[00:00:34] Host: Welcome to the fourthinstallment of the Chapters podcast series. I'm your host, Jon-Barrett Ingels. In our Chapters series, we focus on stories surrounding the exclusion, forced removal, and internment of Japanese Americans, but with all that is happening in our country right now, in this historic moment ripe with the potential for change and growth, we are expanding our scope and amplifying the voices of organizations and individuals who are trying to make a difference, who are standing at the convergence of art, education, and social justice.

With this series, we honor those who have struggled and suffered in the past and question, how are we still here? How have we not come any further than this? In this episode, we connect with Chuck Dickerson, the founder, executive director, and conductor of the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles. Chuck shares his musical journey from politics and law to introducing youth to the works of Tchaikovsky.

[00:01:37] Charles: My father was the choir director at Ebenezer Seventh-day Avenue Adventist Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and my mother was in the church choir. Now, they had met on the campus of Oakwood University. Oakwood was Oakwood College at that time. Currently, as we sit here right now talking, 13 Seventh-day Adventist colleges and universities in North American division. My father and mother attended Oakwood. Oakwood is one of those 13 currently existing Seventh-day Adventist colleges and universities in North America today. It's in Huntsville, Alabama, and it is the only historically Black Seventh Adventist College anywhere. It was originally founded, I want to say, in the late 1800s.

Today, it continues as the primary place where Black Adventists go to college. I didn't go there. I went to Howard University, but my ex-wife went there, my daughter attended there, and my parents met on that campus. When I came home from the hospital, man, I also have two elder brothers. My eldest brother, Dwight, who's eight years older than me, is a professional pianist. He was eight years old when I came home from the hospital. My point about all this is when I came home from being born, I came into a home that was infused with music. My parents were heavily involved. My eldest brother was heavily involved. Everybody in the house except for one of my brothers played the piano.

My parents were singers. I came into a situation where music was almost like expected. In fact, it was expected. All of us had to do something musical. However, I made the decision. I went to Glendale Academy, as I've shared with you, and my high school teacher, Rochelle LaGrone, she was the one who had so much influence on me. When I left Glendale, I went to La Sierra for one year as a music major. JB, I really didn't think that I was getting what I wanted or needed musically from La Sierra, so I made the decision to leave and to go to Julliard. I went to Juilliard to take auditions and I took auditions there.

While they were waiting to make a decision, Julliard is in New York, I went and spent the summer in Washington, DC, with a cousin of mine. My cousin said, "Hey, man, get a job. Stay here and go to school in Washington. It's a lot less expensive." He was right. I ended up getting a job for a United States Senator because I could type. In those days, this was 1970, man, 1971, man, they just needed people who could get their letters after their constituents and that kind of thing, which is ultimately what I ended up doing. I ended up enrolling at Howard University where I obtained an undergraduate degree in psychology with a minor in political science and then I went to law school.

I went to American University Law School right there in Washington, DC, and then I came back home to-- graduated in 1978, came back home to Los Angeles, and began practicing law in 1980. During this entire time, even while I'm in school, including law school, I'm conducting church choirs. I conducted the choir at DuPont Park Seventh-day Adventist Church, at Plymouth Congregational Church in Washington, DC, and I served as the music director at a couple of Christian Science churches in Washington, DC. I was following in my parents' footpath very much.

I practiced law and was involved in a whole lot of political activities having served as president of the Board of Public Works for the City of Los Angeles, as Chief Deputy to Los Angeles City Council member, as the City Attorney of the City of Inglewood, so I have that experience, but all this time I'm directing church choirs. Now, in 1996, I was called to Holman United Methodist Church to be the director of music. Holman is a very important church in the Civil Rights Movement. The pastor of the church at the time I was called, and who had ultimately served at the church for 25 years was Reverend James Lawson, L-A-W-S-O-N.

Reverend Lawson was the architect of the non-violent, political civil rights activities during the 1950s and the '60s. He was a very close ally to Martin Luther King. As a matter of fact, he was the pastor of Centenary United Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968 during the Garbageman strike. He was the leader of the Garbageman strike. He was their appointed leader and he is the one called Dr. King to come to Memphis in 1968 to give the speech to inspire the garbage workers. That was when Dr. King was assassinated. They were close. Reverend Lawson was the pastor at Holman and he called me to be the director of music there in 1996. This is going to sound complicated, but you'll understand the throughlines here very quickly.

