Where Will the Real American Idols Come From?

By Jeff Tamarkin

Published in Global Rhythm, August 2005

Sometimes I think that I am the only person in the country who has never watched American Idol. I read about the show all the time (it's everywhere, so how can you not?), and I have some idea of how it works and what the point of it is, but I just have not been able to muster enough enthusiasm to actually turn it on. I guess that puts me out of the loop big time but I don't care, because in my way of thinking true success as a musical performer is not something that can be attained by beating out other contestants on a TV show.

Call me crazy, but I always thought a real idol was an artist who constructed a solid fan base by working hard and building a reputation from the ground up-playing live in clubs, making recordings, etc. Word of mouth-"you've got to see/hear this person I just saw/heard"-has traditionally been a very effective tool in establishing a lasting career for an artist, and I'm skeptical that any of the winners of this ongoing televised competition will be in the spotlight for long, regardless of how talented they might actually be.

A show like American Idol is a shortcut to the top, but it almost guarantees that those who survive to the coveted end of a cycle will enjoy a flash of fame that will almost invariably dissipate as other winners come along. The system that creates an American Idol virtually ensures that the crash will be as swift as the ascent.

I understand that something like 100,000 wannabe idols audition for each season and that the whittling process ultimately finds the two best battling it out. How nice for them, but already some previous winners are finding that their big moment was just that, and that their once-adoring public has moved on to, well, the next winner.

Believe it or not, I thought about all this while I was watching a 12-year-old boy playing the piano at my son's elementary school. He's a kid who has taken lessons since age four, money well spent. In his brief recital the child played jazz classics by Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus, a tune by Gershwin and a snippet of Bach. This wasn't mere mimicry either-he understood the music he was playing and made it his own. While his musicianship was not yet at a level that could be called professional, his interpretational and improvisational skills were quite admirable.

In talking to him afterwards, I learned that the boy has been a jazz fanatic for a few years now, especially fond of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. It is unusual, of course, for someone so young in 2005 America to even know these names, let alone admire them, but it proved to me that the road to real artistic achievement can still be traveled the long, hard way, with impressive results. It also reminded me of the value of a musical education, both formal and personal, something too many of our learning institutions have abandoned and not enough parents encourage.

The boy told me that he had little interest in the current pop scene-he was determined to become an accomplished jazz pianist and hoped only that he would some day be recognized as an innovator. I felt that he was well on his way.

But, I wondered, how will he ever find that level of achievement in a culture that increasingly values overnight sensations at the expense of a solid background in music and the time-honored tradition of the performing arts that actually centers on performing? While I don't doubt that the contestants who become finalists on American Idol are indeed talented, will they be able to sustain interest in that talent once the TV cameras are no longer pointing their way? Who will still care about them a few years down the road?

On the other hand, if this young pianist were to try out for American Idol, would he even make the first cut? A show like this does not seek to honor artistic merit, it strives by its very definition to create "idols," and those are two very different things.

I'll be happy to tune in when a major (or minor) network creates a program called Brilliant Artists In The Making. But the idols will have to find their way to the top-and bottom-without my help.