experienced. I think that’s really transformational, and it can get you out of your own head in a way.
Anya Grundmann:
21:35
If you’re spinning, it allows you to engage with yourself, I think, in different ways. I remember one time, I was in Rome by myself, and I was walking down the street. I was day two of my solo adventure in Rome. I started saying to myself like, "Man, I’m so sick of the way I think. I’m so done with you, Anya. These patterns are so boring." I think if you listen to music, you can jump yourself out of some of that, the patterns and routines of the way maybe you’re wired. I know some people think music is dangerous because of that, because it can rewire you in some way.
Ben Binversie:
22:25
Like a drug. I think it helps us work through our feelings not just when we’re antsy pubescent teenagers, but into our adult lives as well. Now, you’re basically in charge of NPR’s non-news content, which is a lot.
Anya Grundmann:
22:43
I’m actually trying to figure out how to talk about what I do because I’m in charge of all the podcasts and music and events and some of our overall strategy about how we think about programming across our different platforms and reaching different audiences. My official title is senior vice president for programming and audience development. I spend most of my days thinking about how can we connect our audiences across different platforms with content that they’ll love and that we can be useful to them.
Anya Grundmann:
23:14
That requires sometimes thinking differently about the way we’re doing something. So how do we engage with people in new ways, and how do we take the energy and talent that we have in our organization and have it connect with people across the radio, which we have 30 million people a week listening to, but also the 20 million monthly podcasts users? Then we’re thinking about those Tiny Desk audience, which we are getting a million views a day on YouTube right now. So how do we connect with those people who we know are really young and diverse and exciting?
Anya Grundmann:
23:50
You look in the comments’ section there, and it’s so great. That’s not on our platform. That’s on YouTube, but how do we connect more deeply with those folks? We’re thinking a lot about ways that audio can be delightful, useful, helpful to people across all the different places where people want to find it.
Ben Binversie:
24:17
Thinking about audiences, I think NPR has a trope or a stereotype of who might be a typical listener. Obviously, that’s changing, but from your perspective, what are you doing to maybe subvert that historical idea of what an NPR listener looks like and reach new audiences?
Anya Grundmann:
24:40
Well, everything we make, I want to have a surprising twist to it so that we don’t feel like we’re doing cookie cutter programming. We do want to be focused. We have the largest audio newsroom in America, and so we have hundreds of journalists on the audio side who have expertise and who are following the news and have following beats and really are striving every day to help people understand what the heck is going on. So we do have some inherent strengths as an organization.
Anya Grundmann:
25:18
We also have people who think a lot about big ideas that shape the world that we’re in, and how do you talk about those? I’d try to spin out new things around our strengths, but allow different takes on it, and to have people maybe surprising voices or interesting frames that we might not have traditionally done like Tiny Desk concerts or our short form podcasts, Code Switch, which is a race and identity podcast, which is really great, so really thinking about a portfolio of things that might reach people in different ways and support them in different times of their life and also different usefulness.
Anya Grundmann:
26:04
Some things are about big ideas and how to make yourself a better person. Some things are about catch me up on what’s going on out in the world, because I need to understand the crazy, and then help me keep in touch with what’s important in pop culture, help me find great music. We have this opportunity to do a wide range of things and to do them in hopefully interesting and smart ways that will appeal to a wide range of people.
Ben Binversie:
26:32
I think a lot of what is under your domain is maybe considered a more fun side of journalism and radio. You’re not doing the news, but how do you see your role fitting into NPR as a whole and comparing it to the news?
Anya Grundmann:
26:51
Well, we do. We have podcasts that are the news, so I spend time.
Ben Binversie:
26:54
That’s true.
Anya Grundmann:
26:54
Our first daily news brief, we have... I mean, all of this is collaborative. We have economics by Planet Money, Planet Money Indicator. So we have all kinds of topics, and we have a foreign international podcasts. News is actually bad ass. I would not say that there’s a different... There’s fun can be had in all kinds of realms. I mean, being a political reporter on a campaign and being embedded with candidates can be a wild ride-
Ben Binversie:
27:29
Certainly.
