[Steven] Van Zandt has a way to counter all this, at least where music is concerned. He\u2019s drawn up a high school music curriculum that tells American history through music. It would introduce students to Muddy Waters, the Mississippi Sheiks, Bob Dylan and the Allman Brothers. He\u2019s trying to use music to motivate and engage students, but most of all, he is trying to establish a canon, a common tradition that reminds students that they are inheritors of a long conversation.<\/p>\n
And Van Zandt is doing something that is going to be increasingly necessary for foundations and civic groups. We live in an age in which the technological and commercial momentum drives fragmentation. It\u2019s going to be necessary to set up countervailing forces \u201d\u201d institutions that span social, class and ethnic lines.<\/p>\n
Music used to do this. Not so much anymore.<\/p>\n