The Female Song Writer Interview

My oral history interview was very fun! My interviewee was Sarah Mae, an alumni of Westminster Choir College. She is known for her wonderful choral skills, teaching, and conducting but most of all Sarah Mae is known for her songwriting skills. Beyond this interview being about females as songwriters I must say, I myself took a lot from her interview. She was her usual bubbly self and she opened up a lot.  I started off the interview by asking her why she wrote music? Her answer was on the lines of songwriting being a source where you can say things that you wouldn’t be able to say outside of music.  One thing that really stuck out was when Sarah Mae said, “It’s the only way that you can feel fearless in what you want to say”; she then went on to state that that is the only reason why she does it: it’s therapy.

I then went on to ask her questions about what inspired her to write and what was her first song. Sarah Mae then went into the process of her music making. She constantly stressed how her song writing is a way for her to express herself. Many songwriters are very emotional and write their personal diaries as songs and Sarah Mae is very much a songwriter whose music is not just music but is her life. The interview did not stress gender issues, but I did later get into some gender-based questions. I asked Sarah Mae what she thought was special about being a female song writer? Sarah Mae’s reply was a simple “I don’t know” and went on to state that she never thought of it as anything special. Sarah Mae then talked about when they’re doing commissions they look for female songwriters and basically look for the stereotypical expectations of a female in the sense that “Oh well you know, she’s in touch with her emotions, etc.” This stood out a lot to me because although there is no MAJOR gender bias problems in the field of song writing, there is still an unconscious stereotyped expectation of females in music in general. Sarah Mae then spoke of how it is good for females to be song writers because in some societies and even in ours they look to the women to be quiet and well be obedient and just be the “idea” of how women should be but to her songwriting is good because again as she said in the beginning of the interview it gives expression and breaks boundaries that have been put on women. She calls music a weapon but also a shield due to being able to express freely.

When we spoke about men being a dominant figure in music Sarah Mae then went in to discussing how the industry is very man driven in certain fields as classical music and how in the pop world when she goes to studios there is a man at the control panel. She stressed how it’s not that they expect men to be better but that the original set up and the foundations that were built are based on men doing these things.

Sarah Mae overall showed that a songwriter is a songwriter. In spite of being a male or female there is nothing special about the gender but instead it is the individuals themselves. There is no hard fight for females in the field of song writing, songwriting is songwriting and she is a wonderful songwriter.

The Female Songwriter

My oral history topic is on female songwriters. In the music industry you see men being powerhouses on all levels. As for women, you mainly see them being the singers and very few are behind the scenes of the music being heard. From the times of Schubert, Beethoven, and Mozart, and way before these famous gents, it has always been male songwriters/composers. Nowadays you are starting to see women be more in charge in the music scene. Performers like Chaka Khan, Mariah Carey, Missy Elliot, etc. are examples of female singers who have strong involvement in songwriting and the production of their and others’ music. As of now days you have more indie artist coming to a rise and a lot of your female singers in the mix of this underground movement are songwriters.

It is very refreshing to hear women write and sing their own songs and even write songs for males. Why has this been such a slow up rise? Well the answer is simple; there is a lot of “gender” awareness in the music world. For woman to be involved in music in general is a hard ball to throw. Men have stereotypical ideas of females in the sense of how they should look, sound, talk, be, etc. All these stereotypes that have been placed through out music for decades and well centuries, is something that women still have to battle with pretty hard. As a female who is a song writer, it is very settle that I face gender problems but I have had moments when I realized I was underestimated due to my gender, but are there other things I am not aware of when it comes to being a female song writer? Or is it just something I’m possibly over thinking?

Well, with this oral history project I hope to dig deeper in to this. There is no serious gender problems on the lines of song writers but I do know there is a difference of what people expect from female song writers. Over all I just want to really focus on the song writer. Their process, approach, technique, and how being a female in a major part of the music industry in society today, effects their music or if it even does.

Today’s world has of course changed a lot since the times of Mozart. Although seeing women as songwriters is very common now days it is still interesting how you see more females as songwriters than you do in any other part of the mechanics of the music industry. Something interesting said by a friend of mine who is a female song writer herself, she said, “we write and write but yet still there is a man we have to go through to get it all heard” I found that to be very interesting and true. Hopefully my interview with the song writer, Sarah Mae will possibly broaden this concept as well! Who knows but beyond being a female, knowing and understanding the mindset of a song writer is a very spectacular thing.