Anya Grundmann:
27:30
... and covering some of the most important issues in a whirlwind that we have right now can be really gratifying. Being the person who’s the best at talking about that or knows the most about something is really great. I wouldn’t categorize the stuff that I do is exclusively the fun stuff. I think that we have to... If you want to enjoy your life, you got to look at a lot of things as fun. You gotta have a broad view of fun.
Ben Binversie:
27:58
Yes. I want to read an excerpt from the mission statement of NPR back when it was founded around 1970 from Bill Siemering, and ask you to think about how it applies to NPR right now and your work. So, "National Public Radio will serve the individual. It will promote personal growth. It will regard individual differences with respect and joy rather than derision and hate. It will celebrate the human experience as infinitely varied rather than vacuous and banal. It will encourage a sense of active constructive participation rather than apathetic helplessness."
Ben Binversie:
28:38
How does that mission continue at NPR right now, and where do you fit into that?
Anya Grundmann:
28:43
How do you think we’re doing?
Ben Binversie:
28:45
Pretty well.
Anya Grundmann:
28:47
I feel it’s weird, but we’re about to celebrate our 50th anniversary. I actually know Bill Siemering who wrote that. He’s in his 80s, and he’s the most wonderful man. He started all things considered, and he started fresh air. He’s part of a group every week that talks about the mysteries of life, but what he wrote was so prescient. In this podcast world, it’s actually more relevant today even than it was then.
Anya Grundmann:
29:16
His idea was, "I want to create a new sound for radio." Before public radio, before NPR, it was very much like Walter Cron- like someone talking from a desk, and they’re talking really formal voice. They’re like, "I am the God of the news, and I am giving you the information. So listen up." It was more of like the spirit of multitudes, embracing the multitudes and multiple voices, digging into cultural issues, being playful. All of that stuff is in the DNA of NPR. It was also started by, I would say, professors, philosophers, activists and theater people.
Anya Grundmann:
30:02
So there’s a sense of putting on a show. I feel like we have things right now that are really speaking to helping you think about you being the best person you can be, whether it’s Hidden Brain or Life Kit series, How I Built This, and then we have things that are about participation. So one of the most fun things that I’ve worked on is things like the Tiny Desk contest where we have 40,000 people participating and submitting videos for the Tiny Desk contest.
Anya Grundmann:
30:37
Then we proclaim a winner, and the winners have gone on to huge careers because they were anointed, but that participation. Then we go on a tour with the winter. We have local winners. We have people from every state in the country participating is just such a joy. We just did a student podcast challenge where 25,000 middle school and high school students participated in making podcasts. We have a segment on morning edition, which is a poetry call-out, where Kwame Alexander is actually making poetry with the audience, and then 30 million people are hearing that.
Anya Grundmann:
31:10
Anytime we do anything in the participatory realm, we get so much energy, and that’s incredibly fun. Whether it’s on the news side helping people think about how to vote well and how to become active smart members of their community who know what’s going on in the world or participating in making things, it’s a really fun area for us to explore because I think it provides connective tissue.
Ben Binversie:
31:42
I think there’s areas of connecting. It seems like will only increase in the future with technologies. obviously audio in terms of how people consume it. For a long time, it was radio, radio, radio, and now with the advent of podcasts and other things and smart speakers, it’s changing rapidly and seeing where that goes and how NPR and other places it can capture that possibility for connection really does open up some new possibilities.
Anya Grundmann:
32:17
Absolutely.
Ben Binversie:
32:21
Do you think there’s something special about audio as opposed to other forms of communication?
Anya Grundmann:
32:28
What do you think?
Ben Binversie:
32:31
My personal opinion as... I mean, there’s a lot of... A lot of people talk about video like, "Video is king," especially for these young gen Z-ers or whatever, wherever we’re at now, and with people’s decreasing attention spans in a lot of ways.
Anya Grundmann:
32:52
Have you downloaded TikTok?
Ben Binversie:
32:54
No, I have not, but I see it on my Snapchat.
