Searching for the Soul of the Guitar

Searching for the Soul of the GuitarI’m Matthew Cochran, host of the Classical Guitar Dispatch, this brand-new podcast that you are kind enough to be listening to. Normally, the tagline that I’ll use to end my intro is that the show is dedicated to telling the story of the guitar. And while that statement is true, it’s not the whole, entire truth.The whole, entire truth is that I’m on a mission to find the soul of the guitar. And look, I know how that sounds. It’s a frankly embarrassing statement for me to make. I worry that you will think it’s pretentious, cheesy, and self-indulgent. And maybe it is. But I turn 50 this year, which means I’m on the back nine of my time as a conscious entity on this little blue orb. And so far, most of my good memories involve the guitar. Most of the beauty I’ve experienced has been in some way shaped by the guitar. I play the guitar, write music for it, record myself and others playing it, and I love it. I just love it.But there’s a frustrating element to loving the guitar, particularly the classical guitar. And that is how profoundly misunderstood the instrument is. Even in specialist circles, it’s often portrayed as the cartoon version of itself. You know, the hyper-macho, Spanish Romance version of the instrument. That may have something to do with the fact that every regional, semi-professional, or professional orchestra puts the Aranjuez on its Valentine’s Day concert or its "Spanish Fire Fundraising Extravaganza" once every five seasons or so. Yet, if you’d like to hear one of the hundreds of other guitar concertos available by any composer whose name is not Rodrigo, I mean, just forget it. As far as music institutions go, there’s a constant drumbeat from administrators to sell the guitar as the everything instrument, which, of course, dilutes the quality of their offerings and makes the guitar into an advertising tagline.  Like, “come to our school, and our single-person guitar faculty who by the way studied classical guitar performance will magically make you an expert in jazz slash rock slash songwriting slash composition slash music production slash classical/flamenco blah blah blah…which, if you know anything about how hard each one of those individual artistic disciplines are, then you know that those admissions programs, development offices, and marketing teams are, knowingly or not, slinging a load of horseshit just to get another student in the door because they care way more about their job security than they care about actually educating the students who pay those salaries. By the way, if this sounds heretical, don’t take my word for it, just look up dwindling enrollment numbers, demographic shifts, and superimpose those numbers onto how many eliminated positions, cost-cutting measures, and music school closures there have been over the past decade or so, and do your own math.That’s the way I view the state of affairs in the most visible areas of the mainstream classical music profession, so it’s no wonder how superficially the guitar is presented to the general public. But I’m sooooo tired of seeing the guitar as a prop in press photos and Instagram posts that aren’t about the guitar at all; they’re just thirst traps that want me to buy stuff or click on a link or whatever. And I’m exhausted by my YouTube or TikTok channel’s dumb algorithm that thinks I want to hear Leyenda. Again. Played pretty well. Again. By yet another person that the algorithm thinks I will find attractive. Again. Please don’t misunderstand me here, I have nothing against youth and beauty. It’s a time-tested mechanism to get people’s attention. If that’s what you’ve got to offer, go for it. And if that’s all you need from the guitar, you know, have fun or whatever.   But for me, it’s just not enough. I mean, we live in an age when most of the music written for the guitar is available for us to play, to listen to, to enjoy. Much of the repertoire has been recorded, in some cases multiple times, by some of the greatest artists to ever play the instrument.  The guitar has breadth, depth, history, and profound expressions of the human condition. Yet, if my feed has anything to say about it, I’m supposed to be happy with advertising. I’m supposed to be satisfied with the most superficial AI-generated, Spotify playlist-type crap. To just gobble it up as if I don’t know the difference between quality and garbage.  But I think I do know the difference, and that’s exactly why I’m not satisfied. And I bet a lot of you know the difference between quality and garbage, too. And you aren’t satisfied. Especially if you’re even vaguely aware that the level of performance at the professional level is as high as it’s ever been; there are resources, there are festivals, there are student-level opportunities, there is a growing adult learner community out there, it is truly a golden age for lovers of the classical guitar, but only if you know where to look. This new podcast chronicles my personal search for the guitar’s soul. And I’m gonna warn you upfront: it’s a deep, nerdy dive into something, maybe only a few of us care about, and that’s just fine with me. I’ll let Joe Rogan talk to the masses; he doesn’t need my help. I’m looking for meaning, for knowledge, for beauty, for human connections in this enormous, yet somehow hidden world of the classical guitar. I’ll try to share my discoveries in a way that is entertaining, but never pandering. And I want you to join me. So, let’s make it official: for the Classical Guitar Dispatch, I’m Matthew Cochran. Let’s get started. Get full access to Classical Guitar Dispatch at classicalguitardispatch.substack.com/subscribe