The Lifelong Learner

Preparing oneself for an interview is quite an overwhelming task. You face the anxiety of trying to get reasonable, up to date, and more importantly, professional information on a person and question them on what could be their most core beliefs. Then comes the stress of organizing what you think are well articulated, flowing, and thought provoking questions that you hope on tape do not sound as derpy as you assume they will sound like in your head.

Now, fortunately, I had the honor and privilege to work with the lovely Lynnel Jenkins, Artistic Director of the Princeton Girlchoir and Timberland Middle School music educator. My experience with Ms. Jenkins was very limited, yet also extremely connected to my experiences as a high school student. Ms. Jenkins is an alumna of the University of Arizona where she met my previous high school teacher, Mr. Anthony Bernarducci. She also ran the university’s outreach choir, which many of my friends were a part of. Needless to say, I have been hearing the woman’s name thrown around for quite some time now. Prior to the beginning of the interview, we had the opportunity to speak of her experiences with Mr. B and with the UA program and how I came to be at Westminster Choir College. Luckily, this broke a lot of the apprehension I was feeling about this impending interview.

My biggest goal in interviewing Ms. Jenkins was to get inside her head and see the process by which she approaches a choral rehearsal. What became of this interview was truly enlightening.  In this interview, I wanted to explore how such a fantastic music educator and conductor came to be. Beginning with her childhood, I had an inclination to believe that she was exposed to music at an early age (and I was right). Growing up with a heavy musically involved family, Ms. Jenkins was constantly exposed and involved in the music making process, which in turn lead to an awakening in her to continue down that road as a career. In my experience, it seems that those people who are actively involved in music making at a young age or who are exposed to music, tend to be lifelong music lovers, enthusiasts, and maybe even musicians themselves. Lynnel is prime example of this.

The other aspect to this interview I wanted to set the record straight on was her fierce passion with younger students and how she specifically targets her approach to teaching. What I learned was this: a blend of Kodaly and Orff with compassion and an understanding that everyone brings something different to the rehearsal, drives her methodology. Some call it Critical Pedagogy, she calls it “good teaching.” Regardless of the label (or lack-there-of), Ms. Jenkins adapts her pedagogical tools for students of all age, whether that be a seventh grade girls chorus or a group of undergraduate student teachers.

Walking away from this interview, I have come to realize that Ms. Jenkins is one of the most well-rounded and intellectual music educators I have ever met. It is my hope that while not everyone may know the basis of each methodology Ms. Jenkins is trained in, every viewer of this interview will see that she has a fierce love, an intellectual prowess, and a deep, consistently growing understanding of the world of education in this country and her school. All I can say is: what a woman.

Something for Everyone

Music Therapy is without borders. Through the use of individualized musical interventions, music therapists strive to use music’s therapeutic qualities to satisfy physical, emotional, cognitive, and even social needs of an individual. By creating, singing, listening to, or moving to music, individuals strengthen connections that had once been obstacles.

This is exactly what I use music for. Though I study music as a student here at Westminster Choir College, my connection to music comes from something much more raw–pure enjoyment. The comfort that comes with humming my favorite song, or dancing to whatever’s on is something everyone understands, even at a very young age.

When babies come into the world a bit sooner than expected, it can cause a lot of issues for development, i.e. the inability to feed. This is where music therapists step in. They give a special pacifier to the baby and whenever the baby sucks on it, a lullaby plays. The baby learns very fast that they get to hear the music if they suck on the pacifier, which activates the same muscles needed for the infant to feed! This is called the PALS System (Pacifier Activated Lullaby System).

The PALS system is something Ms. Carol Ann Blank taught me when I interviewed her. Ms. Blank presently works at the Music Together Lab School here in Princeton but has been a music therapist for 18 years. When she first began, she was working with veterans to overcome traumatic experiences and social (self)-exclusion. However, when she had children, she began to find more interest in early childhood development. The idea of swapping to such drastically different groups baffled me! I thought you had to pick a specialty like a doctor picks surgery or medicine. She explained that the approach to the field is all inclusive and it is very easy to retrain yourself to work with anyone.

After speaking with Ms. Blank, I stopped viewing music therapy as this outlandish idea. I saw the proof in the Lab School classroom where children happily created music together. I saw the proof in the joy I got when my favorite song came on the radio as I drove home from my interview. Music doesn’t provide the answers for whatever issues there may be, it’s just a great tool and music therapy is just beginning to explore what it can do.

