Percussionist and Girls March founder Raychel Taylor joins me to shape a happier, healthier, and more inclusive marching arts community. We talk about female mentorship, female-to-female peer relationships, and moving from a “I’m scared of you” to a “Can I learn from you?” mindset. All band directors and marching band musicians need to hear this one.
It’s actually powerful to lift each other up, and that is a rebellion: to believe in ourselves and to be friends with each other.
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Actionable Advice
- Before it was like, “We’re the drumline. Y’all are the front ensemble nerds. We’re totally different”. It didn’t necessarily feel like we were on the same team. But i’s kinda odd to think that way! You’re being scored together. It’s not like you get a “front ensemble” score and a “drumline” score. So it was really nice to feel like we were on the same team. The people on the drumline were totally understanding that the people on the front ensemble were contributing to the drum score just as much as they were and knew we were killer musicians just like they were.
- At UNT there were hundreds of percussion majors, and when I was at school I think we had 8 girls in the studio. That’s a huge disparity.
- I was one of those people growing up who had a hard time finding other female friends. So I started organizing UNT percussion girl hangs. I wanted to break down this weird barrier of – “I feel intimidated to even go up to you in the hallway, and I feel like it’s just because we don’t know each other.
- There are so many people who are so much better than you. So being able to flip that switch from “I’m scared of you” to “Can I learn from you?” is a really big deal.
- I didn’t have a women teaching me until I was like 19. To go through your entire childhood and all of your learning comes from someone who doesn’t look like you has a huge impact on what you think is possible for your future. So we wanted to give girls direct access to women who are very successful in what they’re doing so they start to see paths forward.