Talking to: Julian Leeks
Julian Leeks is a songwriter, guitarist, singer and composer, as well as the founder and director of Sound World.
Please tell us a little about what Sound World is, how it came to be, and your goals as a charity?
It started as an extension of an organization I used to run called New Music in the South West, which involved putting on concerts, running educational projects in schools and commissioning new music. In 2018, we changed our name to Sound World, we registered with the charity commission, and carried on doing the same core events, at the same time we expanded into more ambitious things. For example, on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, we did a project with We The Curious, there was a planetarium show which we commissioned and recorded the music for, which premiered with We The Curious but then went to planetaria all over the world, which was really exciting.
We’ve also done projects working with schools in disadvantaged areas. The schools didn’t have the sort of opportunities that you might get if you went to a private school, or a different state school. At that point, COVID came along, which wiped out everything. It took a long time for schools to be happy with external providers coming in.
We did do various other things; we did a lockdown album where we commissioned composers to write new music, we recorded them playing their parts in isolation and knitted it all together in the studio – that was fun! And we now also have a house band, called Sound World, and they have a residency at The Mount Without in Bristol, which was going really well, it’s a lovely place there and they’re a great team to work with. Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful with some Arts Council funding and that’s had to be put on hold for a while, but we do have new plans to resume that.
We noticed that fewer and fewer schools were able to participate in our educational events, for the simple reason that departments are closing, and fewer and fewer people are getting the opportunity to do music in schools. Someone I interviewed for the podcast told me that there is only one school in Bristol now that does A Level music, and this impression of what the trajectory was led me to look into it a little bit, and the numbers are shocking – the lowest ever number of young people recorded are playing instruments, with fewer and fewer teachers available and fewer schools doing music. A Level music is predicted to disappear from state schools completely by 2032, which is just around the corner really.
It occurred to me that this is so much bigger than me worrying about classical, or contemporary classical music, because if things continue like that, we will reach the point where we will go below the critical mass of musicians needed to sustain a viable musical culture, so as I say in the podcast, it will affect everything from Friday night Pub Bands, to the London Symphony, to Nativity plays, to Oscar winning films. Everything will be affected. So that’s the whole point of the podcast.
What would you say the key issues are that are affecting the health of the British music industry? You touched upon education already, for example.
Obviously, not everyone needs to have a music teacher. There are people who are self taught – I was self-taught for most of my young musical life – but the vast majority of people, whatever genre they are involved in, have someone in their background who motivated them, someone who taught them, someone who inspired them. It is the educational thing is the biggest problem.
Allied to that is the fact that people aren’t really aware of these issues. If you look in a listings magazine to see what’s available, particularly in a city like Bristol or London, you would look at loads of bands and orchestras, gigs and concerts and stuff and think that everything is really healthy. But that doesn't mean everything is going to continue being healthy, because the health of the music scene at the moment is reflective of how things were educationally 20 years ago. You can’t look at music now and think it’ll be the same in 20 years’ time, you have to think how many young people are doing music now, how many young people are having those opportunities, and the answer is nothing like as many as should. That’s your indicator for what things might be like in 20 or 30 years time.
It seems so unimaginable that we could get to the point where there just aren’t enough musicians or music teachers, but that’s the problem – because it’s a slow reduction, it’s like shifting baseline syndrome. We aren’t going to have any one generation that’s going to experience a sudden and massive loss of music, gradually it’s going to happen, and the trajectory only leads to one place. I think even musicians aren’t necessarily aware of it. Some are, some aren’t. As musicians, at work and at home, we are surrounded by music all the time, and we meet loads of musical young children by the nature of our work, but that is totally disproportionate to real life, it doesn’t reflect the real-world situation at all so I think even a lot of musicians can miss the point.
Anyone who loves music really needs to be aware of this, and stand up and do whatever you can, to safeguard it for the future.
Absolutely! I wanted to touch on the podcast, how has the reception been to it so far?
I’ve been really pleased at the reception. We’ve got such great guests – it’s an easy job for me, I get to talk to these people and they say interesting stuff, and we just put it in the right order! It’s been really well received, yeah.
Have you got any particularly exciting guests lined up that you can tell us about?
