A Conversation with Alfred L. Watkins, Part II – by Matt Temple

A CONVERSATION WITH ALFRED L. WATKINS, PART II

BY MATT TEMPLE

Part 1 of this interview appeared in the Summer 2021 edition of the NBA Journal. Part 2 begins with further conversation about Mr. Watkin’s tenure as a high school band director and then shifts to address issues of inequity and racism in the larger band profession.

HOWDIDYOUFINDTHE STRENGTHANDCOURAGE TOSTANDUPTORACIST SITUATIONS?

“To whom much is given, much is expected.” As I look back at those situations, I am appreciative of the gifts of perseverance and tenacity that I was given. I am a child of the church, and a child of the rural south. I was raised by my large community, which included my nuclear family, extended family, teachers, and preachers, as well as my immediate neighborhood of Black family and friends. I was often sheltered by my “village” from the horrors of overt racism as long as we stayed in our place. This basically meant we could not expect the same treatment as the white citizens. My parents encouraged a Christian upbringing and would not allow us to become angry or to have malice in our hearts. I was taught that God would make a way out of no way. and transformative 1960s, I was impacted greatly by the writings and speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Classes in history and government became more impactful as I became older and exposed to a more intense academic curriculum. As we read one version of America on paper, you could vividly see yet another cruel, offensive, and hate-filled America just outside our windows. Recognition of ancestral suffering and oppression only hastened the drive within me to correct some of the ills of society.

The inequality of America motivated me to be the best person I could be. I chose not to adopt the personalities of my oppressors. I was determined not to be deterred by anyone and only had to answer to my family, my community elders, and God. There was so much work to be done to help repair our republic that I had no time for yet another detour. My parents emphasized to me that education was continuous, and that what you put in your mind, no one could erase or take away from you. I took their advice to heart and became a sponge for learning. This gave me tremendous ownership of my own knowledge and growth. My rudder was set, and I never deviated from my plan. I took pride in my work and pride in my growth. I’m proud of who I am and what I’ve been able to accomplish.

Matt Temple is Director of Bands at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois. In 2014, the New Trier band program was recognized by the National Band Association as an inaugural national winner of the Blue Ribbon Award for “Programs of Excellence.” Temple currently serves NBA as the Second Vice-President and is humbled to be a member of the IDEA committee. He has authored many articles over the past decade for multiple publications. Temple has presented sessions on music selection, score analysis, student-centered instruction, and innovative band curriculum at multiple universities, state music conferences, and twice at the Midwest Clinic.

HOWDIDATTITUDESTOWARD YOUASABANDDIRECTOR CHANGEOVERTHECOURSEOF YOURTEACHINGCAREER?

“It was rather remarkable how attitudes varied during my career as a band director. My first teaching position was at Murphy High School in the Atlanta Public Schools. The school was an allblack, low-achieving, inner city school with limited leadership and resources. Very few students

A Conversation with Alfred Watkins Part II, Matt Temple, cont.

had minimal theory, history, or pedagogical skills, even after I had taken a band to the Midwest Clinic. I was often questioned as if I was a young undergraduate student. I eventually dropped out of GSU. I didn’t need their brand of education or the hassle! The move to Lassiter High School required an adjustment from everyone in order to make it work. Lassiter was a large, nearly allwhite school, nestled in the heart of the suburbs of Atlanta forty minutes from the city’s center yet culturally deprived of the

were college bound at that time. The band program was very small with limited structure and poor musical skills. I knew that everyone could learn and that their backgrounds would not limit their learning, so I set in place a series of classroom and artistic beliefs. The students gravitated to the concept of excellence.

At the end of my 6-year tenure at Murphy, the results were staggering. Over 95% of my students were college bound. The band had improved dramatically from playing grade 2 music when I arrived to playing grade 6 music at state assessment for the last two years, where they earned superior ratings with straight As from all judges. Students at Murphy performed in district and allstate bands, participated in solo and ensemble festivals, and won 1st place in previously all-white marching band competitions, performing a combination of Broadway, jazz, classical and Top 40 music.

