[Opening theme music]

[Diane:] Hello, and welcome to this episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation. My name is Diane Kolin. This series presents artists, academics, and project leaders who dedicate their time and energy to a better accessibility for people with disabilities in the arts. You can find more of these conversations on our website, artsably.com, which is spelled A-R-T-S-A-B-L-Y dot com.

[Theme music]

Today, Artsably is in conversation with Alexia McLean, a saxophonist, an educator, and a disability
rights advocate from Houston, Texas. You can find the resources mentioned by Alexia McLean during this episode on ArtsAbly's website in the blog section.

[Excerpt of Ray by Jenni Watson, performed by Alexia McLean at the saxophone]

[End of the excerpt]

[Diane:] Welcome to this new episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation. Today, I am with Alexia McLean, who is a saxophonist, an educator, and a disability rights advocate from Houston, Texas. Welcome, Alexia.

[Alexia:] Thank you so much, Diane, for having me. I'm excited to be here. As you've already indicated, my name is Alexia McLean. I'm a disabled musician, woodwind specialist, and a passionate arts educator, especially now with disability rights accessibility. I use she/her pronouns. I'm joining you from my home office in Texas. Just a quick introduction about me. My background weaves together performance, education, arts administration altogether. I taught students from across K through 12 and beyond, to be honest. College, community program, serving in roles from private woodmen instructors to elementary music teachers to band clinician. It feels like I've done everything under the sun at this point. My career path has taken me from higher education, music admissions to concert stages to classrooms across that K through 12 spectrum. I bring all those experiences of how I advocate for inclusion, creative agency, and equity in the arts. I think that's really important. I think that'll also be a good segue into what I'm doing right now, artistically and professionally. Right I'm wrapping up my year as an elementary music teacher in Houston, Texas, where I have worked with students from kindergarten all the way through fifth grade. I teach a different grade every class, and, woof, that was a learning curve at first, that's for sure. I had done quite a few performances with them so far, and it's been such a gratifying experience. I did a holiday concert with my third to fifth graders this past December. I actually I just did a community performance this past weekend with my fifth graders, where they got to play on a community stage in front of people they've never met before, which to us sounds like a norm, but to them was a new experience. They got to play ukulele, and they got to sing Stand by Me by Ben King, which also was a new song to them. Got to teach them the oldies but goodies. I'm also currently working on a spring musical with my kindergarten through second grade. That is coming up next Thursday. I am in a whirlwind of finishing things up. I think like every single educator in probably all over, we are very much looking forward to the summer because things are just wrapping up very quickly. Outside the classroom, I currently serve as the Director of Mentorship for the North American Saxophone Alliances Committee on Gender Equity. In that role, I coordinate professional development, community building, one-on-one mentoring for emerging artists across the United States and in Canada. Artistically, I am continuing to perform and teach privately with a focus on woodwind instruction. I'm trying to lean more into collaborative creative projects to highlight accessibility and inclusion in music,
but it's also just a really nice opportunity to play, too.

[Diane:] That's a lot of things.

[Alexia:] I know. It's just a lot of... It's like, let's talk about me in under 90 seconds, right?

[Diane:] Well, let's go back to the beginning. What made you start saxophone?

