Nathan Langfitt came to LSU as a music education major with every intention of leaving as a band director. He expected to learn the basic fundamentals of music and music education, and practice them by student teaching. What he didn't expect was to have NPR's Baton Rouge station 89.3 FM WRKF's hundreds of listeners as some of his students.
Every Monday, between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m., Langfitt hosts a radio show titled “’B’ is for Beethoven.” The goal of the show is to teach the public about classical music without being “stuffy,” said Langfitt, so that people will be able to relate to it.
Music has been a key element in Langfitt’s life. His earliest memories are “music memories.” He recalls “sitting on a piano bench with my dad and him teaching me how to play the piano.” However, Langfitt could not read music for the most part of his childhood because of how he remembered where the notes were.
“Our piano in our home has a big crack on the 5th octave E natural,” he said, “and I learned everything I played on piano off of the key with the crack on it.” He still looks for it to this day. Ever since then, “music wasn’t really ever a choice” for Langfitt. “It’s sort of something that’s absorbed into my psyche,” he said.
During his childhood, Langfitt was involved in the usual “childish hodge podge,” he said. He played sports through local athletic centers and participated in Eagle Scouts, but a natural musical ability gave him a great opportunity.
“When I was in 3rd grade, I got picked to sing the national anthem at an all-star baseball game, mostly because I could hold pitch,” Langfitt said. “It was funny for me because I was not a ‘stage kid,’ and all these other kids were.” Many of the other children at the game had either modeled or been on television, “and I was just ‘local kid who knew how to sing,’” Langfitt said.
Langfitt grew up in Plano, Texas. He said that the area “brews” musical opportunities. “Sadly enough we live in a world where good culture requires good money and requires the people with money to value culture,” he said. Fortunately, the various corporations in nearby Dallas did just that; they provided art museums, a symphony and musical opportunities for children.
When Langfitt reached 6th grade, he was given the option of participating in band, orchestra or choir. “I didn’t want to do orchestra because it was the dorky kids; I didn’t do choir because it was all the gippy girls you wanted to punch in the face,” Langfitt said. “So it was like, ‘OK, looks like I gotta be in the band.’” As a pianist, Langfitt was quickly put on percussion. He said that this transfer was simple because “a lot of the percussion instruments resemble the same melodic patterns as the piano.”
Langfitt enjoyed his new instrument. It allowed him to participate in high school marching band and three rock bands, and occasionally win over some girls. “The drummer always gets the girls!” he exclaimed. Langfitt’s most successful musical endeavor was the Plano Jazz Project. The members consisted of a pianist, bassist, trumpet player and Langfitt on percussion. Their venues included various coffee and book shops, as well as the Texas Floor Tile Convention.
“[Musicians] can do whatever the heck we want and people, just to look sophisticated, will say ‘Oh, music is wonderful!’” Langfitt said. “[The Plano Jazz Project] played for the Texas Floor Tile Convention. Each of us got paid this sick amount of money because they thought they were hiring professional musicians. We could have played ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’ 20 times; these people would’ve just been the happiest people in the world!”
Music was one thing that Langfitt always understood, and he found it imperative that he share it with others. “Music was always great to me; music can be great to you,” he said. This outlook was shaped by a combination of inspiring teachers from high school and Langfitt’s musical father. “Classical music will only live as long as we try to make it live,” he said. “If you love it enough … you do your part to help survive it.”
To ensure classical music’s longevity, Langfitt searched for a university that would suit his needs. “Some people really want the conservatory atmosphere, where it’s just music 24 hours a day,” he said. “And I wanted that, but I also wanted that classic college experience.” He said that LSU offered everything that he was looking for, including “loud, crazy football games” and a gorgeous campus. “I don’t think it gets any better than being here,” he said.
LSU’s School of Music has gone above and beyond Langfitt’s expectations. “I find great fascination to thinking back to what I was when I got here,” he said. He finds that an important factor in a musician’s growth is the diversity of music appreciated. “If someone has a[n artistic] statement to make, I am ready to listen,” he said.
As passionate as Langfitt was about his area of concentration, he felt that something was missing. He looked to the university’s radio station, KLSU, to satiate him.
“I really wanted to be the classical [radio show] guy,” Langfitt said. Before that could come, he was given the morning show. It did, however, give him an exceptional experience last fall.
“By being the guy that lived closest to the radio station, I became LSU’s hurricane correspondent,” he said. He was on the air for around 17 hours straight during Hurricane Katrina, beginning at 5 a.m. He took phone calls “from everything from a woman who couldn’t find her cat to CNN.”
His radio work during the crisis assisted Langfitt in realizing that he enjoyed “being there for people… being a person who can give information, entertain, make happy; make comforted and controlled,” which connects directly to teaching. When asked if he would ever give up teaching to go into radio, Langfitt replies with “Ha ha ha – I do teach! I am a teacher every day I get to be on the radio.”