[00:06:54] Host: Absolutely. I'm with you.

[00:06:56] Charles: Okay. In 1996, I go there and that church, among other things, in terms of its music program, every Easter and every Christmas it would put on a concert. As we did that with the choir, we would bring in an orchestra to play with us. Who was the orchestra? The orchestra was members of the Southeast Symphony. I need to tell you about the Southeast Symphony for a moment. No doubt you've heard of the movie Gone With the Wind.

[00:07:25] Host: Absolutely.

[00:07:26] Charles: Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, huge films during the golden era of movies. Those films all have wonderful orchestral scores. JB, you will probably not be too surprised to know that no person of color was a member of any of the orchestras. They weren't included in the orchestra and therefore they weren't earning royalties. The question came, why is that? Why can't Blacks get those jobs? Come to realize that Local 47, which is the local union, musicians union here in Los Angeles, controlled who got those jobs, and Local 47 was segregated. They saw to it that Black people didn't get those job opportunities. When asked, "Why can't Blacks get these jobs?" The Union said, “Two reasons. Number one, blacks don't have ensemble experience, meaning they're not playing in orchestras, so they don't have the experience to know how to play in an orchestra, and number two, they didn't know the repertoire.” In 1948, a woman by the name of Edith Gunn, G-U-N-N, who was a teacher, a music teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, she and some of her colleagues, other Black music teachers in the district formed the Southeast Symphony as a place where young emerging musicians, professional musicians could get ensemble experience and learn the repertoire so that the union could no longer use those excuses for excluding us from the opportunities to get jobs in the music studios in Hollywood.

Ultimately, the Southeast Sympathy was successful, broke down those barriers. You see it even tonight. If you watch The Late Show, you'll probably see the musicians who are Black. The precursors to those musicians were members of the Southeast Symphony. When I came to Holman Church in 1996 and it was time to do our Christmas program, we called members of the Southeast Symphony to play as the members of the orchestra to support the choir. You're with me so far?

[00:09:30] Host: Absolutely.

[00:09:31] Charles: All right. In 2004, the then-director of the Southeast Symphony abruptly resigned, and therefore they had a vacancy. The members of the Southeast Symphony, the players who had worked with me at Holman Church in these concerts I'm telling you about, told their board, "We need to hire Chuck as our new conductor." That's what they did. Now I'm merging the long history that I've had directing in church choirs with now I've got an orchestra that I get to conduct, and I conducted that orchestra from 2004 to 2011.

[00:10:10] Host: The layperson may think that it's the same. That it's the same thing that you need to conduct a choir that you need to conduct an orchestra. We're taking anyone who doesn't have a music education.

[00:10:22] Charles: Correct.

[00:10:23] Host: It's a huge difference.

[00:10:25] Charles: It is a huge difference. That's right. How do you know?

[00:10:28] Host: Being in a choir, you're dealing with maybe eight parts and then solos.

[00:10:36] Charles: Usually four. SATB

[00:10:37] Host: Usually four, but as many as eight and possible solos. In an orchestra, you're dealing with--

[00:10:45] Charles: A classic orchestra is two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, perhaps a tuba if the composer called for that. A battery of percussion instruments, starting with a timpani, a snare, a tenor drum, a triangle, xylophones, all kinds of percussion instruments. Then, of course, the string section, which is the largest section of the orchestra. First violin, second violin, viola, cello, and bass. You're talking easily-- okay, here we go. [laughs]

Right here is the score to the Tchaikovsky piano concerto number one, but enlist for you. Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two tenor trombones, the bass trombone, timpani, and the piano, and all five of the string parts. You're dealing with a whole lot of different parts.

[00:11:42] Host: What is that learning curve of transitioning from the voice to this multi-instrumental beast?

[00:11:50] Charles: It's a tremendous learning curve. You may or you may not know this, but here's something else. I also serve as professor of conducting and orchestral studies at California State University of Dominguez Hills. I teach conducting, and right now at our university, we only teach one course in conducting. I'm the professor and I have to combine both choral conducting and instrumental ensemble conducting, which could be an orchestra, a band, a wind ensemble.

There is a huge difference in teaching my students about how to handle, stand in front of how to conduct a choir and to learn the various instruments of the orchestra where they are seated, so when it's time to cue them, you know exactly where are the oboes. Yes, the learning curve is steep, but it's one that is achievable. It is a mountain that can be climbed.

[00:12:41] Host: Because ultimately you're dealing with the same language, which is music.

