Help Teach

Help Teach: Episode 18 - Music to My Ears
Mihai Covaser: [00:00:00] Welcome, learners and learned alike, to Help Teach.

Mihai Covaser: [00:00:09] Hello and welcome to our community audio project. I am your host, editor, producer, and project co-lead: Mihai Covaser. I am also a youth living with a physical disability. My most formative experiences living with a disability have come in the Canadian public education system. Many students like me, with physical, emotional, or mental challenges, go through their years of schooling lacking the supports and accommodations they need to partake of the same opportunities offered to their peers. The vision of this project is to provide educators in Canadian classrooms, students with disabilities, and members of the general public, with the tools and knowledge that they need to make our institutions more accessible and inclusive for all. Join me and a diverse cast of guests as we explore perspectives on disabilities and education in this podcast series. One last message for you teachers tuning in: Listen in each episode for our key takeaway that you can implement in your classroom today to help us further this vision.

Mihai Covaser: [00:01:14] Welcome back to Help Teach! Today, I have the pleasure and honor to be speaking with a member of the musical community, worldwide and especially here in Canada, and a member of the disability community, as well, who has dedicated a lot of time to music education and inclusion, and I’m really excited for the conversation we’re about to have today. Before we get into all of that, without further ado, I want to introduce to the show today: Adrian Anantawan. Adrian, thank you so much for coming and joining the show.

Adrian Anantawan: [00:01:43] It’s a pleasure to be here.

Mihai Covaser: [00:01:45] As I start all of my interviews, I’ll throw it to you here to just introduce yourself to our audience, a little bit about who you are, what you do, and then we’ll get into our discussion for today.

Adrian Anantawan: [00:01:58] So I am a musician, specifically a violinist. I identify with having a visible disability; I was born without my right hand and use an adaptation to be able to hold my bow, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to have a career in performance and also now education, and some of my passions really include figuring out ways that we can use classical music as a platform for accessibility, sharing unique stories, and really finding ways that we can share our individual identities with the rest of the world.

Mihai Covaser: [00:02:56] Mmhm, mmhm. Well said. Of course, I have to flaunt you a little bit; I know that not everyone likes to toot their own horn, but of course, for our audience members that maybe aren’t familiar: Adrian is, I mean, a renowned musician, award-winning performer, has performed at the White House and with the Toronto Symphony, and your activism work and your musical career are pretty much hand-in-hand here. Just some notable items include national broadcasts for the CBC, for the Glenn Gould Studio, of course, I mentioned the White House appearance, and you have been inducted into the Terry Fox Hall of Fame, as well, so all of these things to say that your reputation precedes you, and I really appreciate you setting aside the time to come and talk to me today.

Adrian Anantawan: [00:03:45] Absolutely. And I think that it’s a real privilege to be able to share my perspective from the other side of growing up with a disability and forming a career and working as an advocate, like yourself, and I must say that I am so amazed and proud of all the work that you’ve done already in those roles and how you’re growing and evolving, as you deepen those roles, not only where you are in your community, but on a national scale.

Mihai Covaser: [00:04:22] Thank you. I really appreciate those words. So what led you down the path of music? I should also mention, you know, for our audience members, before we start here: this is not something I’ve talked about a lot on the show, but our connection is that I am also a musician; I have performed in the local youth symphony in my hometown here in Kelowna, I have been a classical and jazz musician for about fourteen years, and of course, that has presented its own unique, interesting journey alongside, of course, being a member of the disability community. But I’m curious: what has led you down the path of music and how did you get here?

Adrian Anantawan: [00:05:06] So, like a lot of young people growing up in Canada, I started off being exposed to music–formally, at least–with my elementary school classes, and I remember in about fifth grade or so, our music teacher all wanted us to play an instrument as part of the curriculum, and that instrument ended up being the recorder, which was something that– Yes, exactly. I think it can be a very compelling instrument in its own way; I think that the teacher obviously thought it was accessible, because it was something that fit within the school budget. You can mass produce these and they’re relatively sanitary. They’ll probably put it in your laundry and have it survive. And for me, that was not necessarily a very accessible instrument, because I didn’t have enough fingers to play all the notes, so… I was very lucky that my parents were my first advocates from birth onwards, but I think this was just another part of that accessibility advocacy that they took on, and they started helping me try a lot of different types of musical instruments. The first was the trumpet, because it was something that was relatively easy to hold with one hand; probably practical in its own right, but not necessarily aligned to my personality, I felt, and not something–I thought it was a little loud.

Mihai Covaser: [00:07:05] As a trumpet player, I don’t take offense to that and I definitely agree; it takes a certain personality to play the trumpet.

