How do we teach music and how do we operate in this idea of cultural exchange as music makers, because that's what we are as vocalists, right? As cultural ambassadors. How do we gauge and in cultural exchange in a manner that is not only responsible to our voice, but also responsible to our cultures and a representation of both who we are and who we want to uplift in this moment, particularly if we're not Talking or we're not presenting something of our own culture, but we're presenting a culture that we feel is viable and we're presenting a culture that we that we want to be heard. And I'm saying it from that standpoint for through composed music, right? From composer driven music that's already set.
Right. You know, in this case, I'm jumping in and I'm perpetuating a snapshot of someone's culture. Mm hmm. You know, and it may or may not align with my own cultural.
sounds, but it may align and hopefully it does align with my story. Welcome to the Vocal Lab. I'm Sarah Ramsey and this show aims to pull back the curtain on the entertainment industry where veterans give up and coming artists some of the information they wish they'd had when they were just starting out. Sort of a music industry primer, if you will. Welcome to the Vocal Lab.
Today, I am so thrilled to have with me Dr. Trinise Robinson-Martin, who is a powerhouse multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, composer, arranger, scholar, and educator with over 20 years of experience. A globally sought-after performer and clinician, she is dedicated to preserving and promoting American music with a specific focus on African-American music. At Princeton University, she teaches voice, directs the Jazz Vocal Collective Ensemble.
and lectures on African American music and pedagogy. Dr. Trenise is the creator of the Soul Ingredients Methodology and founder of Soul Ingredients Voice Studios. She serves as executive director of the African American Jazz Caucus, Inc., sits on the board of the Jazz Education Network and the editorial boards of the Journal of Singing and Australian Voice.
Her acclaimed debut album, All or Nothing, under 4RM Productions, captures her passion for African-American music. Starting in 2023, the Soul Ingredients brand began its global expansion, offering online training through the Soul Ingredients Music Teacher Training Academy. Dr. Trenise, I am so thrilled to have you with us today.
Thank you very much for joining me. I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
So do you want to tell us your story briefly for those who are meeting you for the first time today? A little bit about who you are and your journey in the biz, how you got where you are today? Yeah, sure.
Well, my journey began as me not realizing that I wanted to do music because music was just a part of my culture. You know, I'm a PK, preacher's kid, and that meant that, you know, everybody sang. Yeah.
So I didn't really see myself as a vocalist. And actually, I didn't even start undergrad as a music major. I started music. I started undergrad as a chemical engineering major.
And then I changed into music probably around my junior year. Yeah. And this was after having an internship at Kerning Incorporated New York.
And I sang something just for a function. And mind you, I was in music programs in high school. It was just not my focus. You know, so I sang something and everybody was like, so why are you doing engineering?
I'm trying to understand this one. Right. And that's when I really started to think about the why as to what I was doing with my life purpose and career. So as I got into studying music.
One of the things that I started to become aware of, particularly as I progressed in the academic field, is that the more trained I became, the more removed from my cultural setting I was, the less I fit in. The more I became the trained singer, the more I became this hybrid person with no direction. What does that mean?
That means when I was singing jazz, I sounded very gospel-y. When I sang R&B, I sounded too jazzy. When I sang gospel, I was too trained. When I sang classical music, because of course my vocal training was classical, I sounded like Sarah Vaughan singing Schubert.
You know, it was like I was never really fitting into anything. And by this time, I had finished my master's degree at Indiana University. And so I'm like, all right, I have debt and I have all of this technique.
And how am I not fitting in? How is it that my... You know, my cousins can roll off the couch and sing their face off at church. And how is it that I'm in this party band, you know, this event band with people that didn't, that don't have all of these degrees and can sing their face off? Like, what is happening with me and my training?
And is it just I'm not supposed to fit into these spaces? So there was a lot of confusion in that. And as a result, I became very motivated to find the answers for myself. And that's what brought me to my doctoral research and all of the advanced research on voice science and ethnomusicology and teaching, the art of teaching itself to create the dissertation that I have. And that's what would build it.
