Mezzo-soprano Briana Hunter, a member of this year's Artist Propulsion Lab, is joined by Kerriann Otaño, Leah Claiborne, and Rae De Vine to discuss how they disrupt, change, and improve arts education and cultivate new audiences. Briana asks: What does it take for art to be in service of the community and what does it mean to think about art as a form of activism and advocacy? How can art educators and administrators help create safe spaces for all? Briana: Hello, I'm Briana Hunter. I'm a member of this year's Artist Propulsion Lab. I am a cinnamon-colored Black woman. I have big chunky glasses, my hair in braids. And I have my favorite overalls on. I'm here today with several friends of mine who work in arts education, outreach, and administration. We have been having conversations for years about how we would disrupt, change, improve arts education and audience development. And now here we are in those roles and we wanted to invite you in to sit with us at the table. So, hello friends. Can you say your names, your pronouns, and a little bit about yourselves? Kerriann: Hi everyone. I'm Kerriann Otaño. I am a beautiful, biracial woman, freckles, curly brown hair. A little poof on top of my head. I am the Vice President of Engagement at Opera Delaware. I'm based in Wilmington, Delaware. My pronouns are she, her. I was a professional opera singer for 10 years and then plot-twist, basically had a mental breakdown when I was working at the Met, and decided that I was gonna change everything about how we do this. Uh, and so it was a very, very dark period of my life which I talk about very openly now. I love that we're getting to experience this together. Leah: That's beautiful. My name is Dr. Leah Claiborne. I am a pianist, based out of Washington DC. I am a light-skinned Black woman wearing my hair in braids, which I'm loving in a bun. I have a white and black dress, and I love my eyes. Hazel eyes. I serve as Associate Professor of piano and coordinator of the keyboard area at University of the District of Columbia. I also serve as the Director of Diversity Equity and Inclusion for a nonprofit called the Francis Clark Center. And a lot of my work is advocating for the inclusion of piano music by Black composers, from their earliest stages of music education up through academia. Rae: Hi, my name is Rae De Vine. I use she and they pronouns. I am a light-skinned honey-hued Black person with short, curly hair and big, chunky blue glasses and a bold red lip. I currently am the manager of education and engagement at the Metropolitan Opera. I'm also a Sphinx LEAD Fellow and I have a background as a freelancer in theater, music, dance, and as an arts educator teaching all ages English and Spanish, all of those disciplines as well. And I'm happy to be here. Briana: All of my beautiful, successful, and accomplished friends. So, a quote that I recently read in an essay in the New York Times, was addressing the establishment of the National Endowment of the Arts in 1965. Congress's view at the time, it quoted. “An advanced civilization must not limit its efforts to science and technology alone,” Congress declared. “Democracy demands wisdom and vision in its citizens. It must foster and support a form of education and access to the arts and the humanities designed to make people of all backgrounds and wherever located masters of their technology and not its unthinking servants.” It just really served the focus of what I wanted this to be about. And I think the way each of you move in your own individual spheres is always kind of with that in mind. That it's art serving everyone. It's art that is in service of the community. It's for the audience. And somewhere along the way, we lost focus. Pretty deeply. So I was almost shocked to read that. I was like, really? Who were they? Where are they? They're, I mean, probably dead and gone by now, but how do we–how do we get back there? So I wanted to start with an easy question. Do you remember your first exposure to classical music? How late, how early? And could you each talk–kind of address that. Kerriann: I was doing a lot of musical theater and singing in church. And this woman heard me sing in a musical, heard me belting my face off in Anything Goes and she was like, baby, I think it's opera actually for you. She was like, I really, I think we should talk about opera. And let's be honest, I had a great music program in my public school, but I wasn't going to operas, I wasn't growing up in that world. We talk a lot about like taking people by the hand and what advocacy looks like. it's not enough just to say like, you belong at the opera, we want you here. This woman really came into my life and said, here are these albums. Come back next week and tell me what you think about them. It wasn't just, let me spoon-feed this to you. It was, you are part of this, it's participatory. I wanna know how you feel when you hear this. Your opinion