Why classical music needs an image refresh, with Berginald Rash

BR: 00:00

When you look at films and cinema or TV, whenever a person in a film or in media wants to mark someone as being sort of stuck up or overly posh or unreachable, they always use some classical art form as a marker of that, whether it's going to the opera or enjoying classical music. And it's always sort of seen in a very negative light. It's never like, my God, you love opera? That's great.

TS: 00:26

You're listening to Made for Us, I'm Tosin Sulaiman. This is the third episode in our mini-series on the artists redefining what classical music looks and sounds like today. We're partnering with Classically Black, a festival in the UK showcasing black and global majority musicians and composers in classical music. My guest this week is Berginald Rash, an American-Irish clarinetist who's been heard with orchestras like the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and the RTE Concert Orchestra.

Berginald has made debuts at the BBC Proms, Lucerne Music Festival, and the South Bank Center. In this episode, Berginald tells me about his original ambition to be a cardiologist and why he decided at college to switch from medicine to music. He shares the inspiration for his new album, Black Boy, which features solo clarinet music by black male composers, and why he thinks classical music needs better PR. Here he is.

BR: 01:30

My name is Berginald Rash. I am a clarinetist teacher, curator. I present on the radio and the Board of Chamber Music Scotland and just do a bunch of a bunch of everything recording artists. So yeah.

TS: 01:44

I've never heard the name Berginald before, so I was just curious, what's the story behind the name?

BR: 01:48

Actually I did a TEDx talk about this. My name is a combination of my mother and my father's name. When they got together, they wanted a baby so badly and that when I finally came, they combined their names, Bertha and Reginald, to form Berginald.

TS: 02:05

Wow. That's a cool story. Yeah. And presumably you're the only Berginald that you've met.

BR: 02:10

Only one I've met, though I believe there's another one out there in the world. I have done like Facebook searches and think there might be another one out there, but I'm the only one I've ever met and so far the only one anyone else that I've met has met. So

TS: 02:23

And so what role did music play in your family when you were growing up?

BR: 02:28

My family in general loves music. I grew up listening to a lot of different music from my grandfather used to always have Afro-Cuban jazz playing in the background. My father, when we take road trips, would always have blues playing. My mom always had gospel music playing. My my stepmom always had like Neo Soul sort of music. My sister loved hip hop and R and B. So like all I was always growing up around music. Music was always around. But no one besides like my grandmother on my dad's side and my aunt were like trained as musicians. My grandmother used to sing in the choir and my my aunt got a scholarship to study voice, but instead chose to go and be a primary school teacher. So music has always been presence in the house, but I'm the only musician, I'm the only one that that I know of that plays an instrument or formally studied it.

TS: 03:17

And so tell us more about these road trips. Like where were you taking these road trips to? What was playing in the car?

BR: 03:23

So like the thing is my my mom and my dad and and my stepmom will always be the ones driving. They love driving. Like my mom used to want to be a trucker, if you can imagine. So whenever we take roads, it'd always be like gospel music and she loved Vicky Winans. So she loves Cece Winans. She loved Helen Baylor. So you always have some gospel music with my mother. And with my dad, he loved the blues. He loved, you know, Bobby Womack, James Brown, big fan of James Brown, Al Green, Billy Blue Bland, like just anyone that he could like could sing along with and that had a bit of funk and and blues to it, my my dad would have playing. And if if I was with my stepmom, she'd have like Anita Baker on Luther Van Jaw. So depending on who was driving, depending on who was controlling the the controls. And we take road trips all over like my my because I have such a wide a large family rather, we lived all over the US. So we take road trips from like Florida to California. Like that's the most natural thing to hop in a car and drive like thirteen hours.

TS: 04:20

Wow. So loads and loads of hours of music listening.

BR: 04:25

Loads of hours of music listening. I could sing the songs by heart by the end of the trip. And actually one thing I loved is that when I would drive, so I did my undergrad in in Florida, when I would drive to Atlanta where my dad and my stepmom were, I always would put on Tony Braxton's album. So I had it planned. So if I start with her first album as soon as I get out of my apartment complex.

By the time I'm drive pulling to the driveway, I'm on the last song of like her third album. And so I will be singing all the way to all of like Tony Braxton's songs. And that was like my soundtrack to when I started doing my road trip.