[00:12:46] Charles: That's right. Exactly. Back to my story, if you don't mind.

[00:12:49] Host: Please.

[00:12:50] Charles: The Southeast Symphony, among other things, since it began in 1948 and in the late '70s, early '80s, they began a Saturday morning conservatory, which, JB, really is just a glorified word for Saturday morning music lessons for young people. They developed a junior orchestra from young people that were taking lessons on Saturday mornings. In the year 2009, unfortunately, the Southeast Symphony was running out of money and they didn't have money to run their summer program. Some of the kids who were in that junior orchestra came to me and said, "Mr. Dickerson, would you work with us this summer?"

There was one in particular who came to me, Dequan Robinson, a bass player. I was a little reluctant to do it. I'm conducting a professional orchestra, and here are a bunch of young high school kids, but I did it and it has changed my life. I said, "Okay." Dequan brought eight of his friends and we started with nine players. By the end of the summer, we had expanded from 9 to 24. We put on a small recital. It was so well received by the community and the kids felt such pride. They said, "We want to keep this going." That was the precursor to what is now the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles.

The Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles now numbers approximately somewhere between 100 and 125 kids that we serve every school year. We start, usually, the Sunday after Labor Day. We run through July and we are pretty much dark in August to give the kids time off for the summer. We are now the largest, primarily African American orchestra in the country. We put on a season of concerts, 8 to 10 concerts per year. All of them are free except for our final one of the year. Our season-ender, which is a concert at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which is of course the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and we are involved in several activities.

Among them, we have a fellowship program through which we teach young emerging professional musicians. To prepare we prepare them to take and win auditions in American orchestras. We have a program that we run through local boys and girls clubs where we actually teach young kids from a beginning stage how to play an instrument. We have a Drum Corps now that we just recently developed, but the purpose of it is twofold.Number one, to actually have a drum line that can participate in the Rose Parade, or the Macy's Thanksgiving parade, or around the world. Number two, that Drum Corps Program is going into Los Angeles County detention facilities for young detainees to teach them a skill, give them an organization to affiliate with once they get out of juvenile hall or whatever it is. Also to help them develop friendships with other kids who are playing drums and stuff so that they do not hopefully find themselves back to a situation where they are engaged in criminal activity, which put them in detention in the first place. That's how we've gotten to the creation of the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles. That's my primary job now, is as the executive director and conductor of that orchestra.

[00:16:11] Host: We're working with young people and giving them a music education, which I know from firsthand experience how important that is, but I'd love for you to talk about what the importance of that music education is for the growth and the development of young minds. It's learning a new language and seeing the world differently.

[00:16:32] Charles: There's other things that I think are critical, probably always have been, but really relating to today's young people. Number one, the learning of music instills discipline, particularly the discipline of practice. You know as a musician in order to get good at something, you need to repeat it time and time again. There's something about doing something 10,000 times before you're an expert.

I have no doubt that LeBron James had probably bounced a basketball 10,000 times by the time he was 5 years old. If every child could have a musical instrument and play 10,000 notes between the time they are born and the time they're 6 years old, I think they're well on their way to having developed a skill in the performance of an instrument and whether they pursue the use of that particular skill for a vocation, I don't think is important. I think what is important is that they have learned the principle of practice. I will do this and I will do it until I get it right.

Here's another principle. The pursuit of excellence. It seems as though practice and the pursuit of excellence may be the same thing, I distinguish them because the pursuit of excellence says you can practice something over and over again. You can practice it wrong over and over again, and you can develop very bad habits in practicing something wrong over and over again. If you are in an ensemble and you have the responsibility of making sure that you know your part well so that you can support others who are also in that ensemble, then you have learned how to pursue excellence not just for yourself, but for the broader community in which you are a part.

We learn in ensemble performance, particularly as young people, we learn the distinction between leadership and being a part of a supportive community, so to speak. JB, these principles I'm telling you about, the principle of discipline, the principle of the pursuit of excellence, the idea of learning how to work in an orchestra, ensemble setting. These are principles that are transferable, not just usable and music, but they help to create wonderful and good societies. The fact that we learn as the clarinet player to support the flutist or the oboist or the trumpeter, and you also are willing to defer and give yourself up to the conductor, we use those principles to learn how to be a good member of society.

