Sounds that Carry, and a musical Bronx tale
Araceli Poma is a music teacher graced with the unique calling of teaching Latin youth composition via the six-week pilot program Sounds that Carry. “It has been a unique experience to witness the process of evolution and be part of it at the same time,” Poma said of the program.
Even in the postmodern era of access, technology, education and seemingly sincere olive branches regarding diversity and inclusivity, music composition remains a form of study that is quietly, yet strongly limited to white male American and European musicians. Classical music and jazz have been especially rigid in broadening its reach to diverse youth composers.
Casita Maria, a legacy Latin community arts and culture center in the Bronx, did the important work of opening those doors wide enough to invite youth of color in via the empathetic, trauma-informed music program, Sound that Carry.
“I think it helped that we didn’t pretend that everything was rosy,” said Poma’s co-teacher, Liz Hogg. Her statement refers to a prompt offered to the mostly second-generation Latin youth asked to create a piece of music that reflected the sounds of their neighborhood. Growing up in the centuries-old urban depths of the Bronx, the most prominent sounds were sirens and ambulances and it is not unheard of for a composer to reflect the urban and industrial audial clanking or metal being molded to man’s design and image.
In 1913, futurist composer, Luigi Russolo wrote the widely read manifesto, “The Art of Noises” which understood how vital capturing the sounds of the industrial revolution was for the modernization and the current mode of nature; Vivaldi wrote “The Four Seasons” in 1723, denoting the beauty of the morphing of each meteorological season and pre-dating the use of metal in construction. Russolo wrote “Awakening of a City” in 1914, revealing the audial reality of the world in which many knew: living through industrial expansion,and the sensory effects it has on understanding of music and art.
So, the youth at Casita Maria and Sounds that Carry weren’t outside of a musical legacy when creating their first compositions.
“The point of this pilot program was to change up the way we think about writing a piece of music,” said Hogg. “The most important step in the beginning is cultivating a love for music, and [making] them feel that they can do this, and if you immediately start to give them rules in the beginning, that won’t happen,” she continued.
Sounds that Carry is a music education consulting organization, founded and structured by Renate Rohlfing, associate professor at Berklee School of Music, and Olivia Cosio, a composer and educator. “[Olivia] and I began talking about how we could create curriculum and opportunities for people to create music, and for them to express themselves as creative beings because music is a birthright,” said Rohlfing.
In attempting to understand the experience of the students and the creative environment of Sounds that Carry, Araceli wrote via email, “Throughout the program, I witnessed how the classroom transformed into a dynamic space where creativity flourished, cultural barriers were broken down, and connections were forged through the universal language of music,” she shared as one of the instructors guiding the students the entire duration of the program. “The energy shifted from a timid and cautious curiosity to enthusiastic collaboration as the new musicians embraced their individuality and celebrated the shared experience of making music together.”
The dismantling of racially limiting composition programs where women and composers of color are discouraged from pursuing composition careers within their collegiate experiences is important. “There’s an idea that theory and analysis are the be all and end all of being a composer. One, that’s a very Western view. What some consider very strong feminine qualities, which men can have, like intuition, [are] very downplayed in Western composition. The analytical and theoretical aspects and making [music] into mathematical models and being action-oriented [in that way] is seen as more of a [masculine] way of making music,” said composer Amirtha Kidambi for Jazz Right Now’s column, Feminist Jazz Review.
Jazz composer Steph Richards also spoke of the difficulty of fitting into white male-dominated music spaces, which truly denotes why Casa Maria and Sounds that Carry’s work is so important to the growth and inclusivity of creative youth culture: “[There] was a moment for me when I was trying to figure out how I was going to fit into that sort of puzzle because my piece didn’t fit the same way. My edges are just different. I wondered how I was going to try to deal with [being different] and still be true to myself. I just accepted that I’m not like [everyone], and that’s okay.”
Regarding the support the students, the founders, and instructors received from Casita Maria, the organization’s artistic director, Gail Heidel, focuses on legacy, cultural support, and consistency in order to create a safe established space for education to flourish, “Casita Maria responded to a need 90 years ago that became a permanent part of the social fabric of America, an ‘underclass’ of Spanish-speaking migrants and immigrants who remain at the bottom of most socio-economic indicators. Though Latinos are the largest minority in the United States, they remain largely underrepresented in business, government, politics, arts, education, etc.”
While Gail and Casita Maria maintained the mission of upholding quality education for the Bronx’s Latin community, the Sounds that Carry instructors became quite aware of learning disorders, and nurturing neurodivergent youth. “[One of our students] was on the spectrum, and we let him work alone and he did amazingly! I think he had one of the best compositions: lots of beats lined up one after the other…”remembered Hogg.
It certainly takes a village. In speaking to CM’s senior professionals, to Sounds that Carry co-founders, and the instructors working in the classroom with every child, it is safe and positive to assert that this woman-led musical arts educational structure, from executive to grassroots, has created a space for students to thrive. Their final concert, filled with family, staff and proud community members, highlighted their unique pieces, many composed with fluid rhythmic form, not traditionally syncopated like Latin-pop or hip hop, but truly the youth’s singular creations. It was a testament to the positive outcomes of encouraging freeform composition, as theory can be taught any time.
As the music world continues to modernize, and now globalize, the work of preparing diverse American youth to stand out on the musical world stage by being authentically themselves as musicians, artists, thinkers and composers is being done by culturally based arts community centers like Casita Maria. It is also the open-minded musical basis upon which Sounds that Carry was founded. Both organizations should continue to move forward in their work, as the world will not slow down for our youth, marginalized or otherwise.
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