TS: 04:59

Sounds fun. I didn't hear you mention much classical music. Did you ever listen to classical music on your road trips?

BR: 05:06

No, no, we didn't listen to classical music growing up, which is a wonder that I I am a classical musician. No, we didn't listen to classical music at all. Like it would be something that would come on, like when you're watching cartoons, you how that's like the soundtrack. But growing up, like we would never have classical music when I actually when I'm relaxing on my own, I don't listen to classical music. That's not the first thing I would put on. It would be the soundtracks of the stuff that I grew up listening to. That feels more like home to me in terms of, you know, relaxation.

TS: 05:34

Right. And so how did you discover classical music?

BR: 05:38

well, that's a good question. So I try to figure out like I wanna pinpoint the moment for you because I remember wanting to play an instrument. I always wanted to play an instrument. And when I was in Oklahoma, they started us in what would be considered like third or fourth grade. So you had you did recorder class and then from there you got a chance to choose your instrument. They put me I remember they put me on tenor saxophone and I didn't know what a tenor saxophone was, but from there I knew that the saxophone was mostly used in big band and jazz and such like that. And I knew that really wasn't the music I wanted to play. Although there was like a big push for me to go in that direction by my band directors, I felt. But in Wind Band, we always did what could have been considered, you know, Western art music, classical music by musician standards.

So I grew up playing that in my first ensembles and singing, 'cause I sang in choir as well. And that music was always very classical adjacent, particularly like with the hymns and such. And this is what I was in Oklahoma singing in what would be predominantly white churches versus when I would go to black church and we'd sing gospel. So it's very different. So I've had so my whole life can be described as these two parallel lives happening. And so I remember in band having friends that played clarinet and they could do some really cool things. So I think once I decided I want to play clarinet, then that got me interested in classical music because I knew that's where the clarinet really lived. I knew it played jazz up, I knew it lived there.

So I came, I was introduced to the multi-clarinet concerto which like my first big clarinet piece I heard and was like, my that's really cool. And then I came across because we took a band trip. I remember this, we took a band trip to New York because we were playing in Carnegie Hall, and they had us go see the Blue Man group, which is this percussion group that all that paints themselves in a blue and they do all that program stuff. And their final piece was Ravel’s Bolero. And I was so transfixed by that piece. I was like, my God, it's like the orchestra and you can hear all the instruments playing their solos, which is what I really wanted. And then it got like, you know, it builds and builds and builds. And so I got back home. When I got back home, I got the album, I got the London Symphony playing Ravel's Bolero. And so that was it. And then I at that time I had a recorder. So I would try and play along with my recorder, playing just the opening. And that was it. And then from there I got like Ravel, because I was like, well, Ravel's really cool. let's look at other pieces.

BR: 08:01

So I came across his Mother Goose Suite, which was beautiful. I think that was also Lenin Symphony. Actually, I think it was on the same album. And I fell in love with the Mother Goose Suite, just all the tonal colors. And so that's what got me into classical music. The desire to play the instrument, to play it soloistically, wanting to play the clarinet, finding the Mozart, and then that band trip to New York where we heard them do the bolero. So kind of like snowballed. Yeah. And everyone's gonna be like, why classical music? I didn't understand because it was never, like you said, it never there. But I was like, I just want to play these those.

TS: 08:30

So how did you then make the decision to study music? Was that quite a natural decision for you?

BR: 08:36

Yeah. And I often look back at that like I could have done anything else. Why did I do that? Why did I switch? Originally I wanted to be a doctor, like also my childhood. If you had asked me what I wanted to be, I wanted to be a cardiologist, I want to be a surgeon. And was so much so that I was in like this pre med club while I was playing clarinet. And I remember my first year of college, I went to University of Rochester, which has a world renowned medical school. And I was my parents like, he's gonna do that, but I really wanted to go to Eastland instead, where which is a part of University of Rochester.

And so I was taking clarinet lessons at Eastman, but I enrolled at the University of Rochester doing all these calculus classes and being asked to like take these other science classes. And I'm like, I don't really want to do it. And I remember going to University of Rochester that first year and seeing all the pre-med students, all the med students staying up three, four, five in the morning cramming. But there's this sort of further afield computer lab that was on campus a little bit further out. And they'd be there all night. And me and my friends, freshman year, we're just over there. We would play Uno while everyone else around us is studying frantically in groups just trying to fill their brain with all this science. And I was like, I don't want to do that.

