Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
ABLE Voices Ep 87: Andrew Dell'Antonio
15 Plays3 months ago
We are inviting disabled artists and arts educators to be guests and guest hosts on ABLE Voices. Today's guest host, is Tara Allen.
Tara Allen (she/her) identifies as a queer, neurodivergent, and disabled music psychologist, music educator, advocate, and bass clarinetist. She holds a BM in instrumental music education with concentrations in instrumental wind band and bass clarinet from the Crane School of Music (2021), and an MA in psychology of music from the University of Sheffield (2022). Her master’s thesis, “The Bees Are Too Loud!: ADHD’ers Sound Preferences as an Aid Daily Task Completion"" focused on how ADHD’ers used sound and/or music to help cope with completion of mundane tasks, and the combined social hardships. Her research areas of interest are: neurodivergence and music perception/cognition, learning, processing, behavior, and accessible music education. She has been advocating for neurodivergent and disabled musicians through a variety of platforms since 2020. She has a podcast, Breaking the Third Wall in Music, that invites disabled and/or neurodivergent musicians to discuss disability topics in the music scene. She has also spoken on the The Brave New Sound and Marching Arts Education. She has also given talks at universities, conferences, and organizations about neurodivergence. Lastly, she is a bass clarinetist and active performer in a variety of contemporary, classical, and popular music ensembles. Today, Tara will be speaking to Andrew Dell'Antonio.
Andrew Dell’Antonio is Distinguished Teaching Professor in, and Head of, the Musicology/Ethnomusicology Division of the Butler School of Music in the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. He is Co-Editor with William Cheng of the series Music and Social Justice (University of Michigan Press). His collected edition Beyond Structural Listening? Postmodern Modes of Hearing and monograph Listening as Spiritual Practice in early Modern Italy are both published by University of California Press. He blogs at The Avid Listener and is co-author of The Enjoyment of Music, both from W W Norton. He has recently turned his focus to Universal Design for Learning and related approaches to anti-racism, anti-ableism, and intersectional equity / inclusion in higher education music. His commitment to UDL comes partly from his personal experience of neurodivergence.
Follow Andrew online:
Website: https://www.adellantonio.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adellantonio/
The ABLE Voices podcast is produced and edited by BIAAE Operations Coordinator, Daniel Martinez del Campo. The introduction music was written by Kai Levin and the ending song was written by Sebastian Batista. Kai and Sebastian are students in the Arts Education Programs at the Berklee Institute for Accessible Arts Education.
For more information about our programs visit us at https://college.berklee.edu/BIAAE
Follow us for more weekly updates at:
Instagram: @BIAAE
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BIAAE
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:13
Speaker
Hello
Introduction to the Able Voices Podcast
00:00:14
Speaker
everyone and welcome to the Able Voices Podcast.
00:00:17
Speaker
I'm Dr. Rhoda Bernard, founding managing director of the Berklee Institute for Accessible Arts Education and the assistant chair of the music education department at Berklee College of Music.
00:00:27
Speaker
And I am proud to present this podcast featuring disabled artists and arts educators.
00:00:33
Speaker
We are inviting disabled artists to be guest hosts for the Able Voices Podcast.
00:00:37
Speaker
Our next guest host and today's guest is Tara Allen.
Guest Host Introduction: Tara Allen
00:00:42
Speaker
Tara Allen, she, her, identifies as a queer, neurodivergent, and disabled music psychologist, music educator, advocate, and bass clarinetist.
00:00:55
Speaker
She holds a BM in instrumental music education with concentrations in instrumental wind band,
00:01:01
Speaker
and bass clarinet from the Crane School of Music and an MA in Psychology of Music from the University of Sheffield.
00:01:09
Speaker
Her master's thesis, The B's Are Too Loud, ADHDers Sound Preferences as an Aid Daily Task Completion, focused on how ADHDers use sound and or music to help cope with completion of mundane tasks and the combined social hardships.
00:01:29
Speaker
Her research areas of interest are neurodivergent and music perception and cognition, learning, processing, behavior, and accessible music education.
00:01:41
Speaker
She has been advocating for neurodivergent and disabled musicians through a variety of platforms since 2020.
00:01:48
Speaker
She has a podcast, Breaking the Third Wall in Music, that invites disabled and or neurodivergent musicians to discuss disability topics in the music scene.
00:01:59
Speaker
She has spoken on the Brave New Sound and marching arts education.
00:02:03
Speaker
She has also given talks at universities, conferences, and organizations about neurodivergence.
00:02:09
Speaker
Lastly, she is a bass clarinetist and an active performer in a variety of contemporary, classical, and popular musical ensembles.
00:02:21
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to the Able Voices podcast.
00:02:24
Speaker
I am Tara Allen, your guest host.
00:02:26
Speaker
This week, I have Andrew Delantonio.
00:02:28
Speaker
Andrew
Introduction: Andrew Delantonio
00:02:29
Speaker
D'Antonio is the Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Butler School of Music and the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as a distinguished teaching professor in and head of the Butler School's Musicology and Ethnomusicology Division.
00:02:43
Speaker
He is a co-editor with William Chang of the book series Music and Social Justice from University of Michigan Press and is the co-author of the textbook The Enjoyment of Music from W.W.
00:02:53
Speaker
Norton.
00:02:54
Speaker
While his early career focused on musical traditions of early modern Europe, more recently he has collaborated with academic and community scholars to open access for conversations about disabled and neurodivergent musical culture both inside and outside of academia.
00:03:09
Speaker
The broader goal of his collaborations is to seek practical applications of universal design for learning, UDL, to music history and higher education pedagogy from perspectives informed by critical disability studies and disability justice, as well as his own lived experiences of neurodivergence.
00:03:24
Speaker
I'd like
Andrew's Musical Journey
00:03:25
Speaker
to start off by asking you, Andrew, to tell us a little bit about your story as an artist, musician, however you identify.
00:03:32
Speaker
How did you start as an artist and how did you get where you are today?
00:03:36
Speaker
Thank you, Tara.
00:03:36
Speaker
It's such a delight to be here, by the way.
00:03:38
Speaker
This podcast is so much fun.
00:03:39
Speaker
I've really enjoyed listening to it.
00:03:40
Speaker
So it's an honor to be joining you.
00:03:42
Speaker
There's lots of bits to my origin story and I don't want to draw it on forever, but just to make it an elevator version of this, I'm a recorder player.
00:03:50
Speaker
That is still my main instrument.
00:03:52
Speaker
I started playing recorder like all kids in my single digit age because my parents wanted me to learn music because of course one should.
00:03:59
Speaker
And for a long time I was fiddling around on the recorder and just playing folk tunes.
00:04:05
Speaker
And I was very proud in middle school that I could play Beatles tunes.
00:04:08
Speaker
And then we went abroad for a year.
00:04:10
Speaker
My stepdad was leading a study abroad program.
00:04:12
Speaker
And my teacher, when I got to where we were, said, would you like to learn music that was written for your instrument?
00:04:18
Speaker
And I said, what?
00:04:19
Speaker
And so then that kind of got me into early music nerddom.
00:04:23
Speaker
So that's sort of a fast forward.
00:04:24
Speaker
I've been really interested in repertories of European musical traditions, particularly instrumental music of the 16th, 17th centuries.
00:04:31
Speaker
That's sort of where much of my early research went.
00:04:34
Speaker
I went to got a bachelor's of undergrad.
00:04:36
Speaker
I still played a fair amount.
00:04:38
Speaker
I gave a couple recitals, but I went to a program that didn't have credit for lessons.
00:04:43
Speaker
Mainly because by that point I realized that, well, I didn't know that I had ADHD, but I realized that practicing was too boring.
00:04:49
Speaker
I just could not deal with practicing.
00:04:51
Speaker
I didn't have the self-discipline to really become good.
00:04:53
Speaker
I love sight reading.
00:04:54
Speaker
I loved improvising, but practicing.
00:04:57
Speaker
So...
ADHD's Impact on Andrew's Academic Path
00:04:58
Speaker
I went into a program very, very thoughtfully that I was very interested in history as well.
00:05:01
Speaker
My stepdad is a historian.
00:05:02
Speaker
So I went into the family business.
00:05:04
Speaker
My family is all academics.
00:05:05
Speaker
And I thought, this is kind of cool.
00:05:06
Speaker
You get to talk about cool stuff and hang out with cool people.