Anya Grundmann:
32:57
Get with the program, man.
Ben Binversie:
33:00
I see it, and I’m like... I cringe every time I watch some of these videos. I’m like, "What did I just watch? This is ridiculous," but then sometimes, I see funny, interesting stuff pop up there, and I’m torn always as I interact with different social media, but I think audio allows us to take away some of the elements that might distract us in life or in consuming something, and just absorb it in a way that maybe you can’t when you’re trying to pay attention to all these other things going around you when you’re really just focusing on what’s coming in through your ears.
Ben Binversie:
33:43
I feel like it’s, I don’t know, but a more pure way of consuming information. It’s different than the others, but I feel like it allows us to focus in a way that others don’t necessarily.
Anya Grundmann:
33:54
Well, it’s also the primary, the primal communication. It’s very visceral. Also, I think it requires your imagination. I’m imagining the cubicle firm that you’re sitting in right now.
Ben Binversie:
34:14
I’m actually in a conference room right now. I’m the only person in here in this big conference room.
Anya Grundmann:
34:19
That sounds really lonely.
Ben Binversie:
34:20
It is. There’s this weird piece of, I guess, some modern art staring back at me, but that’s pretty much it, a large room of empty chairs.
Anya Grundmann:
34:30
You seem to be handling it okay.
Ben Binversie:
34:32
Well, I’m talking to you so it’s not too bad.
Anya Grundmann:
34:35
Do you know Terry Gross of Fresh Air? You know what that is?
Ben Binversie:
34:40
I know Terry Gross. I don’t know her personally.
Anya Grundmann:
34:43
She does none of her interviews in person.
Ben Binversie:
34:46
Really?
Anya Grundmann:
34:47
None of them.
Ben Binversie:
34:48
Are you serious?
Anya Grundmann:
34:49
They’re always like this.
Ben Binversie:
34:51
No way.
Anya Grundmann:
34:51
Yup.
Ben Binversie:
34:53
Oh my God, that is-
Anya Grundmann:
34:54
She thought it’s too distracting to actually see the person she’s talking to.
Ben Binversie:
34:58
Wow, I didn’t know that. That changes. I’ll have to reassess what I do because I detest doing... I don’t detest talking to you right now, but I love to be in the room with someone when I’m talking to them because I feel like I can connect better.
Anya Grundmann:
35:19
I think she’s really introverted.
Ben Binversie:
35:19
I’ve certainly heard that about... Wow, that’s interesting.
Anya Grundmann:
35:25
I mean, I guess people are saying these days we really need to be better listeners as a culture, and take a breath while we’re listening to people who we may not agree with, and take a deep breath and then empathize and take a beat, and then have a conversation rather than reacting so quickly. Also, leave some breaks so that people might say some things that they wouldn’t have if you were talking all the time. I think if you practice that in your life, it’s actually interesting what happens.
Anya Grundmann:
36:21
That’s one of the reasons also radio is interesting, and also music. Think about what if you were to walk through a day and think about the spaces in between what people are saying or the spaces in the music and what the spaces do in terms of making that music really pop and be strong and the quality of the conversations when you have some space? That’s my thought for you today.
Ben Binversie:
36:54
Well, I have enjoyed listening and talking, but especially the listening and the spaces in between. Thank you for taking the time to share your story and all the stories that you share as a part of NPR. Thank you so much, Anya.
Anya Grundmann:
37:11
Thank you.
Ben Binversie:
37:35
Anya Grundmann is the vice president of programming and audience development at NPR, and a Grinnell grad from 1989. I’ve come back to this conversation quite a few times since we first talked, and it’s always thought provoking and refreshing, like listening to NPR. You can find some links to Anya’s work on our webpage. Continuing with interacting with the world beyond the spoken realm, we’re going to take a little auditory journey ourselves with Eric McIntyre, professor of music here at the college.