And so I think seeing that and going through AP chemistry and AP biology, and AP basically means advanced placement. So in the US, you have these options of taking high school courses that account for college credit, which are advanced placement, you have to take an exam, dah da da. So I see y'all was in all advanced placement courses and I was like, I didn't enjoy it. It didn't bring me joy. What I loved was playing the clarinet. So once I got to college, wise that's what I wanted to do. With a with a little consternation from my dad, I I said, I'm not gonna do medicine, I'm gonna do music. And I transferred from University of Rochester because I got seasonal depression. So I left to a sunnier state to went in and did music performance.

TS: 10:20

And where was that?

BR: 10:22

Florida, I went to Florida State University.

TS: 10:24

And so when you were at FSU, what did you discover about your artistry?

BR: 10:30

What did I discover? I discovered that I can work really hard when I'm focused. I'm driven, competitive. I think that's a very clarinet thing to do is be very competitive. I was competitive and driven, but that I also wanted my music to say something, wanted to sing, wanted to be expressive, wanted to be colorful, wanted to shape phrases and want to be inspired by my colleagues and be able to inspire my colleagues with my playing. That something I really wanted to do. I really wanted to play so well that people be like, my God, that's such beautiful playing and really respond to that. And then I can reflect and feel like, that is really beautiful, really great playing. Like, you know, all the notes are where they're supposed to be and where they should be. And, you know, just have something really meaningful to say. That's what I discovered that my love for music, though the drive was, you know, to be good and to get better, what kept me going, I discovered, was that I just really loved sounding beautiful on the clarinet, making the clarinet sound beautiful.

TS: 11:28

As you've navigated your career as a classical artist, what have been, you know, some of the unexpected things about this profession that you've noticed?

BR: 11:38

So I guess as a profession, realizing that a lot of these that first of all, none of us are self-made, obviously, that the audition isn't always the end all be all to a career. Realizing how some things are already predetermined before you get there. So you can show up to an audition and there's already someone in mind for the job and this is just a formality. Seeing how nepotism gets you very far in classical music.

Connections can get you very far in classical music, much further than even talent. And particularly if you have the right name, the right connections, and are passable in your instrument. There's enough people that will support your name and your connections to then talk you up to make you appear to be worthy of whatever accolades they've provided. Meritocracy is a myth. Doesn't really exist. And no one can even define meritocracy and demonstrate an example of meritocracy because these sorts of things are subjective. So just do what you can do and leave the rest. Have fun. And getting to the point now where I have consciously decided that I don't want to be anywhere. I'm not celebrated and wholeheartedly welcome.

TS: 12:54

So let's talk about the breaks. you know, have there been any breaks that you would say have changed things for you and for your career?

BR: 13:01

In a positive way, yeah. There have been tons of breaks, but they all came because a person and usually a person of color has been in a position to lift as they climb, right? So just my even being here talking to you, I'd say it was a benefit of a long chain of events, right? Me going to Milwaukee and doing my masters, meeting a great musician who's Clifton Harrison, who's a violist, who lives in London, been there for years. An amazing violist and one of my dear friends. Like I've known him for decades at this point. And he single-handedly cr created an opportunity by just mentioning my name, by suggesting me to Chi Chi Nwanoku, who was forming Chineke. So before Chineke was a thing, she was, you know, looking for players. And so reached out to Clifton and Clifton, you know, mentioned my name. And so because of that, then Chi Chi brought me to the orchestra and then I met these other great musicians and those so those sort of connections led to this thing.

And then there have been breaks and but a lot of those breaks have been because of a person seeing value in my work and what I can do and being in a position to put my name forward. And to realize that so much of our career is based on just one person believing in you is beautiful, but it's also treacherous. It's dangerous. Particularly when historically the people to have that power have been largely white male people, white male, right?

So to find someone who who sees you and resonates with you and believes in you, who doesn't look like you or doesn't have your background, doesn't have your experience, can't see what brilliance looks like from your perspective because they don't live that story and have been cultured to not see it in that population is a big ask. There have been breaks, there have been amazing breaks. I'm completely aware of that. In my new album that's coming out, my solo album that's coming out, there's a whole like section about how my career has been in large part due to the support of women of color and women in general who historically haven't had that power and are now in a position in the present day to use the influence they have to create opportunity for other people. And I'm very grateful.

