Ep. 020 | Being a Black Music Therapist Part One
Today, we chat with guest, Tanesha Ross, a board-certified music therapist, as she shares about how her personal experience as a black music therapist.
LEARN MORE
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Dr. Joy DeGruy | Book, Website
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by F. Douglass and D. Blight | Book
My Bondage and My Freedom by F. Douglass | Book
Artists Striving to End Poverty | Website
Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln by J. Stauffer | Book
Most people think ‘whiteness’ is innate. They’re wrong: it was created to keep black people from voting by K. Gerbner | Online Article
TRANSCRIPT
Erica: Welcome, friends! You’re listening to The Feeling is Musical — as presented by the Snohomish County Music Project. My name is Erica Lee, and today, we start a 2-part series on Being a Black Music Therapist. Today, we are talking with board certified music Therapist, Tanesha Ross. Currently, Tanesha works with hospitalized children through the Melodic Caring Project, a nonprofit organization, and with older adults through NM Entertainment. Additionally, her prior experiences include autistic children and adults, as well as people with PTSD, Parkinson’s Disease, as well as various forms of memory loss. Tanesha continues her volunteer work with Artists Striving to End Poverty, and she received her BA in Music from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, and her BA in Music Therapy from St. Mary of the Woods College in Indiana.
[Podcast intro music plays]
Erica: Hi, Tanesha, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here.
Tanesha: Thanks for having me.
Erica: Absolutely. I’m really looking forward to this episode for like multiple reasons. I think this is a really needed conversation in general. Also, at the top of the episode, I just um wanna in advance like recognize and thank you for being willing to do the episode, and to do the emotional labor to have to think about this and talk about this - it’s not all like joyful, pleasant, to like happy; it’s hard and uncomfortable, and a lot of things people would find like negative or hard to deal with. So, I just thank you in advance. I mean, we’re friends, so like, I know that like you’re cool with this and we’ve had kinda conversations about this previously, but um I just wanna thank you in advance anyways for this.
Tanesha: Well, I thank you for - for being interested in the topic because, you know, this kind of topic wasn’t something growing up that I could really talk about. I think, in the last 5 to 10 years this conversation has been starting to open up more, and I think it’s important. Because I’m someone of color, you know, this is something I - I deal with all the time.
Erica: Mmhmm.
Tanesha: So, being able to have the conversation with people who might have been avoiding that conversation previously is actually really healing, so…
Erica: Well, let’s just dive right in. Um [chuckles] okay, so before we dive into like the real meat of the episode, can you just start us on like some like background information about yourself? Where did you grow up? How did you get started in music therapy? Etc, etc.
Tanesha: Yeah. So I grew up in Spokane, Washington, and I went to a school that was not very diverse - I think I was 1 of 5 persons of color there. And I was always into music - always in choir and all that. When I was 5, I said I wanted to be a singing doctor - clearly didn’t know what that meant til later in life. Um, I went and got my music degree - had no idea there was a music therapy degree until, gosh, probably another 6 or 7 years post graduating from, you know, Cornish - and, of course I was like ahh I can’t go back to school - I can’t afford it! And so I was a performer for a long time. But while I was performing, um actually in New York, I started volunteering with Artists Striving to End Poverty - and they put on arts camps in under-privileged youth uh areas all around the world. And, uh, so I started volunteering with them, and I would go do something with them and then go do my show at night, and I found myself not wanting to go to my show at night - and just wanting to do the work that I was doing with these - with these amazing kids. Um, and so that’s what really prompted me to - to seriously look back uh at going to school. So… That’s what I did.
Erica: Great! And so, uh now that you’re a music therapist, how would you describe your therapeutic approach or philosophy?
Tanesha: Ever evolving.
[Erica and Tanesha laugh]
Tanesha: I would say - ever evolving and all of the things. Um, I really love learning. Um, I think that people are complex individuals, and so, you know, having 1 approach um isn’t necessarily gonna work for every person. I really do like the neurologic music therapy model - um, I’m a type A personality, so having like really regimented like ways of doing things, I - I like that part of it. And uh so I definitely come from an NMT background, a humanistic approach, I would say, a little bit of behavioral and psychodynamic thrown in there. Um, one of my um mentors was a psychodynamic —
Erica: Okay —
Tanesha: Um based yeah person, and so, she heavily influenced me, and I highly respect her. So, even if I wasn’t trying, I feel like it would just come through.