Ben Binversie:
38:03
There was a special exhibition on display this semester to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the opening of Faulconer gallery and commemorate its rededication as the Grinnell College Museum of Art. This inaugural exhibition showcases the wonderful array of works in the collection, sources of inquiry and inspiration as well as pure visual delight. The works are visually astonishing, but that’s not the only way to interact with the exhibit.
Ben Binversie:
38:28
Eric McIntyre, professor of music, responded to the exhibit in his own way. He made a series of six musical compositions in response to works from the exhibition. McIntyre came up with the idea for these compositions in a workshop over the summer with the gallery staff when he got a sneak preview of the upcoming exhibition.
Eric McIntyre:
38:45
Along the way. I started thinking I would actually like to engage with the artwork myself as a creator, and that I would write new music inspired by the work that I see in the show.
Ben Binversie:
38:56
After the exhibition was set up in the gallery, McIntyre made his way through the space.
Eric McIntyre:
39:01
As I came and I walked around the space, there was one work that really attracted my attention. That was this giant red dress that’s hanging off the wall. I realized that was probably where I was going to start because it is very, very striking, and the noting right next to it was with this work by Tinguely, which I had known from when I first saw it that I wanted to deal with it because it’s a fascinating piece. It has a motor on it, and as the motor turns, the artwork is changing constantly.
Eric McIntyre:
39:30
It’s about anticipation, and you can see something coming and you wait for it, and the excitement as it comes and then it fades away. I thought that inspires a lot of music. Then that work when I saw it in the show is actually hanging next to a Calder mobile, and the Calder mobile is made from found objects, things that are industrial in quality and yet they look elegant and airy the way they’re hanging with them. The colors are lighter compared to Tinguely. This contrast is also really inspiring.
Ben Binversie:
40:07
We’re hearing the horn, McIntyre’s primary instrument, but also an instrument that he made himself.
Eric McIntyre:
40:14
Among the things that I do is I work with sculpture, creating what I call dangerous instruments. That is musical instruments from found objects that we might think of as dangerous or that don’t seem to make sense. For example, I work a lot with pitchforks and saw blades. In this case, I was inspired by the Tinguely artwork itself to create an instrument that involves three circular saw blades on a spindle that are turned by a motor.
Eric McIntyre:
40:41
As they turn, they look quite dangerous with the sharp teeth on them, but as they turn, there are spent rifle, brass cartridges hanging, and they ring against them. They create gong like sounds and ringing sounds. They go perpetually, which is why I call it the perpetuum three instruments. So throughout the piece, what’s happening is some mechanical ticking and then things that sound like they’re getting louder and then fading away, and then every once in a while, a glorious swooping melody that I think reflects the way the Calder reaches up and toward the air.
Ben Binversie:
41:43
The next piece that struck McIntyre was by Tau Lewis, "Making it work to be together while we can."
Eric McIntyre:
41:50
The work itself is a fiber work, and it’s hanging on the wall. It’s collage, and it’s made from bits of clothing, some leather pieces, seashells. It’s a big collection of all sorts of things together in this really intriguing shape. The colors are mostly dark. Visually, it’s very striking. Then once I saw the artist’s description of the work that she describes that it’s considering the millions of black people who died at sea during the transatlantic slave trade and then all the things that would be lost along the way and their secrets that belong to their communities, as she says, learning system, spiritual traditions, stories, information systems, and what if these things all still existed underwater?
Ben Binversie:
42:52
Lewis’ collage contains some dark ideas but also hope, and holding those themes together is something McIntyre tried to capture in his own collage.
Eric McIntyre:
43:01
It’s as if they’re struggling to stay together, and that’s why the collage is so important. As I was dealing with myself, I wanted to make sure that the work had this deep undersea aquatic quality and a sense of collage, but also that there were moments of hope and moments that were just very positive. I came into the gallery when it was closed. I took my horn and just recorded myself improvising sounds on the horn. So every sound in there is created by a horn, and there’s no digital editing of the sounds.