00:05:08
Speaker
So I'm going to try it.
00:05:10
Speaker
So it really worked out well for me.
00:05:11
Speaker
I went to college.
00:05:12
Speaker
I got a Bachelor of Arts in Music.
00:05:14
Speaker
I went off to grad school.
00:05:15
Speaker
I got a doctorate.
00:05:16
Speaker
And it took a little while to get a job, as it often does for those who have PhDs.
00:05:20
Speaker
So you all listening, just whatever you do, don't get a PhD in music history.
00:05:24
Speaker
No, I mean, you can, but it's tough.
00:05:27
Speaker
And academia now is sort of a mess.
00:05:28
Speaker
And we can talk a little bit about that later in terms of ableism.
00:05:32
Speaker
But I was fortunate that I landed a sweet, tiny-year track gig at the University of Texas, Austin.
00:05:36
Speaker
And that was in 1997 in the previous millennium.
00:05:39
Speaker
And so I showed up there as a little baby musicologist and now I've been there for...
00:05:43
Speaker
20, however many years.
00:05:45
Speaker
And I've somehow become the elder musicologist on staff.
00:05:48
Speaker
And so, yeah, so that's sort of where I came to music performance.
00:05:52
Speaker
That's how I always have been a musician.
00:05:54
Speaker
I identify as a musician, as a performer, as an improviser, as somebody really interested in the instrumental traditions of the 17th century, especially in Italy.
00:06:05
Speaker
I don't know if you have a follow-up question about this, about this disability piece, so maybe I hold off.
00:06:10
Speaker
Yeah, definitely hold off.
00:06:11
Speaker
I mean, I was also very curious because I, Andrew, as long as I've known you, I didn't even know you were a recorder player.
00:06:17
Speaker
Like I didn't realize that was like your primary instrument.
00:06:22
Speaker
I learned something new today.
00:06:25
Speaker
Yeah, I've continued playing.
00:06:27
Speaker
When I first got to Texas, they're really, I'm unfortunately at a school of music that doesn't really have a really solid early music program.
00:06:35
Speaker
You know, schools of music have different priorities and ours never really has had, we never really had several full-time people.
00:06:41
Speaker
So for the first few years I was there, I played fairly regularly.
00:06:43
Speaker
We had a regular sort of Bach cantata workshop and
00:06:46
Speaker
As you may know, Bach, we had a whole bunch of his cantata movements for recorder.
00:06:49
Speaker
So, you know, when they needed a recorder player, they pulled me in.
00:06:51
Speaker
It was fun.
00:06:52
Speaker
But, you know, like a lot of things, if you don't do it enough, you know, you get rusty.
00:06:56
Speaker
And I still play every now and then.
00:06:58
Speaker
I still, for example, there's an intro class that I lead.
00:07:01
Speaker
And I always lead the students through some improvisatory work on a round basis.
00:07:05
Speaker
But, yeah, it's...
00:07:06
Speaker
It's sort of one of these semi-well-kept secrets.
00:07:09
Speaker
I don't really do it very much anymore.
00:07:11
Speaker
There are pictures flowing around of me with recorders, especially with recorders that are larger than the ones that students expect me to carry.
00:07:17
Speaker
I love playing the tenor.
00:07:20
Speaker
Actually, I love playing the bass once upon a time, but the tenor is a great instrument.
00:07:23
Speaker
The alto, as you may know, is sort of the instrument for most 17th, 18th century work.
00:07:27
Speaker
Yep.
00:07:28
Speaker
But yeah, that's me.
00:07:29
Speaker
So yeah, I should play more often, but of course I should do a thousand things more.
00:07:34
Speaker
So yeah, anyway, that's my background.
00:07:37
Speaker
I am curious, what is your favorite piece to play in the recorder?
00:07:40
Speaker
Like, you know, the traditional period recorders.
00:07:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:44
Speaker
So I'll...
00:07:46
Speaker
I'll give you two pieces.
00:07:47
Speaker
Well, first of all, I love playing any pieces that involve ground basses, so sort of divisions, right?
00:07:53
Speaker
So the whole division flute book is good.
00:07:55
Speaker
I really enjoyed when I was younger and I could still move my fingers over the instrument really fast.
00:08:00
Speaker
I really enjoyed Van Eyck's Flut in Neusthof, this collection of elaborations from the early 17th century.
00:08:06
Speaker
Now I actually got interested in it again because I found out that Van Eyck was blind.
00:08:10
Speaker
And so one of these days, maybe I'll go back to the piece and think about sort of the, you know, the tradition of blind instrumentalists and how Phenag fits into it.
00:08:19
Speaker
I really love playing Telemann solo.
00:08:22
Speaker
Classic.
00:08:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:24
Speaker
Telemann is, I mean, Telemann is so fricking awesome.
00:08:26
Speaker
It's been a while, but I used to teach a Telemann Bach course in which by the end of the course, I was hoping the students to realize that Telemann was actually a
00:08:33
Speaker
better composers than J.S.
00:08:34
Speaker
Bach.
00:08:35
Speaker
You know, I mean, in different ways, but really, really phenomenal, phenomenal pedagogue, phenomenal composer.
00:08:40
Speaker
So Tillemann is sort of like, yeah, I mean, it's a chestnut.
00:08:44
Speaker
I've enjoyed playing, you know, back when I did this fabulous, you probably know, this fabulous concerto that Tillemann wrote for E minor, right, for a quarter and fluke.
00:08:53
Speaker
And in college, that was one of my recital pieces.
00:08:55
Speaker
And it's a bear and it's a lot of fun to play.
00:08:58
Speaker
And yeah, now I couldn't play it anymore, but it was fun.
00:09:00
Speaker
Thanks for sharing, Andrew.
00:09:01
Speaker
Like I said, I feel like I learn something new every day when we have a chat.
00:09:06
Speaker
My next question for you is, I'd like you to tell us about your experiences as a neurodivergent person and musician.
00:09:13
Speaker
Thank
Living with ADHD: Challenges and Strategies
00:09:14
Speaker
you.
00:09:14
Speaker
Yeah, I appreciate that.
00:09:15
Speaker
That's, you know, what's interesting to me is I didn't officially identify a neurodivergent until about seven years ago.
00:09:22
Speaker
My diagnosis of ADHD came in my mid-50s.
00:09:26
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, I've been a neurodivergent all my life, right?
00:09:29
Speaker
So I think...
00:09:32
Speaker
What I mentioned earlier about practicing insight reading, I now realize that my difficulty in certain kinds of practicing came precisely out of the fact that my brain just gets so bored with it.
00:09:46
Speaker
And on the flip side, my ability to improvise and to sort of be present with improvisation, I think, comes in part from the way my brain works and the way I enjoy throwing stuff together and playing with stuff.
00:09:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:57
Speaker
Language as well.
00:09:58
Speaker
Another, you know, I guess connected to this is I was born in Italy.
00:10:02
Speaker
I came to the States when I was nine.
00:10:03
Speaker
I've been exposed to a lot of languages as a little kid.
00:10:05
Speaker
So I can work around pretty, you know, several romance languages.
00:10:09
Speaker
And so playing with language is something that we did at home all the time and that I like to do.
00:10:13
Speaker
And so that's also part of this whole improvisatory thing in my mind.
00:10:17
Speaker
I think the other piece that I've become aware of more recently in collaborating with a colleague of mine who is an independent scholar who's autistic is how certain kinds of musical training were difficult for me.
00:10:30
Speaker
And again, now probably because of the way my brain works.
00:10:33
Speaker
So for example, I really, really struggled with keyboard skills.
00:10:36
Speaker
In fact, to this day, I could not play the keyboard to save my life.
00:10:40
Speaker
My college training was such that I managed to get out of college without keyboard skills.
00:10:44
Speaker
The program was that way.
00:10:45
Speaker
I get to grad school and I had to demonstrate keyboard skills by the time I got to candidacy.
00:10:49
Speaker
And that was tough.
00:10:49
Speaker
I mean, people who helped me do that, they were saints because it was just like, no, the brain does not compute two hands doing same play, even though, of course, I'm using two hands to play my instrument, right?
00:10:59
Speaker
So that's, I think, there's a variety of aspects.