TS: 15:09

Can you say more about Chineke for people who might not be familiar with it?

BR: 15:13

Chineke, founded by Chi Chi Nwanoku, founder of Chineke Orchestra, the first what minority ethnic orchestra in Europe, based in London, and just celebrated their ten years. I was one of the founding members of the orchestra, clarinetist, but I have been playing with them from its inception.

TS: 15:30

Tell us about your new album that you mentioned earlier.

BR: 15:33

So my new album is a solo album just for me and my clarinets. It's titled Black Boy. It's coming out on Orchid Classics. I think it's 76 minutes long of unaccompanied solo clarinet music by black male composers. Its name, Black Boy, is taken from the book by Richard Wright called Black Boy. And it's basically my celebration of black boy joy, which I think is very revolutionary because we don't often get to see black men in the media portrayed as creative and soft and gentle and feeling and emotive and caring. The imagery that's shared oftentimes in media, black men is of aggression, hypersexuality, this absentee father, this image that is always negative. You know, when you look at a TV show and they're they want muscle, they want someone to be a bodyguard. They always get a big black man to play the muscle, the image of power and danger, right?

And this album takes this sort of idea of what a black man is and brings them back to our most it's the period in our life when we're most vulnerable, of course. I mean, we're always vulnerable as black men because you know extrajudicial killings are a thing. But at a period in our life when things are so vulnerable and where things can change for us raising us our adolescence, where we're black boys, right? In our adolescence, this period in our life where we're most vulnerable to society, projections and fears onto our bodies, and takes on a sonic journey of our exploration of our growth and our search for a space, a place, and joy, happiness, the expression of that joy and happiness and all of its multifaceted nature, right? Because black men, black people, we're not a monolith, right? So this album takes that and it takes us this journey. So there's lots of pieces that are soft and gentle, searching, introspective. And there's also some that are just rambunctious and fiery and active and energetic. And it takes us on this journey, just this beautiful tonal journey of my black male experience, the music and that of other black male composers and what they hear in the clarinet. And some of the pieces are written by composers who were writing them at the very beginning of their career. So they have this sort of youthful energy. So in its compositional style, it might feel very sort of elementary. And that's a part of that joy, that discovery. And then it goes to some from composers who are very seasoned, who've been composing for s decades.

BR: 17:54

And my hope is that this music will become a part of the permanent repertoire for clarinetists around the world who are looking to place, you know, solo pieces and are often faced with the same ones. You know, we have Stravinsky and we have Sutermeister and we have Berio and da-da-da. Like when I grew up, when I was studying clarinet, and I've studied clarinet for many years with many different people, I've never been offered and told about an unaccompanied piece by a black male composer ever. And so I wanna put those on an album so people can hear them. And even though it might not be the definitive, you know, performance of the work, it is a performance of the work to give you an idea of what they sound like, what they feel like. And so you can then choose what you want to say because they're open for interpretation, they're open for conversation. So that's what it is. And I'm really I'm excited about it. I'm also a little like nervous because it's a very long album. And I'm sitting here thinking, like, who wants to sit and listen to the 70 plus minutes of clarinet music just with just clarinet?

But maybe there's someone out there who loves new music and is looking for to listen to it. And there's a bonus track that we have coming out for the digital album, which I'm really excited about because it's the only piece for that I've done on the album with bass clarinet. So it's a by a composer named Eric Dolphy. It's his God Bless the Child, based on the song by Billy Holiday. And yeah, so it's it's an exciting album. It's a fun album. It was a huge undertaking just learning the music. It's all solo. So you know you spend time learning the piece and stepping away so it sits with you in your person and grows and germinates. And then coming back to the piece. So I'm trying to give yourself the time to let the piece sort of sit and grow. Some pieces I had to sort of jump in sooner than I wanted to or record them before I felt like I really had the time to just let it live in me because these pieces are big. They're dynamic. So yeah, that's the album.

TS: 19:50

Hmm. I love the way you talk about it. Sounds wonderful. How long has it been in the making? How did you first discover these composers?