[Alexia:] What made me start saxophone? Oh, my gosh. Well, that is a really fun story. When I was in sixth grade, there was a surplus of extra sixth graders at my middle school that I was at. I'm originally from Orlando, Florida, so I've lived in quite a few different places by now. While in Orlando, Florida, started sixth grade. Wasn't I'm not really sure what my interests were. I was involved in different things like cheerleading and stuff like that, but still trying to figure out who I was. There was a lot of extra sixth graders at my school, so they developed a music appreciation class that the band director had to teach, and I was put into that class. I guess I don't really remember much about it, but this is what my band director tells me. We still talk. He said I learned how to read music very quickly, much quicker than he anticipated a sixth grader that didn't demonstrate initial interest in music. I think I learned how to read music in a month or something like that and just was very interested. We did a lot of listening to different things and identifying what we were listening to. I eventually became his helper in class where I would help other students with their theory homework. At the end of the year, he went up to me and was like, You're joining band next year. It wasn't even a negotiable conversation. It was like, This is what you're doing next year, and you're going to have a grand old time doing it. I was nervous, but I said, Okay, let's try something new. When he asked me what instruments I was interested in, saxophone came to mind because my dad always really enjoyed listening to jazz. He always played Dexter Gordon and John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. He also really enjoyed Kenny G, too, and let's be real, we do I appreciate Kenny G for making the saxophone as popular as it is. I know he gets some disdain from saxophonists in my community, but that introduced me to saxophone and what it was. I thought it was a really cool instrument. I wanted to do it. My band director told me, Well, you're going to play clarinet for a year. So I played clarinet for a year and then transitioned into saxophone, my eighth grade year of band. And by then, oh, my goodness, I fell in love with the instrument. It was just... There was something about it that just brought me so much joy every single time I got to pull the instrument out and put it to my face and playing through it. It was a very cathartic experience for me. So it was almost like a no-brainer pursuing it in high school marching band. Then moving on into college really quickly, I initially thought that I wanted to pursue music for the rest of my life, but I was convinced otherwise to start doing something else because music isn't career, quote, unquote. I started psychology, and I hated it. I was a semester in, and I was like, I can't do this. I miss playing my saxophone. I miss talking about music. I miss talking to other people about music. I was hanging around the music majors a lot at my school and helping them with their theory homework. They would all look at me like, Alexia, why aren't you a music major? We're really confused right now. That got me thinking, it's like, Okay, well, now I need to make these decisions for me instead of just listening to what other people think I should be doing with my life. Second semester, switched it right on in music, and I think the rest is history from there.

[Diane:] I think one of the things we... I'm also a voice teacher, and I think we have that in common between teachers that one or several great teachers in our career really set us on track. As teachers today, we think of these people. Isn't that true?

[Alexia:] It is so true. It's funny you mentioned that, and what I forgot to mention in my quick history story about my saxophone origins. That middle school band director was my first private saxophone professor in college. It was a full circle moment for me. It was incredible to see that shift for us. And yes, even now when I work with students, because like I said, I teach all across the spectrum, K to 12, college, community, students. And if I could be that person, that that band director was for me for one person. I think you can agree with this, too, Diane, that music has brought such joy in our lives and has changed us for the better. And we feel like we're really making this positive impact in our communities. We want to share the love. We want to pass it forward, if you will.

[Diane:] Totally.

[Alexia:] Yeah, absolutely.

[Diane:] So, from this path, then you finish your studies, and then there is a point where you say, I need to become a teacher. I want to pass it on. I want to be this impact person. When was this moment for you?