00:11:03
Speaker
I think another piece of it is, and maybe part of the reason why I gravitate towards either very early or more recent music,
00:11:09
Speaker
is that I don't have as much long range listening skills, even though I was technically trained to listen, to be able to, you know, listen to a Mahler symphony or a Bruckner symphony.
00:11:21
Speaker
I,
00:11:22
Speaker
I just can't.
00:11:23
Speaker
I just can't.
00:11:23
Speaker
And it's really hard for me to keep that attention going.
00:11:26
Speaker
Again, it's sort of an attention thing.
00:11:27
Speaker
So I think that's part of it.
00:11:29
Speaker
And in all this, that's sort of where my teaching then has gone.
00:11:33
Speaker
That is that I've become increasingly realizing that certain things are hard to keep track of.
00:11:38
Speaker
I've always had trouble memorizing things, for example, which is bad for a historian.
00:11:42
Speaker
But you know what?
00:11:43
Speaker
Not really, because historians don't just memorize things, right?
00:11:45
Speaker
They put things together.
00:11:46
Speaker
And so...
00:11:47
Speaker
This is sort of thinking about how do I make things accessible to students in my classes, particularly music history, but even talking about, for non-majors, how do you start thinking about larger scale forms in sort of listening for and making sense of larger scale forms?
00:12:04
Speaker
Because I came up with strategies that work, and in fact, that makes sense.
00:12:08
Speaker
But I had some friends in grad school who were like, oh, Bruckner, my God, my most best favorite.
00:12:13
Speaker
And I would shrug.
00:12:14
Speaker
I always try to be nice.
00:12:16
Speaker
I definitely understand.
00:12:17
Speaker
I think that that's the struggle as a teacher.
00:12:20
Speaker
I used to be one, so I understand.
00:12:24
Speaker
I know you started talking about it a little bit earlier about some of those difficulties that you experience in academia as an ADHDer and as a neurodivergent person.
00:12:35
Speaker
I feel like this kind of feeds into the original question, but kind of in a different way of like...
00:12:41
Speaker
Yes, our musicianship is our performance, but for a lot of us who are also researchers as well, which myself included, there is a different level of experience as a neurodivergent and disabled person in music academia.
00:12:55
Speaker
I'd love to hear a little bit more about your experience.
00:12:57
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:12:58
Speaker
And again, I think part of it is, I mean, the way ADHD manifests for me,
00:13:03
Speaker
Because I grew up in an academic context, because I was coached on how to be an academic, I think differently from some of my friends who did not have academic families, I had a lot of support in my family, so I came up with strategies.
00:13:16
Speaker
So in a way, I attributed the difficulties that I had to just, oh, well, I got to work a little harder, right?
00:13:21
Speaker
So the whole, you should try a little harder is absolutely refrained as a company, me my whole life.
00:13:26
Speaker
And I was always a perfectly fine student, but I was never an A student.
00:13:31
Speaker
And again, you know, arguably have actually done better in the long run than some of my colleagues who were A students.
00:13:36
Speaker
And so there's a whole question of what, you know, is being an A student really everything that it's hatched up to be?
00:13:41
Speaker
I mean, whatever.
00:13:42
Speaker
But certainly in terms of certain kinds of standard academic performance, test taking, memorization, and even certain kinds of large-scale planning, that is tough.
00:13:54
Speaker
It's tough.
00:13:55
Speaker
It's tough.
00:13:56
Speaker
You know, again,
00:13:57
Speaker
Coming now from an instructor perspective, I have a lot, well, a little more authority to say, hey, 14 weeks is a random number, right?
00:14:05
Speaker
There's no reason why you should learn things over 14 weeks in a semester.
00:14:08
Speaker
And I had the authority a little bit to say, I'm going to give you extensions because if you don't learn over 14 weeks, it's not your fault.
00:14:16
Speaker
It's the fault of the arbitrary 14 weeks.
00:14:19
Speaker
So I think that's part of it for me too, is that particular timings, right?
00:14:23
Speaker
I mean, one of the things, one of the ways my ADHD manifests and has always manifested is
00:14:27
Speaker
is a sense of time that is non-standard, right?
00:14:29
Speaker
I mean, a lot of BIDD people have that, right?
00:14:31
Speaker
And so getting late to things, right, and such, you know, on the flip side, I'm pretty good at knowing exactly how long 50 minutes is because I've gotten the practice of, okay, I teach a 50-minute class, and so I'm pretty good at ending class on time as long as I'm not, you know, going off on my tangent, which sometimes I do.
00:14:51
Speaker
But, um, so I think, I think that's it now on the other hand, you know, I encountered a lot of instructors, faculty who were also neurodivergent.
00:14:58
Speaker
I mean, it's, you know, one of these dirty secrets of academia is that it is actually a very
Challenges in Academia for Neurodivergent Individuals
00:15:03
Speaker
good place in some ways for, for especially male and straight, right.
00:15:06
Speaker
And white, uh, neurodivergent academics, because we're just a quirky professors and, and, you know, pat me on the head and, and, and there, there you go and off you go.
00:15:15
Speaker
So that's part of it is that I think I managed to get myself to a field that valued my differences.
00:15:23
Speaker
Where in fact, just like Brett says about queerness is, if you are musical or if you're whatever, you are odd, but we accept you as a musician.
00:15:33
Speaker
I think there are a lot of us in this field.
00:15:37
Speaker
And again, there's a whole question, of course, of what is neurotypical or not, and we could go down that rabbit hole forever.
00:15:43
Speaker
But I think that's part of it, too, is that the different ways of being have both been difficult for me.
00:15:49
Speaker
But also, I was able to build up in the strategies the way this manifested for me was such that, again, I was able to not know it.
00:15:58
Speaker
I mean, I had diagnosed anxiety since forever, at least since grad school, probably since before then.
00:16:03
Speaker
Such an ADHD pre-diagnosedness.
00:16:05
Speaker
Right.
00:16:06
Speaker
Exactly, exactly.
00:16:07
Speaker
And in the end, right, it's the, you know, I got to build strategies, otherwise everything's going to fall apart, right?
00:16:12
Speaker
So that mindset is there.
00:16:13
Speaker
But if you build the strategies, then, you know, then it's just anxiety, you know, giving you panic attacks from time to time.
00:16:19
Speaker
But then when life changes, so in my situation, you know, I got older, as my doctor at the time said, I got benign senescence, this is a term I want to recommend to everybody, it's when you get old, but it's okay.
00:16:31
Speaker
So it's not, you know, it's not malignant senescence, right?
00:16:34
Speaker
So, you know, you get a little older and your brain changes because what happens.
00:16:38
Speaker
And as it turns out, as your brain changes, some things might become more visible.
00:16:41
Speaker
And so that's sort of how it played out for me.
00:16:43
Speaker
You know, partly it was because, you know, people started noticing certain things, but partly because, frankly, it was happening more often and it had more responsibilities.
00:16:52
Speaker
So that I dropped more balls.
00:16:53
Speaker
When you have more balls, you drop more balls.
00:16:56
Speaker
So I think a lot of that was, you know, managing, coping, telling myself I got to work harder, people telling me I got to work harder, being successful enough that, okay, I can deal with this even though I'm a little anxious.
00:17:07
Speaker
And then realizing, well, wait, this thing that is happening in my brain is happening to all the other people.
00:17:13
Speaker
And therefore, how can I embrace it and work with it as opposed to trying to pretend that everything's okay and I'm not struggling with certain kinds of things?
00:17:23
Speaker
the neurodivergent experience of masking is so real for real right and sometimes you don't even know that you're masking right right exactly don't know right right i mean i talk to a lot of people right exactly i talk a lot of people it's like i mean you're coping right and the coping means means you know adapting to neurotypical norms right now we know but back then when you haven't had the framework you're like you're coping because that's what quote unquote normal is now thankfully
00:17:46
Speaker
We know normals are sitting in the dryer and we can, you know, call people normate and insult them for pretending to be normal.
00:17:51
Speaker
So that's kind of fun.
00:17:53
Speaker
Every day.
00:17:56
Speaker
The next question is, I know our listeners would like to hear about the arts education you received.
00:18:01
Speaker
I know you've talked about it a little bit, but can you tell us about how you studied the arts and how you continue to learn today?
00:18:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:08
Speaker
So I did, actually, I'll say I started, I mean, I mentioned this idea of learning the music for my instrument.
00:18:18
Speaker
So that was really the beginning of thinking of what I did as something really creative, right?
