Title: “The Divide”

Written In: 2021

Publication: In From Our Eyes & Ears: Writings by Musicians of Color, Vol. I: Black Voices, edited by Lorin Green and LaVonna Wright, 2024. Full publication available on Amazon.

Excerpt:

There aren’t any moments in my musical background that stick out to me as a time when I was discriminated against as a musician of color, but I do think all my experiences together had a significant influence and impact on my view of music and the world. The moment I was taught the “divide” and how I could be or express myself one way but not another—that was the problem. It was like I was only free to voice one side of myself—the side that was “accepted” in the classical music world.

            Because I didn’t know any better, and I was naturally a kid who liked “neatness” and “coloring inside the lines,” I submitted to all the rules and “hegemonic, essentialist thinking.” Just imagine if I had been exposed to more ways of thinking—more perspectives of history, math, science, literature and music earlier in life, in the classroom, and rehearsals as well as with my family and friends.

            I continue to ponder this now, not only with my own life and how to reform my own views, but also how to use my experiences and what I’ve learned to give the next generation of musicians and artists the “culturally sustaining”2 space that I did not have. I want to help debunk this “individualist” mentality and raise up community-centered work. To create a place where everyone’s views, values, cultures and identities are realized, respected and celebrated. A place where we all come together to do the work.

            It is this community around which an ideal world, without the “divide”, can manifest. Because that’s how Black artists, and Black people as a whole, escaped—how they transcended—their entrapment. However, it is not only about the artists embracing this collective bond but also about the world fully welcoming it and all the identities involved. The ideal world is a place without dissonance between the creation and reception of a kind of music (as the first note breaks the atmosphere). Where every crack and lilt are heard for what they are.

            What if we just listened to someone as if hearing music for the first time? Something that is so tethered to history and what we think we know yet also inherently new? If music can be described as the breath of humans, then it, too, will and must be allowed to evolve and shift and diverge and converge in a glorious enigma of ways. Music is about purely acting on instinct—what it truly means to be human—and if we are to survive, it is a freedom we need to embrace.