[Alexia:] I think it halfway through my undergrad career. I got this job. I was working on my undergrad in saxophone performance at the University of North Florida. Out there, there's this private school known as the Episcopal School of Jacksonville. My saxophone professor reached out to me at the time and said, Hey, they're looking for a saxophone adjunct instructor. I think you would be really great at this. I was nervous because I never taught before. I was like, Sure, I'll try it, see if I like it. And I went to it. I taught my very first sectional. And even before going in, I went to my professor, pen and paper, I was like, what do I do? What do I do when they walk in? What do I do? How do I warm them up? How do I get them to play? I was like, I don't know what to do. They're giving me 45 minutes to work with these 20 students, and I have no idea what to do with them. And he helped me to develop a whole plan from start to finish. And then I remember after to that very first sectional, a student went up to me and she said, Hey, do you teach privately? And I lied. And I said, Yes. And she said, Can you be my teacher? And I said, Sure, let's do it. And then I went back to the same professor after it. I was like, What do I do? How do I get lessons? How do I do this? And I was so nervous because I was so afraid of failing. But looking back on it now, it was such an amazing experience because it showed me whenever that student gets that aha moment or that student gets that part right the first time or they can't play altissimo, all of a sudden it clicks for them because of the way I taught them how to do it. Just the happiness that it brought me of, Oh, my gosh, I just helped this student was amazing. And as I continued to teach, I went on and did my master's, and I continued. So I started developing my private lessons studio. I was teaching about 30 to 35 students a week while working on my master's, which was a little crazy, looking back on it now. Don't know how I did that, but I did. I was going to several different high schools and middle schools in the Baton Rouge area when I wasn't in class or wasn't in rehearsal, going to those schools, working with those students. And that really jump started like, okay, I love doing this. This is something I'm really passionate about. I love getting students excited about the saxophone. I love getting students feeling like they're getting from point A to point B. Something I struggled with a lot when I was working on playing in high school, I couldn't afford lessons. My family couldn't afford the lessons as much as I wanted to. And I totally understand why, because there is a cost associated with doing that thing. But I felt like I was falling so far behind all of my peers, and it made me feel very inferior to them. And they never intended to act that way towards me, but they were at this whole new level that I couldn't even comprehend, and I wanted to see what I could do to get there. When I was becoming that teacher for that person and helping them get to those levels, and not just about playing an instrument, but about character development, giving them leadership opportunities, getting a student feeling more comfortable speaking in front of an audience, just those kinds of things that are so inherently woven into everything we do as musicians, that was the turning point for me of like, oh, my gosh, I can change people's lives doing this thing. And it was very, very exciting. So I love doing it. And even today, as a quick example, I'm working on that spring musical with my K to second graders, and I have a second grader. There's some speaking roles in the musical. They're very small, and they're cute, like Dr. Seuss-esque, rhyming things. And I had a second grader just get total stage fright and started crying. And I had to pull him aside and talk him through it and said, This feeling is normal. You're going to be okay. I believe in you, all of those things, because he was the one that came up to me and said, Ms. McLean, I want to have a role, but I'm so nervous going on stage. I told him, I will help you get there because I was that shy kid who was afraid to talk to anyone. I want to be able to help those students blossom out of their shell and really grow into themselves.

[Diane:] Today, you do that also at university level with the ADI committees and things like that. Can you talk about that role?

