For those of you who do not know me, I am a traveler. I have wandered through cities and lived on mountaintops. I have taught and learned from children. I have questioned everything I thought I knew. I have been educated and re-educated more times than I can count, by people who cannot pronounce each others' names.
As I moved through unfamiliar landscapes, I found common ground by returning to what I have been doing my whole life: playing music. In the Peruvian Andes, each mountain is an apu, a spirit. I think they are musicians, too. They inspire us to pick up a pan pipe and breathe into it, creating a space of personal reflection but also a means of communication.
Maestro Abreu has talked about the "spheres" affected by music: the personal, the familial and the communal. He points to the unique power of music to be both private and public, to resonate inside and out.
Furthermore, music travels. From living rooms to concert halls to street corners, it can go anywhere, but it is our responsibility to make sure that it does, that everyone has the opportunity to feel the spheres vibrating.
If we do this, we can grow: as individuals, families and communities.
When I found musicians who had given words to our shared experience, who had dared to call it a movement, I finally rejoiced at being back at sea level. Mark Churchill is building a community, a means to effect change in a country that has only recently remembered that change is possible.
I feel so fortunate to be a part of the movement, to belong to a group of musicians whose talents and energy are already obvious. (Though I haven't met them yet!)
I hope this blog will be a space both for me and for you. I will update it as the Abreu Fellows Program and my own musical experience progress.
Thank you for reading!
Rebecca
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