Music matters for two rockin’ WCC instructors
RICK GONZALES
Contributor
ROB SATTERTHWAITE COURTESY PHOTO
If the pen is mightier than the sword, the guitar is mightier than both — and 33 percent cooler, too. And while the guitar might be a relatively recent invention, music itself predates the earliest human writing.
Music has been with us for more than 30,000 years, Norman Weinberger estimates in an article for Scientific American. He also notes that no civilization has ever been discovered that was devoid of music. Quite simply, music is a fundamental human constant like food, water and sex.
“Music is universal,” notes Lee Tondra, a psychology teacher at WCC. Like many in his field, Tondra feels “it’s entirely possible that music predates human language.”
In addition to being a distinct form of communication, music very well may elicit distinct emotional reactions beyond those accessible to language. The intensity of emotion elicited by music is on par with those elicited by love, sex and drugs.
Communications as a performance art
It’s 5:58 p.m. on a Tuesday; two minutes until the advertised start time. Realistically, it’ll probably be a couple minutes later to give the stragglers a chance to find their seats.
Most people have butterflies this close to “show time,” but Rod Satterthwaite isn’t nervous. Satterthwaite, who prefers Satt for convenience, is a journalism instructor for Dexter High School and Washtenaw Community College, as well as a bass player with the band Progress Report. So he’s used to performing for an audience. He performed yesterday, he’ll perform tomorrow and this is his second performance today.
Noticing the time, he finishes up a conversation with an audience member and prepares to start.
As Satt surveys the crowd, he isn’t surprised to see less than half of the seats filled. He usually performs in a room twice the size of tonight’s with every seat full. But it’s always a smaller, slightly older audience when he’s in Ann Arbor.
It’s 6:01 p.m. — time to begin the show.
As Satt steps to the front, the audience falls silent and waits for Satt to start. He takes a deep breath and begins, announcing this week he’ll be introducing how to write opinion articles, particularly editorials and columns.
Like most musicians, Satt tends to see the world a little differently than most. He finds little difference in discussing the finer points of journalistic ethics or plowing through the bassline for “Back in Black.” Both are opportunities to perform, share and communicate his passions. The subject is almost secondary for Satt, “the connection is the powerful part.”
Satt has a talent connecting with students. WCC student Lindsay Baker put it this way, “Satt is just amazing.” She first met Satt four years ago when she was a freshman at Dexter High School. She cites Satt as sparking her interest in journalism and communications.
“Satt makes everything fun,” she said. “You don’t feel like you’re doing work.”
Satt thinks he knows why his classes are often described as fun.
“I get bored too easy,” he said almost sheepishly. “I’m just trying to keep myself entertained.”
Looking rebellious and being rebellious are two different things
Seeing Lee Tondra walk across campus, it’s not difficult to discern that he’s a teacher. Not many students wear a tie and slacks to class. But true to the cliché, you can’t always judge a book by its cover.
Tondra knew he wanted to teach psychology in a community college when he was 18 years old. But long before Tondra discovered psychology or teaching, he discovered the guitar. And even today, beneath the conservative clothes and his familiarity of multisyllabic words, Tondra still has a healthy rebellious streak.
“I started playing because it got me out of class,” Tondra recalls. At the time, he wasn’t playing guitar yet. He was playing the baritone horn. But the rebellious nature of a guitarist was already there.
Due to his outward appearance, many of his students might be surprised to discover that Led Zeppelin’s “untitled” (aka IV and ZoSo), the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s” and Ozzy Ozborne’s “Blizzard of Ozz” are among his favorite albums. Tondra also mentions “Blizzard of Ozz” guitarist Randy Rhodes and Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page as his main musical influences.
Psychologists typically have a penchant for analytical thinking, but Tondra generally doesn’t like getting too analytical when talking about music.
“I could certainly talk about music analytically,” he said. “But I want to keep it just fun.”
Don’t let ‘the man’ get you down
In a classroom setting, the teacher is obviously an authority figure. And rock music, by definition is anti-authoritarian. Yet Tondra and Satt don’t see any conflict between their jobs as The Man and their musical hobby typically associated with opposing The Man.
Sattherthwaite tells his classes that, in essence, good journalism should hold a mirror up to society so we can see how things are, warts and all. In the same vein, he says, “Good music is a reflection of the times, of the society.”
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