Most of the guests that we’re talking to have already appeared, at least in a tiny way. We’ve got a full-length interview with a guy called Peter Floch, who is an AI specialist. Some of the interviews veer quite a long way away from music, but the way I think about it is – something like AI, there is so much hysteria and hyperbole about it, it’s quite good to hear someone speaking a little bit calmly, so in a way an episode like that is a bit of an outlier. But we do talk about music as well of course!
We’ve got a full-length interview with an author called Ian McGilchrist. He wrote an astonishing book called The Master and His Emissary, and he is very very interested in music. He’s something of a polymath; he’s a psychiatrist, he’s been a GP, a neuroscience researcher, a literary scholar – he’s extraordinary. But he also believes that music is really central to our lives, and if you look at the terrible direction things appear to be going in the world, things like music help, because they make people more thoughtful and less binary.
We’ve also got Daisy Fancourt, who is the lead for the WHO’s group on arts and health, she’s amazing, and she talks about the fact that we’ve got music disappearing from schools at a time where we’ve got a mental health crisis, and music can do so much to help that.
As individuals, how would you say we can help?
That’s a difficult question! On one hand throughout the podcast series we’re highlighting problems, but we’re also highlighting the value of music.
As a little example, I was talking to someone a couple of weeks ago who runs a music organization, who was offering local primary schools the chance for professional musicians to come in and run a music assembly for free. One of the schools said to them “no thanks, we don’t really do music” – that’s mad. If someone has children or they are a child themselves, and they go to a school and there’s no music provision – ask why there isn’t. It isn’t going to change overnight, but people need to understand how important it is, and how much it can do for a school. The fourth episode of our podcast was all about what children get from music, and people listen to that podcast and listen to really knowledgeable people - I mentioned Daisy Fancourt – talking about what music can actually do, and share that with as many people as possible. Share that with teachers, tell them that it’s important. Music can change a whole environment at a school.
And also, go to as much live music as possible. Whatever music you’re into, go and see it live. Another big issue is all the independent venues closing. Music is being attacked from multiple fronts.
What I’d like to see is a future where – and I’m just looking locally here – there is a community of what I like to call adventurous listeners, they’re not classical music listeners, they’re not world music listeners, they’re people who are interested in all kinds of music. Bit of jazz, classical, contemporary, whatever.
Is to be part of music, and if we could build that kind of community in Bristol, people can come along and talk to composers, talk to musicians. Amateur musicians – get out there and play. One thing we’re going to do is open mic sessions, they’re great fun, where people can come along and take part in spontaneous collaborations, improvising, try out pieces they’re writing, students can come and play – and to make music part of your life and be as involved in it as you possibly can. That’s what I’d like to see.
One final thing I wanted to ask you about is your thoughts on AI and music?
It is another of those fronts on which music is being attacked, isn’t it? It’s such a fast changing field, it’s difficult to know what might be possible in 5 years time. I find it difficult to imagine that it’ll ever be able to really completely replace proper musicians – well, it won’t be able to replace proper musicians. The trouble is, people have a tendency to try and find the cheapest possible way of ever doing anything and then not being too concerned about if it works or not.
Going back to schools as an example, if you go to a school play, particularly if it’s a primary school, and 90% of the time they are singing along to some awful backing track that’s been recorded, and it’s absolutely anodyne, it’s the type of music that sucks all the life and joy out of the process.
In a way, AI has the potential to do that, but in a more far-reaching way. Really not a fan of aimless background music. But one thing to be said about it is it gets musicians paid. If you’re struggling to get recognition in whatever field you’re in, you can get work as session musician. You can do something and get paid in that way, and that I think will completely go. Why would people pay royalties when they can just get some nonsense done by AI?
I think it has huge potential to have an awful effect on the aural environment we live in. I’d rather go into a supermarket and not hear music, I’d rather hear someone walking down the aisles whistling, it’s more real. At least if it’s recorded music it is actually humans, but imagine everywhere you go having this lifeless, weirdly perfect, constant backing track.
Films is a massive area. The idea of using AI in film scores, that’s a danger. It’s never going to be able to replace a great band, a great jazz band, a great rock band, an orchestra or ensemble, but I suspect that wherever it can creep in where it will.
Interview by Chris Hughes
Find Sound World online
Listen to the Sound World podcast, ‘A land without music?’, hosted by Julian, here
Opinion
