With Black History Month this February, Chelsea sits down with Justin Swain to talk about black history month and all things in between.
If you’d rather listen instead of reading, check out the podcast version below! There’s also a video version on YouTube found below:
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CHELSEA: I am super excited to introduce our special guest today: Justin Swain! So Justin, he is my Martello, my Martello… We did La bohème together and it was so much fun. And we toured around columbus—we did that with Opera Columbus, when they did that.
CHELSEA: And so I got to be ridiculous with him and he was such a good sport, being like “I’m gonna hang all over you, and like do all these crazy things to you!” And so it was so fun!
CHELSEA: So welcome, Justin! We’re so excited to have you here. For those that don’t know you, why don’t you give us a little background about yourself, and tell us a little bit about yourself?
JUSTIN: Sure! Thank you so much for having me, Chelsea. As Chelsea said, my name is Justin. I’m a classically-trained baritone. My pronouns are he/him/his. I have two Master’s degrees from Ohio State University, one in Vocal Performance, together with Vocal Pedagogy.
JUSTIN: I am a voice and piano teacher and studio owner, and I’ve been performing now… professionally, I guess, for seven or eight years, primarily around Columbus. And yeah. I’m an educator. There you go!
CHELSEA: That’s awesome! And tell us a little bit about… When did this journey for music start with you? Maybe there was a defining moment, maybe there was a time in your childhood, or maybe there was an experience that you had in your childhood that kind of set things off for you… Or a piece of music that you heard or saw. So tell us: how did this all start for you?
JUSTIN: Absolutely! So music was always super important in our household. I did not grow up in the greatest of circumstances. And I very publicly share that knowledge, just because I have had so many opportunities to work with children from underprivileged areas.
JUSTIN: So I grew up in extreme poverty —lots of issues at home from drug abuse to emotional abuse, trauma survivor…
JUSTIN: So music was always kind of that balm. No matter what was going on in life, whether it be inside the household or outside the household, we were always singing. We were always listening to music. I grew up listening to a lot of Motown just because that was my parents’ favorite kind of music. Lots and lots of influence from R&B, Gospel. etc.
JUSTIN: And for me… Again, growing up in poverty, voice was the one instrument that you didn’t have to pay for. It was inherently your own from the moment of birth. And so we were always singing. My father was a singer, my mother, she kind of dabbled at piano when she was a child, I guess. But she wasn’t really that much of a musician. I’ve always said it’s taken a village to kind of like, get me to where I’m at, and a lot of my influences and my teachers or my mentors are my teachers primarily, my music teachers from a very early age.
JUSTIN: So I studied trumpet in elementary school, and then I did choir in elementary school. And my trumpet and my choir teacher—they were married, and did choir literally all through K-12. And I just remember always having so much joy any time that it was time for music. And I tried to fight it. My sixth grade year, I decided that I was going to be an art major because we had our gym, music, or art, and we could have that class three times a week for the entire year. And I said I’m gonna be an art major, because everybody else is a musician in my family, and i want to be the special one. And so i fought it as long as possible. And by the end of that year—I love art, I still create, but—music was always a passion of mine.
JUSTIN: And then in high school, I again decided I’m going to rebel against all of the expectations and all that literally everyone had for me. “You’re gonna go on, and you’re gonna be a professional musician.” I’m like… “No, I’m not. I’m gonna be a biologist!” And I remember my senior year of high school, my choir director pulling me off to the side. And he’s like “I’ve arranged for voice lessons for you. You are going to audition for music. Your grades state otherwise that biology is probably not in the cards for you.”
JUSTIN: So um he uh arranged for me to take voice lessons and uh the rest is kind of history
CHELSEA: Wow. that’s amazing! So it’s not necessarily that you had, say, some kind of defining moment where it was like “This is what I want to do!” but it was kind of like “This is what you’re gonna do because you’re super talented and let’s just make this happen for you.” That’s awesome!
CHELSEA: And then how did the transition from the the musical influences you had growing up, to going into classical style… how did that happen?
