What Walt Taught Me: Make Mine Music

Last updated on: August 6, 2015 at 9:41 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

What Walt Taught Me: Make Mine Music 2015-08-06T09:41:23-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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They were cool cats once.

World War II changed everything, but what if you just missed the War? What if for the rest of your life older brothers or dads fought and you simply grew up in the peaceful world they made? Just as the generation that came of age in 1866 must been thankful to have missed the Civil War, so the kids of 1946 must have been glad senior year did not mean getting shipped to Europe or the Pacific . . . and yet the years just before and during the war were so important that it is hard even to remember that 1946-1950 happened. We hasten from the end of the War to the Eisenhower Years, even forgetting the Korean Conflict that was such a mixed bag.

Make Mine Music is Woodstock for the generation of youngsters that did not get to win World War II but were too old for Elvis. They came of age, like my dad, just as the War ended. They were the Forever Plaid Generation.

I was lucky enough to have them as my music teachers in an era that still prized teaching music and still believed (as Walt did) that some music was worth teaching. Peter and the Wolf was shown to me so long ago in school that I cannot remember when I first saw it. All I know is that Russia, snow, fairy tales, and the music stayed with me all my life. Once a love of Russia began here and several other places, a book came of it.

Walt made sure that even Make Mine Music!, a more pop program than Fantasia, contained excellent or high music. Why? He thought that some music was of lasting value and his sense of what would last was roughly right. Most of the pop music selections have not worn well. Once pop music is no longer popular, then it is simply unpopular simple music. The flaws are manifest when the charm is gone.

It is no accident that when music appreciation ceased to pass on the “greats” it was cut from many schools. If all a teacher is doing is passing on her favorite tunes, then Spotify can do that for free! My music teachers, like my literature teachers, were broadening my musical world from what I did like to what I could and should like. They taught me to love more than what I had loved before taking their class.

That kind of music education that dares to make judgments like: “Bach matters. Stravinsky matters. Coltrane matters.” is worth defending and funding. Walt Disney was an ally to that generation of music teachers: a pop culture maven who loved teachers. Walt had (himself) been an indifferent student, but this was partly because the curriculum of the schools he was forced to attend was not broad enough. He was an advocate of arts and music education because he knew how much he had needed such teaching himself.

Americans need more education of all kinds, but education in the greats of music and art is most pressing. Walt Disney could make a concert film like Make Mine Music! and people could go because they were still not arrogant enough to believe that their particular tastes were sanctified. Walt gave them the fun stuff, but he also helped expose a generation to the better content. At the time, music snobs sniffed at his simple efforts and how he limited the difficulty of the pieces for his audience, but I can personally testify it worked: I began with Peter and the Wolf and I ended by choosing to go to ballet in Saint Petersburg on my holiday. I am no opera, orchestral, or band expert. I am not even very well informed in those areas, but I go and one reason is Walt Disney and the help he gave my music teachers.

The generation that Walt shaped loved popular music, fun, and entertainment. He also understood that the civilization that made mass culture possible also gave the masses an opportunity to enjoy excellent things that used to belong only to the aristocrats. It was the genius of this most republican of men, Walt Disney, to appreciate consumer culture and to limit it. He did not always give us just what we wanted, but was always trying to help those (like our teachers) in giving us what we needed.

Mass culture made mass excellence a living possibility. There was also the danger that Mr. Disney and his products would come to represent the cleanest, purest, highest, most decent thing we would see and consume. If that happened, and perhaps it did for many, then Disney failed. But at least for many of my peers, and a bit for me, Uncle Walt worked with our teachers to make mine music!

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