Eventually KLSU gave him a classical music show that he hosted with an alter ego: Dr. Walter McFarriot. Unfortunately, KLSU’s schedule conflicted with his commitments to the School of Music, and Langfitt had to leave his shows.
The school year wore on, and Langfitt longed for the radio. He emailed 89.3 FM WRKF with the statement, “I have an idea for you.” He planned to save classical music in Baton Rouge.
“I said that because I wanted to be that loud flashy guy; that would get me the job,” Langfitt said. “And I had to go back and be like, ‘Wow, how am I going to save classical music in Baton Rouge?’”
Langfitt met with the president of WRKF, who told him to develop a pilot episode and promotional material and return in a month. Langfitt did as instructed, and “before I knew it, June 12, 2006, the pilot episode of “‘B’ is for Beethoven” went on the air.”
“I realized that the reason people – when I say people I mean [a] 35-year-old male who works at the bank – why does he not like to go to classical music concerts? He doesn’t like to go to classical music concerts because he sees them as stuffy. He sees them as this intellectual thing where he has to put on his coat and tie, and sit there and listen to this long, dragged out music,” Langfitt said. “One of the biggest reasons why it doesn’t work is he’s bored out of his mind. I’d be bored out of my mind going to a banking convention, why shouldn’t he be bored out of his mind going to a classical music concert? So I realized that I if can tell people how this music is just like our world today, I could make it interesting enough to them where they would enjoy classical music.”
Langfitt aimed to teach the public about music. He extracted the “boring parts” –“put aside theory, put aside all the music mumbo jumbo that I’ve learned since I discovered that crack on the 5th octave E natural” – to make the classical genre more appealing to more people. Langfitt planned to educate people based solely on the social, political and historical contexts of classical pieces. “By picking the right pieces and by telling the right stories, I think I can make classical music interesting enough where my 35-year-old banker will listen,” he said.
In addition to teaching the public about classical music, Langfitt wants to make his listeners think. “The show is meant to make people ask questions,” he said. One example he gave is for listeners to go as far as asking the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra why they don’t play a wider variety of pieces.
“Our local arts organizations are doing just as bad a job as the 35-year-old banker in the audience at not being keen to what the people need,” Langfitt said. “People don’t just want to hear Bach and Brahms over and over again. They will go crazy; they will go bored out of their minds and they will be asleep. So we have to give them something that they can latch onto and enjoy, and be immersed in enough that they want to come back. Why do we just mindlessly program something that keeps people asleep in the audience? Why don’t we make music what it’s supposed to be – something that grabs you and inspires you to be a better person. Why not?”
Needless to say, “‘B’ is for Beethoven” is doing its job “very well; it’s doing exactly what I want it to do,” Langfitt said. His show has new listeners every week that are asking him questions. His most recent show was “‘Q’ is for Questions,” during which Langfitt read and responded to e-mails he had accumulated from listeners over the past few months. He loves that people contact him, whether it be for advice on what to listen to or for more in-depth descriptions of pieces.
“I don’t always know the answers. I’m a college student, for crying out loud!” he said. Yet as a college student, Langfitt has the resources to find any answers that the public wants: the “world-renowned” LSU School of Music faculty.
Langfitt said that he relays the information “in a manner that isn’t so stuffy and intellectual that it scares people off,” which was the original idea. “It is Beethoven in blue jeans on the radio.”
NPR’s last classical music show existed from 1961 to 1999 and was hosted by Carl Hoss, who would take on classical music “like it was tying your shoes,” said Langfitt. Langfitt believes that there has been an absence in radio since the end of Hoss’ show.
Langfitt said that, although Hoss was a wonderful host, he had an “intellectual” and “woofy” voice which some people may find intimidating. Langfitt hopes that, as a 22-year-old college student, he has a more welcoming persona.
“Classical music is only as stuffy as we make it. Let’s take it off the shelf, dust it off and have some fun with it,” he said. “Every piece has a message in it that can be applied to our world today. If I make one listener out of a non-listener, I’ve done my job. That’s all that matters to me.”
Langfitt’s show has achieved its goals for the most part since its debut in June. He has a large, loyal audience. His listeners are becoming more curious about music, and hopefully are listening to it outside of the show.
However, Langfitt has one more goal for “‘B’ is for Beethoven.” Langfitt dreams that it will someday become nationally syndicated. “I would love for it to be a show that can be heard coast to coast, not just from Lafayette to Mississippi,” he said. In the “far-fetched” event that Langfitt’s show takes off, it would be a dream come true and he would stay with it “without even thinking.”
“Being a host on NPR is the world’s best teaching job,” Langfitt said, “Public radio actually has a bigger listening base than you think. You’d be surprised how many people listen to NPR across the country, and if my show could become as established as ‘All Things Considered’ or ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ or ‘This American Life,’ I think I could definitely make a difference for classical music in the world.”