00:18:22
Speaker
Not just playing tunes.
00:18:24
Speaker
I went in Italy.
00:18:26
Speaker
There have been for a long time these summer workshops in this lovely town called Lugbino on top of a hill in central Italy where you do early music for two weeks, like continuously wall to wall freaking early musicians.
00:18:36
Speaker
It was a blast.
00:18:37
Speaker
And so I went to those about three times when I was in between high school and college.
00:18:41
Speaker
And so that was sort of a deep introduction.
00:18:44
Speaker
Then
00:18:45
Speaker
While still finishing high school, the director of the early music ensemble at a nearby college was a great mentor to me.
00:18:50
Speaker
And we sort of talked about, okay, what is this all about?
00:18:53
Speaker
How does one do this?
00:18:54
Speaker
I did end up going to a liberal arts college because I thought I was gonna major in psychology.
00:18:58
Speaker
I took my first psych test, I got a C.
00:19:00
Speaker
And I said, I'm not doing this, right?
00:19:02
Speaker
Because I had to memorize all this stuff.
00:19:03
Speaker
It's like, what the hell?
00:19:04
Speaker
But thankfully, I'd also enrolled in this sort of intense music parallel thing.
00:19:08
Speaker
And so I dove into music from there.
00:19:10
Speaker
And so then, you know, I was a fancy undergraduate, you know, Ivy League undergraduate college.
00:19:16
Speaker
I don't want to sort of throw names around.
00:19:18
Speaker
But anyway, I was there.
00:19:19
Speaker
Well, you know, I was a B-plus student.
00:19:21
Speaker
I did good.
00:19:22
Speaker
Grad school, California, Berkeley, wonderful place.
00:19:24
Speaker
A lot of really great musicians, a lot of great historians, people who really understood
00:19:28
Speaker
where music was going, right?
00:19:29
Speaker
Music and history was going.
00:19:30
Speaker
So I really, that's where I really went deeply into the idea of being a music historian.
00:19:35
Speaker
So I kept playing, but I wanted to be a historian and that's how my learning happened.
00:19:40
Speaker
And that's how it's continued to happen because I've been fortunate enough to be surrounded by a lot of people
00:19:45
Speaker
When I was younger, people who were older who were sort of cage rattlers, right, who were shaking things around a bit and didn't allow me to be complacent in thinking, what does it mean to do this work?
00:19:57
Speaker
And then more recently, even better, people younger than me who are fabulous cage rattlers and who are saying, hey, you can't just sit back and keep doing the work you're doing.
00:20:06
Speaker
because we need to include more people.
00:20:08
Speaker
We need to make sense of more things.
00:20:10
Speaker
We have been telling stories that are very limited and that then leave people out, right?
00:20:15
Speaker
So that's been, I mean, the, you know, telling stories, you know, my mom was an early childhood education person.
00:20:21
Speaker
My stepdad's a historian.
00:20:22
Speaker
People told stories all the freaking time around me.
00:20:24
Speaker
My grandma was a great storyteller.
00:20:26
Speaker
So I've just enjoyed the idea that we tell stories, but we tell stories with a purpose.
00:20:30
Speaker
We have different reasons to tell stories.
00:20:32
Speaker
And what the facts are that we tell stories with are actually really interesting because they're never really solid.
00:20:38
Speaker
And in music, they're especially cool because there's so much interpretation happening.
00:20:41
Speaker
So that's another reason why I really love working with early repertories because there's so much, you know, flexibility.
00:20:46
Speaker
I mean, some people say, oh, well, you got to play Bach, you know, with the original instrument.
00:20:50
Speaker
But...
00:20:51
Speaker
When I was younger as a scholar, the number of people in the early music scene were really, really keen on that.
00:20:56
Speaker
You know, y'all in the Boston area.
00:20:58
Speaker
I mean, I got my own recorder from the Fahuna workshop.
00:21:01
Speaker
So I know the high level nerdiness in Boston early music.
00:21:04
Speaker
And it's great stuff there.
00:21:06
Speaker
But even again, you might say 1970s when I was really young, people were saying there's a right way to play Bach.
00:21:12
Speaker
And now people are saying, well, there are many ways to play Bach.
00:21:14
Speaker
And actually, if you use these things to play Bach, it sounds different and it opens up possibilities.
00:21:18
Speaker
And that's what I love.
00:21:19
Speaker
So that's what I love to bring to my saxophone students and tell them, because they'll come in and say, well, Bach never wrote anything for the saxophone.
00:21:25
Speaker
I said, well, you know, that didn't stop him from arranging things for everything under the sun.
00:21:30
Speaker
And saxophones are really cool instruments.
00:21:32
Speaker
And so what can you do with a saxophone with this piece?
00:21:34
Speaker
Because Bach would have asked you the same thing.
00:21:36
Speaker
You know, Bach would have been satisfied to say, well, I'm sorry, you can only play this piece on a flute or a violin or whatever the heck.
00:21:41
Speaker
And so that then opens up the possibility of claiming the music for yourself.
00:21:45
Speaker
So I guess that's a long way to say, you know, the notion of, of making it yours and helping people make it theirs and being excited and learning from other people.
00:21:53
Speaker
I mean, one of the coolest things about teaching I find is every year I have a new crop of people who can tell me new things.
00:22:00
Speaker
And, you know, and I'm technically telling them things, but you know, they're, they're telling me a lot more things than I'm, I'm learning.
00:22:07
Speaker
And, and in the end,
00:22:10
Speaker
Having that dynamic, telling students that they are authorities, right?
00:22:13
Speaker
That they don't need to feel like they don't know anything, but they are, you know, people who have knowledge and who can keep building knowledge.
00:22:19
Speaker
That's been fun too, because it gives a different dynamic than I got.
00:22:23
Speaker
I mean, I pretty, I, you know, I had good instructors, but a lot of what I got was here are the facts.
00:22:28
Speaker
You will learn the facts now, right?
00:22:29
Speaker
And that stuff just, I mean, I coped with it, but it just, and so once I had latitude to not do that so much, then it was been actually more and more fun as time's gone along.
00:22:38
Speaker
So I've gotten,
00:22:40
Speaker
less and less, I don't know, specific.
00:22:43
Speaker
I know that's the wrong word.
00:22:44
Speaker
Less and less sort of determinant in my teaching because I realized if I give students agency, they're going to do a lot more fun things and they'll be more fun for me.
00:22:52
Speaker
Because, you know, my God, if I have to make people learn dates, first of all, I can't learn dates.
00:22:57
Speaker
And second of all, I know the freaking dates.
00:22:59
Speaker
And so why should I, you know, why should I take so much time doing that when, I mean, this is the other thing I, granted, I'm realizing sort of ranting here, but
00:23:07
Speaker
One of the things I decided to do, and maybe this will sort of, if you want to talk a bit about this OEDL-ish thing, might get us into this, is a few years back, you know, I'd been teaching our first semester on music history sequence for majors for very long.
00:23:22
Speaker
And I registered that most of our students, maybe a semester, two semesters later, remember almost nothing about what they had studied.
00:23:30
Speaker
And that felt, I mean, on the one hand, I could have gone and said, how do you dare?
00:23:34
Speaker
You scallywags, you should have stayed better.
00:23:36
Speaker
But thankfully, I went, oh, shoot, that was a waste of time for them.
00:23:41
Speaker
Right.
00:23:42
Speaker
What I mean, and for me and OK, so how are we going to fix this?
00:23:47
Speaker
And so that's what I've been trying to do ever since is, you know, can we make it?
00:23:52
Speaker
It can be hard for students to relate to music from a very long time ago.
00:23:55
Speaker
I get it.
00:23:56
Speaker
Every year we get a few nerds who are really into it and then some who aren't.
00:24:00
Speaker
It's okay.
00:24:00
Speaker
So I'm not going to take it personally anyway, but can we make it as worth everybody's time?
00:24:05
Speaker
Because you guys, you know, students are paying money and they're doing things and they're being told, oh, you should be practicing here instead and why you should go to Silly Music History where you're going to memorize this crap and then you never use it again.
00:24:16
Speaker
I mean, if that's the way that we move into it, then yeah, I mean...
00:24:21
Speaker
what the heck am I even doing?