To Bring Full Circle

When I was first presented the assignment of conducting an interview, I was admittedly very concerned. You see, we were given the task of finding a woman in New Jersey, and figuring out how to turn their relationship with music into a story. I’ve never done anything like this before, and as someone that also happens to be a complete stranger to the east coast, the job couldn’t seem any more daunting. I first set out by contacting several professionals deeply experienced in classical music (be it opera or orchestra.). To my surprise, not a single response came back. I’m sure that it wasn’t due to any lack of respect or protocol–my emails were more than polite and understanding. However, I doubt that most of them even got past the person’s agent. Things looked bleak, and it wasn’t until my voice teacher offered to ask a friend of his that I was able to return to the assignment with confidence.

Having agreed, I immediately jumped into action, researching everything I could about her. She had been interviewed previously, and from that I was able to glean some important, albeit outdated, information about this person who had given me their time. Wanting to make the interview as clean-cut as possible, I started looking at other interviews, and assessing the mistakes and blunders that they had stumbled upon. The major issues others seemed to have lay in their preparation and improvisatory skills. It’s true that you must write your questions before hand. However, I saw that when the interviewer bound themselves to the questions, the interview became forced and uncomfortable to the interviewee, reducing the quality of what both wanted to be a good product. So, it became clear to me that I should have a list of questions, but be flexible enough to slash ones that were made void by statements made, and to explore places of interest that arose simply through natural conversation. It was made clear that flexibility would need be the core philosophy of my approach. Taking this to heart, I made my questions focus around overall themes that I would pursue throughout the course of the interview.

The big day of the interview was soon to arrive, and I just had some minor planning to do (i.e. location, time, and camera acquisition). Luckily, everything fell into place perfectly. I found a room with decent natural lighting from a good angle, and left a note in all the major practice rooms, politely asking that the hour I would spend recording be not interrupted by loud noises/music. I focused first on the present, then the distant past, and, as a connection, how she got from there to where she is now.

To my delight, Mrs. Barstow was not only friendly and forthcoming, but also full of stories to share. I’m sure I looked like quite the idiot with a smile pasted on my face from start to finish. She just seemed to exude positive energy. For that, I’m thankful. She was everything an interviewer could hope for.

A Reflection

Upon beginning this project, I knew the questions that I wanted answers to, but I am not sure I knew what I wanted the answers to be or what I would do once I had gathered the information. In the end I decided to try and focus my interview around how to balance being a teacher and having a family and outside life at the same time.  Along with this topic came questions that asked about the reality of how demanding teaching is.

Walking away from my interview I felt relieved that other people struggled with this balance as well, even after years of teaching.  However, I was frustrated by the fact that I did not really have any true answers for how this magical balance could be achieved.  Despite this, I learned a lot from in the process.

When first starting this project, it was overwhelming deciding where to begin.  What do I want to discuss and who will be able to answer the questions I have?  Throughout this process, I found myself learning a lot about the value of networking and all of the resources that are potentially available to us via people and places in Princeton.  Upon choosing a topic and finding a teacher who was willing to work with me, things became easier and more manageable.  It was exciting to see the project begin to take shape and become something personal.  Now it was about me finding the right questions to ask and the right approach to get a stranger to open up about such personal aspects of their life.

Overall, my interview went very well.  My interviewee was very willing to work with me and to answer the questions to the best of her ability, trying to cater to what I had asked her.  Something I could have done a better job of as the interviewer was to ask follow up questions based on the response I received.  I suppose this is part of the learning process.  I took away two big things from this project.  The first was what it means to be a professional in the music field.  Westminster is professional within itself, but this is something different; you are personally responsible for appointments you make for yourself.  Not only are you representing your self as a future music teacher, you are also representing Westminster. The second big thing I took away was the reality of what being a music teacher is, especially when you are young and first starting out.  My interviewee talked a lot about what her first years were like versus where she is now and how that played a role in her personal life.  The project was a great reality check, while making it pertain to something each individual found a connection with.

A Hope for Music Education

Mrs. Janice Chapin, the interviewee of my oral history project, is the Director of choirs at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South in Princeton Junction, NJ. I wanted to interview her for various reasons. I studied with her during my freshman year of high school at WW-P HS South, before moving to another state. I wanted to catch up with her and also talk about how the music program has changed now.