Adrian Anantawan: [00:07:15] Absolutely, and lovely personalities, too. I guess it just wasn’t me. So I tried that, and then I tried a little bit of singing, but again, I didn’t really identify with the sound, so I was watching Sesame Street, of all things, and a man named Itzhak Perlman, who has polio, came up on stage, and he was struggling to get up with his braces. He puts those braces down and he picks up a violin and plays beautifully, and that really spoke to me, not only because of seeing the representation of someone with a visible disability on stage, but it was also a beautiful instrument, so I asked my parents if I could try it. My dad had been an amateur violinist when he was young, and it just seemed like, “Okay, well, we’ll just sort of see what happens, one step at a time.” So I ended up getting a small violin and looking for a teacher, and one of them was very kind to ignore that I couldn’t hold the bow for the first few months while I had an adaptation made, and we proceeded to just pluck the instrument, like a guitar almost. I mean, sometimes I use my small hand or sometimes I do a technique called “left-hand pizzicato”, where I would use my fingers on the fingerboard, my left hand, to play more notes. Eventually, I went to a pediatric rehabilitation hospital in Toronto, called Holland Bloorview, and I had a brace made for me that allowed me to hold the bow, and I haven’t looked back ever since.

Mihai Covaser: [00:09:01] I had the pleasure of seeing your concert and meeting you, when you came to Kelowna to play with our Okanagan Symphony Orchestra, and it just goes to show, right, I mean, time after time, it’s really nice to see that you just get the right in-road and potential really is limitless. It’s incredible to hear you play and to see the passion that you put into performing with that instrument, that all it took was–I mean, not to say that it was easy, but all it took was the chance to get that adaptation made, right?

Adrian Anantawan: [00:09:34] Mm. I’m curious how you started playing the trumpet.

Mihai Covaser: [00:09:38] Oh, yeah! Well, so I started in middle school band with the trumpet; I played piano for a long time, but then in band, concert band, you know, it’s not usual to have a piano in there, and so we each got our instruments and I wanted to play the alto sax, actually, like a lot of my friends, and my teacher looked at me–She actually grabbed me by the face and turned my face side-to-side, and she’s like, “You have the teeth of a trumpet player!” And then handed me a trumpet and said go ahead. So yeah. And like you said, I haven’t looked back since, I mean, I love the instrument. Piano never really presented much of a difficulty, except in the use of the pedals, which I sort of did what I could over time and I practiced that. Luckily, for me, you know, my condition is mild enough that it didn’t really affect that, but definitely, there is some adaptation and stuff that I had to do in that regard, but trumpet, like you say, was pretty accessible. I mean, I just need to put it up to my face and use the one hand, right, if I…

Adrian Anantawan: [00:10:38] Yes. I mean, you have the right teeth.

Mihai Covaser: [00:10:41] Exactly! And I had the right teeth, so… But yeah, started with concert band and haven’t looked back, either. So, you know, to that, I think it’s important to sort of frame this, as we get into the second half of our discussion here, but I wanna ask you: what do you see as the greatest advantage that students can get with practicing and learning the arts, be it music or any other art, and why are you so passionate about making sure people have access to that? What has music done for you over the course of your life? I mean, obviously aside from the career you’ve managed to build out of that.

Adrian Anantawan: [00:11:18] So I think that, for me, music was a way for me to express my own individuality, and to be able to be seen or known in a different way, outside of the initial impasse I might have upon someone if they saw me missing an arm. I think that, for me, it was wonderful, as a musician in particular, to be known in that way of how I sounded, versus how I looked. Because visual disabilities, it’s very much something that you see first, and music has a way of being able to cut through a lot of that, and I was very lucky that that was combined with early successes. Like I could play music relatively easily, and some of the basic techniques I was able to move along very quickly, so I think a combination of all that and having a sense of agency over my development was fortunate. I think that the arts, in general, are ways for us to explore our uniqueness in a way that sometimes typical education settings tend to shy away from, at least at the primary-elementary level; this idea of like standards or normalization of “You need to know these basic things.” It’s harder, but not impossible, in other disciplines, to really share your personality or your feelings. I mean, say technically, one in every four people in the world has a disability, and when you think about it, I mean, everyone will acquire a disability, either temporary or eventually permanently, as they age. The irony, of course, being that the arts are really a flexible mode of being able to express our ability, and I think for young people in particular, that is something that gives us a stronger purchase upon our lives, in general, but also I think even if you don’t pursue it as a career, it’s something that will always stay with you in a positive way.