Many teachers in my district were seasoned professionals who were both well-educated and excellent musicians/band directors. Our bands were as strong as any in the state. Yet, when I went to state, regional, or national music conferences, the vendors always guided me to the elementary music section of their booths. Or they would guide me toward their “less expensive lines” of instruments. How insulting! This practice continued for nearly 20 years of my career. Many of my graduate school professors at Georgia State University (late 1970s to early 1980s) would automatically assume that I

PHOTO COURTESY OF ALFREDWATKINS.ORG

personalities offered by living in a metropolitan area. The school’s student population was 99.5% white with little to no previous contact with African American teachers. The local and district administrations were all-white and not always very kind to people of color.

After the first few weeks of school, the Lassiter band students were enthusiastic and welcoming. As a director, I was firm, demanding, fair and kind. I always had high expectations for my students in terms of their disposition, courtesy, timeliness, and musicianship. Students at both Murphy and Lassiter accepted my leadership and we created outstanding programs. The parents at Lassiter were hesitant at first but eventually were extremely supportive of my leadership. As a result, in 2000, the Lassiter Band Boosters lobbied the Cobb County Board of Education to name the band building in my honor. I couldn’t have asked for a more supportive set of students and parents. I never put pressure on them to win competitions – instead, I put pressure on them to develop a zeal for excellence and to become decent citizens. I gave them all the tools necessary to be successful.

As my career continued on an upward trajectory, the world around me was very slow in its obvious need for change. A low point occurred for me when, in 1998, we were on our return trip from Indiana where the Lassiter Band had won first place at the BOA Grand National Championships. We stopped for a meal at fast food restaurants A Conversation with Alfred Watkins Part II, Matt Temple, cont.

in Kentucky, and the workers assumed that I was the bus driver. Unfortunately, this was not a one-time occurrence. Teachers and administrators would often ask me if I ever played an instrument or what my major was in college.

The demographics of the school did not change much over my thirty-one-year career at Lassiter. It was around 86% white when I left, with the remaining students being primarily Black, Asian, Pacific-Islander, or Hispanic. The faculty changed even less and was about 3% minority. I only had five or six Black male colleagues over the course of my entire career at Lassiter. Each year, I would ask the principals about the potential of hiring more minorities, and they would always say they “just couldn’t seem to attract People of Color.” That part was frustrating as it was tough working with racist administrators on the local school and county level.

Eventually, as a result of my work at Lassiter High School and with the Cobb Wind Symphony, I became a more accepted entity in many quarters of the profession. I have had the pleasure of conducting bands in 38 states including guest conducting 23 All-State Bands. I have been recognized by several national organizations with some of their highest awards. I am listed in five Halls of Fame. In my senior years, I could not be more pleased with my stature in the band profession.” WHYHAVEPEOPLEOF COLORHISTORICALLYBEEN UNDER-REPRESENTED INOURNATIONALBAND ORGANIZATIONS?

“Dating back to the 1920s, the national organizations were founded and led by white men. This resulted in institutional racism, whether conscious or not, where all the members looked like one another. As people, we tend to surround ourselves with people with whom we have a fraternal or cultural bond. Nominating committees are usually charged with finding the best people they know to fulfill the leadership positions. Unfortunately, it is not traditional for people on those committees to reach out to a broad swath of American band directors. Instead, they tend to nominate people in their circle who they already know and who they already have some kind of personal relationship with, such as co-workers or old college classmates. Often, it doesn’t include a person who looks like me. As a result, women and ethnic minorities have been shut out of leadership positions, minimizing the potential for diversity of thought and decision-making in our organizations.

People of Color tend not to engage where we feel we are not welcomed. When we look at yet another slate of officers for district, state, regional or national band organizations and see the same profile as our founding fathers – all white men – it doesn’t take long for us to recognize that we are not welcomed in that community. In Georgia alone, the African American population

A Conversation with Alfred Watkins Part II, Matt Temple, cont.

is 32% of the state, and yet, we've had only one African American president of GMEA and a handful of minorities in other elected or appointed positions since the founding of our state organization. We must nominate more women and People of Color to national leadership positions. The old expression, “we just can’t find anyone,” was always a convenient fabrication and simply doesn’t hold water anymore.”

