In Part One I discussed some of the ways we think about practice, and how our practice thinking can be at the root of out practice problems. I discussed musical practice can be both reflective of, and productive of, various forms of trauma. This week, I want to explore the subject of trauma in greater depth.
There’s a lot to unpack in this, and I want to be clear that I’m at the beginning of a longer process of thinking through complex, intersecting issues. In this piece, I’ll first discuss definitions of traumas, recent experiences of collective trauma, and examples of trauma in music education. I’ll then introduce topics of trauma-informed teaching and learning. Finally, I’ll return to the question of practice.
Content Warning: This post refers to, but does not describe, traumatic circumstances including violence, sexual assault, abuse, hate speech, death and dying, sexism, misogyny, ableism and classism.
What is trauma?
“Trauma” is a spacious word; one that can stand for many things. It comes from the Greek word τραύμα, which means “wound.”
A traumatic event can occur once, or repeatedly over time. A particular event may be experienced as traumatic by one individual, but not by another: it’s an individual’s experience that determines whether any given event or circumstance is traumatic. The effects of trauma are variable, too. Adverse effects might be felt right away, or years later. They might last for a short time or a long time.
The effects of traumatic events or circumstances are not limited to those directly impacted. Traumatic stressors can be transmitted vertically and horizontally through families and communities. People can be traumatized vicariously, by living inside cultures and systems that sustain racist, violent and injurious actions. The term complex trauma describes exposure to multiple traumas (typically of an interpersonal nature) and their wide-ranging, long-term impacts on mental health.
This spaciousness of trauma—its limitless manifestations and configurations—contributes to a habit of thinking that trauma is mysterious and exceptional, when it is not. Trauma is ubiquitous and endemic.
(See the end of this piece for a list of research studies and statistics).
We live in traumatic times
I teach in conservatories, and my calendar remains perpetually organized around academic terms. It’s taken me until now—midway through January—to begin to take stock of the events of the past semester.
At one time, we experienced at once a global pandemic, an economic collapse, a great loss of lives (390,938 lives in the US alone, according to todays’ data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), an epidemic of deadly police shootings, and an unforgiving and unyielding national politics that has exploited each of these events for political gain, with no interest in mitigating the harm being done, and—instead—causing still more harm.
These events amount to a collective traumatic experience. No one student in my class experienced these events in the same way. One might be in their spacious family home, focused on their practice, adept at enterprises like streaming concerts with a Venmo “tip jar.” One might be struggling to keep up with their own assignments while managing their children’s home-schooling. One might be making long commutes to late-night gigs in another state with less-restrictive social distancing laws. One might be suffering the stress and anxiety of trying not to get sick, not get killed by the police, and not get vicariously traumatized by the flood of videos, while considering numerous requests to share their experience of racial trauma through unpaid service on panels, committees, and advisory groups.
Then last week, we witnessed the nation’s capitol stormed by a violent mob of terrorists. They wore symbols of genocide. They carried flags—American flags, Trump 2020 flags, Confederate flags—into the Capitol. Some used their flagpoles to beat a police officer to the ground. One man stood casually outside the Senate floor, right hand on his hip. the pole for his Confederate flag resting on his left shoulder. (He’s since been arrested.)
Some people want to dismiss the rioters as cultists, disaffected white trash, or conspiracy theorists—as though they could be something other than ordinary American men and women. The New York Times inventoried some of the notable arrests after the riot. They are an Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer. The son of a Brooklyn judge. A retired firefighter. An occupational therapist with the Cleveland public schools. The former owner of Car Nutz Car Wash. A Republican elected as a state lawmaker. Two off-duty police officers.
Violent extremists, white supremacists, athletes, evangelical Christians, suburban Trump voters, Republican state senators, bartenders, CEOs, firefighters, and armed militia. It sounds like a perverse inversion of the old Sesame Street song, “These Are the People in Your Neighborhood.” They are ordinary white men and women, living out their best lives: in which their emotional comfort comes before anyone else’s right to survive.
