Stop the trumpets...

Jeff Lipscomb, a high school orchestra director in Kanawha County, West Virginia, US, has been doing a lot of maths. He has 12 cellists but only 10 cellos. If the school district gives him a total budget of $500 to $600 for the year, but one new cello costs more than $1,000, what should Lipscomb do? What if he needs some new violins too?

“I’ve actually had to buy instruments out of my own pocket,” Lipscomb said from his classroom at South Charleston High School. “I kind of have to.”

Like many music teachers, Lipscomb has become attuned to tight budgets. Lately, though, the cost of instruments has ballooned beyond his ability to make do.

Pandemic-era supply chain snarls lifted prices for goods across the board. President Donald Trump’s global tariffs further swelled the cost of foreign-made instruments. Then in August, the Trump administration proposed additional 25 per cent tariffs on trumpets, tubas and other brass instruments, citing “national security threats”.

Higher instrument prices are a particular threat to lower-income districts where enrolment and budgets are shrinking. An elementary school music teacher in Beaverton, Oregon, has considered 3D printing ukuleles because she cannot afford them. In Passaic, New Jersey, an arts administrator is doubling down on encouraging students to clean and care for their instruments so they last longer. The superintendent of a small district in Washington County, Pennsylvania, has taken to scouring eBay and Facebook Marketplace for used instruments.

Proponents of musical education say the tariffs are endangering school music programmes and threatening to push the extracurricular activity out of reach for many families. John Mlynczak, CEO of the National Association of Music Merchants, warned that higher instrument prices could lead to “empty music classrooms”.

Some instruments, such as higher-end Fender and Gibson guitars, are made in the US. But most elementary, middle and high schools rely on less expensive beginner instruments that are largely made in China. Many school districts own or rent instruments they lend to students at no or little cost.

As Trump escalated his trade war with China last year, music teachers grew wary.

Schools were already dealing with a confluence of challenges, including the end of federal pandemic aid, budget cuts and declining enrolment. Inflation was driving up costs.

“It’s hitting the horns, it’s hitting the strings, it’s hitting the percussion,” said Cullen Hendrix, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “All of those things combined are kind of sapping the available pool of tools that we can provide these children to begin their journey.”

Carolynn Langston has been teaching music at low-income elementary schools in Oregon for two decades. Her room this year, at a school in Beaverton, has a colourful rug surrounded by a rainbow of paw prints to indicate where her students should stand. In one corner are patterned drums and other percussion instruments. She described her musical philosophy as “sing, dance, play”.

Schools like hers will feel the higher instrument prices most.

“I don’t even have a budget,” Langston said. “Zero money.”

When she wants to buy instruments — or a carpet, for that matter — she applies for grants, including from a local educational foundation. Sometimes she requests money from people directly. She considered using a 3D printer to make plastic ukuleles. At least they would be durable.

Latasha Casterlow-Lalla, the supervisor of visual and performing arts for Passaic Public Schools in northern New Jersey, said many instruments had doubled or tripled in price since the pandemic. A student saxophone that used to be $420 is more than $900. Tubas are at least $9,000, and the high school band wants four. If the proposed brass tariffs go into effect, she said, buying all of them would probably take her five or six years. By then, the would-be tuba players would have graduated.

Students are hard on their instruments, and Casterlow-Lalla estimated that each one lasted 10 years at most. Anticipating that costs will continue to rise, she is pushing principals for better storage to keep instruments functioning longer. She is also emphasising proper cleaning and care to students and parents.

She worries above all that she will not have enough instruments for all the students who want to play. If registration in school music programmes falls, it could create a domino effect where the district pulls funding.

Lipscomb worries that rising instrument prices mean the students who stay will be stuck playing old instruments. He knows that when children play on instruments that sound bad, they do not blame the instruments. They blame themselves.

New York Times News Service