[Erica and Tanesha laugh]
Tanesha: Um, and then of course, uh as always, just trauma-informed approach, which is —
Erica: Yes —
Tanesha: What we’re —
Erica: Yeah —
Tanesha: What’s needed [chuckles].
Erica: [Chuckles] Yeah. So, being black is your life. And so, how does being black inform your experience as a music therapist? I’m both curious about your experience working with clients or their families, or people on that end of what you do as a therapist, but then also your experience with just other professionals and being in other interdisciplinary settings.
Tanesha: Yeah. It can be really complicated. I’m actually of multi-diversed background. You know, my mom was white, my dad was black. And I actually have been really diving into the words white and black and where that came from, and why we use them. And - and, you know, I’m actually more brown than black, so if we’re talking about just color, you know, there’s that. And, you know, I’ve gotten sort of oppression from both sides really.
Erica: Mmm.
Tanesha: Um, you know, I’ve had, you know, racist comments or, you know, uh approaches from white people as well as darker skinned black people.
Erica: Mmm.
Tanesha: Um, and so, being somewhere in the middle is really tough sometimes. And then I would say - actually, I had a friend once ask me - she goes, when you - when you meet like a new white person, you know, how does - how is that for you - like what is that like in your mind - like do you think that their just accepting of you? And I hadn’t really thought of that before. I mean, I think I had, but not really sat with it. And I sat with that and - and I realized that there is - I - I feel like sometimes I have to prove more or be more to prove that I’m smart, or prove that I am capable. And, of course, working with older adults sometimes, you know, sometimes - especially with dementia,, sometimes they’ll throw out a expletive that is - that makes me uncomfortable, or some sort of, you know, phrase or something that, you know, I had one time - I have to just share this one story. This one time where uh I was - we were singing the national anthem, and I asked people to place their hands on their hearts instead of standing up - mostly because some of them would fall, so I was like, here’s an option, you know, to not fall down - and this one guy goes, well at least you’re not kneeling. And, you know, because I just wanna help people, I have to let those things roll right off. Even if they hurt. And luckily I have people that I can process that - process that hurt with - outside of that setting - and so, to keep - to keep those compartmentalized. ‘Cause I - whether he means it meanly or not doesn’t matter at that point. Right, so, yeah.
Erica: When I was growing up - I have a very uh quick tongue, and can say things without thinking about them - is something I really worked on uh being a teen. And [chuckles] my um my parents are great people and really helped me through a lot of - all of - all of that - everything adolescence. But, my parents drilled into me that like what you say matters in terms of how the person perceives what you’re saying. It doesn’t matter what your intent was, or how you thought you said it, or - it matters how the other person perceives and receives what you are saying. And so, that’s really carried over into my adult life, but particularly my professional life - that when we’re working with people that are different from us, or grow up different from us, or all of that - regardless of intent or what you think it means, or - it means something to the other person, and then that’s gotta matter more than what you think you are saying.
Tanesha: Absolutely.
Erica: Yeah.
Tanesha: Well, and, you know, so many individuals are traumatized, and actually, this country in particular - we are all traumatized by slavery. And I think that you see that in, you know, people of color are re-experiencing it all of the time, and then white people are in avoidance —
Erica: Mmm —
Tanesha: I don’t wanna talk about it, it makes me uncomfortable —
Erica: Mmhmm —
Tanesha: Right, but that’s still trauma.
Erica: Mmhmm.
Tanesha: And, uh - somebody who’s an abuser, or descendant of an abuser, or whatever is still being traumatized - or, you know. So like, while someone’s abusing someone, they’re actually being traumatized as well —
Erica: Mmhmm —
Tanesha: And, we don’t think of it that way, but if I think that if we start to, then we can really start to unpack the healing of all of that —
Erica: Absolutely —
Tanesha: It’s like, why are you avoiding that conversation?
Erica: Mmhmm.
Tanesha: There’s something going on there.
Erica: Mmhmm.
Tanesha: And actually, my - my husband who’s actually a molecular biologist at Fred Hutchison, he told me something when we first started dating that blew my mind, and actually still kinda blows my mind. He said that the human male is more genetically compatible with a male chimpanzee than with the human female —
Erica: Really —?
Tanesha: And vice versa. So, essentially, a black man and a white man are more genetically compatible than the female counterparts - which makes sense because of the sex chromosome, right?
Erica: Oh, sure. Yeah.
Tanesha: And - and when you talk about the amount of melanin from like the darkest darkest darkest person to the lightest lightest person - about the tip of your pinky is about how much genetic material makes yours that color difference.
