12/10/22 There’s No Place For Me In This Room

Ever feel like you just don’t fit in? 

Ever feel unappreciated, like you have this special thing that you can do, and you’re really good at it, but nobody seems to want it?

In fact, they want you to stop it!

Maybe it’s something you improvised on your instrument. And your teacher was not interested in your improvisations.

Or maybe it’s the way you like to kind of dance along when you play a Beyoncé tune or a Bela Fleck tune and your teacher said, “Don’t move around!”

I just interviewed my old friend Daniel Bernard Roumain, aka DBR, and he put it this way:

“The things that were coming naturally to me didn’t have a place in this room.”

He said that for most people of his Haitian-American culture, if you don’t move while you’re playing it means you’re not enjoying yourself. He felt like he didn’t fit in and was unwelcome in that classical space.

Back in the day, we progressive string players really had to stick together and try to stay in touch, because it was us against the world. But now, all you have to do is go to #electricviolin or #jazzviolin on Instagram and you’ll see dozens of progressive string players all over the world who don’t fit into the old tradition, so they’re starting new ones. A new normal! Woohooo!

Daniel also said “Tradition is nothing but an old innovation waiting patiently to be made new again.”

Creating a new normal for string playing is what I mean by the future of strings.

You are not a freak and you are not alone! In fact, you are the future!

Rock on!

—Tracy