Sole ingredients, the whole methodology to my work is how do we teach a oral tradition, an oral music tradition in a codified manner. in an academic institution or an applied setting. So all of this was a distillation of my own life and my own passions and my own desires to understand what it is that I'm supposed to be doing when I'm performing.
I think that's so fascinating. And I'll tell you, I've had a number of guests on the show who have talked about their experience in academia. really running counter, not counterintuitive, well, counterintuitive, but counterproductive to fulfilling artistry or fulfilling creativity.
And I understand both sides of it. I mean, I didn't, I didn't quite finish my degree, but I did a lot of years of schooling in a jazz studies program as well. And, and I understand the benefits of, you know, a music education.
And I understand the drawbacks of it as well. And both things are true. And so I am fascinated to learn more about your methodology because I think that's the piece that is missing. Especially, I mean, so many of the programs are based on so many of the academic programs.
are based on a classical music framework. And although we have more and more programs based on a jazz framework, over the last, you know, 30 years or so, we have had more of those come into existence. There's still very few that are based on other commercial music forms beyond jazz.
There are a couple, you know, we've got Berklee, but not a lot beyond that. And truthfully, because of these of this kind of Eurocentric model of education, even jazz or any of the other musics that do filter into academic space is filtered through the academic lens and the kind of assessment driven formula that dominates higher education. Yes, which just that I think that's the part that really.
Uh, saps the joy and the creativity and the artistry a lot of the time. Not that there aren't things you learn that, that ultimately can contribute to that, but in the process, they don't always. So we'll, we'll come back to that in greater detail in a few minutes, but I'm going to start off with a couple of questions that I ask all my guests. So.
Here on The Vocal Lab, we aim to shine a light into the music industry kind of through the lens of what I know now that I wish I'd known then. So if you were starting your career all over again, is there anything that you would do differently? Yes.
I think if I was starting my career all over again with what I know now, I would definitely... believe that I already had in my body what I needed for success. Yeah. That's how, that's what would be different.
It would not be based upon matching the parameters that were set before me of excellence, but it was valuing and learning to value who I was along the process as important. as something to say. And my whole focus would have been more about the communication of joy, as we were talking earlier. Within music...
than the acquisition of skill. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And conversely, is there anything that you would specifically do differently?
No. Excuse me. That's what I just asked you. But is there anything that you would specifically do the same? Well, I think everything that I've done, I've done in purpose.
But I think knowing that piece of information, I would have done on purpose. Yes. You know, I would have been much more motivated to go and take the paths that I've been taking instead of being apprehensive and still moving and taking the paths that I'm taking.
Yeah. You know. I think, I mean, both of those pieces that you just answered.
Speak to the confidence that we tend to acquire through the course of a career, through the course of a lifetime, but would serve us very well to acquire earlier in the process. It would be an easier road. if we had confidence in ourselves and our abilities earlier in the process.
Absolutely. And I think that's the part of what makes the soul ingredients approach different because it's about valuing who you are throughout the process. Yeah.
And making you, or should I say helping you recognize. that you have the authority to make music. You know, someone doesn't have to give you permission to do that.
It's a part of who you are. So my goal is to help you tell stories using your voice and help you do so in a manner that's going to be sustainable for the activities that you have to do in the cultural context in which you're performing. Yeah.
Okay. I love this. I love this.
I can tell that this is going to be an awesome conversation. So let's talk specifically. So in an industry that has widely varying levels of education, from full-blown academia to completely self-taught to something in the middle that's sort of, you know, mentorship models and things like that. Can you... talk a little bit more about your education and how it has impacted your work that has grown out of it?
Yeah, I think for me, most of my education has been the application of things that I've learned post-grad or during the process of me trying to find a pedagogy that makes sense for the styles of music that I sing and understanding that even people that become close to starting to talk about commercial music or contemporary commercial music and the pedagogies for that, adapting it to what I did culturally, recognizing that there's a different approach to music making that is found in my culture and my cultural identity of Blackness or as a Black American and recognizing how that little piece of information is much more profound and what's important and what's valued. So I've always had to kind of translate, even for the people that think that they've translated the application to how the music and how it serves me and how the technique serves who I am and how to apply who I am to the music in a way that, again, you can be strategic and codified, but at the same time is very unique to my individuality. I love that. So let's get into that. Let's talk about soul ingredients.
