Music is a people

If you’re reading this magazine, you probably know how it feels to not fit in. To have – at least at some point in your childhood – felt like the odd one out. At the risk of sounding like a middle school anti-bullying campaign, nobody likes being excluded. By now, it’s a point of pride, but that’s not the case when you’re young. In elementary school, it felt like the end of the world. I was a bookworm, a kid of mixed race, and about a dozen other things that painted “ostracize me” on my back. By middle school, I was just angry. 

When I was 14, I joined my local School of Rock. Not the musical, but the place where you can get music lessons and perform with other students. Other musicians. Other people who didn’t fit in when they were younger. Just talking to and sharing space with the people I met there was incredibly calming and validating. Actually playing music with them was a bonding environment unlike anything I’d ever seen before.

Most musicians know what I’m talking about. The first time you play in a band is like an awakening. Every jam session, irreplicable. I’m convinced that for the rest of my life, the sounds of each musician coming together will still make me want to jump up and down like a little girl in her first mosh pit. And with that euphoria comes 2 vital realizations.

1. You’re damn good at what you’re doing.
2. You fit in here.

Music inspires confidence. The obvious side of that is realization #1: the bravery you get from perfecting your art and performing onstage. But I’m here to argue that we don’t give realization #2 enough credit. Music isn’t just sound, it’s community. The DIY music scene in New Jersey (where I grew up) is one of the most beautiful collections of people I’ve ever met. It’s full of life and love and shared experience. Being part of it gives me just as much confidence as being able to pick up a guitar and hop on a stage. That confidence lets us go forth into the (unfortunately) non-musical aspects of life and continue to not fit into most rooms we stand in.

Some people will hear your problems and tell you to “pick a struggle.” I say this: pick as many or as few struggles as you want, and music will make them all a little bit easier to carry. It did for me, and so many others. One of my best friends grew as she honed her vocal skills; working through internalized racism with every solo, confronting familial expectations with a support network found in our musical community. Tons of queer and gender non-conforming kids find acceptance and empathy in the scene, because music is full of so many role models, and we’ve all been young and alone at some point.

Music is a lifestyle; it’s not just a space to fit in, but a space to find the confidence to be left out. Go to a local gig, and embrace it.

Written by Kedhar Bartlett.

Design by Savannah Rice.