Welcome to the Sound In Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Jeanna Isham, owner and founder of Dreamr Productions and Sound In Marketing Learning. I create, consult and educate brands and individuals on the power of sound in marketing. Now back to the show. We pick up where we left off talking with Denver Dill about Sonic branding and sound in the military. In this episode, I've got all sorts of great musical examples
sprinkled throughout, so enjoy. The opinions of Sergeant Major Denver Dill are his own and don't represent the United States Military Academy, the U.S. Army, or the Department of Defense. Kind of wanted to, shift gears a little bit about, you know, kind of the elephant in the room. Like, how does the military use sound and song in strategy in in the way that it functions? We're talking about the ways that it can strengthen us and it can create an identity.
But how can we also use it to our advantage? During the Civil War, there were pieces of music that were banned because they were causing people to desert. Right? You would think about your mom or your sister or some other trouble and, you know, wasn't technology wasn't the same then. And so you just run off and, you know, now we're down a troop. So the idea that if you can connect to an emotion, you can get an outcome, well, that's that is the lifeblood of music, right?
That's specifically what it's for. And you think about those, those events to which, where we, we have the military and we have the civilian population together because we're representing both ideas in congruence. Think of like Inauguration Day, right? That's the perfect example. The civilian leadership of the country, the military leadership is there as well. You know, all the political leadership, it's all it's all intertwined into what we call this democracy in America.
And it's the music that we all come together. Those are the moments that a speech doesn't necessarily capture the energy of what's trying to be expressed. You need a poet, right? So we brought a poet to that event. We will rise from the lake room cities of the Midwestern states. We will rise from the Sunbaked south. We will rebuild, reconcile and recover in every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country. Our people, diverse and beautiful, will emerge, battered and beautiful.
When day comes, we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid. The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there was always light. If only were brave enough to see it. If only we were brave enough to be in Or we need a song. We need amazing grace. Or we need, you know, the anthem again. Or all these aspirational piece of music. Because music communicates emotions and ideas that only you know the best poets could communicate, right?
We're all striving to how do we get you to this place? For the services, When we take our musical presence and we take it overseas, we're promoting our strategic national narrative. The idea that there's rule of law in the United States, the idea that you can prosper if you work hard. Right. The chance for prosperity and safety, you know, safety, those ideas, like they're all coming together. And when you see and hear American performances, that's what you think about, right?
You think about Louis Armstrong going overseas at a time when there was segregation in the South, but the State Department was taking him overseas because they knew, hey, we're going to get over that. You know, we are going to get over that. And so he was there is our aspirational voice, and representing the country, as I think to myself. What a wonderful world. So it's really about how we project that. I did a Psy-Con talk where I talked about K-pop and how they've done this in Korea.
Right. And so now BTS's and K-pop bands represent South Korea. They're able to be this idea of uniquely Korean identity. And that's amazing, right? They have the millions and millions and millions of followers that they're able to leverage and talk to and affiliate and create a sense of inclusiveness. And I think that that's that's a lot of the space that we're in is like, how do we do that?
And if our music is the opposite of that, if it's non-inclusive, if it's racist, if it's sexist, well, those aren't the ideals that we want to promote, and we should be sensitive to that and we should give it analysis. It's not just lyric analysis, right. It can be any other form. If you go to Ghana and I just start drumming carelessly, right. I could be offensive not to just be wishy washing to really care about all of those things.
So care about civil affairs, care about cultural affairs to be really astute in those areas. I think that that's in our nation's best interest to continue to do that, to continue to work on public diplomacy and to think about all of these areas where our culture is borrowed from others. And there's is borrowed from us, and it just keeps cycling because we're all just humans on the same planet. We've been talking about the power of unifying through music and bringing cultures together.
How does the opposite happen? How can music and sound create bias and conflict? You know, for music to create a bias, it's not like the word bias, you know, has a lot of possible meanings, So Leon Theramin was this great Russian, scientist in the, you know, electrical engineer, basically Thomas Edison of Russia, and he invented many, many interesting things. But his instrument that later became, you know, was known as the Theremin.
Well, he was a virtuoso of that instrument in the early 20th century. He's over here in New York playing with the New York Philharmonic on his instrument until he's accused of possibly being a spy. Ship him off to Russia, and he goes to the Gulag. Well, eventually. And this is like the late 90s where this finally comes out to the American public. But a very, very, very effective tool of espionage was used that he likely invented.
