How Ted Gioia Turned into the Honest Broker

Background Note

Ted Gioia says that he rarely feels a need to add an introduction to his essays; however, given the deep personal significance of the subject, far beyond anything he has ever published lately, some words of explanation might be fitting.

Firstly, in this essay, he describes a time in his life that was never publicly discussed before, either in his writing or interviews. So this account is meaningful to him, even if only from a confessional or autobiographical perspective. He hopes his story gives some comfort to others who, similarly, were forced to live divided or conflicted lives.

Second, he believes that he better describes in this essay the core values and personal aspirations he attempted to pursue in his vocation than anywhere else in his entire body of work.

Finally, he would like to think that he outlined an approach here that can be employed usefully in other disciplines beyond music criticism, maybe as a kind of vocational philosophy, or even, one might say, a way of life.

While that last claim might seem too ambitious for such a succinct personal memoir, he thought about this matter over for some time and felt that a broader application of his own story could be its most crucial aspect. After the brief introduction, the account begins…

How Ted Gioia Became the Honest Broker

He rarely talks about his workaday life before settling into music and writing. To him, those days are far too bizarre and confusing to describe without writing a book about them. A book that he will never write since he wishes to forget most of it.

Other people in the creative sphere have day jobs, but they are usually easy to describe – driving a taxi, tutoring school kids, waiting on tables, would you like fries with that, sir? However, his job was quite different. He worked on projects that sent him to unfamiliar terrain worldwide and odd and unpredictable situations. The work was often secret with high-stakes deliverables, surrounded by confidentiality agreements and cautionary warnings, and the agenda seldom going according to plan.

He admits that he was like a person with a split personality in his twenties. He was obsessed with music, working to advance his piano skills and diving deep into research that would culminate in so many later books and articles. However, he also had bills to pay, and he had a few extremely marketable skills.

Gioia could analyze complex social, political, and economic situations, a method of navigating through turbulent waters, an aptitude for making the right decision at the right time. These skills caught the attention of influential people, and they would use him to solve their problems. They would thrust a plane ticket onto his hands and send him to situations that might involve anything and everything.

Thankfully for him, his employers paid well. What they wanted was never simple. However, if he managed to succeed, he was rewarded enough money to cover his costs during long periods solely dedicated to his music and writing.

Ted Gioia has little desire to dive into the details, especially since many are still confidential, and saying too much could get him in trouble. Most of it is a blur to him – Tasmania, Medellín, Bangkok, Tokyo, Macau, Krakow, Frankfurt, Prague, Paris, Cannes, Tijuana, Copacabana, Jakarta, Shanghai, and all the other places he went on his several missions. So many cities, so many hectic days, and long nights. However, to tell us about the Honest Broker, he needs to remember it.

The discovery in China

This particular project took him to China. He attempted to set up an operation in a remote province significantly outside his comfort zone. However, he could not figure out how to navigate the various interests and stakeholders. His patron was one of the wealthiest men in Hong Kong, and through his contacts, Ted Gioia Gained access to people who typically operate behind layers of intermediaries and gatekeepers. However, even said contacts led him on a wild goose chase. His sources gave him conflicting advice and confusing instructions. Everything felt wrong, and nothing seemed quite right.

He knew he needed help, but he was out of options. Then he met the drunk Australian.

He was not a contact on his list, and he cannot even recall his name. This was a faithful encounter in a hotel bar late at night. However, this heavy-drinking Australian was chatty and had intriguing things to say. He had spent the majority of his life going from capital to capital in Asia and was a high-level operator in his circles. The Australian bragged about his insider’s knowledge and claimed – with some accuracy- that he knew how to navigate in China better than the oblivious Westerners who were now showing up on the scene. He traced secret routes to power and knew all the risky mistakes rookies always make.

He spouted a list of them. “If someone goes into a province or city and flashes around some money expecting the local officials to help better forget about it. They will rob everything and force the person to bribe them for the privilege. It is the same for the party leaders. From each according to his ability, and all that, my friend. And skip the lawyers—the legal protections here are just like this”—he lifted his empty glass, then flipped it over as if to highlight the emptiness of what he was offering to the gods of Marx and Mao. “And you might as well call the bankers wankers.”

To Gioia, the empty glass also signaled that he needed to order another round of local brew, and he quickly complied. His new friend fell into a meditative silence until more drinks arrived. Finally, after one more sip on the stomach-destroying glass of baijiu that posed as spirits at our watering hole, Gioia asked the obvious question. “So what do I do? Whom can I trust?” “That is easy, mate. You need to find the Honest Broker.”

