Sometimes stardom makes a performer stupid. Sometimes it even kills them. Why Henry Lau is more important than Pinchas Zukerman.

Stardom is unnatural

It often looks good from the outside, but from the inside it can be a hellish trap. Stardom killed Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, John Coltrane, Prince, and many others. Each of these musicians had an unhealthy relationship with drugs. Just why that is so, that’s not clear, and it certainly varies from case to case. Performance itself can be anxiety provoking; drugs can ease that. Stardom creates an ‘aura’ around the performer, a vicious magic circle that insulates and isolates them from others. Drugs can seem like a way of easing that, but they only amplify the isolation and make it worse.

But not all stars are consumed by stardom. Bruce Springsteen, Duke Ellington, Hilary Hahn, Leonard Bernstein, and Dolly Parton, all seem fine, many others too.

Stardom can stupefy

And some stars merely become stupid behind their stardom. Pinchas Zukerman, a classical star of the first rank, seems to be one of those. As you may know, Zukerman recently made the news for some insensitive remarks he made to a pair of young Japanese-American women participating remotely in a virtual ‘Masterclass’ (scare quotes because you can’t do the work of a Masterclass in that setting). He thought their playing too perfect, too technically clean. It needed to be more lyrical. They needed a touch of “soy sauce” (his term) in their playing.

As far as I can remember this has been a standard charge leveled by an older generation of musicians against a younger generation. It exists in the jazz world as well, though without the particular focus on Asians it seems to have in the classical world. Is it generally true? In some particular cases, probably; but generally, I have no idea whether things are better or worse on this score than they were 50, 100, or 150 years ago.

However, Zukerman didn’t stop there. He also observed that neither Japanese nor Koreans sing. Wherever did he get such silly ideas? I can understand bigotry, and if he doesn’t like Japanese or Korean singing, OK. But to flat out deny that they do it – I think he’s got to work pretty hard at being blind to the world in order to say such things in a quasi-public setting. Then again, maybe he doesn’t have to work at all. Maybe a star-struck world lets him get away with it.

I did a little sleuthing (take a look at the comments to my blog post on this incident) and found out that he’s been saying such things for some time. This is from a 2019 interview:

I think there have always been child prodigies ... People like Horowitz, Rubinstein, Rachmaninoff, Heifetz, these were all great prodigies. Probably in some ways they were even more amazing than those today, because they came from a culture that already understood the inner workings of music and art. Because of where it comes from: Europe, Russia—that’s where the music came from. Not India, or Japan, or Korea. It came from those countries and therefore those prodigies were amazing. They still are! Beethoven, Mozart—these are huge prodigies. They are the ones who have really cultivated the Western hemisphere in the last 500 years to make us who we are today as a society.

Does he really believe that the Japanese, Koreans, and (East) Indians do not understand “the inner workings of music and art.” It may not be Western art, but it is certainly art and the traditions go back millennia.

And then there is a Masterclass – a real face-to-face one-on-one Masterclass – he did with a Chinese violist who is working on the Sibelius Violin Concerto. There’s some crack about China seven or eight minutes in and at various points Zukerman gently shoves the student on his chest – for what reason? This Twitter note captures some stupid and demeaning remarks he makes at the very end:

Pinchas Zukerman: “What you need to understand is that we speak in English in a very different way than you speak in China. You understand? And that’s no fault of yours, that’s the way it is.”

[PZ does some faux-Chinese Ching-Chong talk]

PZ: “That’s not a violin sound.”

Scum. https://t.co/O9OnExCbpN pic.twitter.com/JuXcs065SV

— ninedragonspot (@ninedragonspot) June 29, 2021

Judging from these and other remarks I can only assume that Zukerman has been doing this for years and getting away with it.

Why did he get away with it? Because he is a star, he is The Pinchas Zukerman, Great Virtuoso. And stars have privileges. Apparently those privileges include being a jerk and not getting called on it.

No. I’m not buying it. He may be a star but that doesn’t exempt him from the demands of ordinary civility and decency. We must rid ourselves of practice of fetishizing and, yes, dehumanizing very talented people. It hurts them and it hurts as. It’s an affront to human dignity.

How stardom threatens the future of music

Consider the final paragraphs of my book on music, Beethoven’s Anvil (pp. 280-281):

In 1992 the National Endowment for the Arts surveyed public participation in a variety of arts, including music. People were asked whether or not they had performed music in the past year. The following table presents these results expressed as percentages of the total population:

Public Participation in Music-Making
Type of Music	Private	Public
play jazz	1.7%	0.70 %
play classical	4.2	0.90
sing opera	1.1	0.24
sing musical	3.8	0.73
sing choral	NA	6.3

While this hardly covers all musics performed in America, the numbers, such as they are, speak for themselves: They are low.

Until the 20th century you couldn’t hear music unless you heard live performers. Some cultures musicked more than others, but everyone sang and danced regularly. This participation was critical for Western classical music. By the 19th century pianos graced the parlors of every middle-class household in Europe and America, and someone in those houses played those pianos. Similarly, the working classes of Europe and America were swept by brass bands in the second quarter of the 19th century, and these bands flourished well into the 20th century. That is the world that gave birth to jazz and nursed it into its cultural hegemony during the swing era.

