President's Corner — Volume 46 #3

I hope this issue of Bass World finds you enjoying some great weather, perhaps playing a summer music festival, or enjoying a different pace to your work and study. This recent spring, I have had the chance to participate in some double bass events that bring teachers, performers, students, makers, vendors, and more together for a day or two. A mini-bass-convention, with all the good vibes that happen when the bass community gets to hang together.

What is community? I think it is the intentional act of people coming together around a shared idea. In our case — we love the bass! And when you think of "bass community" who comes to mind? Lately, I'm thinking a lot about who isn't in the room, and how we make space to radically include in our bass community. I'm grateful to the ISB for making scholarships available to attend our convention, to help with accompanying costs, for women attending music school, to name a few examples. That is one concrete way to facilitate inclusion.

We can model inclusion and community from the very start with the materials we use in education. It was completely lost on me (yes, lost) that my entire training was playing the music of men. And all my recorded examples of bass music were performed by men. There is nothing wrong with that music or those players. And there is room to include more voices, faces, and cultures in what we show to our students. Modeling the concept of radical inclusion by making it completely normal, almost blasé, that we would have music of women, of Black and Brown people, of non-Western cultures right from the start in learning this instrument.

It takes a little effort to start to change our resources, but my friends, it is so worth it. Our community is vibrant because of all the people who choose bass and bass community every day.

Gaelen McCormick
President, ISB

Read this issue of Bass World, Volume 46 #3 (Members Only).

Archive

• Current
• Volume 46 #2
• Volume 46 #1