JUSTIN: So I’ll admit, I really had no exposure to classical music growing up. Absolutely none other than instrument music. I knew that opera was a thing, but to be quite honest, I had never heard anyone sing classically until my very first voice lesson. In my senior year of high school, and my instructor carol marty she was the former voice area head at capital university’s voice program she’s no longer with us but she gave me don sedan safanjali and um i was just completely out of my element and i started singing it like as a pop song she’s like no no no and she pulled out recordings and i was i just remember being like people do that with her voice oh my gosh she’s like yes and this is what you’re gonna do um so i learned it and i also learned a josh groban song um and i auditioned um i got a full ride but because of female familial issues at home um that full ride was stripped um and so i didn’t get to actually go off to college for a couple of years after high school but i just remember listening to those recordings that she showed me and just being like well that’s cool i mean i guess it’s a means to an end and then of course getting to ohio state studying with robin rice um i thought i was gonna sing musical theater and he has one lesson with me he’s like no no you’re gonna do opera nope no musical theater this is this is where you belong um and i’ve kind of not looked back
CHELSEA: Oh that’s awesome! And then do you have any favorite memories of performing? Or maybe some favorite shows that you’ve done in your life of performing?
JUSTIN: Yeah, absolutely! So it’s kind of all over the place. I guess professionally, the stuff that I’ve been able to do with Opera Columbus has always just been such a joy um specifically the La Bohème the opera on the edge that was so outside of anything that i ever thought that i was going to do i mean presenting a you know a shortened opera in a venue such as shadowbox live i never in a million years would i thought i did do that um but lat the past two years prior to the pandemic um opera columbus did a program called the journey in the voice of freedom and um i was a performer for the voice of freedom and it spoke about black issues from slavery to present day the first year and then the second year it focused on the civil rights movement and the music associated with all of that um but besides being a performer i was a teaching artist as well for the company and i got to work with children at the southside boys and girls club as well as out in the blacklick area in lower ses areas very similar to where i grew up and so it was kind of a full circle moment for me um to get to work with those children in such an underserved area um and then as far as like most fun out of this world experience i had in school performing was when we did candide uh the second year of my master’s program at osu it was just so much fun and i had veered away from performing other than like coral works and stuff like that um and that was the first time that i really was just like you know this isn’t so bad because it was it was basically an operetta and it was as close to musical theater as i’ve ever gotten um to perform professionally or semi-professionally and it was just so much fun um to put on several different masks throughout that production um and just be silly and and spread joy through music
CHELSEA: Yeah, no that’s amazing, that’s amazing! And let’s talk a little bit about your transition to teaching from performing. And what do you love about teaching and kind of… how did that all come about? What was that journey like for you?
JUSTIN: Yeah. From a very, very young age, I recall just loving school absolutely every aspect about it except for the bullying but that stopped in high school um but um in elementary school i was always in accelerated classes um from first grade on and my first grade teacher miss others she’s no longer with us um either but she recognized very quickly that i loved learning um and i have always read at a way higher level than i was supposed to i guess in in k through 12. and so she had me reading novels in first grade she had created a specific curriculum just for me um despite having 30 other students to you know to be in charge of and um i just remember i was so sad um towards the end of the school year because i realized it’s going to be summer and i’m not going to be in school and she realized she asked me she pulled me off to the side and she said well um i have all of these teacher books and i’m going to let you use them over the summer i mean a giant stack of books she said what i want you to do is i want you to create lesson plans for yourself just like we do in class and i want you to you know burn through as much of this as you can over the summer and it kept me busy and i created a little makeshift study in a closet at home um and i remember just like memorizing as many facts as i possibly could