Posted by Bill on July 05, 2000 at 08:13:43:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: popularizing the tuba posted by Rick on July 04, 2000 at 23:47:32:
Rick,
How nice to have a response from you without resort to invective. To answer
your questions, I have been in Utah, working as a tubist and observing and I
have been in several midwestern states as a teacher and clinician, as well as
3 Canadian provinces and Mexico. I am an old man; I have been around. Now,
I did not say that the stereotype was a racial thing. I said that there was
an observable dichotomy that I have never seen anywhere except in the 5
southern states I have worked in (and all of these are south of the Mason
Dixon line, four touch the Atlantic). As I mentioned before, I grew up much
farther south on this continent than I now live and much farther west. The
observable point I make was the differences in playing style and the resort
to labling any criticism of these styles as "racist." I am NOT saying that
any particular skin color or ethnic group is solely to blame. My observations are
that every group has members who call criticism racist. I have not seen
this in any other part of this continent where I have worked in the
last 50 years. I have not lived or worked in New England so I may be
missing a piece of the puzzle there. The issue becomes important when kids
are encouraged to play in a manner that causes then to faint or at a lower
level of performce than they are otherwise capable. This ain't good, right?
In popularizing the tuba, we can display a high standard for everyone, right?