[Alexia:] Yeah, absolutely. I mentioned I'm the Director of Mentorship for the NASA's Committee on Gender Equity. NASA is short for not space. North American Saxophone Alliance. We have a very clearly matching acronym. I really do enjoy the work that I do with diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. Something that I was quickly figuring through my college years, and especially as I was starting to navigate my new disability, is that I am very much in the minority population. There's not a lot of representation, one, of female identifying saxophonists, and two, of disabled identifying artists, and I couldn't find my community. So I definitely felt isolated a lot in those aspects of my college experience. While I was working on my undergrad, it was definitely a boys club, if you will. I was one of the few women in my studio that was playing saxophone. And there were some troubling times with that. And I know that a lot of people in my shoes can share some stories with that. But I think what it taught me is something had to change, something had to give. And I always tried to change something into an inspirational moment for myself because I want to be able to become a better version of myself. And also, again, that whole idea of paying it forward. So I started to involve my efforts into gender equity-esque things. So the North American Saxophone Alliance first started this committee. It was known as the Committee on the Status of Women, and they started it, I think, 2016, 2017? No, maybe it was 2018. It hasn't even been in existence for 10 years. They wanted to address this very issue of the lack of female identifying or non-binary identifying saxophonists. What can we do to get there? I fill out a volunteer form immediately and I was like, I want to be a part of this. I don't know how, I don't know what skill sets I can provide you to help you reach our goal, but I want to be a part of this because I think I found my community. I surely did. Meeting with these women and these non-binary saxophonists who are doing these amazing things all over North America was so inspiring, and I wanted to become a part of that. When I shifted my role into actually becoming a committee member, which was this past year, I was very excited when I got the call to be offered to lead the mentorship program because everything the mentorship program is - everything that they stand for is just everything I believe in, wanting to support those emerging artists, wanting to give the support that maybe they don't have in their immediate communities, whether it's within their immediate college circle or beyond that, and giving them a vehicle to be able to figure out what their strengths are, what their passions are, what do they want to do with the work that they're doing? Because I think we, as musicians, are quickly realizing that as much as we would love to all be paid full-time to only do our performances, we just don't live in that world anymore. There's definitely an influx of musicians that are amazing, but it's hard. We also need the folks like ourselves to be able to advocate for those who maybe not be able to advocate for themselves. Doing that has gotten me thinking a lot about just the landscape of what music looks like for us, what musicians career fields look like. When I first got out of college, and I'm just backtracking a little bit, but I did my first job at LSU as their School of Music Admissions Recruiter. Basically, my job was to be the person talking to the parents and saying, yes, your child can do a degree in music. This is a very much doable thing. Yes, There is a job market. The starving musician stereotype is just it's not an accurate representation of our job market. I remember one mom, specifically, went up to me at a fair, and she said something along the lines of, Can you please convince my child to not do a degree in music. She needs to be a doctor. She needs to make money. I was so shocked that she was so blunt about it. I tried really hard to combat that and say No, I don't think that's the case. I'm actually a professional
musician myself. But the mom was having none of it. She was like, No, what you're saying is not true, and all of that. So it got me thinking about, Well, why does this mom feel this way? We always make the joke about the starving musician, and we always joke about how we had to find 32 gigs to be able to pay our rent. But why is that the case? Is it us? Is it the job market? Is it the general public? Is it a combination thereof? I started to do some research on my part. The unemployment rates, and it's been a while since I've checked, this is pre-COVID. I would be interested to look at the data if it's changed since COVID has hit. But pre-COVID, when I initially looked at the data, the unemployment rate for musicians was 3%. It was very low. The highest percentage of unemployment rates was actually engineer majors. The major that everyone was being told to go and pursue was one of the highest unemployment rates. Now, underemployment, totally different story. The unemployment rate is quite high for musicians, which actually got me thinking, too, well, why is that the case? Are we just not educating the general public enough about the work we do and why it's important? I think the combination of those two things really dove me into the work that I do, because when I was going through college, my experience was very much teach, perform, or nothing. There's no room for arts administration. There's no room for arts advocacy. There's no room for anything else but these two things. I think that's been... We've been putting our foot in our own mouths for quite some time saying that these are the only two available career paths because now we have this influx issue and the lack of support in other areas where we could be really beneficial working in a studio or working in an office that knows how to run a festival. The festival that I was mentioning that I did this past weekend, they told us they had keyboards. They were toy keyboards. They were not real ones. Just that knowledge. If there was a musician on site, a lot of that would have been fixed. I think we need to give ourselves more credit than we are a lot of the time.

[Diane:] For sure. I would like to go back to your performer career now. As a performer, you also did a lot of very interesting things. Can you talk about that a bit?