and if i wasn’t doing that then i was watching zaboomafoo uh on pbs um because it was another educational um opportunity and i knew from a very early age like i love learning and i love teaching um and i love you know the possibilities of that and i didn’t know what that was gonna look like um you know again i thought in high school i wanted to go off and be a biologist or biology teacher and once i got to school for music i realized no like okay i’m decent at music and i love teaching how can i you know kind of combine those two and so i i started to major in music ed and i very quickly realized that classroom teaching is not for me um and so i switched to performance um and i realized i can teach privately on the side in a one-on-one setting or smaller groups um and i started experimenting with that during undergrad um through tutoring i started an audition and music theory tutoring program at osu and i loved it absolutely loved it and then i started giving one-on-one lessons um to my friends slash guinea pigs and i i realized like oh my gosh this is amazing i love this so much and um so much so that i decided to go to grad school for voice pedagogy and then also i got the second master’s degree in performance because it was it was there and i had already fulfilled the requirements for it um and the more that i’ve had the opportunity to teach um the more and more i just just fall in love with with that area but also to to know and to see um just the spark that happens when a concept clicks or when somebody realizes like i’m not too shabby at this you know i’m like i’m pretty good at this i can do this um and the confidence that um you know music lessons especially um builds within people um i think that you know the study of music helps us to not only understand our corner of the world a little bit better but also opens our eyes to the cultures of the world if you are lucky enough to you know be taught about things outside of your one little bubble and it also just helps us to more fully realize who we are as a person i love that i love that and as as we both know i kind of have this hang up about the the phrase making it um because it is so subjective for everyone and so do you feel like throughout all of your journey and founding or finding your place right now in in teaching and what you’re doing do you feel like that’s the fulfillment place that you’ve been searching for and you’ve kind of found your place yeah absolutely um and i i love that we share the same idea of i hate that term just making it because it is so different for everyone and early on especially my collegiate studies i was just doing what people expected of me um you know if my professor would say this is what you should be doing to be successful because this is you know this is the career path and these are the steps that you have to do um and i’m a very rebellious person um as we have seen already biology um so i you know there were moments where i definitely self-sabotaged um because i just absolutely hated not feeling in control of of my own life um and i’ve since you know addressed those issues um but from you know as a young singer you know we trust the people that are in our circle and those people are usually either our musical influences if we have the opportunity to speak to them or our professors and if they are saying you have to do x y and z or else you’re not going to make it that’s that can be quite discouraging
CHELSEA: Oh for sure! And how it’s it’s just very much i feel like in the college programs this is the path like you said and and not having as much of like but this is the path and look at how many ways that you can go into it and it doesn’t have to necessarily be the one and all be all and stuff.
CHELSEA: And so since we’re talking about music programs… what other missing pieces do you feel like might be in or that you’ve either experienced yourself or that you’ve seen others, or your colleagues, or your students go into? What missing pieces do you feel like there are?
JUSTIN: Yeah. Music business—anything outside of performing. Never, not a single time was it ever addressed or brought up to me. Other than… “Don’t teach. because the second that you start teaching. you’re not going to be able to perform.”
JUSTIN: That’s bogus. I’ve absolutely been able to juggle both. It’s difficult, you know. But you can make it work if you want to.
JUSTIN: But the aspects of doing your own taxes as a 1099 contractor, or understanding all of the tax laws and write-offs that we can do, or that we can make use of as independent contractors, as well as… how do you promote yourself as a performer without, you know, management. how do you find opportunities if you know they’re out there? I was lucky enough that I started with Robin at OSU. For him to say, “Okay, these are the programs that exist, Yaptracker, etc…. These are the items that you need in your portfolio, of sorts.”