BR: 19:58

It's been the making for three years. Started in what, twenty twenty-three. I had the idea because it what happened at that time. We had just come out of COVID. We had just come out of a pandemic. And I had just started around that time studying historical clarinet. And I wanted to then go from this historical perspective into this now very modern perspective with modern music. I wanted to push my technique some more and just have a project to really dig my to dig my teeth in.

And around that time, if I remember correctly, that was around the time we had in Dublin, because I live in Dublin, we had this anti-immigration riot that took place on Thanksgiving. What was it? On November 26th in Dublin City, where they were lighting police cars on fires, trams on fires, buses on fire. And actually, I was at my friend's house who was a black woman from America. I was we always did Thanksgiving together. I was at her house, which is in the city center, literally around the corner from the fires and with where the fires were happening. And I remember getting the news and we're like, my God, what should we do? Like people had a hard time getting across the river because they had shut down because of all the fires. And I was thinking, my gosh, where in the world can we go as black people where we can be safe? You know, where can we go as black as a black man to feel whole and seen and appreciated? And so these thoughts post pandemic, around this time of lots of anti-immigration rhetoric happening in Ireland.

I was like, I need to just do something with them. We are also seeing a huge proliferation because of, you know, the murder of George Floyd, of classical music institutions, symphonies and stuff posting their black squares in solidarity and wanting to do EDI. We're we're gonna do quality, diversity, inclusion now. We're gonna do this. Take it seriously in Ireland as well. And of course, since you know, the current writ change and regime in the US, we've seen those initiatives fall by the wayside with a huge thud.

You know, with very little fanfare. Few of those organizations have mainstreamed it to the point where it was so easy to remove their EDI policy just like that. So how effective that period was, I don't know. But it was around that time where EDI was really picking up, people talking about it. I was like, I want I have something to say about this, and I want to make sure that what I have to say isn't just a fart in the wind, you know, but it has a lasting impact. So around that time I I applied for funding by the to the Arts Council of Ireland to produce this album.

BR: 22:23

And I did. And they they funded it. They gave me the money. Here we are. And I just started doing research. I started looking. I knew some composer, like one composer, Adolf Hillstork, is from Norfolk, Virginia. I knew Eric Dolphy's piece, God Bless the Child. So there's composers I had already heard of. And so then I just started doing more of a search. I just did basic research to look up black male composers and you know, saw who came up and compiled a list and started contacting people about you know, getting the music. I had a a com composer friend in LA, Stefan L. Smith, who I knew wrote a solo piece for clarinet. And it treats the subject of h his recognition and acceptance of his homosexuality and then coming out as a homosexual man and as a black gay man. That was something that resonated with as well. So I wanted to make sure that piece got represented on the album, that sort of thing. So I just did my research and pulled together talking to people and you know, pulled together a list of a pretty long list of stuff. And then I narrowed it down to the bits I wanted.

TS: 23:18

And when is the album gonna come out?

BR: 23:20

So the single is probably coming out October and then the album itself is coming out in February, which is Black History Month of the US.

TS: 23:26

Okay. I read an interview that you gave where you said that classical music needs a better PR team. Absolutely. Why do you think that?

BR: 23:34

I think a couple of reasons. One, if we look at it politically, we have in the US at least, we have political lobbyists who lobby for cars and guns and pesticides and all these things. We have these political lobbyists who are paid large sums to go to politicians and make sure that their agenda stays on the docket is viewed in a certain light and gets done. And so from that perspective, we could use that in classical music and the arts in general, but specifically for each art form so that we are getting the funding we needed and it's sustained and we're it's we have a a political commitment to that kind of work. Second of all, when you look at films and cinema or TV, whenever a a a person in the in a film or in in media wants to mark someone as being sort of stuck up or overly posh or unreachable, unattainable, they always use some classical art form as a marker of that, whether it's going to the opera or enjoying classical music. That's always seen as this left of popular not culturally relevant. you're rich or you're really smart. And it's always sort of seen in a very negative light. It's never like, my God, you love opera. That's great. Let's celebrate that. It's like, you like opera. And they make fun of opera and it's always used as a gag, as the joke. It is always the butt of a joke. Someone's love of classical music or classic music in general is used as the joke while at the same breath celebrating the soundtrack of a a hit film, right, that is predominantly classical music.