It's based on your doctoral research, as you mentioned. It's a teaching methodology for developing a singer's musical style or interpretation in African-American folk-based music styles like jazz, gospel, R&B, blues, etc. And the notes I have here, the methodology shows students how to take their personal experiences, musical influences, and models and execute the various components in a personal manner to the singer's or performer's unique expression.
So do you want to talk a little bit about what that actually looks like in Tell us all the things. I got you. You know, so the whole idea of Soul Ingredients was I wanted to create a methodology that is going to honor what we know about voice science, but at the same time honors who a person is and also honors the culture they're representing. So moving it even back from the idea of Black American music. I was looking at it from the standpoint of broadly, what is culture and who are you within that culture, right?
And so as a result, when I developed this particular style, it was about, hmm, how does the voice work? How does it work abstract? How does it work, more importantly, in the context of how you articulate your emotion?
Because depending upon your identity and depending upon how you identify with the way you express, like your personality, your personality will express how you feel about whatever it is you're talking about passionately in the realm of who it is, who you are. I happen to be more animated. And so as a result, you know, the pitch of my voice is going to go up every two seconds. You know, just wait. You're going to be like, oh, my gosh, I'm going to need you to back off the mic.
But, you know, as a result, we don't I didn't stop to be like, I wonder what the place is for this. Maybe if I just allow my breath to go, I can be in this heady. Like, I don't think about that. Yeah.
Right. I'm just emoting. So then from a pedagogic standpoint, I'm looking to say, how are we musicking?
How can we music ourself? And then how can we create a stabilized version, an exaggerated version of your natural self? So, you know, all the way to how we break down registration. You know, what does mixed registration mean in your voice?
What does it mean in terms of the emotional context that you're communicating? So that we're not talking about texture and we're not talking about quality. from the standpoint of this abstract thing, but it's more integrated into, this is what it sounds like when I'm communicating the sentiment in this context to this person. Yeah.
And so then if I can itemize or quantify my own behaviors, then I can apply it into songs that are telling the same stories. Yeah. In a way that I'm not thinking about technique, I'm just being. I'm being in my own expression. And I think that that allows for the uniqueness of voice to appear because we're not trying to manage to be the, well, sometimes we are, trying to manage being the good person.
Oh, I'm the dignified person or I'm the smart, intelligent person. But when we're really trying to be our authentic selves, our let's, let me be vulnerable in this vulnerable art form to be who I am. and sound like who I am, regardless as to whether or not someone likes it or not.
You know, some people can be like, oh, their voice is so annoying, you know, when they speak. But hey, that's who you are. Right.
And so what is what if that is musical? And what if that is OK? How can we create a formalized structure where that's OK? Where you say you're wonderfully made and these are the stories and these are the ways that your voice changes. And these are the ways that your body's energy adapts in these contexts.
And these are the stories that you want to tell. And because these are the stories that you want to tell, let's make sure your rep follows your soul expression. And for me, soul expression means it's the unapologetic, passionate communication of who you are, what you believe, and how you feel about it.
So because I'm steeped into the Black American music tradition, where words are not just weighted, they're loaded. I'm coming from a tradition where you couldn't overtly just speak what you wanted to say. So everything about what you say has much more meaning behind it.
So if I'm using that framework as the framework for teaching American music or a framework for teaching music in general, then... When I'm approaching music and I'm approaching repertoire, it's not just about the notes. It's about how I feel about the notes. It's about what am I functionally trying to...
get out of this experience? What am I, what is my relationship with the audience? Am I inspiring them? Am I, do I just want empathy?
Do I want like, what does the conversation look like? So we're looking, we're bringing all of these things into the pedagogy in addition to understanding, well, if this is the story I want to tell, and this is who I am, how is the conversation led in terms of the dialect of the room, right? How do I use my voice? And that's what I think of style.