00:24:22
Speaker
So it's, it's even, it's actually more fun for me to try to figure out how can this music that I love so much, how can I get people to, to love some of it, you know, and to love the fact of talking and telling stories about music, which is really ultimately, I mean, we need to be able to tell stories about our music and we need to know what the ethics of telling stories are.
00:24:43
Speaker
And that's what
Adapting Teaching for Diverse Learning Styles
00:24:44
Speaker
I really care a lot about.
00:24:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:46
Speaker
I think you brought up a really good point earlier about
00:24:49
Speaker
you know, giving agencies to students, you know, as teachers, that's a really big part of our job is providing them the tools to kind of create their own agency, but then also like
00:25:01
Speaker
As you were talking about it, you're like, I'm learning from them through their own agency.
00:25:05
Speaker
And I remember when I was training to be a teacher, I literally remember a teacher just looking at me and going kind of in a similar tone of like, just because you're the teacher doesn't mean you're not going to learn anything from your students because they're going to teach you a lot of things that you thought you knew, but you didn't know.
00:25:24
Speaker
And it's very true.
00:25:27
Speaker
I think that's absolutely right.
00:25:29
Speaker
And I think part of it is, and this is a more recent sort of thing that I've focused on, tried to learn more about this whole UDL, you know, design for learning frame, is sometimes, I mean, certainly students have insights on things, right?
00:25:43
Speaker
I mean, frankly, four-year-olds have insights on things, but certainly 19 to 23-year-olds who are the people who I deal with most of the time have a lot of insights and thoughts.
00:25:52
Speaker
And sometimes they haven't thought a lot about it and they deserve to think more, but
00:25:55
Speaker
Sometimes, you know, they've thought a lot about it and it's sort of helping them to tell the difference between the things that are just knee jerk reaction based on their bias and stuff they've actually thought about.
00:26:05
Speaker
So that's, that's really important too.
00:26:07
Speaker
But another thing is, you know, some things that make sense to me because I've learned in a certain way may not make sense to somebody else if I try to help them learn in the same way.
00:26:16
Speaker
Mm hmm.
00:26:17
Speaker
Because, you know, all because our brain is different and people have different ways of learning things.
00:26:22
Speaker
And so so that's something that I've really thought a lot about.
00:26:25
Speaker
And again, I've drawn a lot of students to help me figure that out.
00:26:28
Speaker
You know, oftentimes there's students who have accommodations, sometimes not.
00:26:31
Speaker
But the student will say, hey, I really can't make sense of it this way.
00:26:35
Speaker
But, you know, in a different class, I made sense of this thing that way.
00:26:37
Speaker
Do you think we could do it that way?
00:26:38
Speaker
And I say, well, that's cool.
00:26:40
Speaker
Sure.
00:26:41
Speaker
Why not?
00:26:42
Speaker
And then I have a new tool that I can pass on to the next students, whether or not
00:26:47
Speaker
they have disabilities officially whether or not because tools are good you know you want to have many tools because having only one tool you know unless it's a multi-tool uh you can't do that much with it you know if everything you know everything's a nail right if you only have a hammer whereas you have many different tools then maybe i can go back with other music that i think i know something about and i know something about but i can know more about it because this student has given me a tool to make sense of it myself and
00:27:15
Speaker
So yeah, that's, I mean, again, it's not absolutely what your teacher says spot on.
00:27:18
Speaker
It's in the classroom for sure.
00:27:20
Speaker
But it's also the kind of renewal that we can get as instructors is there's fresh ideas as long as, again, we can set up that dynamic where students feel comfortable trying things, not worried about getting it wrong.
00:27:33
Speaker
I mean, this is something that maybe even kind of this too, but I really struggle with these days because of the way a lot of students are trained in K through 12.
00:27:40
Speaker
They come to college and they have a lot of trouble being
00:27:44
Speaker
being curious, right?
00:27:45
Speaker
I mean, they just want to know what's right for the test so they get the test right.
00:27:49
Speaker
And when I tell them, we don't have any tests in this class, you know, I mean, I don't want to say they freak out.
00:27:53
Speaker
I mean, it's good not to have tests, but then they start thinking, okay, wait, so how am I supposed to know
00:27:57
Speaker
what's right.
00:27:58
Speaker
I want to tell you, and that's when they find out that they're not supposed to know that they're supposed to figure out what they think is right rather than what I think is right.
00:28:05
Speaker
But it's, you know, again, it's, it's, it's wonderful for some students.
00:28:09
Speaker
It's very hard for others.
00:28:11
Speaker
And so this idea of how can I then meet the students halfway who have been, who've had curiosity, you know, crushed out of them because of the standardized testing K through 12, you know, because if you have no idea of how to build your curiosity, then you are going to kind of
00:28:27
Speaker
have the cereal aisle thing in front of my options and say, well, I can't even choose which cereals to eat because there's so many of them.
00:28:33
Speaker
Right.
00:28:33
Speaker
So I can't choose what option I want to take because, because there are too many options.
00:28:37
Speaker
Tell me which one I need to take.
00:28:38
Speaker
So the strategy of how do you help people gradually become comfortable with options is, is one that I've had to learn myself, right?
00:28:45
Speaker
The initially I thought, Oh, cool.
00:28:46
Speaker
I'm giving all the options because that's what I want.
00:28:48
Speaker
But no, you know, I'm not, everybody's me.
00:28:52
Speaker
So that's, that's a great learning opportunity for me.
00:28:56
Speaker
100%.
00:28:56
Speaker
I agree.
00:28:57
Speaker
As we've heard, you are very active as a musician in a variety of ways.
00:29:03
Speaker
I see it myself through the group that you have, the Musicology and Disability Group.
00:29:09
Speaker
Can you
Current Projects and Collaboration
00:29:10
Speaker
tell us a little bit about your current work and some of the initiatives and things that you're doing?
00:29:15
Speaker
Sure.
00:29:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:16
Speaker
What's kind of cool, and again, not to ramble on about this, I'm very good at rambling on, by the way, so stop me.
00:29:23
Speaker
But my research used to be defined as me writing articles, publishing books.
00:29:27
Speaker
That's how we musicologists define research, success, career, all that kind of stuff.
00:29:32
Speaker
And that is still valuable.
00:29:34
Speaker
What's been super awesome is as I haven't needed to demonstrate my skills in the area,
00:29:40
Speaker
because of how I've advanced professionally in my field, I've been able to do more stuff that I kind of wanted to.
00:29:47
Speaker
I do what I want, as Cartman would say.
00:29:49
Speaker
And so, for example, I've been doing a lot of collaboration.
00:29:54
Speaker
I was trained to be an independent, you know, got to do my own research and you can't be plagiarizing, yada, yada.
00:30:01
Speaker
So I'm doing this fabulous collaboration with a colleague in theater and dance.
00:30:04
Speaker
They're the head of our theater and dance group.
00:30:05
Speaker
And we got a bit of funds from a university to come up with a,
00:30:11
Speaker
a series of initiatives to look at the syllabus as a document of community.
00:30:17
Speaker
So not as, you know, if you don't show up, you get an F, but setting guidelines collectively on what is ethical and what is viable for the community, right?
00:30:26
Speaker
Accountability is really important.
00:30:28
Speaker
Showing up for each other is really important.
00:30:29
Speaker
And, you know, any musician or performing artist who goes out
00:30:32
Speaker
after school knows that if they don't show up for their ensemble, then they're ensemble tanks.
00:30:37
Speaker
So it's important to be accountable.
00:30:39
Speaker
But also, you know, academia often has these artificial guidelines that says, well, if you're absent twice, then you got to grade down or whatever, right?
00:30:48
Speaker
And so a lot of people say, well, people got to learn that, you know, in the real world, but in the real world, people take care of each other.
00:30:55
Speaker
You just need to be accountable.
00:30:56
Speaker
So we've been talking about what does that mean, both with colleagues.
00:30:59
Speaker
This year we're working with graduate students who are instructors to just figure out how do you set a class up like that through a syllabus, but then how do you continue conveying that message?
00:31:09
Speaker
So that's been a super, super cool initiative.
00:31:11
Speaker
Another really fabulous initiative that, again, is a collaborative initiative that you sort of mentioned is this initiative connected to our study group, our National Society, the American Musicological Society,
00:31:22
Speaker
has a number of study groups and i've been involved with the music and disability study group for a while but for the first time this sort of academic year i am one of the co-leaders and you know with with a couple of really really brilliant younger scholars i mean i'm just in awe of them it's so awesome to work with them because they have so much energy and and hope and it's like it almost helps a little jaded old me like believe something can be changed but anyway so so one of the things that we've done that we're really proud of is
00:31:49
Speaker
while the society interest group is within the society.