And so what had happened was he had created a, a device that if you shot radio waves at it would it's like a microphone behind a seal in the US embassy in Moscow. And for seven years, this clandestine listening device was undetected. So can you imagine the the access that something has like that? And I feel like only a musicians coming up with it only. And musicians like, hey, you know what? I'm going to figure out how to, you know, connect. And it didn't have any power.
It wasn't like it needed batteries and didn't need all this stuff. It's just a very practical, you can look it up on the internet. You can see, you know, the US at the UN, United Nations revealing this thing to the public to talk about that. But there is that aspect of, clandestine activity with, with music. Humans are going to make music no matter what happens, no matter what's going on. And I find this as a father to be particularly true.
If I leave my two children alone, they end up chanting, or they end up saying nothing like they're just doing gibberish. But it's in rhythm together. Or they, you know, match each other's excitement. And then it's like, you're really crazy loud and I have to put my noise canceling headphones on. Something like that. Right. Well, take a conflict like what's happening in the Ukraine right now. Really early on, we all kind of gasped as we watched this tiny little girl singing Let It Go in a bunker.
The idea of frozen coming into a warzone, and it's a five, six, seven year old girl who's just. That's how she's processing what's all around her.
And you can see it in the room of all the adults, you know, like, wow, (in Ukraine) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) But then you'll also see, Well, this, this strange phenomenon that happened here with, Hey, hey, rise up!
On February 27th, 2022, Andrii Khlyvnyuk, lead singer of the Ukrainian band boombox, ended his world tour early to fight for his country. When the streets were bare in Kiev. He took to Instagram and recorded himself singing the Ukrainian folk song the Red Viburnum in the meadow in the empty streets. The result was powerful.
(singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) So now all of a sudden, it's on Instagram and it's on TikTok, and then other people are like, yeah, hey, hey, rise up. And so it becomes this Ukrainian rally crew.
(singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) (singing in Ukrainian) David Gilmore of Pink Floyd heard about it and was so moved that he got the band together to record a song and a music video in solidarity with Khlyvnyuk. To create a new song called hey, hey, Rise Up.
Andriy’s original video was projected on the wall of the Pink Floyd music video. Proceeds went to the Ukraine Humanitarian Relief Fund. The group hadn't performed or recorded together since mid 90s. It's this huge idea that music is able to beeline through all of that, right? That's a ton of red tape. That's a ton of emotions. That's a ton of that's weird. It's all of those things together. But if you go look it up, you'll see like, whoa, one person with one cell phone had that effect.
These unbelievable but true narratives emerge because of music. You'll see Ukrainian bands then start playing hey, hey, rise up. It's just this thing that catches on. Nine of the top ten most viewed videos on YouTube are music videos. So if you add up all of that YouTube content that's driven by music and then add up all the streaming services Apple Music, Spotify, you know, on and on and on and on, hey, everybody is thirsty for music. All of a sudden it doesn't seem like this nice to have.
It seems like something of importance. And that's part of why we teach it and why we need to be in that space. We don't need to be passive, like, well, that's a nice to have. Now, if you don't teach it, what's going to happen? You know, and soldiers and, and leaders, what they're going to do is they're going to put their earbuds in and listen to who knows what.
And they could be ingesting really toxic narratives or, you know, countercultural or extremist or any of these things that if we don't address it well, you know, it's low risk and it's not low risk. And that's the idea is when you're trying to be your best, everything matters. And this is part of what you ingest.
And I think about that all the time when I when I see people at the gym, I just think, oh, I wish I could know what you were listening to and we could talk about it, you know, why does that motivate you? You know, all those things or maybe you're not even thinking about motivation. You're thinking about healing. You're thinking about other things.
Yeah, that brings up a lot of thoughts in my head because I think about, I wasn't around in the 60s, and the 70s, but the music of that time period is so iconic and not just for the people that experienced it, but like, you know, when I hear, the Byrds, you know, that I that makes me think of Vietnam, you know, and I wasn't there. But it's just so rooted in that.
My dad told me recently that he heard the song bridge Over Troubled Waters for the first time after he came back from Vietnam, and I'm like, wow. Like, so powerful. 2020 pandemic. Social unrest, all sorts of competing things going on, right? It's an interesting time to be alive. And you look at our biggest events like the Super Bowl, and then we did have an election. So like inauguration. And that is when it mattered the most.
If you go back and you look at that Super Bowl we're leading off with, let's lift every voice and sing, lift every voice and sing to the earth and Heaven ring. Ring with the harmonies of liberty. Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening sky. Let it resound loud as a rolling sea. We got to come together. And we can do it through song. And. And the same thing is just perpetually happening. And people, especially in America, but all over the globe, look to music to be that unifier.