I may be the local teacher, but in so doing, I'm also supporting the local librarian. I'm supporting the local trash worker and I'm supporting the mayor and the city council person who are the designated leaders of our societal organization. I think the learning of music as a child helps to instill discipline of practice. It helps us to understand and want to pursue excellence because we all want to be good at the instruments that we play, whether they're vocal instruments or other musical instruments. Working together. Togetherness. Those are at least three.

The reasons why I think musical education with young people is critical and the younger you begin to learn these principles and these ideas, the more opportunity you have to perfect them and to be good at them. I know from my own experience I started piano when I was three years old. If I had waited, if my parents had waited till I was 13, that's 10 years I've lost, but because I started at three maybe that's why I get to do conducting at the level of music that I get to do today as opposed to just playing chopsticks.

[00:20:25] Host: There's another element too that there's passion to be able to fall in love with not just the music you play, but the music you hear, and I think the same is true for an athlete. The love of the game, that passion of the thing that you do to where you can appreciate it in everyone else that you see doing it.

[00:20:46] Charles: I guess you can probably see that I'm a little bit passionate about this myself, [laughs] and you are passionate about what you're doing right now.

[00:20:54] Host: Absolutely.

[00:20:55] Charles: You wouldn't be sitting there listening to me drawing on and on and on, but for your desire to gain information and share it with others, what a valuable thing that you're doing, man.

[00:21:09] Host: It's not just education, because there are a lot of your students that come in with the desire to have, like you said, a vocation to turn this into a career, but a career in arts is a privileged career. It's a financially privileged career. If the price of going to any music school it's the instrument itself, the lessons, the time, the practice, but then there's also the inherent racial bias that exists in our society that presents roadblocks at every step, so how does ICYOLA prepare professional musicians for those challenges ahead?

[00:21:56] Charles: Thank you for asking that question. Let me just start by sharing with you that we are a youth orchestra, Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles. There are youth orchestras all over the country. I need to share with you just so I have some credibility on this point. I am on the Board of Directors of the League of American Orchestras. The League of American Orchestras is the service agency for the American orchestra industry, because I'm on the board, I happen to know a lot about what's going on in the orchestra world around the country. I happen to know that there are approximately 700 youth orchestras around the country.

JB, the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles is the only one that is centered in the ghetto. I mean that there are wonderful youth orchestras in Brentwood, California, but there are no Black people who live in Brentwood, or very few. In Beverly Hills, there are youth orchestras that exist within and around that community, but very few African American or Latino, or Indigenous Americans to get to those communities. The important thing that we do is we have created an opportunity for young people who live in the heart of black Los Angeles to be in a youth orchestra. Let's be clear, all these youth orchestras have told you about around the country, they don't keep people from joining them.

If you want to join them you are welcome to do so, but man, just think of the difficulties that are inherent in trying to join that orchestra, so you live in the middle of Black Los Angeles, and now you're going to join the youth orchestra that plays in Brentwood, that means you got to get to Brentwood for rehearsal, you have to get to Brentwood for performances, and when you get there, more than likely you're going to be playing with kids who have had an advantage over you in terms of having had private instruction and also who started earlier than you.

More than likely when you get there, if you have to compete for a seat, you're probably going to end up sitting in the back row which is closest to the door, and because you don't know anybody there and they don't know you, it's pretty easy for you to walk in that door, stay for a night, and walk right back out and never come back again. Having created the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles, we provide for these very same young people a place where they can go in a community that they know. By the way, just so you know this, African Americans make up 13% of the US population, but we only make up 1.8% of the workforce of American orchestras. Latinos make up 13% of the US population. They only make up about 2.5% of the workforce of American orchestras. I don't know the statistic for Indigenous Americans, but I think it's even less than Blacks. Part of what we are trying to do is improve those numbers so that we might not ever get to the point where maybe 13% of American orchestras look like Black people or are Black people and 13% are Latinos, et cetera, but at least to improve the numbers from where they are now. We learned, it's been known probably for 50 or 60 years that the critical place where African Americans and Latinos would lose the audition is at the actual audition point.

Word would go out, the St. Louis Symphony is looking for three violists, word goes out in the industry. African Americans and Latinos would be among those who would apply. Go through the process, take a look at the paperwork, okay, looks like you've played enough places, we will invite you to the audition. You go to the audition, and it's at that point where Blacks and Latinos were failing. Some thought that perhaps the reason was, you just walk out of the stage and visually you can tell, okay, this is somebody who's Black. We can just discriminate if we want to, so the industry put in a device. We kept a curtain down between where the auditioner was playing and the panel of auditionees. That helped to cut down the biases. I should tell you that this was also applicable for women. Help cut down the biases. Women now make up almost 50% of American orchestras, but still Blacks and Latinos were not winning these auditions.