The most obvious change I noticed was their new classroom. A new hall for all the music classrooms for choir, band, and orchestra classrooms was built just an year after I left. Also, there was a brand new auditorium which was more than twice the size of the old auditorium. Although the place did not look anything like what I remembered, I felt very excited and even hopeful because it showed how much the school supports and cares for the music program. During the interview I learned that the Women’s Choir, a new curricular ensemble has been created to accommodate a large number of female students auditioning for the concert choir. I was surprised to hear this because students attending WW-P HS South are one of the most academically high achieving and motivated students I know. As I wrote on my first blog, 70% of student body participate in the AP® exams and above 93% of student body are classified proficient or above proficient on both mathematics and language arts literacy (U.S. News & World Report).

At the same time, the music program is just as supported in the school and valued by the students. Mrs. Chapin said, “This place [choir] is unique. It builds leadership, helps kids to come out of their shells, find their voice… I’ve seen transformations in personalities and ability to talk because of choir.” This was true for me. Choir was a safe place for me to grow and to be myself. Being the tenor section leader of the chorale was one of the very first leadership opportunity I ever had and it allowed me to not only develop leadership skills, but gave me opportunities use my talent for others. Because of this opportunity, I became more responsible, developed musicianship skills, and most importantly, confidant because I learned that I can be useful for my community through sharing my talent in music.

As for the final question of the interview, I asked Mrs. Chapin, “What do you want your students to get out of singing in choirs?” She answered, “I believe everyone is on their journey in finding who they are or what their voice is and this [choir] helps them move forward in their quest for that more so than any other class because they are absolutely using their voice. I want them to be discerning. I want them to know what quality is and what something not of quality is. I want them to know what is like to be in the moment and to feel the beauty of music because there are so much not very beautiful things in the world. But the music that they make together is beautiful. It may not be the level of music that people make at other places, but I want them to experience that beauty.”

This interview gave me hope as a future music educator. It showed me that people have respect for music and they want to experience it, not because it makes them look smarter or because it helps them to get in to better colleges, but simply because it is beautiful and is meaningful to them.

Second Blog

At the beginning it was very difficult to find a participant who would be willing to openly talk about why they were no longer pursuing music professionally. When I found someone who was willing to participate it turned out that they still wanted to pursue music professionally. They had the impression that I meant classical music only, and because of this the person was no longer eligible to participate. After a few days of scrambling I found someone who seemed to fit the requirements, and was very willing to participate. I called her up, we set the date, and the interview was done!

Hayley Collins was the woman that I ended up interviewing, and may I say this was an interview from heaven. The energy was incredible, the content interesting, and I learned so much from this amazing woman. Some of the personal experience that she brought to this interview really taught me some lessons about life and school. If I had to sum up what I learned in a sentence I would say, “no matter what, give what you do your all.” Hayley is the perfect example of committing to a path, and learning everything she can from it. Then, when life suggests a different route, a route that seems to fit who the person is, you will be ready to take it. Sometimes in life we must make major choices, and even if they seem like mistakes, they would have pointed us in the right direction.

What is interesting about Hayley is that she came to Westminster with the passion to perform. She dedicated herself to her art. She spent three and a half years studying to become a professional opera singer. Toward the end of the road she started to question whether or not this passion, this love for performing, was still present. She began to wonder if she was truly right for this, or if she was just completing a degree program. It was not that she wasn’t succeeding in the program, it was that her heart was no longer into it. Her senior year in college was the year she was faced with a choice. Do I finish the program or change majors? She decided, after much consideration, to change to the Bachelors in the Arts program and graduate with that degree.

I feel like a situation like this would have crippled any person who convinced themselves that they were meant to do something for so long. It can be an incredibly difficult process accepting that we were wrong about ourselves. Hayley however began finding her personal path when she obtained a job at McCarter Theatre in Princeton, NJ. It was here she was exposed to arts management, and truth be told…she fell in love with it. She learned as much as she could from this experience and this aided her when a huge change came about in her life. When she graduated from Westminster Choir College with a Bachelor of Art in Music degree, she knew in her heart what the next step was. The next step for her was attending graduate school for Theatre management.

Like I have previously said, much can be learned from this interview. But the one thing I think everyone should take out of it is to work as hard as you can at something you have decided on. Life has a way of guiding you to where you need to be.

What My Interviewee Dominique Daluise Taught Me

At the start of the interview with Dominique Daluise my goal was to discuss the female perspective in the world of music composition and performance in our time. Because, historically women have been far less involved and influential in musical composition, I have been curious about what the women writing now think about their role and their voice in this ever evolving field.