Like you love the soundtrack of Harry Potter, but you want to make fun of classical music and don't have any realization that the music you listen to in Harry Potter is played by classical musicians, composed by a classical composer. You know what I mean? Like your cinematic experience would be so much less if it wasn't for that training of those people. And so if we had a PR person that would promote classical music in the same way Paris has gotten the best PR in the world, if we could have that kind of publicity around classical music. Imagine, imagine how effective we would be. But also I think there's a part of classical music, the powers that be, that really enjoy the idea of sovereignty around it, that like the exclusion around it. They like the prestige that comes from being part of that milieu of people, that sort of that sort of echelon of people who go to the symphony and have their season tickets to Bayreuth in the summer and you know the popular opera singers of the day. Like there's a there's a sort of love of that exclusionary practice. I mean, if it didn't exist, we wouldn't have luxury brands, right? Louis Vuitton and Dior wouldn't exist if there weren't a population of people who enjoyed exclusionary items.

So I think we struggle with courting the people that have the funding, who want to maintain that exclusive right to this art form, while also meeting the needs of a population who might not have that same sort of financial resource, right? And at the same time saying that's what we want to do, but courting the people who can fund the work. And that's why we need more governmental funding because we're not able to do that work, particularly in the US, where a lot of our funding model is based on donors, right? We have to keep the donors happy in the US. And so by and large, that means we have to keep it somewhat exclusionary, having their board parties and you know, the up at the top penthouse where they get to meet the artists and hobnob with Renee Fleming or Wynton Marsalis and do that thing, right? They want to do that thing. And at the same time, in the same breath, I'm going, well, we need to make it accessible. You can't have your cake and eat it too. So there needs to be a conversation around what it is we're courting and why do we maintain that sort of aspect. What benefit are we really having? And why are we saying with our mouth one thing, but with our hands doing a completely different thing?

TS: 27:13

So some of the themes that have come up a lot are the gatekeeping and the exclusion. What would it take for things to change?

BR: 27:20

We had this thought in classical music that when the pandemic came and everyone was turning to music and the arts to soothe themselves, that people realized, my God, this is a necessity of life. We need to really invest in this. We want it. We've had hoped that that would have sunk in, but has it sunk in? So we need to have that conversation. We need to have it often and loudly at a very young age, recognize that this is a natural national click. This is a right to art and beauty, and it needs to be funded and needs to be treated as a right and not as a luxury, right? Then we need to understand that in order to get you know, people involved in investing. They need to be able to see themselves in it and not in a tokenistic sort of way. So we need to get those people in those positions of power to have those conversations and not just have tokenistic, you know, role models and places because they look a certain way. And then get good PR, get better PR. Get people who want to talk about classic music talking about it in a loving and beautiful way, you know, and get them doing it loudly in all the political halls and spaces. Get them being the cheerleaders.

And start very young. Start early. Like again, if you treat it as a right, then we won't have to talk about funding it in educational settings and primary schools and play schools and secondary schools because it's a right. And they'd all have access to self-expression through the arts, whether it's drama, dance, poetry, writing, reading, music, you know, whatever. You have a right to self-expression through the arts. You have a right to access to the arts. So then we need to mandate and fund it as a right.

TS: 28:47

How can people learn more about your work? How can they follow you?

BR: 28:51

Well, I have a link tree and my handle is my name, Berginald. So if you go to LinkTree or L-I-N-K-T-R dot E forward slash Berginald, B-E-R-G-I-N-A-L-D. You can find all of my socials and information there. I'm on Instagram at Bergique, B-E-R-G-I-Q-U-E. And a lot of my other handles have that same name as well. I have my own website, which is my name, Birgin Rash dot com. All you really have to do is just Google Berginald and I will be there. Very easy to find.

TS: 29:21

Okay. Well, Berginald, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been really great speaking with you.

BR: 29:26

Thank you for having me.

TS: 29:34

Thanks for joining me on this episode of Made for Us. I've included links in the show notes if you'd like to learn more about Berginald or about Classically Black. If you know someone who'd enjoy this episode, please text it to them. And if you'd like to support the show and help others discover it, please take a moment to leave a rating or review wherever you're listening. I'm Tosin Sulaiman. See you next time.