Mihai Covaser: [00:14:07] Absolutely. That’s really well said, and I think it touches on a number of those themes that we focus on a lot in activism, right: agency, personal development, the capability to demonstrate–as I often use as my motto–show people first what you can do, rather than what you can’t do. And that uniqueness and that individuality, and the fact that, as you say, regardless of what you do with it, it sticks with you, once you’ve learned that skill; I think it opens doors for you. You mentioned traditional education and maybe arts education, how they might differ, so that takes us very well into our second half here, where we’ll get into the three components of access that you talked to me about a little bit earlier, and how that has to do with music, so audience members, we’ll get into that discussion in just a moment. Don’t go anywhere; we’ll be right back.

Mihai Covaser: [00:15:10] Welcome back to Help Teach, where today, I have the pleasure of talking to Adrian Anantawan, talking about musical education, and we’re just gonna get into a bit of a discussion about what you think are the three essential components to education, and how music can sort of help to maybe cross some of the boundaries that might come up when those essential aspects are not met or accommodated. So you mentioned space, tools, and attitudes to me as the things that you think are really important to education, so I wanna get into that a little bit. Would you tell us, maybe starting a little bit with your journey in education, like how you became an educator and a music educator, and then getting into these aspects and why you think they’re important.

Adrian Anantawan: [00:15:52] So I always wanted to not only do work within the arts, but I had a passion for working with young learners and figuring out ways that I could be an agent on their learning journey and combine that with advocacy work. You were just mentioning the word “activism”; sometimes it’s a slow burn, and working with a younger generation is really where you can start shifting things around that align to your values or getting toward solutions of inequities, whether they be on the surface or even embedded systematically in whatever our culture might be, to be able to just make an impact. So as I continued to perform in my young career, I decided that I wanted to go into the classroom, and some of my first projects involved using technology that was used for music therapy, in particular, to be able to help kids who might have more limitations, in terms of their motor function, than me. These are kids with spinal muscular atrophy; these are kids who might have very limited motions, and their bodies, due to a higher degree of effect of cerebral palsy, for instance. And I went back to school, after finishing my undergraduate and Master’s in music, to study education more formally. I ended up in Boston, went to school there, and again, it was just the right fit, in terms of, like, my personality, my passions and interests. And then I started working in the field; I worked at an after-school program as a violin teacher, then directed that program a few years later, to the point where I have started a program in Boston called the Music Inclusion Program, amongst all the other things that I do, and it’s a program where we have kids with disabilities and their typical peers play music after school, and we’re in our third year, with the caveat being that a couple of those had to go remote, because of challenges due to COVID.

Mihai Covaser: [00:18:40] Sure.

Adrian Anantawan: [00:18:42] And it’s been a wonderful experience, just trying to figure out this type of inclusive education. So for instance, you were just talking about tools. I think that there are two ways that folks can find accessibility into just an instrument. If you have a disability, number one is modifying the instrument, like I did with the violin; a brace or some type of prosthetic, and that’s useful. Or you create a new instrument entirely, like a virtual music instrument or use technology in some way to adapt to the user. Having a tool like that is useful, but without the right spaces that we share, things can get relatively inaccessibly very quickly. If you have challenges walking onto a stage, like Perlman did, in a sense, and you can’t get up the stairs, or if you have, like, sensory challenges or sensitivities, like the autism spectrum, and your space is not structured in a way that is conducive towards your learning, that can be inaccessible. So even if you have the right tool in your hands or limbs or whatever it might be, it can be a challenge. And I think all those space and tools challenges really blend into mindset attitudes knowledge of the people who are in the room, so I think that first of all: yes, there’s that basic foundation of belief that you focus on what you can do, as you were just saying, versus what you can’t do; you have this idea of maximizing someone’s strengths and minimizing the challenges that they have to navigate within a space or access the tool, and a lot of that is related to good instruction and pedagogy.

Mihai Covaser: [00:20:56] Sure.

Adrian Anantawan: [00:20:58] As you know, there are teachers who can weave magic within the same space and the same tools, just simply by how they communicate with their students, how they structure or pace their classes, and it’s a real art form, just like anything else, so yes.

Mihai Covaser: [00:21:17] Yeah, it’s a nice way to think about it, that teaching, in general, and teaching in the arts is an art in and of itself, and I really appreciate how you sort of weave these three things together, because I think audience members–especially the audience members that I hope are listening, like teachers–can see the parallels, I hope, between this particular example you’re giving of music and the classroom as a concept or the more general classroom, where we might teach anything else. Where obviously first is getting access to the space itself, which is a lot of what I focus on, in my advocacy in particular, just because that’s the aspect that has challenged me most, but then once you’re there, do you have the tools to participate and are the attitudes around you going to be conducive to your growth, as opposed to holding you back, right? And that does take me really nicely into one of the last things I want to ask you here. I have a little quote here of yours from when we first talked, about sharing your life’s journey as a story, or have it be a story for you, not a deficit. So I was wondering if maybe you could expand a little bit upon that and how you see, basically, integrating social justice, or let’s say disability and inclusion initiatives, into music education and education, so that students can have a story to share and a growth–a personal growth journey, rather than see themselves and their life situation as a deficit.