00:31:53
Speaker
And so it's only available technically to those who join the society.
00:31:57
Speaker
We have a community of practice that one of my colleagues, Rena Roussin, who's finishing her doctorate at CUNY,
00:32:04
Speaker
Toronto, if I remember correctly, in Canada, she said, let's have a community practice because one of the big things that we care about is access, right?
00:32:11
Speaker
I'm sure you've been talking, I mean, I know you've been talking a fair amount about this.
00:32:13
Speaker
So how do you provide access to people?
00:32:15
Speaker
If you put things behind paywalls, if you put things behind societies, if you only can allow people to engage with something, if they show up to a national conference with expensive hotels, then you don't give access.
00:32:26
Speaker
And so we've been really nudging our powers that be to really provide more access.
00:32:30
Speaker
And, you know, it's,
00:32:31
Speaker
Limited success.
00:32:32
Speaker
We're still working on it.
00:32:33
Speaker
But we said, the heck with this.
00:32:34
Speaker
We can make our own access.
00:32:36
Speaker
I have the privilege of being able to host Zoom meetings.
00:32:40
Speaker
I had the privilege of being able to compensate someone who would do CART for us, the automatic transcription.
00:32:48
Speaker
It's actually a person who has worked with Gaylene Lee, so who has real sort of disability cred.
00:32:54
Speaker
And so twice a semester-ish, we say to our community, we send email out to people connected to our society, but also who have gotten to know about us.
00:33:04
Speaker
We say, hey, we're getting together on date X on Zoom.
00:33:07
Speaker
Show up.
00:33:07
Speaker
We're going to have a cart.
00:33:08
Speaker
We're going to record it.
00:33:10
Speaker
Come join us.
00:33:11
Speaker
Let's talk about these things.
00:33:12
Speaker
Sometimes we have presentations by people.
00:33:14
Speaker
Sometimes we just talk about stuff that's interesting to us.
00:33:18
Speaker
For example, in fact, we have just decided that the second half of this December's meeting is going to be
00:33:24
Speaker
a tribute to Alice Wong, who just recently passed away, as you might have noticed.
00:33:28
Speaker
And so it's a y'all come thing, as they say in Texas.
00:33:33
Speaker
I'm from Italy.
00:33:33
Speaker
I grew up in the Northeast.
00:33:37
Speaker
But I have learned to say y'all.
00:33:38
Speaker
So y'all is useful.
00:33:40
Speaker
That's something that Massachusetts has got to figure out.
00:33:42
Speaker
So you've got to figure out y'all from Massachusetts.
00:33:43
Speaker
But anyway, so it's a, you know, everybody's welcome.
00:33:46
Speaker
It is free.
00:33:47
Speaker
It is on Zoom.
00:33:48
Speaker
We have, we ask people for their access needs beyond CART.
00:33:52
Speaker
And some people have said, well, I would like to have materials in advance because reading them in advance would be helpful.
00:33:57
Speaker
And we try to do that as much as we can.
00:33:59
Speaker
I have one colleague who is amazing and her access need that she is incredibly courageous to put out there is I'm academic, but I don't want people to be critical of what I have to say.
00:34:12
Speaker
And this is sort of the opposite of the idea, well, academia, people are supposed to be beating up on you.
00:34:16
Speaker
But she says, you know, given my disability, I get flares if I get anxiety.
00:34:22
Speaker
And ain't that going to happen to me.
00:34:24
Speaker
And so you, if you want to be in conversation with me, have to find a way to help to give me feedback in ways that is not
00:34:31
Speaker
Right.
00:34:31
Speaker
I mean, she doesn't use the word mean, but because she can absolutely take constructive feedback.
00:34:35
Speaker
But she's learned that the standard feedback people get in academic context is, you know, jerks.
00:34:41
Speaker
And and and people are jerks to her and her flares go up and she can't function.
00:34:45
Speaker
And she said, I'm not going to I can't play that game.
00:34:47
Speaker
It is such a courageous thing.
00:34:49
Speaker
And honestly, when she puts it out there, everybody shifts.
00:34:52
Speaker
Right.
00:34:52
Speaker
Everybody in our community shifts because it's like, yes, access is important.
00:34:55
Speaker
And frankly, why be a jerk?
00:34:57
Speaker
Why be a jerk to somebody?
00:34:59
Speaker
It's amazing how people don't stop to think that.
00:35:00
Speaker
So all this to say, that's the thing I love, because again, I wouldn't, the first time that she mentioned this to my president, I thought, what, wait, how, what, how can you even function that way?
00:35:10
Speaker
But
00:35:11
Speaker
But it works because you ask for it.
00:35:13
Speaker
And so I love to be surrounded by people who know how to self-advocate and so I can learn.
00:35:19
Speaker
So then I can set that up for myself.
00:35:21
Speaker
I can tell students, hey, I have this colleague who wants this.
00:35:24
Speaker
We're going to do this now.
00:35:25
Speaker
Let's see what happens if our feedback is only supportive.
00:35:30
Speaker
what but yeah what is this exactly yeah so anyway so those are a couple of things that i'm doing the things i'm most proud of uh are those they are sort of collaborations with people which may or may not eventually result in anything written i mean i've written a lot of stuff you know i don't need to prove to anybody that i can write anymore now i can collaborate and i can support people in ways that i find really meaningful and it's it's a joy it's a real it's a real fun
00:35:54
Speaker
What are, because I've gone to a few of the meetings, but I know people who are listening.
00:35:58
Speaker
What are some of like the type of topics you talk about in these music and disability meetings?
00:36:03
Speaker
That's a great question.
00:36:04
Speaker
So for example, our first one, our pioneering one,
00:36:07
Speaker
There was a substantial conference about a year ago about a very famous blind pianist named Maria Paradis, who was Mozart's contemporary, was involved with early Braille experiments, all sorts of cool stuff about Paradis.
00:36:21
Speaker
And so there was a conference about Paradis, and we were really interested in having the person organize it come to us because she organized it as a hybrid conference.
00:36:28
Speaker
It was very accessible.
00:36:29
Speaker
And our society is saying, well, we can't possibly make things hybrid.
00:36:32
Speaker
And this person, boom, she went and made one.
00:36:34
Speaker
And so it's like, OK, come tell us how you did it.
00:36:36
Speaker
So part of her presentation was this is how we did it and this is how we can keep doing it.
00:36:41
Speaker
So that was one.
00:36:42
Speaker
At this latest meeting, there were two papers, two short papers by grad students.
00:36:45
Speaker
One was about music therapy and autistic students in the 1950s, and it was brutal.
00:36:51
Speaker
awesomely brutal because the presenter was autistic and he was like, this stuff is crap.
00:36:55
Speaker
This is terrible.
00:36:56
Speaker
And let's think about how it still underpins a lot of what music therapy is today.
00:37:00
Speaker
So it's one of these, hmm.
00:37:02
Speaker
So it was a content-based research for the 1950s.
00:37:05
Speaker
Another one was this really, really interesting analysis by a composer-theorist of a piece by Molly Joyce.
00:37:11
Speaker
Molly Joyce, who's a contemporary disabled composer.
00:37:13
Speaker
And it was a read on this piece about disability, about access, actually.
00:37:16
Speaker
And it was a really, really, really interesting read.
00:37:19
Speaker
So
00:37:20
Speaker
You know, those are a couple in December.
00:37:22
Speaker
We're going to be a conversation can be led by one of our colleagues who used to be one of the leaders of the group, a gentleman named Stefan Honish, talking about terminology of disability identity and how that is useful in various ways to different people and how we might make sense of it with each other and for each other and for our students.
00:37:41
Speaker
So some of it is sort of very practical, how are we going to do the things?
00:37:44
Speaker
Some of it is, here is this particular historical moment in disability.
00:37:48
Speaker
But a lot of it is like, let's see who shows up and we can talk about what we want to.
00:37:52
Speaker
I mean, we are really, really, really keen to draw people from all corners because one of the things, and again, to really briefly touch on this, some of my best collaborators
00:38:03
Speaker
one of the Steph bands.