JUSTIN: But speaking to colleagues, not all of them had that. And so there are people that I meet now with music degrees who are just clueless as to the opportunities that are out there because they were never brought up to them and we always i won’t well maybe not always but oftentimes i find especially in more classical oriented programs we are pigeonholed into this expectation of if you do not graduate and go perform on a major stage you you’re worthless um that was all for naught go get a job at target or whatever and that’s such a horrible thing um for so many people because we see so many people drop off that first year in undergrad because either they realize like oh my god this is way harder than i thought it was ever going to be or i had completely different expectations of what this was going to look like um or they just realized like no this isn’t really where my interests were i was good at this thing in high school and and i decided i was going to go on and do this um professionally um but we can do so many different things and we can juggle so many different plates and wear many different hats as performers even if we don’t necessarily major in music um in college there are still so many opportunities um if you’re willing to look for them or if you know where to look for them
CHELSEA: For sure. And I definitely agree with all of that. I think a lot of times, sometimes the college professors—they’ve had amazing careers and amazing experiences but it’s so hard to stay on top of all the trends. Like all the trends are changing so fast. And so unless you’re kind of “in it” or in the craze of social media… How would you even know? And so sometimes it’s just hard because then it’s there they might be limited to to their experiences or what they think is is their it for for instance and and then that kind of influences everything else so that is that is something that’s i think really important for current music majors or grad students or even think people that are considering going into that to just kind of realize off the bat because i i don’t think i had that mindset it was just kind of like you know whatever they say that’s what it’s supposed to be and and all that kind of thing so i think it’s it’s good to have that perspective going in
JUSTIN: Yeah, cool. Absolutely. Awesome! As far as other things that I felt like were missing—at least in my track of study in performance—I did not have to take any classes on American music specifically, or music that originated from black culture; whereas music ed majors did. They had to take one class. But a lot of my colleagues that were in those classes in undergrad, I just remember them saying, “Oh my god, this is so stupid. This is not relevant to anything that I want to do.” And having come from a very diverse… you know, upbringing as far as the the population of students that were in my schools. Yes, it was predominantly black but there were it was such a melting pot of different world cultures within that and um you know i would say to them like you know you don’t know where your placements are going to be first off um and even if it isn’t something that is your experience your life experience we still need to be aware of what is out there so that we can um you know properly or more fully um teach our students to educate them and you know you don’t know what’s gonna walk into your studio or your classroom one day um and what their life experiences are gonna be like but i am so grateful that um i was exposed to so many different kinds of music i wish classical had been more of an emphasis just whatever but um the fact that i did get to see black artists um or you know different ethnicities represented in the music that we had at home it was just so cool and it was you know it was showing me like just because these are your life circumstances there’s still more out there it’s okay like that is a possibility to see repre myself represented out there right that’s that totally makes sense and that very much ties into at this time when we’re recording this episode we are in black history month and so talk a little bit about the significance of that to you personally and maybe how special it is or maybe some of the pains and the struggles that you’ve gone through in your life to get to the point where you are today for whatever amount that you’re comfortable sharing sure um so a lot of people when they first meet me they think i am latino and i am not i’m actually biracial um my mother’s caucasian and my father is african-american and from a very very early age i just remember my parents having a talk with me about you know these are the the things that you might have to face growing up as a biracial um person and as an adult even um because my complexion is fairer um i am oftentimes told you’re not black enough to talk about these types of things but i do identify as black you know even if i’m only half and as far as being black in america and specifically in music um when we look at american popular music everything traces back to work songs or enslaved people’s music the vast majority of it is found in and originating in america and again we can look at black pop music which also includes rap um it can be traced backwards by way of hip hop which originated in black communities of new york city in the 70s which was influenced by rock and roll which um despite what we’re told it wasn’t invented by elvis presley but now we uh credit it to sister rosetta tharp and we can move backwards from rock and roll we get to jazz music which we still hear trickles of today um in music um and we can tie that to modern day artists such as billy eilish who states that some of her musical influences included frank sinatra um an exercise that i like to do with some of my students especially those who just primarily live within one bubble of music um or who think like oh i listen to country music that has nothing to do with you know black music um i will say okay well let’s look at one of your favorite artists and let’s just