And I think it's the whole of body that is required of participating in this, in the singing. So the idea of it's embarrassing. You might not be the best singer, you might be self-conscious. There's a social dynamic of is really everybody sing, everybody sing. I better sing too, because everybody sing. You know, like there's peer pressure. There's all these dynamics at work that once you give in and you commit to it, then it's a we.
It's not an I. And how else do you describe that in the Army, you know, team building is doing PT right. We're out working out together you know overcome obstacles together and then, you know, get done. And you everybody's sweaty and you're like, you high five. High fiving is a weird thing, but not in the context of you've just worked out for an hour and you're ready to drop. Music is that same idea.
It's a it's that collective, and it is what brings people together, and it's the default, even though we don't necessarily teach it. Where do you think that West Point is going in the future with with your research center, with your coursework? What what do you see your next exploration, your next “aha” moment right now that's a one semester course. And so we're just refining everything that happened last semester.
So we've been looking at like, okay, we got these angles that we could talk about here and these angles over here. We are working with the history department and possibly making a music and history course, but it's not a we're not a university like, we're a leadership development institution. So I have agreed to help so long as at the end of it, we're contributing to better leaders. And that's that's really the mission here.
And so we're being slow and intentional with how we might build that course. Because again, talking about I want a better leader at the end of it, cadet life is not normal. I don't know where you went to school, but I went to a state school and a conservatory, and there is nothing like what these young men and women are going through. Their time is such a premium. And so as an instructor, I'm just grateful to have them in my class.
I take that responsibility, like, gravely, because they have no free time. This is not a normal college, right? This is. You got to be excellent academically. I feel like most of the classes here are actually graduate classes. Even though they're undergraduate, they're all required to be athletes. Can you imagine that? Everybody's required to be an athlete. Every kid is an athlete. You are on some sort of team doing sports. I would have failed. Oh, right.
So they have all of the they have the military component. They have the academic component, the physical component that they have to be experts in. And, you know, to be part of that mix is just like humbling honor because they truly are inspirational. That's my favorite part too, is I hear what some of them do. Now that I've been here for a long time and I'm an old man, they come back and they teach and it's like, wow, you did what? While you were gone.
That's amazing, you know? And you're just, you know, you're proud. Even though I don't know that that's the right word. You're humbled to just like, wow, these people are truly like selfless service galore. I mean, it's it's an amazing group. It's it sounds like you're doing a fantastic job. And I, I wanted to sum up with one last question.
What in your 19 years that you've been there now, what is it that makes you the most humble, the most proud and humble of your influence, or what you have seen come through that time? The consistency and the integrity of the institution is crazy. I mean, I I've been fortunate and unfortunate to see some of the events transpire, right. And also at a time when the country is at war. Well, we've seen different political parties go through office.
I mean, West Point is truly what it what it's supposed to be. I mean, they are just amazing. From classroom to classroom, the consistency of the instructors just giving ridiculous amounts of time their evenings, their nights, you know, for the cadets who might need extra time, the institution writ large, just being completely apolitical, just making sure that they're focused on developing tomorrow's future generation of leaders. It's, it's so consistent. It's amazing. And it's humbling.
I get to work with someone who. Whose, analysis led to the capture of Saddam Hussein. What? You know what I mean? Like, what world is that? You know, the list goes on and on about the arsenal of wonderful, intelligent, experienced leaders here. And, you know, basically, if you just listen and pay attention, it's this wonderful environment for everybody to learn and to learn from each other. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing.
If you could ever visit, you could see why General George Washington picked its location on the Hudson for its strategic value. You know, it's it's 200 years of trying to build America in one institution. And it's, you know, from the cadet to the instructor to the seasoned professor to the dean, to the commandant, to the superintendent, everybody super consistent. And just you just get anywhere near any of those individuals and you're like, oh, I can keep I can keep marching.
I can do this from everything that I've read and, at know about West Point, it's just an unbelievable rich history of our nation. I mean, that's all that I could say and I, I want to thank you for, bringing to light. I know it wasn't just you, but thank you for bringing to light the importance of music and sound, to our future leaders of America. Well, thanks for having me.
I mean, again, happy to talk about this any time, but, yeah, if you can make it to the East Coast, we'll give you a great tour. I'm going to have to figure out how to do that because that sounds that sounds fun. That sounds like a really good time. Well, thank you again, Denver, for your time. I really appreciate it. I hope you had as much fun as I did. I did thank you so much for having me. I hope you're enjoying the show.
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