HOWWASTHEMINORITY BANDDIRECTOR’SNATIONAL ASSOCIATIONCREATED, ANDHOWHASYOURGROUP UNIQUELYSUPPORTEDITS MEMBERS?

“Don Roberts, a former student of mine from Murphy High School, is the supervisor of the DeKalb County schools in metro Atlanta. The DeKalb schools are comprised of over 100,000 students, 60% of whom are African American. The district also houses some of the region’s finest band programs. Don invited me to present summer in-services to the directors there over the course of several years between 2005-2011. I would pack up all my materials from the Lassiter program and share them with the band directors. Some terrific collaborations came out of those in-services, including several programs that performed at our state conferences and the National Concert Band Festival.

At the end of the 2011 session, we decided to put together an association that could broaden our message. We organized a group of seven high school directors who were all African American and MBDNA was born. We chose the name Minority Band Director’s National Association in an effort to include all ethnic minorities in our group. The four pillars that govern our organization are to serve, promote, celebrate, and mentor ethnic minority directors. We had our first national meeting at the Midwest Clinic in 2011 – it was very well attended. Today, we have over 2000 members in our closed and professional Facebook Group. We use this page to connect our community by disseminating information, mentoring other teachers, and celebrating the richness of our ethnic minority community.

We have hosted four major events to date. In 2019, we created an Invitational Concert Band Festival, which featured eight of the finest all-black high school bands in an adjudicated event at Morehouse College in Atlanta. Then the pandemic started, so the other events have all occurred over Zoom through our Facebook group. The goal has been to build our community first and then have it flourish outward. We held an online event throughout the summer of 2020 with seventeen masterclass clinicians, ranging from Omar Thomas to Scotty Barnhardt to Julian Bliss to Wynton Marsalis. We followed that up with a back-to-school clinic, featuring primarily minority school band directors of note, divided into six hours of middle school clinics and six hours of high school clinics. We hosted the same type of back-toschool clinic this past summer. Our next invitational festival is scheduled for March 31-April 2 at Morehouse College, which has now expanded to eight middle school bands, twelve high school bands, and ten jazz bands.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF ALFREDWATKINS.ORG

WHATDOES“CANCELCULTURE” MEANTOYOUANDWHAT RELEVANCYDOESITHAVEIN MUSIC?

I have not heard many people discuss cancel culture in a positive light. It’s almost always addressed in a negative light.

Cancel culture, in my opinion, allows America to have a reset, which is particularly important to under-represented communities. White, heterosexual males have ruled the land for hundreds of years and have established all our laws. Cancel culture says that we probably need to re-think things that we never should have done in the first place.

As we begin to scour our musical archives, and we find people who were, and are, racist, sexist, homophobic, or anti-Semitic, it is time for us to reconsider how we program their music. We’re not speaking of a moment in time – we’re talking about who they were as people and their beliefs towards others. Rather than identifying these patterns and cancelling cultures, we should work to rid our country and, more specifically, our profession of inappropriate or rude musicians, musical works, and attitudes. We have enough music to last us for centuries rather than hanging on to individuals and references that never should have entered into our lexicon.

WHATARESOMEWAYSIN WHICHCURRENTBAND DIRECTORS,PARTICULARLY THOSEINTHEDOMINANT CULTURE,CANMEANINGFULLY ADDRESSISSUESOFRACE ANDDIVERSITYWITHTHEIR STUDENTS?

“First, we have to identify the dominant culture, and it’s not simply white. More specifically, it’s the group that founded this country: white heterosexual males. We, as a musical community, must encourage them to change, and we can do it any number of ways. One of the hesitations we have is that there isn’t enough dialogue such as this conversation. We must encourage more dialogue in order to eradicate racism, sexism, and homophobic behaviors from our communities. We must face the “-isms” head on.