The Honest Broker

While this sounded appealing enough, he had no idea what his new acquaintance was talking about. He might just as well have told him to go to Oz and consult with the Wizard. “Who, exactly, is this Honest Broker?”

“In every city, there is at least one. However, do not expect their business cards to read ‘Honest Broker’—that is just what I call them. But that is exactly what they are. Sometimes they do not even have an official position. However, they are the key to everything.”

The Australian proceeded to explain how Honest Brokers play a covert but crucial role in societies without a history of legal protections and stable institutions. Their power and influence is built solely on a reputation for straight talk and trustworthy dealings.

“They are true brokers, intermediaries between others and will not participate in your deal, no matter what it is. They are go-betweens. But never underestimate the power of this kind of brokerage. Whatever you need— a building permit, a loan, a place to land a private jet, political influence, whatever—they will introduce you to the right people and lead you away from the predators.

“They do this for a simple reason: their prestige increases by making these connections. In several cases, they refuse payment. Alternatively, you repay them by becoming a trusted contact for them in future dealings. The Honest Broker may assist you for free right now, but do not be surprised to get asked for help on something completely different months or even years later. You Yanks have difficulty understanding it and are always looking for shortcuts. However, the Honest Broker plays the long-term game, mate.

“Discover your Honest Broker, and your problems will be solved.”

To Gioia, this advice was worth far more than the cost of the drinks. He shifted his approach entirely over the next few weeks. He questioned, compared notes, and finally found his Honest Broker—who solved his problems, just as promised. With the mission accomplished, he returned home to California and tried to forget everything about it.

He placed his passport out of sight. His world returned to manageable dimensions, and he spent his days at the two keyboards, the piano, and the word processor. He was returning into his music groove again. A long time went by before he realized the real importance of what he had learned in China and how it related to the other half of his split and fractured life. He was depositing energy into a new field now, music criticism, and trying to produce a rule book for how to make it fizzle.

The fallacy of criticism

However, criticism appeared to be such a degraded form of writing at that point. He had already witnessed the collapse in literary criticism, in fact, he lived through it as a student at Standford and Oxford. The whole enterprise became a circus sideshow in just a few years. Now, critics aspired to a quasi-celebrity status, exploiting their roles as arbiters of taste to participate in the worst kind of strutting and preening.

The more preposterously they sold out their craft, opting instead for self-aggrandizement, the larger their rewards. This affliction started in France but quickly spread. Now the taint appeared to be seeping into several other forms of criticism as well. The critics were the real stars, whether the subject matter was a meal, a movie, or a TV wrestling match. Everything else became subservient to their self-serving deconstruction of anything in their way.

Criticism in music

Music reviews seemed to be at the lowest level, with their own distinct vices. Gioia saw critics who simply regurgitate record label press releases. Alternatively, critics used their influence to approach stars, spewing favorable coverage in exchange for access. Or, every month, they announced the arrival of a new savior of the music, advertising short-lived trendsetters in a never-ending cycle. Hyperbole and hipper-than-thou pretensions were the bread and butter of the field. With an abundant supply of those and a backstage pass, nothing can stop them.

Gioia shamefully admits that all this appealed to him in his twenties. The idea that he could adopt a pose as a critic and launch himself into a high sphere of coolness. Perhaps even hang out with some superstars as part of the deal. That is what leads everyone to pick that vocation, right? Sure there are compromises, but don’t they exist in every field.

He soothed his conscience by reflecting on what Hyman Roth tells Michael Corleone in The Godfather II: “Michael, this is the business we’ve chosen.” You get to strut like a mobster and grab whatever you can, as long as you’re willing to dispose of some bodies along the way. He could play this game and he was even good at it. 

Gioia got published and began receiving some recognition for his talents. However, he was still troubled. Something did not feel right. Was that really right way to do things? That is when he remembered the Honest Broker.

The Awakening

The Honest Broker now reappeared in Gioia’s psyche as an inner voice, an avenging angel whispering in his ear. Remember me? The Honest Broker puts sincere expression and straightforward dealing above everything else. He does not search for direct benefit in any endeavor. The Honest Broker is an intermediary, not a beneficiary. However, all that seems ludicrous—because what does one get out of it?