Style is just a cultural dialect. We're all saying the same things, but there are some cultural expectations that may align with certain genres, with certain spaces, because it's based upon how the people of those spaces interact. You know, so to me, everything about teaching is so much more dynamic. But at the same time can be quantified.
Yeah. Hey, let's just consider some things that may not be considered when we're training based on repertoire on the notes and not the point. Yeah.
Like this brings up a couple of interesting things for me and I think we are seeing a big movement away from or at least in the circles that I the voice teachers that I the community teachers that I'm in, I see a big movement, and I hope it is a wider movement, away from teacher knows best about all the things, and I, the teacher, am going to tell you, the student, what you should sound like away from that, which is definitely what was happening 30 years ago when I was in school. Um, and moving towards a much more student led learning approach to you tell me what you want to sound like. And it's my job to help you figure out how to do that sustainably in your voice. Right. Um, and What I heard in a lot of what you were saying is that your methodology very much sort of puts that relationship at the forefront of creating something that the artist is looking to express first and figuring out how to do that sustainably and quantifiably.
codify how to teach that. Right. Yeah. So much so that I say, you know, I am just here to help you along your journey because I don't care how much words that I use. I can't go into your throat.
Yeah. I can't go into your body. So in our dialogue, you are going to be your best teacher. Yeah. So this is why I need to inform you with.
ways that you can talk about what's happening in your body. That's the awareness part of the system. I need you to know what's happening. I need you to start being aware.
I need you to start taking data on yourself. Yeah. And then come back and tell me.
And then I need you to come back and say, Dr. T, this is what I tried out. Yeah. Because I was thinking of doing this. What's happening?
And I'm not as successful as I thought I would be. Is there any other ideas that you can do? Boom.
Yes. But it's different. But I'm not going to say, well, this is what you need to do to sound like this.
This is what you need to do to sound like this. Because my specific instructions based upon my perception of how it feels in my body may be very different. So I may say, well, when I do this sound, it sounds like A, B, and C.
It feels like A, B, and C. I'm doing A, B, and C. This may or may not work for you. And then we can have a dialogue from there. Or we can look at body types.
And we can look at body shapes. And I can say, well, when I breathe deeply, because I'm short-waisted, my whole rib cage is my torso. You know, I don't have that gap that's in the pictures.
You know, so for me, I may perceive it as more of a back breathing thing. Because that's what I feel. You know, you who have a very long torso might...
feel it a lot differently. So for me to say, go into your back for power would be a very unresponsible to me way to teach because I'm projecting who I am on you and not allowing you to discover where your power comes from. Where is your power source? You know, what do you do naturally without thinking?
What kinds of silence do you make naturally when you're speaking? You know what I mean? So those are those, that's that student led where you're sitting here saying, okay, my power, my superpower as a teacher is to help guide you through this process. Yeah. I also think the other sort of thread that came up in that for me is that for a lot of years, again, I feel like the tide is shifting on this.
Thankfully, I feel like for a lot of years, we were told that certain sounds were good and certain sounds were bad. And I think there is a better understanding that that's not true. There really aren't bad sounds. Some of the sounds, many of the sounds. that we were told were bad sounds to make are sounds that some cultural groups had made for hundreds of thousands of years perfectly fine, perfectly healthy, and so they can be made in a healthy sustainable way.
It might be that if you want to make that sound you have to learn how to do it in a healthy sustainable way, but the sound itself actually has no moral value. It is not good or bad. And we can learn how to do a lot of different things with our voices in healthy, sustainable ways.
So that shift away from the very binary good and bad sounds to much more inclusive and recognizing that lots of those sounds have cultural basis. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, so much so that I would even say that.
Any sound that is not a part of your cultural wheelhouse that you are trying to sustain, you're going to need a strategy for, you know, because it's not a part of your normal sound. So as a result, you're going to, there will be a tendency for you to create your idea of what you think it is as best as you can. And that's always a hit or miss, you know.
That's always a hit or miss. And that comes not only in commercial music, but it also comes in classical music. Yeah.