These fellowship programs cropped up as a way to try to help these young people get better prepared to take and win those auditions and that's what our fellowship program is all about. I was looking for funding for our orchestra, and I went to the Andrew Mellon Foundation. The Andrew Mellon Foundation has about $6 billion in assets right now. They give out 250 to 300 million a year. I had the opportunity to meet the gentleman who was the president of the Mellon Foundation for a while. He was kind enough to situate that we had some funding for our orchestra, but he designated the funding for a fellowship program. What we have done is we've created an opportunity for young people who are striving to have a career in orchestra, to prepare for auditions, to win a job in an orchestra.

We created this program, but we invited and have as our partners Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California as our training partners for young people who apply for our fellowship program and get in. We have been funded for generally a cohort of four fellows. We're in our second cohort now. We had a first cohort, they spent two years with us. One of them went off and got a job with the Seattle Symphony.

[00:28:03] Host: Because you're working in orchestral music, and because of where you're working, and the young people you're working with, there has to be a threading the line between the classical orchestrations and the music that these kids listen to and grew up with. What does that look like?

[00:28:25] Charles: There is to some extent, JB, but not as much as perhaps you or others might think. I mean, no insult, but Black people really do love classical music too. [laughs] That's music of, frankly, well, dead and old White guys from Europe. Well, but that's the culture we know. That's orchestral music in the United States, and so we come up knowing and loving that music. People oftentimes say to me, people period, Black, White, blue, green, purple, “I don't like orchestral music." “You don't like the theme to Star Wars?” That's always my first response. “Oh yes, but that's not orchestral music.” Well, what the hell is it then, if it's not-- You don't like Beethoven 5? “Yes.” You can just go down the list, but to be more specific in response to your inquiry. With regard to our season ending concert, we specifically divide that concert into two sections. The first half is all classical. For this coming year's season in the concert on July 9 at Disney Hall, we will open with the Overture to Candide by Leonard Bernstein. We'll play a second piece and then we'll play the Tchaikovsky.

The second half of the concert will be devoted to music that is historically from the African American community. Over the last 10 to 12 years, in the second half of the concert, we have featured the music of Aretha Franklin, Luther Vandross, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Stevie Wonder, Nat King Cole. 2022 Just last year, for the second half, we featured the music of Marvin Gaye. We give our kids an opportunity to play music that emanates from our own subculture of America and we also teach them the classics.

[00:30:25] Host: I would think that it's almost an entryway as well because, like I said before, everybody loves music, but not everybody has the understanding of classical music or they haven't experienced it in that way. More modern music can be an entryway into this concept of, and I'm going off the rails here, of how many songs have been made, popular songs, with the chord progression of Canon in D.

[00:31:02] Charles: Okay. Right. Exactly.

[00:31:03] Host: Seeing how this chord progression of this music is the same thing.

[00:31:07] Charles: It's the same thing that Pachelbel wrote. Sure. Take it a step further following down the footsteps that you're talking about. Hey, man, if the music doesn't exist-- When we did the Michael Jackson show, it was all cool. It was running, but that music had not been written for the orchestra. Part of what I have done is I took that music and I wrote a bassoon part, and I wrote a flute part, I wrote a violin part so that the orchestra is now playing an orchestrated version of Billy Jean or Man in the Mirror or whatever the Michael Jackson song was. We're using the very same classical concepts and structures upon which all of music is based, and we just use it to play popular music.

A C is always a C. A C chord, a C triad is always a C triad. Whether it's used in classical music, in jazz, in hip hop, it's still a C triad and the foundation is still the same. We can use those very same blocks that are used in the classical genre for popular music and teach that to our kids. I think our kids are at an advantage because they understand how you can use those blocks that they've learned in the classical world for other uses. Whereas kids in other youth orchestras or other orchestras, period, they don't really play the kind of music that we do, [chuckles] so they don't get that opportunity. Too bad for them. [laughs]

[00:32:55] Host: We want to thank Chuck Dickerson and the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles. For more information, visit ICYOLA.org. Chapters podcast was produced by Past Forward and made possible with support from Chapman University, and California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library. For more information, visit pastforward.org, chapman.edu, and library.ca.gov.

[music]