Erica: That’s not very much then.
Tanesha: That’s not very much!
Erica: Yeah.
Tanesha: And so, all of these divisions, they’re psychological constructs, that we - again, when you go into trauma, right, you’ve got your feeling and your thinking brain that is being overwritten —
Erica: Mmm —
Tanesha: By that trauma center. And - and telling people just get over it doesn’t work. You have to unravel it in order to get to the healing.
Erica: Absolutely. Yeah. We live in a predominantly white area - we’re not in a very diverse area, so we’ll just preface that there are different pockets of the United States—
Tanesha: Yeah —
Erica: That have different cultural make up, and we’re not in a heavy black community area. So, what is it like to be so hugely the minority in terms of racial identity? I mean, because there are a bunch of different identities that we all intersect with, and so it’s not just that you’re a racial minority - like, you’re a - you’re a lot of different things, but focusing on that one particular identity right now, what is that experience like for you?
Tanesha: It can be really tough sometimes - especially when having certain conversations like this. And, you know, all of my friends that are of color are pretty much on the east coast —
Erica: Mmm —
Tanesha: Um, I don’t really have any friends of color - partly because it’s just not very diverse - the area that I live in is predominantly white. And so, you know, I - I also have - and I don’t know if this comes from, you know, having a multi, you know, ethnic background… You know, I know that there’s like a Black Music Therapists’ cohort - I don’t - I don’t really subscribe to that —?
Erica: Mmm —
Tanesha: Because it still breeds separateness. I want things to be mixing - I want - I want us to, you know, sure, ident - you know, wow, you’re beautiful, you’re dark and beautiful, you’re light an beautiful, you’re ev - all the rainbow is beautiful. But it’s kind of like saying, I’m gonna separate the colors of the rainbow, in my opinion, right.
Erica: Mmhmm —
Tanesha: And so, sure, I guess I could - I could go there to feel I guess more eddies in certain conversations. But if I’m just having a conversation with somebody who’s black, then I’m just preaching to the choir, and there’s no real forward motion boing. In a direction that feels more inclusive. And so, I would rather have, you know, sort of like a - like a, you know maybe a diversity model of that same type of thing, where it’s like a place where we can learn about each other’s cultures, and - and have open minds - and then also know that cultures crossover. You know, I think that it’s interesting that, you know, if we just talk musically, it’s easier for somebody who’s white to do R&B or rap or etc etc, but if a black person wants to do country or opera or any of these other things, that that’s for some reason really difficult. And there’s push back on both sides, right - black people are like, why is that white boy singing R&B?
[Erica chuckles]
Tanesha: You know, it’s like, well, if he grew up that way then that’s just - that’s culture.
Erica: Yeah.
Tanesha: You know? This genetic stuff is literally - it’s the product of our environment - it has no - it has no basis for really anything other than - you know, it’s like saying, um a rose and an iris, that neither of them are flowers. So, having that diversity is actually wonderful.
Erica: Yeah. That’s so valid. You mention inclusion and like creating some like cross-cultural - how does that feel practically to you? ‘Cause there’s - my mom’s an educator, my sister’s an educator, so we talk about cross-cultural things regularly, and uh we’re really aware of the tokenization that can happen in the name of being inclusive and diverse and blah blah blah. Having a person of color on your staff or on your team does not suddenly make you the champions for diversity.
Tanesha: No.
Erica: So, yeah.
Tanesha: No.
Erica: We’re both rolling our eyes and shaking our heads ‘cause you can’t see us.
[Tanesha chuckles]
Erica: But, um, so, I’m curious - from your perspective like what that might look like - ‘cause there are some equity challenges in getting people of color to become music therapists. It’s so much harder for the black young person just to get into college, let alone have the training that is kind of - it’s not a secret that you need some musical skill to be a music therapist - but you can’t walk in your first day of college having had no musical training or familiarity and then 4 years later graduate with a music therapy degree. So, there’s - there’s some inherent privilege and inequity that starts when you’re maybe 10-9 that gets you to the place where you can become a music therapist.
Tanesha: Oh, for sure. I was highly self-taught on anything before college, actually. And, you know, uh it took I took a little bit of stuff in elementary, you know, I also grew up very poor, which is another piece of that, right. We couldn’t afford piano lessons, or violin lessons, or bass lessons, or, you know, any lessons, really.
Erica: Yeah.