In a recent poll by YouGov, slightly more Republicans (45%) actively support the actions of the capitol rioters than opposed them (43%). In other words, slightly more Republicans prefer an autocrat to a democratically-elected, incrementally left-of-centre Biden-Harris government.
Musical Trauma
There are many good reasons why one might turn to music right now: self-care; to make our feelings audible, mentionable and manageable; to feel connected to ourselves and to others across generations and geographies; to promote our sense of truth and trust; to give testimony.
None of this has come up in the the messages I’ve received about January 6 from the musical institutions to which I belong. In the emails from Artistic Directors, Presidents, Deans and Deanlings I’ve talked the usual shock-and-sadnesses, thoughts-and-prayers, truth-to powers, now-more-than-evers, and one Bernstein—as in “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”
I love Bernstein, but I loathe the way his words are used to justify our doubling down on the status quo. Music is not an automatic good. Music is not an antidote to hate. Music is neutral, like money. And like money, music is attached to power.
Music conservatories are professional training schools, and trauma is woven into the DNA of the systems that train professional musicians. It’s in the power dynamics of the mentor-student relationship. It’s in the demands of an industry where competition is all-pervasive: where everything you do—orchestral jobs, teaching jobs, slots in fellowship programs, scholarships to summer festivals, whether you get added to the sub list, whether a contractor calls you for that tour or passes you over—depends on competition. It’s in the idea that you’re vying, your whole young life, for a seat in this or a role in that, all the while submitting yourself to the assessment of powerful gatekeepers who make the life-or-death decisions about your livelihood.
It’s a world that’s happy to have female performers serve as muses and resonators for male genius; where master (male) pedagogues regularly marry their much younger (female) students; where sisters (Nannerl Mozart, Fanny Meldelssohn) and wives (Clara Schumann) give way to brothers and husbands. It’s a world where it took an internationally-known concert violinist 33 years of strenuous and painful effort to get the Curtis Institute of Music to admit what they already knew: that her teacher, Joseph Brodsky, had raped her when she was still a child, and threatened to send her and her brother back to Canada should she speak up.
To be serious about being a professional musician is to be completely dedicated to a system that might decimate you. In an industry where women hold fewer than 35% of the seats in major orchestras, where women form just 5.3% of the full-time faculty and leadership in American jazz and improvisation programs, where women make up less than 16% of the core personnel on albums in a national jazz critics’ poll, anything that throws you off your game or threatens the status quo has the potential to derail your career. (See the end of this newsletter for more statistics and their sources.)
“Don’t complain,” one of my colleagues once instructed me. We were eating sushi after a panel discussion. As moderator, I’d raised some critical points about improvisation in the academy. “I know 40 guys who would line up to slit your throat to take your gig.” I was 43 at the time. I’d won my job fair and square as a finalist in not one, but two national searches. He’d never had to compete for his job. He didn’t even have to apply.
Towards a Trauma-Informed Practice
I’m just now, at age 50, starting to register the mental health impacts of my professional training and professional experience. (I don’t yet wish to discuss these in detail, but I’ll observe that it’s no wonder I have trouble with practice, when my livelihood has depended on my being complicit with a system that would, metaphorically, slit my throat.)
Ten months into a global health crisis, I’m only now starting to chart its potential long-term impacts on our profession. (More on this in a future post, but the most troubling data points in Americans for the Arts’ weekly COVID-19’s Impact on The Arts Research & Tracking Update is the one that says 78% of artists have no post-pandemic recovery plan. )
Part of the reason it’s taken me so long to understand trauma’s impacts is the silence the culture asks us to keep. Trauma isolates, shames, and stigmatizes. Reading through lists of the effects to trauma, I realized that my experience has much in common with the things others have experienced in trauma:
Wanting to be believed. Worrying that I won’t be believed, or feeling like people don’t believe me.
Feeling like I am at fault. Feeling shame, guilt, or self-blame. Going through events many times to try to figure out what I did wrong, when it was never my fault. Difficulty trusting my own perceptions and experience.
