Stories and Lessons. Story 1: Self-Stifled Graduate Student, June 1995

Songwriting is a personal and vulnerable endeavor. In the spirit of soul-baring songwriting, I chose an autoethnographic approach to this chapter because it “acknowledges and accommodates subjectivity, emotionality, and the researcher’s influence on research, rather than hiding from these matters or assuming they don’t exist” (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011, p. 274). To illustrate ways that vulnerable and authentic moments can inform instructional decisions when working with young songwriters, I will divulge moments of risk and truth in my own musical and professional life. Each story I share contains a life lesson that has emerged in my work as a music teacher, researcher, and songwriter as I have taught, studied, discussed, created, listened, and reflected over the years.

Throughout the discussion, I will apply these life lessons to teaching songwriting or fostering creative music environments sometimes directly and through inference. One sincere goal in this personal narrative approach is, as Carolyn Ellis (2004) describes, for readers to “take a more active role as they are invited into the author’s world, aroused to a feeling level about the events being described, and stimulated to use what they learn there to reflect on, understand, and cope with their own lives” (p. 46) as musicians and teachers. The lesson learned from each story is indicated upon its conclusion, followed by questions music teachers may wish to ponder when investigating their own vulnerabilities.

Story 1: Self-Stifled Graduate Student, June 1995. It is the spring of 1995 and I’m outside my apartment in Evanston, Illinois, a few blocks from the Northwestern University campus where I will complete my oral exam and present a reflective portfolio of artifacts representing various endeavors in teaching and music-making from the past year. The exam and presentation are the final requirements for the Master of Music in Music Education. Professors Bennett Reimer and Peter Webster, internationally known and widely respected musician-teacher-scholars in the music education profession, will preside. I attempt to pack my car with a pile of turquoise binders that comprise the portfolio, hard copies being the norm at the time. The backseat of my car does not have the depth to hold the binders securely. In order to fit the four huge binders onto the front passenger seat safely for the drive to the Reimer/ Webster extravaganza, I will need to move my cherished plastic container of country music CDs down to the floor. Emotionally, this is almost too much to ask. It was, after all, the height of the Garth Brooks era. I then say defiantly, aloud yet only to myself, “This is the last time!”

Although I could not articulate it fully back then, I still remember the many things I meant by that statement 25 years later: This is the last time I will put my music to the side to follow the rules. This is the last time I will postpone my true musical self. This is the last time I will invalidate the music I choose to sing and long to write by keeping it from my teachers and colleagues. This is the last time I will allow self-doubt to triumph over vulnerability and authenticity. This is the last time I will be safe in my choices instead of taking musical, emotional, and social risks. Sadly, it was not the last time for any of those things.

When I arrived at the exam, I safely answered questions about philosophy, curriculum, research, and technology in music education. I presented domain projects within my portfolio, which had never been done in the program before. These projects were meant to be developed individually based on the interests and career goals of each student at the master’s level. Dr. Webster indicated early on that the faculty would not provide samples of these types of projects because that would be the antithesis of the creative freedom they hoped to foster. I would love to be able to report here that one of my projects focused on country music, but that would not have been the safe choice! What would the faculty have thought of me? Instead, I presented a series of upper elementary general music listening lessons for Dvorak’s New World Symphony and detailed plans for creating and maintaining a successful voice studio. While I was proud of my projects, I did not connect my personal musicianship with my professional musicianship because I was afraid and embarrassed. I was bitter that I had to symbolically (and in the car, literally) move my beloved music to the side to make room for these projects. I realize now that my professors created an environment with endless possibilities and that I created the stifling rules myself! I was in my own way. I hindered my own path to creative glory.

I must clarify that neither the late, great Bennett Reimer or the wonderfully influential Peter Webster knew of my internal dialogue or struggle. At that time, I’m quite certain they were unaware that I listened to or enjoyed country music because I worked very hard to hide it. My commitment to keep my musical preferences hidden stemmed from many years of being told by music teachers when to breathe, what vowel sound to make, and how to sit. When I vocally ventured into bluegrass straight-tone territory, I was told by my high school choir director to sing prettier. She and many other music teachers never asked me what music I preferred, and country music was only mentioned during class as part of disparaging jokes.

Of course, this goes beyond vulnerability and authenticity into inclusivity and diversity. It would have been helpful to have even one outspoken supporter of country music within the music education profession at the time, but I would have to wait quite a long time for that. Vincent C. Bates, Jason B. Gossett, and Travis Stimeling (2020) state, “In more than a century of Music Educators Journal, there have been no articles devoted specifically to country music, reflecting a history of American school music that grew out of efforts to preserve and perpetuate European classical music—to bring ‘high culture’ to common folk” (p. 29). At Northwestern in 1995, I chose to use the isolation I felt within the profession and my previous music teachers’ lack of acknowledgment of country music as evidence that Drs. Webster and Reimer would be in agreement with my former teachers.

In retrospect, perhaps one promising way to reconcile and ultimately combine the worlds of traditional/school music with my real-life music was to tell these thoughtful, considerate professors about my predicament. Unfortunately, youth and fear prevailed. In 2018, while Dr. Webster was virtually visiting my class of undergraduate music education majors, I fessed up. He had no idea until then. We had a nice laugh about it. I wish I had the opportunity to tell Dr. Reimer before he passed away. He was always delighted by my blunt honesty when discussing philosophical issues in class. He never knew that the context for those discussions in my mind were aesthetic experiences I had with songs written by John Denver, Dolly Parton, or Clint Black instead of orchestral repertoire composed by Brahms or Stravinsky. I saved my papers from his class and when reviewing them to write this chapter, I can see his positive handwritten comments in the margins. I would like to think that he would have written them regardless of the style of music of which I wrote.

Lesson 1: Get out of your own way. Questions to Ponder:
- What rules from your former teachers are you still following? How do those rules assist or inhibit your authentic musical self?

- How have you gotten in your own way as a musician?
- What are you telling yourself about how your musical preferences are perceived by others and how will that inner voice affect you as a teacher?