[Alexia:] Yeah, definitely. As a performer, I found myself really drawn to music that had meaning, if you will. Not that pieces of music don't have meaning, but the pieces that had a really big meaning. Something I was drawn to. I was always drawn to what the story was behind something. The first one that exposed me to that was Jacob ter Veldhuis, if I'm saying his last name correctly, also known as JacobTV. He's well known for composing music with backing tracks, so like electronic music. The first one that I was exposed to during my grad degree was Grab It by JacobTV. If you don't know anything about the piece or anyone who's listening to the podcast doesn't know, I'll give a quick snippet of what it's about. It's for a tenor saxophone with boombox. The boombox is playing recordings of JacobTV's interviews with prisoners that are serving life sentences and talking to them about what their experience is like in prison, what do they value in their lives. What a lot of these prisoners were saying a lot of the time is you got to grab life because you don't know when you're going to lose it. You don't know if tomorrow is going to come, all of these things. These things that sound so cliché to us, but to someone like those individuals that got their freedom taken away or they couldn't have not their freedom anymore for various reasons and have to think differently. They have to shift their perspective. Because at the very beginning, when you listen to this piece of music, you hear a lot of cursing and the F-bomb is being dropped here and there. A lot of people tend to give, Oh, goodness, I just lost the word. They give less worth to the piece because of it when they initially listen to it because it's like, Oh, there's cursing in it. I don't like it. When in reality, it's just to really represent the of what these prisoners are trying to express. It's a very cool piece of music. I performed it at a NASA conference in, I think, Mississippi in 2019 or something like that. That was my first performance of something I felt really connected to because I always find that when you go through these life experiences, it gets you to think about life differently, which I think is definitely a huge proponent of how I feel when it comes to the disability that I had to start navigating a couple of years ago. That was really the jumpstart for my love for electronic music. I started diving into that a lot more, finding different performance opportunities there. And then fast forward to starting to work in my arts administration work, I stopped playing. I totally kicked myself in the butt for that because I got busy with my full-time job. And I was like, Oh, it's okay. The saxophone's over there, I'll play it later. And then COVID hit, and we were all forced to be at home forever, or it feels like forever, right? And I was constantly working because I was working from home. And I think with a lot of other individuals across the world were finding themselves quickly burned out. So I needed to find a better way to dive my energy into this. So I started doing multitrack videos. And I know those are a lot of what people see when they look at my YouTube channel, it's like, Whoa, this is different. And the reason I started doing that is, one, I wanted a creative outlet, and two, there's something so incredibly nostalgic and amazing about video game music and TV show music that I used to watch when I was a kid or used to play when I was a kid. There's something about it that just brings me such joy. It's almost like the nostalgic feeling. I think it's called "frusion", if I remember correctly, that you get whenever you're listening to something that reminds you of a beloved childhood memory. I started doing that and it got some traction and people were really liking it. I was also thinking about it from the lens of, well, there's so much content out there online now, good and bad. Why don't I put out some stuff out there of a really cool way that a saxophone can sound? Because the saxophone is such a versatile instrument. I started making more. People were loving it. Now, I haven't made them quite some time because I've been moving a lot and also navigating new life events. But my plan is once we move into our forever home, which we're hoping will be in the next 6-8 months, that we can rebuild our studio and then I can start recording again. But I really enjoyed that. Also, what I love about those videos is it's out there forever now. It's official video. It also taught me a lot about video editing and mixing and mastering my music. Oh, my goodness, we do not give enough credit to those audio engineers and those video editors. That is not easy to do, especially when I was doing it by myself. And I was giving myself a deadline of like, Okay, I'm going to post a video every week. That was... It was finding the song, arranging it to be a saxophone quartet, playing it, recording myself, being happy with my recordings, and then playing against myself, which is a lot harder than it sounds because you're playing that one track and then you have to get them all to match up. Then mixing, mastering it, then videoing myself it, and then advertising. It's crazy. Now I understand why people have managers to handle all of those things.

[Diane:] Wow, yes. That's the amazing thing is that these covers, actually from this COVID time, we all found ways to be creative in these times that were really challenging.

[Alexia:] Absolutely.

[Diane:] Yeah, it's a good trace of whatever we were able to do during these times.

[Alexia:] Yeah, I know. Yeah, absolutely.

[Diane:] Okay, so I wanted to ask you about some projects that you might do right now. Do you have specific projects that you want to highlight?