Right? Where we have these manufactured sounds that are not sustainable. Why?
Because we're trying to emulate or embody a sound that's not a part of our everyday life. So we're just trying to emulate what we think it's supposed to be. Yep. And sometimes that can put us in some serious strategies that are not helpful. Yes.
You know? Yes, indeed. I think that one of the things, and this is why I'm always into the who you are, is that many of the sounds that are made, particularly in Black American music, mimic the speech qualities and the spoken expressions that happens within Black culture. You know, so much so, and I didn't realize this as much until I started doing...
much more global workshops and having these, you know, brainiac vocal geek discussions, you know, with my colleagues from around the world. And I remember specifically one time I was talking to a group of colleagues. This was in Australia after the international Congress of voice teachers, voice ICBT. Yeah. International Congress of voice teachers.
And we were all at dinner and we were talking about a mix. And we were talking about kind of like, you know, quantifying it like we like to do. And we were talking about R&B.
And I said to, I was like, yeah, to one of my colleagues who was Danish. And I said, yeah, you know, it's like when you say, what? My gosh. And he said, we never make that sound. Ever.
Like, you won't hear. any person make that sound ever, ever, right? And that's just a normalized sound. Like we hear that all the time, you know? And if you do it all the time, to deconstruct it can sometimes be difficult, which is why there's some people that seem like they can roll up and do it all day long and it not hurt them.
Because, and this is something that I have very much come to in my own teaching and I talk to students about, there are things that I don't always have to tell you how to do it. We just have to practice doing it and your body will organize itself and figure out how to do it in the most efficient way. And yeah, I might help you like tweak it here and there, but mostly your body is. is going to figure out how to organize itself to do the right thing. Absolutely.
There's some times where I'll be like, I'll say something as simple as, okay, see if you can make that sound and not squeeze your throat. Yeah. Okay, see if you can make the sound and not let your tongue block.
the back of the throat and they figure it out they're like oh well and then they you know oh okay well that works for you let's write it down yeah i'll do things like see if you can do that but uh bend your knees do a little dip for me when you make that sound and just the brain interruption of the pattern gets them out of their own way that they are not doing the wrong things stop gripping or whatever you know absolutely absolutely yeah So an organic process where you were, and that's what I mean, where, where going backwards, how do you value who you are along the process? Yeah. How do you value who you are without assimilating to belong in a different cultural context? Yes. You know, how do you maintain a sense of self and say, oh, well, this is just my behavior when I'm at.
this particular house. You know, I might not take off my shoes in my own house, but I do in my sister's house. Right. You know, so these little things, it doesn't make me wrong for wearing my shoes in my own house. Right?
So these are those things that vocally, you know, and culturally we need to be able to acknowledge. Yeah. Like those situations where, okay, well, this particular stylistic behavior. is not culturally acceptable in this context.
It doesn't mean that it's wrong, but it just means that that's not something that people within the culture would do. Yeah. Even if it's right in another culture.
Yeah, yeah. And now for clarity, when you are using the term cultural, are you talking about cultural in the way that we sort of... um use it in everyday language or are you talking about like music or both musical culture more like genre where so when i talk about culture i'm talking about the like the dynamic aspects that make up what we consider culture okay and if we look at it from an archaeologist archaeological standpoint then we're looking at the dynamic you between your ethnic heritage, your region, your socioeconomic status, your age, your gender, your orientation, and how this collective dynamic creates who you are and what you believe. So I'm usually looking at it from a more broader sense that ends up just from a tradition.
being racialized in an unfair way, but it ends up being racialized in an unfair way because of kind of systemic things, systemic, what's the word I'm looking for? Stereotypes. Stereotypes, but more so as systemic policies that have made people of certain ethnic heritages live in certain demographics and follow certain practices.
So it makes it seem like, oh, this is distinctly Black or this is distinctly Italian. Or this is, you know, we end up racializing a much more broader thing versus recognizing that, no, I do these things because I live in this particular environment. Right. I...
go to this particular type of church or not, you know, and this is the age, this is the generation that I'm born into, and these are the acceptable norms, right? So it's a much more dynamic idea when I'm talking about culture as one thing. Yeah, yeah.
