Yo-Yo Ma Goes Beyond the Music

n Sanders Theatre this past Friday, cellist Yo-Yo Ma ’76 showed off his exuberant stage presence—with and without his instrument. Ma was joined onstage by President Drew G. Faust, Humanities Professor Stephen J. Greenblatt, and Literature Professor Diana Sorensen, who heaped praise on Ma for his talent and character as they announced new Harvard initiatives in accordance with the recommendations of the Task Force on the Arts.

Introduced by Faust as “the beautiful Yo-Yo Ma,” Ma performed an awe-inspiring rendition of the Sarabande from Bach’s first cello suite and animatedly discussed his life in the arts. Although he admitted that he can’t carry a tune without an instrument, he explained the value of sharing and communicating an emotional connection with music instead of teaching and learning notes in a strict one-way fashion.

After closing with a call for global empathy, he even provided career advice for Harvard students who are passionate about the arts but fear they lack the intrinsic talent to make it in the art world: “I think the important thing is to never lose your passion,” Ma explained. “It’s a rare gift to have one, and every profession is competitive—keep doing it, keep it alive.”

After the talk, Ma sat down with The Crimson for 10 minutes to discuss his time at Harvard, his passion for people, and the massive undertaking of the Task Force for the Arts.



The Harvard Crimson: Why did you pick Harvard originally, and not a music school?



Yo-Yo Ma: I had played cello for quite a long time. And I knew that I wasn’t ready for the profession. I knew I wasn’t mature enough to do anything in music. I knew nothing about the world, I knew I needed to learn stuff, and I needed time. So I thought, “Wow—a university, what a great thing to do, what a great opportunity.” So I came here and I was a music major, but my great passion was anthropology.



THC: Did you ever consider not going into music full time? Maybe going into anthropology?



YYM: Absolutely. I always thought that I should do something other than music, because I always did music, and it was part of my life. I have a good friend, Emanuel Ax, who said to me, “Yo-Yo, you’ve just got to stop thinking that your profession is an interruption of your life.” Music is part of my life, but there’s a life separate from my life as a musician, and that actually is more of my identity. It wasn’t until five years ago that I realized that my real passion is people.



THC: So maybe you would have been a politician?



YYM: No. No! I would not be a politician. I love people, but politicians deal with the outside measurements of people. I like to deal with the inside measurements of people. That’s the role of culture. I think I would have been involved in culture in some way, whether as a teacher, as a social worker, or as something, but not as a politician.



THC: I think you’ve ended up incredibly involved in culture.



YYM: In the end, yes, but it’s only in the last maybe five years that I’ve come to a certain realization that basically I should do the things that I care about the most. And music, I realized, was a wonderful way to be able to fulfill all the different ways that I’m curious about people, about habits, about why people act the way they do. It’s a form of study, and I believe greatly not so much in creativity, but in finding the preconditions of creativity. So what Harvard is starting to do in the arts is a substantial interest. Obviously the administration is really behind it, and now it’s up to all of you to pick it up and get the ball rolling.



THC: Do you think that a passion for the arts can really be taught here?



YYM: It’s not about teaching, it’s about creating the environment and getting a critical mass of interested people to create enough sparks that things start to happen. If you have 500 disparate groups, that’s not a commitment to arts. Yes, you let things happen, but how do we do that? That’s in discussion with the student body, with FAS, with the administration; all the stakeholders have to be there.



THC: It’s hard to get everybody together around here.



YYM: Absolutely. That’s the struggle. You need the will, you need the resources, you need the people to really do that. And it sounds like the administration has the will. In these challenging times, imagination is free, passion is free. So these are our resources—we might as well use them.

—Staff writer Benjamin C. Burns can be reached at bcburns@fas.harvard.edu.