00:38:04
Speaker
So hi, Steph, I hope you listen to this.
00:38:06
Speaker
Steph is an independent scholar, got a degree in history from Chicago, and has been publishing in disability history, music disability, queer studies, as a non-academic.
00:38:16
Speaker
I mean, she's a scholar, but she doesn't have an academic job.
00:38:18
Speaker
And that is awesome because so often there's so much gatekeeping about who can speak.
00:38:23
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:38:24
Speaker
about things that are important, right?
00:38:25
Speaker
Only people who speak certain languages can speak, you know, can talk fancy, fancy musicologists talk.
00:38:30
Speaker
And, you know, I was trained as that person.
00:38:33
Speaker
And now I'm trying to untrain myself.
00:38:34
Speaker
And I'm trying to help my own students think about the various different ways to communicate with people.
00:38:40
Speaker
Because, you know, musicology can often be extremely off-putting in terms of jargon and so forth.
00:38:45
Speaker
And so how do we talk about important things in ways that are accessible?
00:38:48
Speaker
So that's a big piece of what we talk about.
00:38:50
Speaker
So we want people there who will help us be accountable.
00:38:54
Speaker
to the community and not just talking to each other as academics but to be accountable across the community of disabled folks and or divergent folks and musicians who care about disability as a topic so yeah so you know in the show notes or whatever I mean if you want to look us up we're musicdisability.org and musicdisability the two words put together.org I think that's correct but in any case you can put it in the show notes because that's what podcasts do so whatever
00:39:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:19
Speaker
And I can say as someone who's attended these meetings, I feel they're always very fruitful.
00:39:23
Speaker
They're always very engaging.
00:39:25
Speaker
And there's always people who always have a very vast amount of different opinions that I feel that everyone is so respectful of those opinions.
00:39:32
Speaker
And they're always willing to listen and learn, which is great.
00:39:36
Speaker
So I can't really push it enough on how great it is.
00:39:39
Speaker
Well, thank you.
00:39:40
Speaker
You're very kind.
00:39:40
Speaker
And if folks are so interested in how they are, our very first meeting is currently on the website.
00:39:45
Speaker
We recorded it back in April.
00:39:46
Speaker
Our second meeting, which is in September, October, I can't remember now, a month or so ago, a month and a half ago, I'm still cleaning up the captions because what we do is we have the cart, but then I go in...
00:39:57
Speaker
on principle and make sure the captions are correct.
00:39:59
Speaker
And so that should be up soonish.
00:40:01
Speaker
There'll be a third one that actually may get kicked up first because this was what we just did at our national meeting.
00:40:07
Speaker
The National Society kind of refused to stream our show, so we streamed it ourselves, ha!
00:40:13
Speaker
And then recorded it.
00:40:14
Speaker
And so now, in fact,
00:40:16
Speaker
One of our leaders, so let me just put this plug in, our leader, Elizabeth McLean, who isn't currently leading our group, but has led a group before.
00:40:25
Speaker
And she's a scholar at Virginia Tech, an amazing scholar of music and disability, but also gaming and all sorts of cool stuff.
00:40:32
Speaker
She gave a really great presentation, partly about her work with a particular cultural center in Minneapolis called the CEDAR,
00:40:38
Speaker
But partly about what does it mean to do music and disability in academic context?
00:40:44
Speaker
You know, is it just studying disabled musicians?
00:40:45
Speaker
Or how can we be accountable to disabled people in the music scholarship that we do?
00:40:50
Speaker
So it was a great, great presentation.
00:40:52
Speaker
So I want to get up there as soon as possible.
00:40:54
Speaker
Because it's like, yeah, Elizabeth.
00:40:55
Speaker
I mean, it's the kind of thing that, you know, you sit with people and you talk and you bitch about things.
00:40:59
Speaker
And you say, damn it, people should say these things.
00:41:01
Speaker
And then she went and said it.
00:41:03
Speaker
It's like super well in a very coherent way.
00:41:05
Speaker
And it's like, thank you, Elizabeth.
00:41:06
Speaker
Now we can start boosting it everywhere but loose.
00:41:08
Speaker
So that's, we hope to have that up on our website as well.
00:41:11
Speaker
Again, we have this website is for our study group and our society, but there's a tab in the website that's community of practice, which is where we put the recordings.
00:41:19
Speaker
And we also put the forthcoming, you know, so this December meeting, we have a, um,
00:41:24
Speaker
I don't remember if we put up a Zoom link there yet.
00:41:27
Speaker
But anyway, we would have a Zoom link up there soon.
00:41:30
Speaker
And we have a place where we say, hey, if you want more information, click here, give us your email address.
00:41:35
Speaker
We have an email list that goes on.
00:41:37
Speaker
It goes old school, well, semi old school email list that just barfs out information every few months and with Zoom links and all sorts of good stuff.
00:41:44
Speaker
So yay.
00:41:45
Speaker
Yay.
00:41:46
Speaker
You talked
Advice for Young Neurodivergent Artists
00:41:47
Speaker
about it a little bit with the Dismos website, but can you tell folks where they can follow your work online?
00:41:55
Speaker
You betcha.
00:41:57
Speaker
Well, so a great friend of mine who actually is also in the Music and Disability community helped me build the website.
00:42:03
Speaker
And so it's A-D-E-L-L-A-N-T-O-N-I-O.
00:42:09
Speaker
I think I'm.com.
00:42:10
Speaker
I think that's what I did because.com.
00:42:12
Speaker
Anyway, that honestly, that's the best place to go.
00:42:16
Speaker
If you're a boomer like me, or even if you're not a boomer and you're still on Facebook, I'm on Facebook.
00:42:20
Speaker
I put a lot of stuff in public on Facebook.
00:42:22
Speaker
Anything I put public is...
00:42:24
Speaker
free for the things, follow me, connect with me.
00:42:27
Speaker
I'm, I'm, you know, I used to be on what's called X and I, then I just give up cause I just couldn't.
00:42:32
Speaker
And I haven't been able to get my head around, around Twitter, around Instagram that well.
00:42:37
Speaker
I do have blue sky, but I'm, so I'm, I'm really, you know, I'm, I'm a, I'm a, you know, young boomer, right.
00:42:42
Speaker
I'm 1963.
00:42:43
Speaker
So that counts as boomer.
00:42:44
Speaker
So I embrace my boomer hood and I, and I get on Facebook.
00:42:47
Speaker
So if anybody is on Facebook is interested in following me, I'm there.
00:42:50
Speaker
But my website has a bunch of things about my work, part of it about my research.
00:42:54
Speaker
All my classes are up there as Google Docs, because that's sort of that's another access piece.
00:42:59
Speaker
I'm really keen about it.
00:43:00
Speaker
I want students to be able to see, you know, what kind of things I do, but also people who might want to teach things that are similar to what I do.
00:43:07
Speaker
I mean, I know that, you know, in the before times before there was as much of an Internet as there is now.
00:43:13
Speaker
I used to get syllabi from friends all the time and I coached and I sent, you know, and so there were, you know, you used to be able to find things, but it was harder.
00:43:20
Speaker
Now my point is, okay, Google docs are great.
00:43:23
Speaker
Put everything up in a Google doc because why not?
00:43:25
Speaker
I mean, if we don't share, then we don't get stuff done, but thank you, Tara.
00:43:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:28
Speaker
I mean, if you're, and there are others, a contact form on there, but I'm always happy to be contacted.
00:43:34
Speaker
And if I, you know, if I don't answer your email right away, it's probably kind of got distracted or, you know, it might be because I'm grumpy and I don't feel like emailing you that day, but I try to be nice.
00:43:43
Speaker
That's fair.
00:43:44
Speaker
I definitely feel that persona sometimes for sure, Andrew.
00:43:50
Speaker
The last question is, what advice would you give to young neurodivergent and disabled artists?
00:43:56
Speaker
Yeah, get into community.
00:43:58
Speaker
I know that you said this, Tara, so I'm sorry.
00:44:00
Speaker
I'm sort of, you know, repeating what I mean, honestly, as someone who joined disabled community late-ish,
00:44:07
Speaker
I joined the civil community partly through my parenting status.
00:44:10
Speaker
Both my kids are autistic.
00:44:11
Speaker
And so that was where I learned.