[Alexia:] Yes, absolutely. I'm very excited to share a meaningful project that I'm currently working on right now is a commission of a saxophone piece with Electronics with the composer, Jenni Watson. She currently lives in the UK. She's also a saxophone player and a composer that's becoming pretty well known in the saxophone and woodwind community. Together, we are working on creating a new piece of music that reflects my experience navigating a new disability, being in and out of the hospital in 2023, navigating medical trauma, chronic pain, finding a diagnosis, navigating just all of those things. It's a very personal work. It's grounded in those themes of medical trauma, chronic pain, resilience and transformation. Just to give a very quick synopsis of that story, I was navigating some underlying issues that I didn't know about, and I had COVID, and COVID exacerbated those issues and accelerated them. I woke up one day and my bones died in my legs. So I had to get rushed to the hospital, and it took over seven months to get a diagnosis because of medical gaslighting, doctors just not believing me, getting bounced around from one medical specialist to the next. I mean, just like the epitome of our good old United States health care system. And then I finally had to make the decision for myself to go to the Mayo Clinic. They were able to diagnose me and schedule a surgery, really a life-saving surgery for me within six hours of me being at this hospital. Got the surgery done, and I had to learn how to walk again. It was a bilateral knee surgery. I had to learn how to stand up, sit down, go up the stairs, all of those things that we often take for granted. And so this commission isn't just about telling my story, although that's a very cathartic part of the process for me. It's also about opening a space for a dialog on how our bodies shape our identities as artists because we can't be an artist without being ourselves. I think sometimes people lose sight of that. I think that's why musicians also struggle with personal identity because we put so much of our identity into our artistry that we sometimes have a tough time finding that good balance. My hope is that it resonates with musicians and non-musicians and just listeners of all facets who don't often see themselves reflected in music, shaped by health challenges or disabilities. So I'm really excited to premiere it and perform it in a way to both advocate and connect with different communities. We've even talked about trying to get it connected to the podcast that had nothing to do with music and everything to do with medical trauma and things like that, just because what I navigated in 2023 was something I never thought I would navigate. And now that I have answers and I'm moving towards a place of figuring out my new identity as myself as an artist and everything like that, I wish that I had a community that, or at least had others that I could identify with that could help me better navigate it because I was treading such uncharted territory for a very long time. And it turned out that I had this super rare thing that's only supposed to happen to cancer patients and all of that. So whenever you're navigating a disability that is rare, and rare enough to where, I make a joke about this sometimes, where it's actually a true story. The Mayo Clinic took pictures and videos of the inside of my legs during my surgery to use for their medical research because of the disease or the disorder that I'm navigating is totally new territory for post-COVID patients. So I get to be part of research. Yay! But just working towards a space where we could have an open dialog about this, because something I was mentioning, we were talking about before the podcast started is I had to start using mobility aids, and I was so ashamed of it. I was so incredibly ashamed of needing to use a rollator, needing to use a cane to get from point A to point B because of the way people looked at me. People look at me funny because I don't look like the "person," whatever that person is supposed to look like using a rollator. I don't look like that person that the general stereotype things. Whenever people see someone with a rollator, they typically imagine, stereotypically, an older individual needing to use it. I just didn't fit that bill. That confused a lot of people. People were quite judgmental. People even said some things under their breath, to my face, all of the above. It made me very ashamed. If you take a very close look at some past pictures of me, you'll see canes and rollators hiding in the backgrounds of my pictures because I was afraid to show people that this is something that helps me to live my life better. A lot of people tend to view mobility aids as a hindrance. Like, Oh, I'm so sorry, you need that. It's like, No, I'm so glad that I can use this because now I can walk farther or I can go and enjoy this thing. I think just opening up that dialog and trying to start to move past a place where we can talk about the issues and challenges that ableism presents on society and presents on who we are as artists, because there's definitely not enough representation there. If my commission can do that, that would bring me so much joy.

[Diane:] When will that be performed?

[Alexia:] Oh, goodness. Hopefully, looking at the end of 2025, early 2026.

[Diane:] Okay, good.

[Alexia:] Yeah. So stay tuned.

[Diane:] Speaking of community, we are both part of a community of professional musicians with disabilities, RAMPD. When did you discover RAMPD and what made you apply and collaborate with this organization?

[Alexia:] I love RAMPD. When did I find them? I think it was towards the... It was definitely after my surgery. I think that's when I was trying to seek a community. I started following a lot of disability advocates on Instagram because I just wanted to find a sense of comfort in whatever I was navigating that I wasn't the only person dealing with it. But there was always that disconnect of, well, all of these disability advocates, they are amazing. And they're very open and talking about whenever they have to deal with ableism and things like that or just dealing with a new symptom or dealing with a new doctor. But what I kept falling short on was the lack of, Well, none of these disability advocates are artists. And I want to find that connection with someone. So I think it was - I was Google searching "disabled artist" or something like that, and RAMPD popped up on my thing, and I made myself a profile and I was like, you know what? This seems like a really cool thing. And I think is his name Alex? Is he the operations officer or coordinator?