Feeling alone. Feeling like I’m the only person who’s gone through these experiences; keeping silent out of worry that others will judge me or misunderstand me.
Facing disbelief and gaslighting. Either because those responsible for traumatic stressors deny their actions, or because those responsible hiring them don’t wish to challenge their own perceptions and judgment.
Difficult in finding support. I travelled a good distance in geography, culture and class to get to where I am. I’ve found it hard to find support that understands these distances. And because of music’s role in my mobility, I’ve felt I have no right to “complain.”
Feeling trapped. It has been hard to name traumatic stressors when my livelihood has depended on my working inside a system that has been causing me harm.
My solution, in my twenties, was to quit music. I started again after a few years, and I’ve kept quitting, and starting again, ever since.
For the longest time, I felt I couldn’t speak openly about it—quitting, my reasons for quitting, and my reasons for starting again. Then, I wrote an essay about quitting. It was published on my 48th birthday. In the weeks between writing and publication, I lost sleep worrying over the silence I’d be breaking. I was convinced I would lose one or the other of my jobs. (I didn’t, and the essay was shared more than 24,000 times on Facebook alone. The online magazine that published the essay recently went offline, but you can download a PDF of the essay here.)
I quit, but I keep coming back because I think music is too important for me to leave it aside, and because I think I am important, too. I keep coming back because a musician is what I am.
Trauma-informed Pedagogy
What might happen if we approached teaching and learning by acknowledging trauma rather than concealing it?
Trauma-informed pedagogy describes an approach to teaching and learning that centres students’ past and present experiences of trauma and its effects on their well-being.
A trauma-informed approach asks that we recognize and acknowledge trauma in ourselves and our students, and that we help ourselves and our students to feel safe, empowered and connected. It recognizes that the impacts of collective and personal trauma might mean that students have a difficult time completing basic tasks—like showing up, completing assignments, engaging in class discussions, or simply not dropping the class.
The principles are profound and simple. Safety. Trust and Transparency. Support. Collaboration and Mutuality. Empowerment, Voice and Choice. Liberation. Resilience, Growth and Change. They require dismantling hierarchies and promoting interdependence—teaching with, and not to. They ask that you not pretend.
Since March, I’ve been exploring techniques of trauma-informed pedagogy in my classroom and studio teaching. I’ve received rich, meaningful, feedback from students, telling me what’s working, and what needs attention. It’s made teaching far more meaningful and manageable. I used these techniques to readily adapt the masterclass I was scheduled to give on January 6, moments after I learned the news.
I’ve adapted seven principles of trauma-informed pedagogy for musical teaching and practice, summarized in this document: Trauma-Informed Pedagogy for Musicians. I’ve put a few more resources at the end of this post, too.
Until now, it hadn't occurred to me to apply these principles to my own learning.
We do not have to be martyrs to music
When mental health professionals give advice on how to talk to trauma survivors, they tell us, above all, to believe them.
They tell us to listen without judgment, to acknowledge the difficulty of what they went through, and to express your concern and caring. They tell you to keep supporting them by checking in, letting them know you’re thinking of them, offering normalcy, and practicing empathy. Healing takes time, they say. It’s rarely the linear, steady trajectory we prefer to imagine. Everyone’s journey will be different.
They advise that we use phrases that convey empathy, support, and trust, like these ones: “I believe you.” “It took a lot of courage to tell me about this.” “It’s not your fault.” “You didn’t do anything to deserve this.” “You are not alone.” “I’m sorry this happened.” “I care about you, and I’m here to listen or help in any way I can.”
This is pretty much the opposite of how I talk to myself—when I practice, and when I don’t.
I meant to practice this week, I intended to as I wrote that post last week, and every week of these ten months of social distance. I carved out two days this past week, just for me—for thinking and reflecting and feeling my own feelings about practice. I didn’t practice then, either. I meant to practice yesterday, and again today, instead of working on this (by now, very long) newsletter. As I write now, I am patiently setting aside all of the thoughts that contain a “should.”
An expectation we have of wounds is that they should heal: they are pathologies that should be treated and cured. It might be more apt to think of our wounds as being part of us.
