ToW #5 - Article by Joanne Lipman: "Is Music the Key to Success?"

        This New York Times article is an examination of music's role in success. In order to gather her information, Joanne Lipman interviewed traditionally successful people (Woody Allen, Chuck Todd, etc.) about how their musical pursuits have contributed to their success.

        Lipman is a frequent business commentator, appearing on CNBC and CNN. She is also the co-author of Strings Attached, a nonfiction work about her childhood music mentor, making her very qualified to write about music and success. Written just 11 days after Strings Attached was published, it seems that the main context behind this article is clear. I hypothesize that Lipman wrote this article in with the idea of promoting her book in mind. After all, each page of the article is followed by a line mentioning it. While the explicit purpose of this article is to answer the question "is music the key to success?", Lipman hints at a perhaps ulterior motive of hers (besides promoting her book) in the fifth-to-last sentence. She states, "[Music's ability to improve perseverance is] an observation worth remembering at a time when music as a serious pursuit — and music education — is in decline in this country." This note of Lipman's points to an implicit purpose of her's in writing this article about the benefits of dedication to music: to encourage more people to pick up instruments, saving music from its decline.
        Published by The New York Times and clearly written for people actively pursuing methods to success, this article is rather simply intended for an intelligent audience. This assumption is bolstered by Lipman's almost scientific data-collection and conclusion-making processes. Not to mention that the article is strewn with logical appeals. Lipman both begins and ends the article with lists of examples: at the start, it's successful people who play instruments; at the end, it's success-bringing skills that music teaches. Quotes from her interviewees are also frequently used, constituting appeals to ethos when the speakers are famous and pathos when they recollect personal stories. This article had an interesting effect on me: just a day after I declined an offer to learn how to play the guitar, I'm reconsidering my estrangement of playing music. Simply because of this effect, I feel compelled to say that Joanne Lipman was especially successful in this article. In fact, she was so successful that I must assume that she has played music for all her life.

Link to the Article