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Remarks as written by MCCM(SW/AW/EXW) Jon McMillan, Master Chief for U.S. Navy Public Affairs Syracuse University Military Visual Journalism Program Graduation May 7, 2015 Pop and Punk I was running many ideas through my mind about what I wanted to say to you on your graduation from the course here at Syracuse. As part of very effective procrastination campaign, I started watching HBOs “Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck” documentary. I’ve always been fascinated by people who create and make new things by combining things we never thought could -‐-‐-‐ or should -‐-‐ be combined. Nirvana was like that for me. Light and Heavy. Pop and Punk. I had heard sort-‐of similar music before -‐-‐ like the Pixies -‐-‐ but it never really reached me -‐-‐ it never communicated to me in the way Nirvana did -‐-‐ and at times -‐-‐ does. So this documentary grabbed my attention. The story was interesting to me. But the way the documentary was told fascinated me. It’s authentic with the expected home videos. It’s full of context with multiple interviews with family and friends and their 20 years of hindsight and reflection. And then there’s what really got me: Kurt Cobain’s art. Audio recordings of him telling stories and working through his creative process of making music. Animated segments of sketches and drawings from Cobain’s notebooks. Sections highlighting his letters, journal entries, lyrics and random thoughts. Kurt Cobain was a mixed media artist. He wrote. He drew. He designed. And he made music. Seeing his work -‐-‐ and hearing more than just his published songs -‐-‐ provided me a new way to understand his story.
*** This is something many of us in the Navy have been thinking about. How can we provide a new way to help people better understand our story? Part of the answer is you -‐-‐ our Syracuse graduates. We believe the education you receive here -‐-‐ and the mentorship you will provide to others when you leave -‐-‐ can
help us tell our story better. Your work in storytelling through multimedia, writing, sound production, design, photojournalism and broadcasting builds a tremendous foundation. The challenge for each of you will be how you apply all this when you return to the Fleet. Will you be able to translate the storytelling skills you developed here to the types of stories you’ll be asked to produce in the Fleet?
*** It reminds me of a story a famous musician found himself in back in the late 1700s. At the age of 17 or 18, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart landed a job in Salzburg, Austria as the court musician and composer. This was a job his father had set up with the Archbishop in order to keep a steady flow of money coming into the Mozart family. The job though didn’t sit well with Mozart. He had spent his youth travelling Europe with his family playing for Kings and Queens, meeting and learning from the leading minds in music, playing and composing in every conceivable genre, listening to the best orchestras, and watching Italian Operas. And now he was relegated to life in Salzburg. Isolated from the European centers of music. Asked to play and compose music he felt was dead and conventional and had no way of stirring emotions or being expressive. I guess you can say Mozart was being asked to compose something like a Navy dot Mil story or a general military news article for his time. He ended up moving to Vienna though where he began creating at an intense rate. He used the knowledge he gained travelling Europe and playing all those different genres to his advantage. He started to stretch the boundaries of traditional music and transform those songs in ways no one had ever heard. He found ways to make his music powerful and expressive and broke away from the style of music people had grown to expect. You see, back then the piano concerto and symphony had become light and pop-‐like genres with short and simple movements and a lot of melody. To Mozart, it all must have sounded a lot like elevator music. So, Mozart reworked those forms from within. He composed works for larger orchestras. He expanded the violin sections. His works gave the orchestra a more
powerful sound and he established tension and dissonance that would build and build to a climax and then reveal a grand and dramatic finale. Light and Heavy. Pop and Punk.
*** We’re trying to create something similar for the Navy. Let’s say it’s our version of Light and Heavy. Pop and Punk. We’re on a mission to create Navy content that is both. We need fast and easy-‐to-‐digest content. Quick. Light. “Ok. Got it”-‐ type stories, information summaries, short videos, informational posters. Content that is like pop music: Accessible to many; easy to understand and easy to remember. Content that is mobile, social, visual and shareable. Content that is produced and released now -‐-‐ as it happens. Not in an hour. Not in a day. But now. As quick as we can get it out and be accurate and clear. You know. Pop music.
*** A musician who’s been really good at getting in on the “now” is Sonny Moore. He was the lead singer of the band “From First to Last” from 2004 to 2006. The group mixed Emo and Hardcore -‐-‐ imagine confessional and expressive lyrics with fast, heavy and abrasive punk. It’s a different way of thinking about light and heavy. Pop and Punk. Well, Sonny was plugged in. He met his band on MySpace when it was the largest social networking site in the world. They marketed their album through social media and started booking shows through connections they made online. As social media began to break and become a monster force, so did “From First To Last.” They were booked on the Vans Warped Tour and got bigger and bigger as they promoted their social media pages at all their concerts. Of course, trends move fast. MySpace died. “From First To Last” faded. And Sonny Moore left the band, rented a warehouse in L.A. and started playing on his computer. He started creating Electronic Dance Music and posting it online for free. He continued to promote his work on social media and started playing parties.
He was offered a major breakthrough job remixing a Lady Gaga song… and started calling himself Skrillex. His take on electronic dance music and dubstep became big. Very big. He took the genre to a new place as he mixed pop dance music with heavy deep bass drops and wobble that became his signature sound. Light and Heavy. Pop and Punk.
*** What’s amazing about Skrillex to me is how he has been able to ride on different pop and punk waves and his ability to combine mulitple trends. What’s also amazing is he doesn’t stick with just one way. He moves in and out of trends and finds new ways to connect with his fans. Skrillex understands that pop trends shift. What’s popular and meaningful now may not be useful in a day. The shelf-‐life of pop is natually short. As we create our pop stories that are accessible to many; easy to understand and easy to remember; we can’t forget that much of it is disposable. Content that is mobile, social, visual and shareable is also inheritantly expendable. I have no idea what was in my Twitter feed an hour ago. I never scroll all the way down my Facebook feed to see what happened yesterday.
***
This is why we need the heavy. In addition to the Pop, we need the Punk. And this is where you and the particular skills you learned here come in to play the most. Mozart’s expanded orchestras and violin sections are like storytelling details and color. It adds richness and context. It fills the mind and can create powerful, moving experiences. Skrillex’s way of understaning what resonates with crowds allows him to connect to people through both rock and electronic dance music. Working in mixed media and telling our stories through sounds, graphics, moving pictures, still images and written words can provide a depth of understanding -‐-‐ a holistic look inside, around, above and below the stories we tell. Like Kurt Cobain’s mixed media art -‐-‐ the more ways we can share, the more ways people will have to understand us.
We need to create these deeper, more contextual pieces of work that resonate with our audiences. The work can take many forms: Written, audio, video or multimedia feature stories or series; Storytelling narratives; Full on documentaries; Detailed and data-‐driven stories and infographics.
*** Head out to the Fleet and embrace both the Pop and the Punk. Listen and seek to understand your audiences. Find ways to resonate with them and make something new by combining styles, media, and communication channels in ways we don’t think is possible. Build your own Montage of Heck; Symphony of expression; connection to the now. Find your own balance between the Pop and the Punk and sing it to all who’ll listen. The foundation has been built. It’s now up to you to rework our media world from within. Let’s use the pop to bring people in and use the punk to take their breath away.
*** Link to audio of delivered speech: https://soundcloud.com/jon-‐e-‐mcmillan/pop-‐and-‐punk-‐syracuse-‐may-‐7-‐2015?in=jon-‐e-‐mcmillan/sets/my-‐speeches