Eric McIntyre:
43:40
Then after I’d completed the whole thing, I went back and recited the poem from the artist in whisper. The process for this one was so important to me that once I saw the piece, the whole idea for how it was going to work came to me, and so I knew that I was going to be improvising because I was going to be creating bits of the quilt work. Also when I did the recording in the gallery, it was dark. I haven’t turned the lights on, and so I was able to be in the space, listen to the space, look at the artwork and see shapes in the artwork.
Eric McIntyre:
44:16
Eventually when I created from that improvisation, I had all these pieces that I got to choose from as much as the artists surely did in her creation that she has all these pieces, and looks at all the possibilities, and puts them together.
Ben Binversie:
44:31
The next piece that caught McIntyre’s eye was a series of 13 prints from Carol Walker.
Eric McIntyre:
44:37
They’re giant prints of images from Harper’s pictorial history of the civil war, and as the artist calls it with that title annotated. What the artist has done is take silhouettes of African-American images and caricatures, grotesque caricatures in most cases, and superimpose them over these civil war images that show, as they say, anodyne scenes or everyday scenes where it’s not really action scenes but just peaceful everyday scenes, and yet these grotesque silhouettes on the front showing the torments of slavery and caricatures and the insults to the people.
Eric McIntyre:
45:23
When I first saw the works and I thought, "Okay, what I want to do is something that has a Stephen Foster like song quality to it, and then mess it up and destroy that simple peaceful imagery much in the way the artist has put a different look at it." That’s where the idea of using another one of my created dangerous instruments, the Hornfork, which is a French hornbill welded onto a pitchfork head. It’s a shocking instrument, grotesque and same thing, things that just don’t seem like they belong together.
Eric McIntyre:
45:58
It can be played in a number of ways. It’s essentially a percussion instrument though, and in this case played with a giant washer off a tractor. So bit by bit the horn becomes more excited. It becomes a jauntier tune, a more fun tune, but gradually starts to come off the rails as it goes faster and faster. The pitchfork is just strumming away in this fashion that I think also like Walker’s work is commenting on the seeming civility of the images.
Ben Binversie:
46:44
McIntyre had never interacted with the gallery in this way before, as I’m sure is true for most of us, but he gained a lot from the experience.
Eric McIntyre:
46:52
I can say this has been a fantastic experience for me among other things, for any artists to have a reason to create, and a deadline is good, and that I came out of this with six new works. I found that it was quite reasonably easy for me to get ideas by looking at something someone else has done as opposed to a purely abstract work to have. These are amazing pieces of art. They’re really striking. All the ones that I dealt with, as I looked at them, I was so struck that I couldn’t help but think artistic thoughts.
Eric McIntyre:
47:29
The fact that they demanded that of me, that helps with my artistic growth, and also writing in miniature is something I always strive to maintain that skill because it’s really difficult to be concise in the arts. It’s easy if you have endless time, but to say, "I’ve got 20 minutes, and I’m going to do six pieces," really have to really think about that. I found that to be a great challenge and something that I’m glad that the gallery staff made available for me.
Ben Binversie:
47:57
Now, I’m not a professor of music, and you might not be either, but art inspires a lot of feelings sometimes. We have a ton of faculties within our repertoire to respond to art. I think it’s valuable to nurture those artistic thoughts in whatever way you can. In a way, I do something similar when I score my audio stories. Granted I’m not making the music, not yet anyway, but still, it’s easy to dismiss ourselves as lacking creativity, but I grow more and more confident that every one of us has artistic creative juices.
Ben Binversie:
48:28
So while the evil menace that is society conspires to sap us of these sweet nectars, do your best to let them flow. That’ll do it for this last episode of 2019. Thanks for coming along for the ride, and I’ll see you next year. Music for today’s show comes from Brett Newski, Podington bear, and a new band, the Jury, which includes Grinnell high school teacher, Kent Mick. Kent and his band played recently on Iowa Public Radio.
Ben Binversie:
49:06
You can find a link to his music on the webpage. If you’d like to contact the show, email us at podcast@grinnell.edu or check out our website, grinnell.edu/podcasts for more information about the guests from today’s show. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen.
Ben Binversie:
49:45
I’m your host, Ben Binversie. Stay weird, Grinnellians.