At an interesting point in history. One where we are horrifyingly seeing the rights of so many different groups of people being clawed back. And in some ways, it feels like our society is moving backwards at a breakneck speed.
But conversely, in the arts, and particularly in music, I'm witnessing a lot of conversations happening in a lot of different spaces around our, meaning, you know, performers. writers, artists, our responsibility to honor and understand the origins of popular musics and how Almost every genre of contemporary popular music has its roots in Black music. And a lot of your work sort of grows out of some of those intersections. Correct.
Right, absolutely. You work with, right? I integrate these, yes. Yeah.
Right, right. Yeah, that, you know, leads me to this e-book that is complete. I just need to do some final edits.
And this e-book came, the idea of the e-book actually came from a book, a chapter that myself and there's another colleague named Allison Crockett, who we were co-authoring a chapter in The Vocal Athlete, the next edition that's getting ready to come out. I literally just pre-ordered that last night. Did you?
I did. Yes. Well, this chapter that's in this book, you know, I have. I have the perfectionist issue.
Lord, talk about good things and things get in your way. Well, I have this issue with presenting materials without presenting the material, right? So when you're minimizing something into a document of, you know, 7,000 words, but when you're talking about... a topic that is much broader and not well discussed, then I struggle with being okay with presenting this kind of superficial or what I would consider a superficial representation for easy consumption. And so as a result, you know, when we turned in this chapter, it was like, 22,000 words instead of seven.
And Marcy and Wendy go, okay, so let's... So you just wrote your own book. Right, right. And so in actuality, this e-book that is coming out is the full introduction.
And it's called Considerations for Black American Music. voice pedagogy and performance, but it's an introduction. Recognizing that ironically, in my opinion, it was still a synopsis. I sense another book in your future. Right?
You know, so with that said, you know, trying to make, how do we make these materials accessible and making it accessible in an ebook form that's not expensive. I would love, you know, to do an audio book version of this ebook, you know, this kinds of things that just for accessibility for people like me that like consume a lot of content because I'm always driving, I'm always on the road. So I'm always doing eBooks, you know, literally. I mean, I, I'm one of those that not only do I listen to the books, I will buy the hard copy of the book just to go back to Mark just to make highlights.
Like, yeah, but not actually to read it. It's just so I can find. find it if I'm using it for my scholarship or whatnot, you know? So these are those kinds of things that I'm trying to make available. And I, and I'm trying to make it available from this standpoint because there are so many people outside the culture then followed in the culture that commodify stylistic attributes.
Say, let me just teach you how to do this right. With without providing cultural context. Yeah. Right? I mean, it's so trending to just say, oh, let me teach you how to do runs.
Yeah. Let me teach you how to improvise over these chords and scales. Let me, you know, but it's usually out of the context.
It's usually never, they never start with, let me tell you where this is from. Yeah. Let me tell you how this is developed. Let me give you some progenitors who really made, who helped to develop this stylistic technique.
Yeah. You know, that's never a part of the conversation because it's about, no, let me just give you the tool. Right? So as a result, I tend to be overboard on the other side.
But it's because for me, it's not the notes. Yeah. It's not the notes. You know, and to minimize it into a cordon scale, to minimize it to a pattern, to me, takes the value out of what it can bring.
So much so that if you understand the conceptual framework for why it's done, then when you put that into your own expression, then it becomes uniquely you. And you're just talking from, oh, OK, I understand how and why this cultural practice was done this way. Yeah.
Because but surfacely, American music sounds the same to people outside of the U.S. Yeah. Like they can't tell a country song from a blues song from a they're like, what? You know, and they're and the things that we are not always able to articulate is the why.
Right. What is it about the conceptual approach to music making, as a scholar would put it in black American music that makes the same five notes sound different? That makes the same five notes over these three chords sound different. Right.
So that's what this book does is it takes the time to kind of itemize. Well, what is what is behind all of those things? You know, and so in my own work and in my own work as a pedagogue and scholar and trying to formulate and codify, well, how can we start to identify approaches for teaching culture? Yeah.