00:44:14
Speaker
And I got my head, you know, turned around six times and I got called in really usefully about my ableism, frankly.
00:44:20
Speaker
And then I was well primed to actually say, OK, wait, me too.
00:44:25
Speaker
And therefore, you know, what can I do here?
00:44:28
Speaker
So much is about community.
00:44:29
Speaker
So much is about community.
00:44:31
Speaker
not feeling alone.
00:44:33
Speaker
That, I mean, honestly, this is about any young musician, right?
00:44:35
Speaker
Regardless of divergence, regardless of neurology.
00:44:37
Speaker
I mean, the sense that you are alone in the practice room, that is just one of the hardest things and making sure that you surround yourself with people who get you.
00:44:47
Speaker
And then they can connect you with other people who might get you.
00:44:50
Speaker
And then those networks
00:44:53
Speaker
expand, one of my things that I've noticed is that the disabled community is a very welcoming space.
00:44:57
Speaker
I mean, there are, you know, there are, there are speed bumps, but by and large, if you are going into the community, we'll find people who can support you, who will say, yeah, I get it.
00:45:05
Speaker
We'll say, here's a strategy.
00:45:07
Speaker
That's the best thing.
00:45:08
Speaker
I mean, there are as much as possible in institutions and high schools and colleges, there are disability services centers.
00:45:14
Speaker
And some of those folks are doing much more than they have to.
00:45:18
Speaker
because all they're supposed to do is keep the university nose clean.
00:45:21
Speaker
It's the compliance office.
00:45:22
Speaker
And so a lot of those folks are frustrated because they have to just do the minimum.
00:45:27
Speaker
We are blessed at University of Texas.
00:45:30
Speaker
Many ways things are complicated here, but we're blessed by having a disability cultural center
00:45:34
Speaker
So if there's anything like a disability cultural center at university, or for example, there's this fabulous one in San Francisco that does a lot of public things.
00:45:40
Speaker
So, you know, Google disability cultural center in San Francisco, they are another piece of community.
00:45:46
Speaker
So much community can be online.
00:45:47
Speaker
Frankly, much of my community these days is online.
00:45:50
Speaker
And it's not worse than in-person community.
00:45:53
Speaker
Don't let anybody tell you that, oh, well, relationships that you build online are worse because Tara and I have never met in person.
00:45:59
Speaker
And we trust each other deeply.
00:46:00
Speaker
Right, right.
00:46:01
Speaker
So whatever.
00:46:02
Speaker
But, yeah, but I would say, you know, community is really job one.
00:46:06
Speaker
And also trying through community to realize that you're not, it's not about you.
00:46:10
Speaker
Right?
00:46:11
Speaker
Yeah, we have difficulties.
00:46:13
Speaker
Everybody has difficulties.
00:46:14
Speaker
You have difficulties of a certain sort because the system is not built to accommodate you.
00:46:19
Speaker
And you deserve to be accommodated.
00:46:20
Speaker
You deserve to be supported.
00:46:21
Speaker
You deserve to have the system changed so that you don't need accommodations, but the system is built.
00:46:24
Speaker
Right?
00:46:25
Speaker
That's the whole thing behind the universal design is you build so that you don't need to retrofit.
00:46:30
Speaker
And that's a long-term thing.
00:46:33
Speaker
But I guess the other thing that I was mentioning earlier is there's so many of us, right?
00:46:37
Speaker
There's so many of us undiagnosed, unacknowledged, but increasingly diagnosed and acknowledged.
00:46:43
Speaker
You know, 20 years ago, we had just as many neurodivergent people in music, but nobody was out or nobody was acknowledged.
00:46:49
Speaker
Now, more and more people are.
00:46:50
Speaker
More people are embracing the reality of who they are as disabled or neurodivergent.
00:46:54
Speaker
And that
00:46:55
Speaker
That is good.
00:46:56
Speaker
There are people out there that you can follow that you can connect with.
00:46:59
Speaker
And of course, connect with Tara because Tara is awesome and a badass.
00:47:03
Speaker
And honestly, yeah, well, you're the host.
00:47:05
Speaker
I got to say this, but no, but seriously, I have to say, you know, it's really interesting for me.
00:47:11
Speaker
as someone who engaged with music disability when it was sort of coming into academic circles.
00:47:17
Speaker
And it was a scholarship about disabled musicians.
00:47:21
Speaker
And it was not about identity.
00:47:22
Speaker
It was about, let's study this disabled thing.
00:47:25
Speaker
And now this is actually one of the things that Elizabeth says so well in this presentation I told you about.
00:47:29
Speaker
And now it's like, no, a lot of younger scholars were saying it's about activism.
00:47:33
Speaker
It's about politics.
00:47:34
Speaker
It's about identity.
00:47:35
Speaker
It's about everything.
00:47:36
Speaker
And nothing about us without us, right?
00:47:39
Speaker
And so that really is figure out who the us is.
00:47:43
Speaker
That this got to be about.
00:47:44
Speaker
It's about you and it's about the others who are both like you and not like you.
00:47:49
Speaker
Read the 10 principles of disability justice, biased and invalid, because they talk about this idea of cross-disability organizing and about, I mean, frankly, those 10 things, if our, those 10 principles, if our younger musicians can read them and say, wow, I want a world like that, then you can work towards it.
00:48:06
Speaker
And there's some of us around who can help you.
00:48:10
Speaker
I agree.
00:48:11
Speaker
Thank you so much, Andrew.
00:48:12
Speaker
And I'm sure people will definitely take that advice with them, whether they accept it at first or not.
00:48:17
Speaker
Takes time.
00:48:19
Speaker
Takes time.
00:48:20
Speaker
Lots of unlearning.
00:48:21
Speaker
Lots of learning.
00:48:22
Speaker
Lots of unlearning.
00:48:23
Speaker
Yep.
00:48:24
Speaker
The older you are, the more you unlearn.
00:48:25
Speaker
But honestly, you know, if you can embrace the idea that unlearning is actually just as fun as learning, I mean, it's tough because it means that you are wrong.
00:48:34
Speaker
And so many of us
00:48:36
Speaker
overachievers have to be right.
00:48:39
Speaker
But it's okay to be wrong.
00:48:41
Speaker
But it's more than okay to be wrong.
00:48:42
Speaker
In fact, if you can learn to be wrong, then that's where you achieve.
00:48:45
Speaker
I mean, that sounds very pat, but it is true.
00:48:47
Speaker
Once I learned that it was fine to screw up, to be wrong, to be corrected by somebody, that's where things really started getting fun.
00:48:56
Speaker
So good luck, everybody.
00:48:58
Speaker
It is hard to be wrong if you feel like you don't have a lot of power to change things, but there are people around you who can help you.
00:49:06
Speaker
And again, follow Tara.
00:49:08
Speaker
Come, come check out my stuff if you want.
00:49:10
Speaker
I am, I don't bite if you're not foods.
00:49:14
Speaker
And, and yeah, thank you all.
00:49:17
Speaker
Thank you, Tara, for having me.
00:49:18
Speaker
It's been a lot of fun talking.
00:49:21
Speaker
Yeah, of course.
00:49:21
Speaker
Thank you, Andrew.
00:49:22
Speaker
And like I said, I feel like every time we talk, I learn something new from you.
00:49:26
Speaker
Likewise.
00:49:26
Speaker
Which is my favorite part of our conversation.
00:49:29
Speaker
Excellent.
00:49:30
Speaker
Listeners, thank you so much for listening to this episode.
00:49:33
Speaker
I'm sad to say this will be my last episode hosting Able Voices as the guest host.
00:49:38
Speaker
Rhoda will be back next week, but thank you for listening and I hope you've enjoyed these last few episodes.
Episode Conclusion
00:49:53
Speaker
ABLE Voices is a production of the Berkeley Institute for Accessible Arts Education, led by me, Dr. Rhoda Bernard, the founding managing director.
00:50:02
Speaker
It is produced by Daniel Martinez del Campo.
00:50:05
Speaker
The intro music is by Kai Levin, and our closing song is by Sebastian Batista.
00:50:11
Speaker
Kai and Sebastian are students in the arts education programs at the Berkeley Institute for Accessible Arts Education.
00:50:18
Speaker
If you would like to learn more about our work, find us online at berkeley.edu slash B-I-A-A-E or email us at B-I-A-A-E at berkeley, that's L-E-E dot E-D-U.