How long can we continue to live on the cultural energy bequeathed us by traditions of active musicking that have become severely attenuated? Are the Western nations living out the consequences of an unholy alliance between Romantic veneration of artistic genius and recording technology? In proper measure, this technology makes a wide variety of music available to each of us, while an appreciation of genius encourages innovation. But the abject veneration of genius devalues the musical capacities of the rest of us and encourages us to substitute recordings for our own music. That path leads to cultural stagnation.

If we wish to hear marvelous new music twenty years from now, we must prepare the way by making our own music now. That music isn’t the responsibility of future geniuses. It is ours.

We must break the hold that genius has on our imagination and learn to make our own music, all of us, with whatever capacities we have. By all means, listen to music made by the very best performers. But remember, they are still human, like you and me. Do not make them prisoners of your admiration, pleasure, and desire.

Make your own music, with friends, family, and members of your community. It will give you pleasures of a kind you cannot get from listening to someone else make music, even if that person or group is a great artist.

Henry Lau is more than a star, he is a human being

Yes, he is a star, one of the biggest on the current K-Pop scene. He can and does perform on a large stage, with elaborate lighting, props, and dancers, for tens of thousands of people. But he is also comfortable busking on the street, which is something no star ever did, at least not once they became a star. My impression is that a lot of musicians of his generation are like that. That certainly seems true of the K-Pop world.

That is a good thing, for it allows him, and allows us, to keep things in proportion. There is music, and it is important. But there is life as well, and it is more important than music. Music must serve life, not the other way around. That’s the danger of stardom, it pretends that stars are Super Beings, above even life itself. And that, as we all know, can make it all too easy for stars to live very destructive lives.

I’ve already written various posts about Henry’s work with young prodigies, where he’ll often pretend to be intimidated by them. He’s not fooling anyone, not even the kids, but it’s great fun. And then we have him horsing around with a younger star, Dong-Won Jeong, on a TV show.

Let’s look at some more videos. Here he is on Chinese TV:

Google Translate renders the Chinese title as: Highlights of "Happy Camp": Liu Xianhua cut-Music Prince Dahua will speak idioms! Too talented to sing and play the violin Happy Camp Recap. Something seems a little off there, but that’s OK. This is obviously some kind of game show full of game show nonsense. But Henry also gets to perform Bruno Mars’ hit “Uptown Funk,” in English. And then he plays his fiddle while dancing and having an over-sized shirt wrapped around his waist. And then something else. You can see for yourself. It appears to be some kind of contest with the losers rolling around in a pit filled with what? ping-pong balls, styrofoam cubes? Does it matter? As long as no one gets hurt, no.

And then we have Henry (pretending) to take a staycation at a hotel:

Wake up, out of bed, get dressed, breakfast (cold pizza?) – not much superstar mystique here. Just ordinary stuff. How Henry washes his face. Really. His fans are interested in this? Some of them: 122,483 views as of July 5, 2021 (it went up on May 25). Henry hangs out by the pool. Sings a bit. OJ. Sunblock. You mean superstars need sunblock just like us?

Let’s look at one last video: Henry & Solar Do Each Others Makeup And Make Beautiful Music! He’s got a whole series of these ‘carpool’ videos. I wonder if he got the idea of Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee?

This is obviously set around Christmas time. And, yes, they’re going to do one another’s makeup. And they’re both going to end up with red noses and reindeer antlers. Why? you ask, Why? Isn’t that obvious? So they can make music together. They do a ballad, “Snow Flower,” with Henry on violin and Solar on vocals. And then “Jingle Bell Rock.”

Aren’t those red noses cute?

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So what do I mean when I say that Henry Lau is more important than Pinchas Zukerman? Is he a more important musician? I don’t know. It’s hard to compare them as they operate in different musical spheres. Though Henry is trained as a classical violinist, I’m pretty sure Zukerman is better. He’s devoted his life to it while Henry, he uses his fiddle for other things. I’m pretty sure Henry’s a better dancer, but dancing is irrelevant to Zukerman’s professional life. No, THAT kind of comparison isn’t what I have in mind. Besides, Zukerman is near the end of his career, while Henry has decades to go.

I’m thinking about how they enact their public role as stars. Zukerman is playing the traditional role of the musical genius. Henry is doing something else. Whatever that something else is, we need it right now as an antidote to destructive aspects of the traditional role. 

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Addendum, 9.14.21: From an interview with Belgian filmmaker, Thierry Loreau, published in the Korea Times:

He said he's noticed major changes in the time he's been watching Korean classical performers, even in the time between making his 2012 documentary "Korean Music Mystery" and his 2020 film "K-Classics Generation."

"There is suddenly a new emotion and feeling, compared to my first film," he said. "The teachers really understand that young musicians have to show their feelings. It is much more original and inspiring. Korean musicians have so many emotions and the music expresses them. Maybe they have the experience of K-pop, and they bring something new." [...]

"My movie is (trying) to change the mentality of (Europeans). If you go to (classical music concerts in) Europe, nobody is younger than in their 60s. I think the only people who might bring us something new are from Korea. The center of classical music is shifting to Korea, as it is popular and trendy there. I think that it is good for Korean people to know that there are not only K-pop and K-dramas, but also K-classics, which are the best in the world."