Listening For Marian Anderson In The Past And Present

I learned relatively early the importance of paying attention to silence. Long pauses and refusals to answer were forms of evidence at home as well as school. What I didn't hear or wouldn't say was often as laden with meaning as what I was told or said, and it's in part the conversations shared between sound and silence that led me to study music. I came to the decision honestly, though not easily. As a college student I struggled to commit to the major, delaying my declaration on multiple occasions because I rarely saw or heard anyone who looked or sounded like me in my music classes. Eventually I stopped expecting others to give me what I could find on my own. I began to search, read and listen for those beyond the looming canon of dead white men. It sometimes was a lonely effort and always far from romantic, but I did eventually recognize that, whether welcomed or not,