[Diane:] Arthur.

[Alexia:] Arthur! Thank you. Sorry, Arthur, if you're listening. Arthur reached out to me and said, Hey, I would love to chat with you, have a conversation with you. And he was so awesome to talk to. Definitely made me feel like I belonged, gave me a sense of belonging, talked to me about everything RAMPD was doing, and talked to me about why they believe it was important. I found a sense of community. And ever since joining that, I got to meet you and some other composers that I started collaborating with. So there's this one composer that I started collaborating with. I believe they live somewhere in Europe, or maybe it was the UK, if I remember correctly, and just doing collaborations on that. So it's just it's such a great way to meet new musicians and artists and just having something to connect over. Again, finding your community is incredibly difficult at its best, and I don't think we are at its best when it comes to a disabled artist community. I mean, it was really difficult to try to find something. And then once I found RAMPD, I was like, Okay, I think I found a community that I could really relate to.

[Diane:] This is a good segue to my next question, which is about the representation of disability in disability culture and why it is important. You already replied a little bit to this question, but what is it for you to work in an environment that promotes accessibility in the arts and in disability culture?

[Alexia:] Absolutely. This is something I think about quite a bit, but thinking about this question in specifics, it definitely caused me to do some deep diving of reflection upon myself on what it means to me. With the arts, accessibility in the arts, I think, is more about developing accessible - the blue handicap sign and ramps and closed captions and having an ASL interpreter. I think it means more than that. I think it's about creating systems, expectations, changing stereotypes and that makes participation possible for everyone, from students to performers to administrators, regardless of ability. Disability culture, I think, is really... It's funny because when I first started navigating this disability, again, I think a lot of the same emotions that people deal with is feeling shame and all of those kinds of things. But disability culture should really be about embracing your creativity, adaptability, and deep insight that comes from navigating the world differently. It definitely causes you to see the world a little differently. It's also not about being forced to separate my identity either. I'm a disabled person, I'm an artist, I'm both. It's all within myself, right? I think my lived experiences actually helps to level up my teaching ability, my performance ability, my leadership ability, because I look at life through a different lens now. When we build art spaces where disability is recognized as a valuable perspective, not a deficit, because I think that's something that folks are still having a tough time navigating. We can open the door to such a much more creative and vibrant ecosystem. Something that RAMPD, which I'm sure you already know about talking about literally creating that ramp at the Grammys, so that way performers, regardless of ability of walking up and down the stairs, can go on the stage at the same capacity as everyone else. Things that you didn't even realize were needed until you needed to have that access. I think those kinds of things are what we need to conversate more about.

[Diane:] Definitely.

[Laughs.]

[Alexia:] Absolutely.

[Diane:] I have a last question, which is about people who might have counted in your career or have showed you some paths that you are right now using. If you had to think of someone who motivated or counted in this path of yours, who would it be and why?

[Alexia:] Oh, goodness. There's so many people! I know this sounds a little cliché or cheesy, but I'm going to have to give a quick shout out to my husband, Sean McLean. He is a full-time percussionist, so he's a musician as well, so he understands the ins outs of the music community and everything like that. And he has been with me every single step of the way, whether it was taking me to doctor's appointments or helping me to figure out how to better advocate for myself or helping me to figure out what career pathway is the right fit for me. I think your significant other, your life partner, knows you better than yourself sometimes. So I'm very grateful for his support because a lot of what he and I have done together, I think is a testament to that and that support, because when you navigate new challenges in your life, you need someone to have that immediate support towards. Shifting on to a more specific artist, a disabled artist, I think I have to say Lachi. Lachi, excuse me. She, if you don't know her, she is the founder of RAMPD. Diane and I keep talking about RAMPD, and RAMPD is Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities. She was the founder. While I never really have spoken with her directly, the minute I discovered who she was, I felt instantly inspired and instantly like, Oh, my gosh, there is a space for us. There is a space for disabled artists to thrive, not just exist, but thrive. She is a powerhouse. Oh, my goodness. She is a musician, disability advocate. Her visibility and leadership, I think, not only opened doors, but shifted the conversation around accessibility and representation in the music industry. Seeing someone so unapologetically herself, leading with disability pride while leading systematic change, oh, my gosh. It's inspired me and made me realize, not only is there room for us, but make room for us, please. Here we are. Just having that confidence in ourselves of who we are that we don't have to compromise our authenticity in our space to create an impact. I'm really grateful for her work in that. Even though I've never have personally had a conversation with her, I've seen her do talks and performances and stuff. It's inspiring. It's breathtaking, honestly, to see the work that she does.