Adrian Anantawan: [00:22:51] Sure! I think that there are definitely universal challenges that we all experience through the journey of our life, and I think that one way to make meaning of that is through faring those challenges and find vulnerability as much as strength in how we let in our communities to be able to help, or for us to be able to know where our strengths align to areas of giving, that we can feel intentional in this reciprocity of relationships that weave in and out of our lives. I think that the arts, as a platform for social justice, in particular, is one of those ways to leverage stories, at least, or especially in sharing our challenges with others to be able to make shifts or changes within systems or attitudes, in particular; we’re working on the attitudes part.

Mihai Covaser: [00:24:06] Mmhm.

Adrian Anantawan: [00:24:09] In a way that would be a lot more accessible to other people. Or at least amplify those challenges in a way that feel like they can garner empathy. I can speak, like a lot of folks, about my experiences as someone with a disability, or can challenge where things feel not fair or equal, in some way, and that’s lovely to be able to do that and to amplify that story in some way through the arts and through music. It is a way for us to really show our humanity to others, so that they can see themselves in us, and make motions toward meaningful, positive change. So I’m grateful that I have that particular medium to work within, and the interesting thing about this type of work is that hopefully I am empowering others to be able to do the same, especially in arts education, so we have a younger generation of folks with disabilities who have this particular tool to be able to express themselves on top of other ways for them to be able to advocate for themselves, too. And it’s been a real journey in that sense for me to be able to make that into a life mission and to continue doing that for the rest of my career and beyond.

Mihai Covaser: [00:25:40] Yeah. Absolutely. I think that takes us very nicely into our key takeaway for the episode, and actually, it reminds me–This discussion of empathy reminds me of a quote that I really like; I believe it was a Baba Ram Dass quote, and it’s, “Only that in you which is me can truly hear what I’m saying.” And I think it’s a really interesting way to frame, like–that’s what music really is, right, it’s a language, and I think it’s a language that touches people more deeply, sometimes, than words can, and you know, people can interpret words in many different ways, but I think a lot of us share a feeling around music that can communicate things that words sometimes can’t. I think that’s what I really love about it, and I think that’s why I’ve loved performing and playing music with people. It really is an even playing field, in a lot of ways, if you have the tools to participate, and not only that, but once you’re in that even playing field, you express yourself and others express themselves as they wish, in a way that can touch each other a lot more deeply, so yeah. I really appreciate what you were saying about that. And like I said, that takes us really neatly into our key takeaway for the episode, which, quite simply for educators, is to consider those three components, in particular, to access that we were talking about: space, tools, and attitudes, and how each of those is framed in your classroom, and how it may or may not allow students to participate. And to sort of tag it onto that in a more concrete fashion, consider arts and exposure to the arts as a tool or a pathway you can offer your students, in order for them to have the chance to express themselves and to make this holistic education that we’ve been talking about. If you have students in the classroom that are perhaps struggling to find ways to express themselves or participate with their peers, consider the arts and consider music, and even if that’s not your wheelhouse, offering that as an option, I think, for students and their families, could be a really interesting way to put them on a path to making their way in education and in their lives as a whole. Well, with that, I think that just about wraps up our time, but I really appreciate you coming on to speak with me, Adrian; it was a pleasure to hear you talk about this, and I look forward to continuing to speak with you and seeing the work that you do in the future.

Adrian Anantawan: [00:28:18] Thank you so much.

Mihai Covaser: [00:28:22] You’ve just heard another episode of the community audio project, Help Teach. I’d love to give a huge thank you to my other co-leads on this project: Payton Given, Maggie Manning, Élise Doucet, and Alexis Holmgren, all youth leaders at the Rick Hansen Foundation, who I’d also like to thank for their continued support in this initiative and others. I’d like to give a huge shout-out to our community mentor for this project, Charl Coetzee. My name is Mihai Covaser. I am your host, editor, and producer for this podcast series. You can now find all our transcripts, episode notes, and links to other resources on helpteach.transistor.fm, or listen to us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. If you have any questions about the show, if you’d like to offer suggestions, or you would like to be connected as a guest, you can now get in touch at helpteachpodcast@gmail.com. That’s helpteachpodcast@gmail.com. Please send in any questions that you might have regarding our episodes, and we would love to address them in future ones. Tune in next time for more great conversations and key takeaways that you educators can implement in the classroom today, to make it a more accessible and inclusive place for all. Thank you for listening, and I’ll see you next time.