And participating in this cultural exchange in a manner that's going to be like. to be much more responsible and in a manner that's going to knowledgeably talk, engage in this cultural exchange instead of, like you said, being in a place of being like, well, you know, I didn't even know I was supposed to do it. I didn't even, number one, I didn't know it was a thing. And number two, I didn't even know I was supposed to do it.
Yeah. Like, don't we all just do this? You know? So these are those kinds of things. Like right now, literally, as we are having this conversation, I'm writing a chapter for the new upcoming Oxford Handbook for Vocal Pedagogy on culturally responsive teaching in the voice studio.
And what I'm looking at is if I take it, even if I just take it out of the teaching of Black American music and I approach teaching music, how do we teach music and how do we operate in this idea of cultural exchange as music makers? Because that's what we are as vocalists, right? as cultural ambassadors, how do we gauge and in cultural exchange in a manner that is not only responsible to our voice, but also responsible to our cultures and a representation of both who we are and who we want to uplift in this moment, particularly if we're not talking or we're not presenting something of our own culture, but we're presenting a culture that we feel is viable and we're presenting a culture that we want. to be heard. And I'm saying it from that standpoint for through composed music, right?
From composer driven music that's already set. Right. You know, in this case, I'm jumping in and I'm perpetuating a snapshot of someone's culture, you know, and it may or may not align with my own cultural sounds, but it may align and hopefully it does align with my story. So it's learning to articulate and tell stories through different cultural vehicles as you, and not, again, kind of the assimilation or the hierarchy that says, oh, this is the viable way to tell this story. And this is not the viable way to tell the story, you know.
So, you know, I'm all in the weeds. I love that you're doing so much work to bring this. to the forefront and bring it to an accessible space for people.
Because I do think that for a lot of people, especially a lot of people like outside of the pedagogical world, people who are just in the artistic realm are I still think it's a new if even yet recognized concept. that there are roots that aren't necessarily ours. And there needs to be some broader understanding. And, you know, but I feel like that for, again, even classical music, right?
We have been taught, particularly in academia, that it's the highest, most valued standard for music making. And and was taught that our own home culture was not as valued. Right.
Right. So it's not even just from the multi-ethnic or the multi-heritage approach. It's like even our own American culture is not valued in the idea of excellence in music making in these higher institutions.
Not to say that it shouldn't, not to say that classical music shouldn't be valued, but it shouldn't be valued at the expense of other cultures. Well, and I think, I think it's, it's broader than that too. Like my experience, um, in a, when I was, so when I was in school, 30 some odd years ago, I was, um, this is better than this. That to me. the academic approach, because I call it academic jazz. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because the people-We had a much ruder name for it that I'm not going to repeat. But, you know, that's still a culture that exists, a culture that doesn't even see the black roots in jazz. Yeah.
You know, they don't see the foundational approach as the why. They're focused on teaching the what. Yep. And creating these assessment-driven standards that- If you want to sing jazz, you should be doing this. Otherwise, you're not.
Right? Or minimizing four chords. Yeah. Not recognizing that the reason that there's only four, one, two, three, four chords max, it's because it's not about the harmonic structure.
It's the harmonic structure being consistent enough to give you the platform to speak more freely. Instead of confining you to... A number of courts.
Yeah. So it becomes different, not less than. It's different.
There's a different reason for it. Yes. It's not a cerebral exercise.
And as long, and frankly, if you're in jazz especially, and you're looking at this kind of something that's built on folk derived, but also is looking to be more advanced, right? Then if it's not rooted in the foundation of the premise of telling stories from the heart, making music from the heart, and then coming up with creative ways to tell that story. Hence the chord substitutions, the inclusion of more chords, the expansion of the melodic phrase, all of these different things, you know, if it's not centered in the foundation, then you missed the point period, you know?
So I think that that's, that's a thing. I think that's just a thing. That's the academic thing.
Thanks for joining us today. That was actually just part one of our interview. And I would love it if you come on back Thursday to catch part two. Can't wait to see you then.