trace back through interviews in their own words um and see if we can get back to uh work songs and uh one such person that comes up quite often is taylor swift who states that uh she draws influence from dolly parton dolly parton drew influence from rose maddox who drew influence from jimmy rogers who although he’s credited as the father of country music he primarily lived within the blues genre which comes from black musical traditions and then we look at the blues or the rhythm and blues music which was born from spirituals which were in turn born directly from work songs or chants of black enslaved people so um those are all things that i was not taught necessarily in school um those are things that my parents um just you know they said very early on um like there’s you know there is representation out there but um the world that you live in is going to be vastly different than what has actually happened you know um as far as where does the influence come from um and you know as an adult reflecting on that and going through academia and realizing none of that was ever taught to me in you know in an academic setting and having to do that research for myself it’s really opened up my eyes um as far as representation as a as a black um musician um it’s it’s wild that we don’t talk about it really um one of my favorite classical composers is samuel carroll’s trailer who’s an afro-european his father was enslaved was able to escape all of that um had samuel crowe taylor with a caucasian woman in europe um didn’t know that she was pregnant and then he shipped back off um elsewhere and uh courage taylor is credited to um oh gosh his coral cantata trilogy hiawatha’s wedding feast for instance was the most performed choral masterwork until handel’s messiah and that spanned for at least two decades he wrote piano music he wrote chamber music he wrote violin solo music he wrote vocal works choral works etc and we don’t necessarily hear about him um nearly as much as we should um in my music history classes it was all european artists or composers not a single black composer had been mentioned and thinking of other minority groups or lesser representative groups women composers um i literally had only been exposed to fannie mendelson but there are so many brilliant women composers in classical music history as well and we just aren’t taught about them very often um so as an adult now and as a professional musician if you will i’m grateful i’m so grateful for um these issues actually being more relevant to the masses and people are waking up to wow american history kind of sucks um for everyone um who is of of um of color really and um you know doing programs like the voice of freedom where we were able to go all over columbus and educate people through um narration through singing through um all that those programs encompassed it was so fulfilling um and so often people would come up to us after those performances and say i had no idea that that’s what happened um and oftentimes they would ask how can i help i i want to you know i want to be better this opened my eyes what can i do and oftentimes i would say you can be an ally without overstepping bounds you know but we have to first understand what those bounds are and what they look like to different people just as i’m just going to use a singer analogy really quick just as we say what does a sound feel like to you when you are able to produce a tone what does it feel like to you so that i can create that common knowledge or that common language with you um no two people’s life experience is exactly the same even twins um and so what we interpret as you know this is totally fine somebody else can find that deeply hurtful um and it can really trigger an emotional response from them um and so when we look at um works like uh porgy and best for instance gershwin states in the score it’s to be performed by african americans and there was a european um company that did not have people of color in the cast and it caused a huge uproar a couple of years ago and then of course we see you know even more contemporary things like hamilton um people are really really defensive over certain things because as as black musicians within certain genres we don’t have many things that are our own um and while i am of the belief that you know we should study those things if it states by the composer the person that created it um don’t do it unless you fit these criteria because of these issues because it is relative to the black american experience there’s still something to be gained from studying those things perhaps we don’t perform them in public um but i mean i see so often spirituals on teacher forums that’s a hot topic um my student wants to sing go down moses or my student wants to sing um ride on king jesus or sometimes i feel like a motherless child or any of the other you know big spirituals um and so many teachers kind of walk on eggshells i’m caucasian am i allowed to teach this yes you know um and it’s just it’s so it it depends on the audience and it depends on you know individual people’s interpretation or their life experience um again something that i might see as not an issue at all somebody else might say oh my god that’s deeply hurtful how could you ever and i think when those instances happen um that’s an opportunity for a conversation to happen um and to ask well what is it about this um that offends you or upsets you i want to understand that um and we can grow from that you know and i i’m so glad that you have me on here and to talk about these issues because you know we can think and be all heady as much as we want you know um and if we’re not communicating about harder issues or topics that you know get under some people’s skin there is there’s really limited opportunity for growth to happen um or for people to understand the experiences outside of their own echo chamber or their own bubble so yeah i love that i love that and i no i really appreciate your openness about it because i think that um sometimes especially