matters. Right. So she took me to the Met to see Carmen. It was awesome, cause I kept going to Broadway shows and feeling like I don't hear my voice in these shows, and I don't see myself on these stages. Not because, I mean, Rent was out. There were things where you saw people of different ethnicities, but I knew that that wasn't where my voice was supposed to shine. Mm-hmm. And then seeing opera where it was Unamplified babies. Mm-hmm. I ain't never had a problem being heard. It just felt like coming home, you know? It was game changing to have someone who was an expert in that, to take me by the hand and say, you belong here. You belong here. You belong here. Leah: My first encounter with music is from my dad, who's a jazz bass player. What I love so much about him, I often talk about Sunday mornings, because Sunday mornings was about my mom getting my sister and I ready for church. And so we were gone for about four hours and whenever we pulled back up the house was blasting with music, And this was the sound of Thelonious Monk, Nina Simone, just all these great jazz artists. So I would just listen but also he would just read these records, 'cause he had a turntable. And he's telling me the stories behind the person. And my first encounter with music was understanding right away that musicians were activists, that they were changing their society through music. So it wasn't just so much this performative act. I was very aware at the very beginning that if you are a musician, if you're an artist, you have a responsibility to change your society whether it's your voice or your instrument, that is the tool to engage and influence culture. And the artist-activist that I loved the most was Nina Simone. I wanted to be everything that she was, everything and although yes, her-her voice: absolutely incredible. But I loved her piano. Her pianism is just, it was incredible. And my dad said she started with classical music. And he broke it down that this is, this is a classically trained, dark-skinned Black woman, who changed the game for music. So that was the first understanding of what it means to be an artist. Briana: Rae. Rae: It's a little bit of both of yours. So my dad was always blasting music. And he has reel-to-reels and, like, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of records. I'm African American and Afro-Latina with roots in South Carolina, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. And I was raised and adopted by a Puerto Rican family. And my dad listened to a lot of Afro-Cuban music. I don't remember the first time I heard classical music, but I know like on the weekends, my dad would usually play like Beethoven in the mornings. So I associate it with like the smell of my mom cooking a larger breakfast for Sundays with like Beethoven wafting around the house. So I grew up pretty fortunate in that regard. Because my dad was like a big music head and he listened to a lot of classical music, a lot of Golden age musical theater, and a lot of Afro-Cuban music and specifically Cuban Charanga. I guess the earliest, what I would call classical music is like Cuban Charanga, which is violin, flute, and piano. That's what my classical music was growing up. Briana: I think that each of us started somewhere and probably ended up differently than we thought. Cause we get older, we get to know ourselves as people more and then you realize, oh, these are all my strengths and maybe these could all serve something else. I know your journey, Kerriann, is like giving yourself permission to leave. Especially since you were performing at such a high level. People were always like, well, how could you? You're singing at the Met, you're singing at the Kennedy Center. And talk more about that. Kerriann: I mean, that, to me, like looking back on it, it ended up being the easiest decision that I ever made. You know, that like really mean version of you that sits in the back of your head and tells you that everybody's lying to you? And that you don't deserve anything that you have and don’t get comfortable, everybody's laughing about you behind your back? You know, that one, she, she gets real loud sometimes. Fortunately for me, after I started talking to people about this and admitting it, I was working at an opera company. I was supposed to be there for four shows. And I said to them, I'm gonna have to quit. I can't phonate without crying. I can't sing.It doesn't matter that I have a master's degree in this. It doesn't matter that everybody thinks I'm gonna do this forever. I can't do it without crying. Something is wrong. And these people changed the trajectory of my life because they said, we're gonna replace you on the first show. We're gonna hire another soprano. You're gonna get help, you're gonna get mental healthcare, you're gonna have housing. We're gonna take care of you. And this was a company that I had worked for before and it was a general director on his way out.