We also need to get away from cliché statements, such as, “I don’t see color, I just see people.” I want people to see me as an African American male. I want them to respect my culture and welcome my contribution to the whole. Another common statement I hear is, “I just want to play great music, I don’t care what the color is,” which has been interpreted to mean “as long as it is the music of white, male composers.” When I hear, “We want to hire the best person for the job,” I think it often means, “I want to hire someone who looks like me.” Even directors who are afforded opportunities to conduct all-state and region bands, direct at summer music camps, or guest conduct abroad are typically white males. I am thankful that Steven Davis, the Director of Bands at the University of Missouri – Kansas City, invited me one summer to share a week conducting the National Youth Wind Symphony at Interlochen.

We have to walk our talk. Change won’t happen easily because the majority is anxious to maintain the status quo. As the late civil rights activist and Representative from Georgia John Lewis once said, “When you see something that is not right, you must speak up.” He also said, “We must get in good trouble.” That’s really important for all of us to learn. We have to look in the mirror and see who we are. For example, when I was at Lassiter, of the eight assistant directors that we were able to hire, six of them were women. Three of them now have their terminal degrees and are college band directors. Nowadays, it is not unusual for a woman to be the head director in the south. I think I was able to contribute to that gradual change in some small way.”

A Conversation with Alfred Watkins Part II, Matt Temple, cont.

WHATCHALLENGESHAVE EXISTEDFORUNDERREPRESENTEDCOMPOSERS ANDHOWWEDOWEADDRESS THEM?

“We are all aware that you can receive a terminal music degree in most schools in the United States without having studied the music of over half the peoples of the world. It gives one the impression, directly or indirectly, that the music of Asia and the Pacific Islands, Africa, South America, Central America, or the Middle East is not worthy of serious study. When professors discuss the main ingredients of “good music” (i.e. shape and development of melody, complexity of harmonic structure, use of counterpoint, variety in tone color and structure of form), they are often describing music elements found in jazz, yet jazz is not firmly affixed in the serious study of music in our colleges. Is it simply because it was developed in the Black community? Ironically, much of our formalized study consists of European music that was considered popular in its day.

I discovered through my study of state music lists that the vast

A Conversation with Alfred Watkins Part II, Matt Temple, cont.

majority of the pieces on them were composed by white men, who are the same people who own the publishing houses. The publisher sends scores and recordings to the state selection committees who generally decide which composers go on the graded list. Many underrepresented composers were not traditionally employed by larger publishing companies and were forced to become self-publishers with limited access to graded lists.

As teachers, we need to educate ourselves on how to balance our programming to include more works by women and ethnic minorities. Every concert should consist of a march, a core standard of our repertoire, at least one piece by an African American composer, another by a woman composer, and something by another underrepresented composer. Depending upon the length of the concert, you could also include something patriotic and yes, something popular. Our students and communities will benefit from a renewed growth in programming, and we just might be able to gain our audiences back.”

WHATGIVESYOUHOPEFORTHE FUTUREOFRACERELATIONSIN AMERICATODAY?

“Over the last six years (when the previous President took office), we’ve shared the crisis of a pandemic and renewed racial awareness. We must all look in the mirror to determine who we truly are as a people. I believe it’s going to be good for us in the long run, but the short term will be difficult and challenging. The death of George Floyd was the tip of the racial iceberg. The next generation, the young people who you are teaching now, are growing up in a different America. Many of them clearly see, as I did in the 1960s, the biases of our system. They are making conscious efforts to right wrongs. This time, as opposed to the previous generations, the disadvantaged communities have allies.

My message to America’s band movement comes from an old Langston Hughes’ poem, “I, too, Sing America,” which was written in 1925. It was a period known as the Harlem Renaissance, during which brilliant Black painters, musicians, and artists sought to re-conceptualize African American culture. My twist on his poem is, “We, too, Sing America.” Hughes’ poem was a tribute to the fact that Blacks have been in America as long as Jamestown. In that very significant way, we are Americans. We fought in the Revolutionary War and died alongside our counterparts. We helped design Washington, D.C.; we built the White House. We are patriots, and we deserve an equal part of the American Pie. My hope is that white America hears the plight of underrepresented individuals in their totality, and not just from the ones who are conditioned to be kind, to be polite, or to blend in. My wish is that they can hear the 400 years of our history and include it in the lexicon of the band world. We won't be able to correct our ways until the establishment can decide perhaps that enough is enough.”