One or two last thoughts.
Adrienne Rich’s masterful book, The Dream of a Common Language opens with the poem, “Power.” Her nuanced tribute to the physicist and chemist Marie Curie, the first woman to earn the Nobel Prize, ends like this:
She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power— Adrienne Rich, “Power” (1974)
According to her New York Times obituary, Curie died a “martyr to science.” That was 1934. Adrienne Rich died in 2012. She did not have die a martyr to poetry.
We do not have to be martyrs to music.
Last week, when I wasn’t practicing, I came across this quote from bell hooks. I’d read it before, but it’s one of those things manages to find me when I’d forgotten how much I needed to remember its truth.
One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others.
— bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions (2018)
This week, I’m going to embark on applying this principle in my own practice. I’ve made a set of prompts to work with, which I’ll try out on my own, and the report back to you in the form of an entry in my practic journal, and a handout you can use.
I’ll leave you with a simple practice prompt.
Look at your instrument—in its case, out of its case—and smile at it.
Notice what comes up for you. Believe yourself.
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Get Help
(These resources are organized around American organizations, since this is where I live and work right now.)
National Sexual Assault Online Hotline. Chat online with a trained staff member or call (800) 656-HOPE (4673) for confidential crisis support.
National Domestic Violence Hotline. Call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or chat live now.
Mental Health America. Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) are vulnerable to racial trauma: the mental and emotional injuries caused by living in a system of white supremacy, while managing the impacts of vicarious and intergenerational trauma. MHA provides information and service directories for treatment, prevention and healing of racial trauma.
RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) is the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization. The RAINN website features extensive resources and advice for survivors of sexual violence and their allies.
Statistics on Trauma
A 1995 psychological study showed that 61% of American men and 51% of American women had experienced at least one trauma (Kessler et al, Archives of General Psychiatry, 1996).
Following the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S., there were nearly 1,500 reported incidents of anti-Asian racism in just one month (Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, 2020).
In 2018, 38 percent of Latinx people were verbally attacked for speaking Spanish, were told to “go back to their countries,” called a racial slur, and/or treated unfairly by others (Lopez et al, Pew Research, 2018).
Over the course of one year, Twitter saw 4.2 million anti-Semitic tweets in just the English language alone. (Anti-Defamation League).
A 2018 World Health Organization global survey of 14,000 students found that one in three college freshmen reported dealing with mental illness in the years leading to college (Auerbach et al, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 2018).
One out of every six American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime (RAINN).
Among undergraduate students, 26.4% of females and 6.8% of males experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence, or incapacitaiton. (Cantor et al, Report on the AAU Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct, 2020).
Statistics on Gender and Music
Out of the 190 jazz schools listed in Downbeat’s 2019 Student Music Guide, only 10—5.3%—had female full-time faculty, dean, or department chair. (Source: Ama Amanda Ekery’s analysis of Downbeat.)
The statistic about 19% of female core personnel in NPR Critics Poll comes from this revealing new analysis by Lara Pellegrinelli and a team of independent reporters: “Equal At Last? Women In Jazz, By The Numbers.” NPR Music commissioned Pellegrinelli and her team to analyze the NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll and see what concrete data could reveal about the role of gender in their year-end critics list. Spoiler: the data analysis questions claims of women’s progress in jazz.
The statistic about the number of orchestra seats held by women comes from the study, “Orchestrated Sex” (Sergeant and Himonidies, Frontiers in Psychology, 2019).
Trauma-Informed Pedagogy
Trauma-informed Pedagogy Blog. Janice Carello’s blog shares thoughts, questions, suggestions, links, research, and resources related to trauma-informed teaching and learning.
“Leveraging the Neuroscience of Now: Seven ways professors can help students thrive in class in times of trauma” (Inside Higher Ed, 2020).
“What Does Trauma-Informed Teaching Look Like?” Resources on Trauma-informed teaching, book recommendations, and resource listings. (Chronicle of Higher Education, 2020).