An Introduction to The University City Musician Documentary Project & Sounding the Chord

The history of music and musicianship from the entire St. Louis area is rich and legendary. Globally recognized pioneers in various types of the musical arts from Scott Joplin to Chuck Berry to Miles Davis to Tina Turner to Michael McDonald have called the space at the confluence of the 3rd and 4th longest rivers in the world home.

The strength of the backbone of music in St. Louis is undeniable.

But one place where the importance of the arts and artists is so strong that the names and life stories of the practitioners of the music arts is literally written in stone and metal is University City. Founded in 1906, U. City was built, in part, with the hope of being a place where the arts would be pervasive throughout daily life and be spread throughout the country.

I am a native of U. City. I've lived in the Central West End of St. Louis, the resident halls of UMR in Rolla, Missouri, the classic back streets of Madrid, Spain, the jam-packed residential cubicles of Tokyo/Yokohama, Japan, and currently live in a never-asleep neighborhood of New York City. Throughout my travels I've been fortunate enough to meet many professional artists of many stripes.

When I've asked many artists about what it was like growing up as an artist/musician in their hometowns, they've often said that they were standouts as performers in their home communities and that not many other people were into what they were into. This sentiment wasn't unusual to them or others they knew, but it was certainly very unusual to me having grown up with the arts being as commonplace as stoplights.

While I am not, and have never been, a professional musician, I certainly know the level of significance that playing music from 5th grade through 12th grade at  has made in my life. And the fact that I knew so many people that came through the that went on to be paid, professional musicians or music professionals made me an oddity among the many hyper-talented artists that began to know in New York City.

After a while, the journalist in me finally woke up and realized that there had to be a story in the history of all of the musicians that have come out of U. City. So in January of 2009, I organized a party for U. City expats in New York called "UC In NYC Before DC." Almost 30 U. Citians came out from as far away as Vermont and Virginia in the snow to get together and we heard music played by some of our compatriots. The success of the event let me know for sure that there was something special about the depth and breadth of the culture of music in and around University City.

Skipping forward to March of 2011, I decided to fly out to the Pacific Northwest to begin documenting three U. City artists that I knew and heard about in Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, and Portland, Oregon. Since that first frame of video of cellist Mary Riles in Seattle, I've gone on to do full interviews with 50 other U. City related people in 37 cities and in 15 US states/territories. I've also been able to capture more than 90 U. City musicians/teachers/artists on camera, the last of which was Les Burnside on both the islands of St. Thomas and St. John in the US Virgin Islands that he calls home now.

And with the help of all of the followers of this project on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking platforms, we've been able to identify more than 187 potential interview subjects in at least 11 different countries. It's been a truly amazing year and 3 months meeting people from my hometown who graduated high school from as far back as 1955 and who will leave UCHS in 2013 and the final goal is pretty big.

The whole kit-and-caboodle that I've decided to take on is The University City Musician Documentary Project. The aim is to try to find the roots of the arts, in general, and music, in particular, in University City and get to the core of how the arts became part of the culture of U. City and maintained itself over more than 100 years in spite of all of the changes in taste, demographics, and finances. And I also want to find and show the impact that the artists from U. City have had on the entire world, no matter of the level of perceived "success" that individuals have had and the links to the public education they received in the University City School District.

I plan on presenting what is found in many forms: online social networking, still photography, videos, still photography shows, multimedia gallery shows, a feature length movie, books, concerts, and media for archival purposes...a true documentation of all that I can reasonably find over the course of the next couple of years.

The segment of this project that I'm in now is called "Sounding The Chord." This is where the call goes out for all people who 1) lived in U. City for at least one year, 2) went to the public schools in U. City for at least one year, and 3) went on to be a paid, professional musician or music professional for at least one year of their lives. We want them to sound out and make themselves known to be interviewed on camera, no matter where in the world they are, and have us document them playing, singing, or performing. I plan on stopping the active search for on-camera interviews once I hit 200 people on camera.

The results of these meetings of people during Sounding The Chord will be presented in gallery shows and hopefully in a coffee table book and concerts. The film portion of the documentary is a longer project that will involve selected bits of interviews from the musicians and teachers spoken with and additional context surrounding music, St. Louis, other cities and countries, and the history of the region.

I invite you to enjoy the first stage of this project already by checking out all of the online and social media links for the project that are listed below. This section has been running strong and growing since March 2011 and we have over 515 fans on Facebook. We will be beginning stage two of Sounding The Chord with a gallery showing of stills photography and video clips of interviews at the University City Public Library on Friday, Sept. 21, 2012. You are invited to come out that evening from 7-9 since I will be in town to show some of what I have collected, get community input, and answer questions.

I look forward to using this blog space to also present some of the very unique and interesting findings from the participants I have spoken with so far. So please, no matter where you're from, come along and join us in unearthing some of the historic music culture that has been growing on the banks of the River Des Peres for more than 100 years.

Rod Milam

Creator & Director for The University City Musician Documentary Project

Join the project mailing list: http://www.milamnyc.com/ucdocmailinglistsignup

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