Tanesha: And then there’s - and then there’s implicit biases that people have that they don’t even realize that they have. They might not hire someone, and they don’t think it’s because they were black, but it might be. And, you know, again, really unpacking these really complicated, passed on from generation to generation to generation thought processes, and really unpacking those and going, how can we get away from that bias? And, you know - and and, you know, were saying - you kind of touched on the education piece - you could have a black kid in a sch - in a school in a black neighborhood and a white kid in a school in a - a affluent white neighborhood - both straight A students - but they don’t have the same materials, or access to books, and - and, you know, computers - things like that. So, both got straight A’s, they both applied at the same college, or they both applied for the same job, and the questions that are asked are based on a set of materials that they should know. Well, if that wasn’t accessible to that black kid in a black school, they’re not gonna know those things.
Erica: Mmhmm.
Tanesha: And so, they go into that disadvantaged - not because they’re not smart, but because it just wasn’t available. And then it’s just this cycle over and over and over and over and over and over that just goes on to perpetuity - perpetuity, that’s the word I’m looking for.
[Erica chuckles]
Tanesha: Goes on to perpetuity.
Erica: Yes.
Tanesha: Um, and then, you know - and that’s without even the - the actual racial implicit biases that are really in a lot of people without even knowing it. I actually read this article a couple of years ago about this woman who grew up during seg - segregation um and right when they were integrating schools - elementary schools, and she grew up in a black neighborhood ‘cause her mom had gotten divorced and they couldn’t live anywhere else, and she became really good friends with this little black girl in her class, and they were both held back because - 1 because the girl was black, and her because she was friends with the girl that was black. So, her mom was of course like nope - snatched her out of that school, put her in a different school, got her tested - she was like clearly not dumb and, you know, all of these things, and had a high IQ - all of this. Fast forward to many many years later. She did a lot of civil rights work and um activism work, and she was working with a group of black women who were working with abused women, and they were all just chatting about they’re childhoods growing up, and - and this story came up, and then they each shared what their IQ scores were. And the black women - a couple of the black women had a higher score than her. And she goes, I found myself surprised - and she goes, I had to sit with myself and go why did I - why was I surprised?
Erica: Mmm.
Tanesha: Even me, who’s somebody who’s like full on act - you know an advocate for the black community, and all those things - I still found myself surprised that they were - that they had a higher IQ.
Erica: Mmm.
Tanesha: Which, you know - of Course IQ has nothing to do with actual intelligence I think. But —
Erica: Yeah —
Tanesha: We - we all know that that test is flawed.
Erica: Yeah.
Tanesha: But the point of the story is that she still had this little stickiness of - of sort of - you know, ‘cause again, that’s passed on - it’s in our - it’s in music, it’s in our television, it’s in the news, you know. All of this stuff has been fed to us about what black people are, and what white people are, and what brown people are, and - and it gets under our skin. So…
Erica: Yeah. That’s a really interesting story - it makes me think about… the way that music therapy is in Washington State particularly - it’s not as developed as it is on the east coast or in the midwest. So our music therapists are, more often, doing private practice, doing contract work - it’s not as frequent that they’re just employees at a hospital or for a non prophet, or - that kind of where you get a W2 and that kinda situation. And so - so I imagine then that you’re butting up against the reality of racism in the public, and not running so much into just managers that are the people hiring. Like, there’s a difference - like if our executive director hired you, she is doing work - actively, to dismantle system racism. And there’s evidence of that and etc, versus you as a business owner are just kinda cold calling people sometimes - quite often, I’m assuming?
Tanesha: [Chuckling] yeah —
Erica: And you don’t know - you don’t know where they stand, what work they’re doing, what work they’re not doing —
Tanesha: Whether or not they’re gonna hear my name and then just make an assumption.
Erica: Yeah.
Tanesha: Because, just - just my name gets assumptions. And so - and I love my name, you know?
Erica: Yeah.
Tanesha: Uh, but, you know, there have been times where I wondered, did my name or the fact that I was. Of color get in the way of me getting a job or getting an internship or getting to the next level of something. And - it is - you know, that’s kind of a constantly traumatic experience to have to even have that as a reality in my mind - that it can’t just be like I am right for this job, you know. And if somebody else was a little more right, okay, that’s - I can live with that —Erica: Yeah —
Tanesha: You know. But if it has something to do with something I really can’t change, you know - and I - I ran into that a lot as a performer. I mean, and I literally was told at some points, you won’t be considered for this part because you’re black.
Erica: Mmm.
Tanesha: Which, oddly, actually is a little bit comforting, because at least I know.