When we began I explained this to Dominique. I talked with her about the major shift in musical thinking that occurred during the 20th century that opened a great many doors to female compeers that were previously closed. Then I asked her what she thought about the way women are using this, rather new, prowess in the music industry. “What are women trying to say?” “How are they using this young voice?” To be honest, I was expecting her to give a visceral response defending the way that women today make use of their unique place in history. Being male, I anticipated Dominique viewing my observations from a female perspective which I would have thought to be universal or uniform.

When I asked her what she thought this generation of woman composers/performers were saying, however, I was wholly surprised by her answer. She answered me very honestly and said that she did not think the current collection of popular music songwriters were saying anything of importance with their music. Her perspective on women working in pop music was that they say what they have to say in order to attain their dream of “making it.”

I thought this response was insightful, and was certainly intriguing to me as it not only lent credence to the notion that woman today are still being held back by a force larger than any one individual, but also exposed a more soulful presence within this topic. It showed me that women will not necessarily stand by the work of other women simply because of their sex. I honestly did think that in discussing something with a woman about other women I would provoke a negative response rather than an honest one. Dominique gave an answer that completely contradicted that hypothesis.

Furthermore, during the rest of the interview, I observed another fascinating factoid about the way that Dominique viewed her place within the musical world today. When asking her about how she would prefer to be viewed by others, or how she wanted her message to be perceived by others, she talked about an ideological third group of composers that I had not previously considered in my thinking. While I had been considering only two groups of composers in my thinking, male and female, she talked about what, I have since labeled, the ternary group of the individual. While I was asking what impact she as a woman wanted to have on the worldwide opinion of female composers, she discussed how she wanted the world to view her, and had very little care about how the world saw other women.

In conclusion, what Dominique really taught me is that women cannot be placed together categorically; that women do not compose simply as women, but individuals that are part of the larger collective…human beings. In thinking on this, I began viewing myself as sexist for my thinking going into the interview, but paused when I considered how many feminists propose that women, as a group, have been subjugated to performing the music of men over the centuries. I think the most viable lesson I took away from my interview with Dominique is that we should all look at what our voice, unisexually, is speaking to, rather then create division based on sex.

Communication Inspired by Music

Natalie Shelpuk contacted me after I reached out to a librarian at Westminster who directs a community choir. He asked if any choir members would be willing to participate in this oral history project, and Natalie responded was one of the first to respond. Her enthusiasm and outgoing personality were clear from the first email. Natalie’s story is one of many stories of people who unconventionally or indirectly use what they love to effect change and create a more positive world.

Natalie is an alumna of Westminster Choir College who studied Sacred Music with organ and piano as her primary instruments. At Westminster she found one of her greatest interests while writing program notes for herself and others. For many people this task is often filed under “boring graduate assistant work,” but she discovered a love for communicating with the audience through the brief education she could provide in these notes. In order to follow this interest she went to Peabody for her masters in Music Journalism. She moved from this degree into mainstream journalism where the paper often had her reviewing performances and sometimes asked her to step out of her comfort zone to report on unmusical happenings like sporting events. Throughout this time, Natalie maintained an active presence as a church musician singing in church choirs, leading praise bands, and involving young people in the worship-leading process.

After some years spent in the journalism world, she began her own business based on the goal of helping businesses and corporations motivate and mediate through effective communication. She says that she wants to transfer the life-affirming and life-changing effects of music and her own communication gifts to help people find ways to motivate and reach peace between each other.

Talking with Natalie was incredibly positive. Going into this project, I felt somewhat overwhelmed, and the prospects of finding someone with whom I could have easy and interesting conversation seemed unlikely. After a series of emails to prospective interviewees that received no response or did not work out, I was becoming more discouraged about the overall success of this process. After our email correspondence, I waited outside of the Princeton Public Library feeling nervous to meet a nearly complete stranger. As soon as she walked over to me I could tell that our conversation was going to be incredibly interesting. She effuses enthusiasm, and I was so happy to learn more about her life and experiences with music.

Music, although not always the forefront activity of her life, has been the propelling force motivating her interactions with others and her career choices. She has been deeply touched by music and has experienced it on a spiritual level as something wholly life-affirming. Through her own experience with this inspiration, she finds the desire to bring positive change to the lives of the people she meets, whether they be the youth she reaches through involving them in music ministry or the business people she works with.

Speaking with Natalie was very inspiring. Throughout our interview she communicated so honestly her past and present experience with inspiration. I was honored to have a conversation with such a passionate musical person.