with something an issue as sensitive as this can be there’s sometimes a fear for people or or say that maybe one party would just get emotionally triggered but then almost maybe say something or attack the other party or how dare you or how could you when there can as you said there can be subjective things so can you let’s use the example of a spiritual and so say that there’s a a caucasian student that wants to sing a spiritual and then the teacher is like okay but then what happens when there is there’s a person that might be emotionally triggered or a fine defense to that whereas another person may not i mean how would you go about that you know um we talk about cultural appropriation all the time in in ethics courses and and stuff like that and versus ethnic appreciation and whenever i have given a caucasian student or a student who is not black um is spiritual um whenever that conversation has come up i you know i say i understand where you’re coming from hi i’m a person of color as well um and you know it’s not it’s not the same as somebody who does not come from a certain culture at all and then adopting everything about that culture because it looks cool or whatever and they you know um they code switch into whatever vernacular is being used it’s an opportunity to bring awareness and you know to um bring ink on a page to life um and to keep that alive um you know the the term of if we forget history we’re bound to repeat it you know these things these um these stories these these hardships um that an entire population of people went through for hundreds of years we can’t just turn a blind eye to it you know and as painful as it may be to have those conversations or to relive those moments i think it me personally this is my opinion i think it’s important that we still honor that music i think it’s important that we still present it in a way that’s respectable you know if i have a student that i assign a spiritual to and it is in a vernacular that is not um something that would probably be seen as favorable in today’s atmosphere um then we might change that selection um we might not necessarily speak um in um ebonics or the african-american vernacular um we may change some words you know and hope that we don’t offend someone and understand that you know there’s always going to be that risk of upsetting somebody but when we look at the music that we perform um there’s always some kind of risk that people are going to get offended i remember performing at the italian festival and i was a freshman in college and i had no idea what i was doing diction wise it was the first semester of study and i had never taken italian diction and i i think i was singing um seben and a little old lady hobbled up right in front of me i mean got right up in my face listened to the entire song and she just said ugh that was disgusting how could you dare bastardize this language and it was so hurtful to me um in that moment because my ego just dinged you know um i thought i sang it decently for where i was at in my understanding of of the of the music and i thanked her for her commentary and um i said i hope to do better in the future and so you know even this conversation i’m sure there will be people that listen and they’ll say uh he doesn’t represent you know our life experience or whatever but um the the discussions have to they have to happen and um to anyone listening that may be offended by anything that i say let’s have a conversation let me understand you know where are you coming from so that i can be better and back on my door if this is recorded anywhere i have a quote by uh maya angelou do the best you can until you know better once you know better do better and i live that day to day and i try my best to instill that with all of my students i love that i love that thank you so much for that and i mean it sounds like the best way to go about this is what i’m interpreting from this conversation is if it’s stated that there needs to be a specific ethnicity of some sort to do it then of course to honor that um if it’s not so per se like a spiritual in a way of of someone singing that they’re celebrating it they’re bringing it to life their respecting it in a way and so the intention is not to provide disrespect like oh well you’re not a person of color how dare you sing this but it’s like this is beautiful music if if i don’t you know i want to bring it to life i want to to really spread the word about it and and so is that what you’re you’re saying right okay
CHELSEA: yep yep awesome no i love that i think that is is a very cautious and thoughtful way to go about such a sensitive topic for for so many people these days so that’s that’s wonderful thank you for sharing thank you for being on this and i do have a random question for you let’s talk for a second about your hair because it’s amazing and where do you get your hair done because let’s just talk about that for a second
JUSTIN: i just do it myself um growing up poor you’ll learn how to cut your own hair and um as a biracial person uh my hair is not like my mother’s and any biracial person um whose hair is unlike one of their parents or both of their parents um they will talk about their struggles and trying to figure out what works for them and what doesn’t and i’m still experimenting um 33 years old i’m still trying to figure out what works for me and i like my curls
CHELSEA: Oh, it’s working. It is working. If you are listening on the podcast right now, go to our YouTube channel and check out Justin’s hair, because you’re definitely going to want to look at this. So.
CHELSEA: Awesome! All right. Well, thank you Justin so much for joining us today. It was such a pleasure to have you. And is there anything that you want to leave us with today?
JUSTIN: The quote by Dr. Maya Angelou: “Do the best you can until you know better. Once you know better, do better.”
CHELSEA: Love it, love it, awesome! Well, thank you so much, Justin!
JUSTIN: Thanks, Chelsea!
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