Erica: Oh, yeah.
Tanesha: Instead of walking away going, hmm, I wonder —
Erica: You wonder, yeah —
Tanesha: Like, did that have something to do with it? It’s like, oh no, this is clearly something to do with it.
Erica: Yeah.
Tanesha: And so I can put that in this little box, and I know what that was.
Erica: Yeah. Does it make the - the - the grief and trauma less ambiguous so it’s easier to process or deal with?
Tanesha: Yeah, because, at - you know, if I walk away going, hmm, I don’t know what that was, then I start to question myself and my performance in the room - as opposed to if somebody says, you’re not gonna get this ‘cause you’re black, I’m like, oh, well, that’s your problem.
[Erica and Tanesha chuckle]
Erica: Yeah.
Tanesha: You know?
Erica: Yeah - yeah.
Tanesha: Like, yeah. It - it’s still hurtful, but ultimately, that’s your problem.
Erica: Mmhmm.
Tanesha: And so, it’s easier to unpack - because it’s clear.
Erica: Totally. Yeah. For students - black students particularly, who are like university or college age, and they’re studying to be any kind of helping profession - nursing, social work, therapy, etc - what kinds of wisdom or advice, as cliche as that sounds, would you wish to give them?
Tanesha: I would say, first to be authentically yourself. And then, I would also say - and this is really for everyone, not just for black students, um, which I think you - you’re gonna get to this in a minute —
Erica: Yeah —
Tanesha: The work of doctor Joy DeGruy. Um, she wrote a book called Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, and it is pretty deep look at the trauma of 400 years of chattel slavery, and what it’s done, not only to the black community, but to the white community, and how it’s traumatizing us both. She actually wrote a book on how to heal the trauma as well, so it’s a 2-parter.
Erica: Oh wow —
Tanesha: So there’s a workbook on how to unpack all of that, which is so good, and I just - I think that everyone - it should be in schools really. And I think that it will, hopefully, give those students more confidence when they’re going into school - more confidence when they’re going out looking for jobs - and that, if you’re doing the work, and you have a desire and a hunger for knowledge and learning, then you have - any - any obstacle that’s in your way at that point isn’ about you - it’s about something else.
Erica: I love that. SO, yeah that leads me to my next thing is like, what resources do you have for people?
Tanesha: Mmm.
Erica: You emailed me quite a list of different things, so maybe you could mention —
[Tanesha and Erica laugh]
Tanesha: [laughing] I know, and I wanted to add more, but I - I was like I have to stop. Um, so —
Erica: Maybe you could mention 1 or 2 of them, and then I’ll post them on the episode notes on the website.
Tanesha: For sure. So, definitely the Dr. Joy DeGruy uh um work, and then I also implore people to do more work on Fredrick Douglas - he’s the reason that we’re - that black people are free. Abe - Abraham Lincoln - sure he listened to Fredrick Douglas, but he gets all of the credit and it wasn’t really him. And I also think that, in general, we need to be seeking out people of color’s perspective and their writings instead of just continuing to listen to the European version of everything.
Erica: Yes!
Tanesha: Uh, you can’t have a European talk about slavery as deeply and, you know, as - as someone of color can.
Erica: Yes. Big head nods. Yes [Laughs]
Tanesha: [Chuckles] Huge head nods! Um, so I would say, definitely those 2.
Erica: So, I will put all the resources - to limit what Tanesha sends me - Tanesha sent me an email and then sent me another email with more resources.
[Erica and Tanesha laugh]
Erica: Which is like - I laugh ‘cause it’s amusing that like there’s multiple emails, but at the same time, like, genuinely, it’s great that we’re gonna get so many resources. And so, I cannot encourage our listeners enough to do the work to start dismantling racism in their minds. And, if you just walk around and say that you like black people, and you’re kind, and that kinda thing, you’re still racist. And like, racism is still pervasive in your life - you’re just not looking close enough at it. So it’s not enough just to say that you’re you’re not. You need to actively do something to - to break that down.
Tanesha: Agreed.
Erica: That was my soapbox for this episode.
[Erica and Tanesha chuckle]
Erica: Um, okay, so our website is S as in Sam, C as in Cat, music project dot org (SCMusicProject.org) You can find us on all major social media platforms @SCMusicProject. And then, um, just thank you again, Tanesha, for like, chatting - and I really appreciate it. Well, thank you, listeners, for listening, and we will talk to you next time.
[Podcast outro music plays]