[Diane:] Well, the story that launched RAMPD is that... I know her from before RAMPD.

[Alexia:] Oh, my goodness.

[Diane:] When she started talking about conversations with the Grammy Awards, about accessibility and inclusion. Then she realized - she put some people together, and she's the cofounder, actually, because Gaelynn Lea was also in that pack that founded RAMPD at the very beginning. They both realized that when people wanted to meet artists with disabilities, they didn't know where to go. As you say, because of the lack of representation, and they were talking about it very well, we couldn't find anything. They did a talk for the Grammys or for the Recording Academy. At the end, the person says, Oh, yeah, sure. We are going to contact you back, and then we continue the conversation. Who is we? I mean, there is this musician, this musician, this musician. There is no we. We don't have an ensemble. We don't have an association. We don't have a coalition. We should create that. They were both very, very excited about the fact that we needed to create that, and that's when it started RAMPD. She's always been very verbal and... and here present in the room. When she's present in the room, she is not unnoticed. Everybody's turning the eyes toward her direction, and then she glows. I mean, really like her cane. She uses a glow cane. That's exactly it.

[Alexia:] I saw that. That is amazing.

[Diane:] It matches her personality, really. So, yeah, she's amazing.

[Alexia:] Yeah, she's really wonderful. I'm very grateful for how authentic she is about herself because I think authenticity is something that musicians sometimes struggle with. I feel like a lot of times when we try to represent ourselves outwardly, whether it's online or in a presentation or even in a conversation like this, I feel like a lot of times we try to act how we think we should act instead of just being the best versions of ourselves.

[Diane:] Yeah, we should be the best version of ourselves.

[Alexia:] We are all different and important, and we all have something to contribute. There's no need for all of us to try to act like the same entity that we think we need to be. The world is constantly changing. I think disability has changed the way I move through the world, but I think it's also deepened my commitment to inclusion and given me new tools for connection and resilience. I want to continue to build those communities where people can feel seen and not in spite of their differences, but because of them. That's why, going back to Lachi, it's amazing to see the work that she does. When it's something as simplistic as, Hey, check out this amazing outfit that I'm wearing at this awards ceremony. I don't remember what she posted recently, what she was at, but I was like, Oh, my gosh, that dress, everything just from head to toe, just amazing. Like you said, when she walks in a room, everyone looks, she's there. Everyone knows she's there.

[Diane:] You know, this kind of advocacy for musicians with disabilities today, it's really important, especially now. Especially now that we live in that world where we look at each other and say, How did that happen?

[Alexia:] Yeah. And we look at such a digital world now that we might as well just take this and run with it. Start to put onto paper, literally and figuratively, that this is the pathway we want to go in.

[Diane:] Well, thank you so much for this lovely conversation. It was really interesting.

[Alexia:] Thank you.

[Diane:] Yeah, I think we will see each other at another RAMPD event sometimes.

[Alexia:] Absolutely. Many, many coming forward. But thank you so much for having me. I'm really grateful for this space to share my journey as all of the above, musician, educator, advocate, navigating a disability. If I could leave a quick message to those listening is that we don't have to separate our artistry from our advocacy. They can coexist. They could feed on each other and can inherently make our work much more powerful. I'm excited to keep learning and collaborating and pushing towards a better version of myself, whatever that looks like, and I hope that others can do the same. Again, thank you so much for having me, Diane. It was a pleasure.

[Diane:] Thank you so much, and see you soon.

[Closing theme music]