A Musicians’ Liberation Workshop
I attended a Musicians’ Liberation Workshop led by Heather Hay, the International Liberation Reference Person for Musicians.
I am a Canadian currently living in the United States. It was powerful to have a Canadian woman’s leadership and thinking be celebrated and loved. It contradicted my internalized oppression as a non-USer as well as my U.S. domination patterns from having lived long-term in the United States.
The organizing was thoughtful and warm. We were invited to send in links to our music before the workshop started. I experienced the beauty and diversity of who we are as musicians and the music we create.
Heather emphasized that music is for everyone. It’s not for the “special” few. There’s no such thing as too much music! And there is no “better than” or “worse than.” All music is good. The idea that some music is better than others is a result of racism and classism. Music and competition have nothing to do with each other. Music is about connection.
I had some classical music training and became a singer and songwriter. It’s a miracle that I stuck with [persisted with] music after all the competitiveness I faced as a young person. There was something in me that just loved music and was ready to fight to have it on my terms. I also figured out through my Jewish identity how to have music as a form of connection. In the Jewish community there are many contexts for communal singing, and I grabbed on to those like a lifeline!
My support group leader asked us to hold our instruments and notice how much we loved them. She also invited us to slow down and discharge, to not “perform” while playing music. I shared a song about being born in Canada to U.S.-born parents, how I came to live in the United States, and how much I miss my family.
Musicians try to do big things while being up against their early hurts. Heather asked what it would be like to back [support] every musician we know—the way we back RC leaders. It was a relief to imagine this and good to discharge about doing it in the wide world.
Those of us who are white were encouraged to reconnect with the music of our roots. For me, that is Yiddish music. I had many mini-sessions mourning how my internalized anti-Semitism had caused me to lose the Yiddish language and music. I am a musician in the Jewish world but can barely speak or read Yiddish. I also realized how much Canadian folk music, and Canadian children’s musicians, had been part of my early life and I decided to reclaim it.
During the workshop, two of my children, ages six and eight, popped into the “telling jokes” breakout room. I listened to, and got to discharge about, my eleven-year-old son who had recently stopped playing violin. He told me that he needed a few more months to get used to [accustomed to] his new school and that after that he would like to find a klezmer violin teacher who wasn’t rigid about practicing. I felt hopeful that he might play the violin on his own terms.
Again, music is about connection. Being with a wonderful crew of us musicians fighting for ourselves and each other and our collective liberation was a big contradiction [to distress]. I didn’t want it to end! And now I have lots of Co-Counseling buddies to remind me that music is about connection.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of artists
(Present Time 206, January 2022)