As the days went by, the whispering became louder turned into a constant whirr. “Do not underestimate the power of this kind of brokerage…the Honest Broker plays the long-term game, mate”. That strict fidelity and reputation for reliable advice wins over all other strategies over time. The Honest Broker is irreplaceable even more when other guides have become untrustworthy.

Gioia continued asking himself: Could the Honest Broker be a model for himself as a critic? Or more to the point, did the Honest Broker represent a completely different model for criticism? Precisely the correcting approach we need at this moment in cultural history?Gioia shamefully admits once more that his initial reaction to this idea was to resist and even ridicule it simply because it did not gratify his ego. The critic as a celebrity was much more attractive on every level. Even the title of “broker” was a massive disappointment, especially when he considered the other options.

The author, Stanley Crouch, had just released a book of critical essays entitled Notes of a Hanging Judge—now that sounded cool. The Hanging Judge? How could he get a nickname like that? He tried saying aloud: Notes of an Honest Broker. Hell’s bells, it just did not have the same ring.

Still, over the next few months, Gioia saw his approach to writing change. He was taking on the persona of the Honest Broker without even consciously admitting it to himself. He started to measure his methodologies against ideal standards of righteousness and nag himself when he strayed from them. 

Gioia started paring away at exaggerations and posturing his prose and worked to discover other ways of imparting color and vitality to his sentences. Above all, he started worrying about his reader. Because wasn’t the reader the real person he was supposed to serve? Wasn’t the reader the beneficiary of his brokerage services?

Satisfying musicians or editors brought more palpable rewards. What did he get out of serving some miserable, anonymous reader? The ingrate would not even recognize his noble sacrifice. Then Gioia reached the most abject level in this whole process of self-abasement. He started worrying whether the reader would enjoy the music he was recommending.

This was a completely new consideration, one that had never dawned on him before. By consulting various avant-garde critics, he could tell that this had not got on their radars screens either. They did not care about the reader’s musical pleasure. Alternatively, if they did, they never show it.

The road to honest brokerage

Gioia started reading music reviews searching for the words: pleasure, enjoyment, delight. They disappeared in action. Why didn’t anyone talk about them? Shouldn’t enjoyment be a pivotal part of the deal? Yes, a critic enlarges the reader’s horizons, informs and educates, but also guides them to joy. Ultimately, wasn’t that why he listened to music? Wasn’t that what took him to his vocation in the first place?

Lost in this labyrinth, Gioia started to recognize all the other priorities people had written about music. Therefore, the more he contemplated the ecosystem, the more contaminated it seemed. He saw intelligent people who wrote entire books about music intending to secure tenure from their elder colleagues in a college music department.

Gioia also saw others bending over backward to win a grant or to satisfy an editor or curry favor with some institutional power broker. He even read reviewers who wrote with the obvious goal of ingratiating themselves with other reviewers—the blind guiding the blind. Above all, he noticed a whole syndrome that he came to call the Clement Greenberg problem-named after the art critic who attained enormous success ( and huge paydays) by praising the work of Jackson Pollock and other abstract expressionists.

Greenberg had made it evident that the single most lucrative move for a modern-day critic was to declare the newest new thing, the forthcoming revolution that would brush everything else aside. And Greenberg had proven so influential that, by the time Gioia came of age as a critic, a revolution in music was announced every few weeks.

Gioia could not grab a newspaper or magazine without reading about some futuristic, world-beating sound that had changed all the rules- only to be forgotten a few weeks later, replaced by something just as vapid. The whole ordeal was a joke to anyone looking from the outside; however, no one could find any better way to operate.

And there he was, the poor Honest Broker, with his ridiculous self-chosen nickname and very few tools at his disposal. He had no revolution to peddle, not even a medium-sized riot or a back alley scuffle.

Gioia knew that he needed to equip himself better to make it work, which would be a long and challenging journey. He had to educate himself more thoroughly and learn as much as possible about music, especially the riches and beauties that others might miss. His concern with musical pleasure might turn into an advantage, opening his ears to sounds the celebrity critics would shun. He also had to learn how to write better, with more incision and an imaginative grasp of the subject matter. Above all, he had to think about the reader with far more clarity than he had done before.

Perhaps the reader would even think of him someday.

“Could he wear the title of Honest Broker with pride? That might be too much to ask,” contemplates Gioia. Gioia says that he is just a broker, merely an intermediary, and sometimes he does not even get paid for his services. However, maybe, just maybe, this can work. That is what he kept telling himself, over and over: It is the long-term game, mate. It is the long-term game.

Read the original article in TED GIOIA.