Antonio and Neil

Rebekah Wilson: Hi, Antonio, Neil. Thank you so much for making the time to join today.

Antonio: Thanks for the invitation.

Neil: Yeah.

Rebekah Wilson: It's something of a reunion with this anniversary that we're having here, this 20 years of Source Elements. Over the last 10, 15 years. I've told so many people your story. It really affected me. And you were one of the first to use Source-Connect in a different way that it was made for.

Thank you so much, for what we were about to share the story here that has been really instrumental to me in my development as a musician and composer as well.

Antonio: Thank you. And I should say that your calm voice from those years back in 2012 and on leading us through various technical challenges was a huge part of getting us through the learning curve and making the best use of Source-Connect. So we're grateful.

Rebekah Wilson: Glad to hear it. How did you both meet? The University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban South Africa is quite far from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.

Antonio: There was an opportunity at my university back in 2011, where they came out with a grant where faculty at VCU could create some sort of project with a sister city university elsewhere in the world. VCU had a sister city relationship with about a dozen institutions of higher learning, and one of them was UKZN.

And I looked at it and I recognized its existence as a jazz school also because I had done some research and some articles previously involved with the predecessor, Neil's mentor, Darius Brubeck, son of Dave Brubeck, who had established the jazz program there. So I reached out to Neil and said, I got a crazy idea.

How about we try something? You wanna fill in some blanks as to how we met in that way?

Neil: From what I remember when you reached out all those years ago, it was also Zim [Ngquawana], who was also one of various students, one of our leading alumni who became an international jazz illuminary.

Sadly late now, he was also one of the people that connected us because he had spent time in the USA, had studied there and traveled all over the world, but Tony had known him previously as well. So that was all the other connection to UKZN.

Antonio: I am glad you brought that to light and Zim [Ngquawana], I tried to do the Zulu Click, which I can't do well, but Zim, I had hosted Zim twice and I knew him to be an alumnus of UKZN. And so he was a nice liaison in that he spoke highly of me to Neil and very highly of Neil back to me. And we trusted each other from a very early stage.

Rebekah Wilson: What was the initial sort of idea of the program?

Antonio: While I formed a thought before I contacted Neil, I very much wanted Neil's input; and he helped shape the continuing evolution of the thought. But the grant, the idea of the grant, was to bring together the students and faculty from these two continents to talk about to use music as a means to talk and share about racism, healing, and progress in our two cities and our two countries, because Richmond, as you may know, Rebekah, even though you're not in the United States, was the capital of the Confederacy back in the day of the Civil War and very much pro-slavery and Durban, South Africa in 1959 in particular, was where the Durban System of segregation came to light and oppression. That later became a model for South Africa's Apartheid policy. So I thought if we can get our students and faculty together to study about each other's cultures and learn and write music maybe for each other, and bond and travel to each other's countries and learn about the mistakes we've made as a country and as individuals and what progress we're trying to make in the future, maybe we can also create some incredible musical opportunities for ourselves and for our audiences and bring our communities together. And so I brought that hare-brained idea to Neil, I think maybe first in a quick email and then started talking and he was able to expand it in a lot of ways before it first came to light in, I guess it was July, 2012. So Neil, in terms of the idea behind this?

Neil: The other thing you also brought, Tony, was the theme of a bridge to greater understanding. And that was such a beautiful theme because it is something that connected us in terms of trying to know more about each other in terms of our histories that were similar in many respects, but also just the idea of communication and conversation.

It's really the only way that you can bridge people and, and it's interesting also because I don't think at that stage he had envisaged at that point that Source-Connect was going to be part of this bridge because I didn't know that at that point. But I must say in terms of our proceeding with the work, when it did come into play , it really was a vital ingredient in us being able to work with each other, especially across such a significant geographical distance.

Antonio: It's funny because bridge is a term that's used in audio software quite a bit and Source-Connect. And so I had used this idea of jazz as a bridge to create an understanding, and we hit fairly early on in the idea that Neil would choose some composers and I would choose some composers from our students and faculty, and we'd pay them a small honorarium to write music for each other.

So I'd write music for the South Africans to learn and perform, and my students would write similarly, and Neil and his students would write music for myself and our students to perform. And we knew that it was going to be an other-worldly experience. And so we would write music and send it over to South Africa and they would try to rehearse it and they would send us music and we would try to rehearse it. And we knew, my students and I were like this, "we're playing this as well as we can, but it doesn't sound anything like what they have in mind."

And so the idea behind Source-Connect, which our mutual friend and our colleague, Carlos Chafin, our studio studio owner over at VCU/In Your Ear studios, he brought Source-Connect to my attention as a possibility because ISDN lines would've been very expensive. And so we were able to bridge this gap by having my VCU Jazz students in a band room at 8:30 in the morning.

And maybe it was 2:30 or 3 in the afternoon for the South African students and faculty, and we could play the music for each other and get opinions immediately, as opposed to sending an email or sending a recording of an idea, whatever. With Source-Connect, it was as if Neil and his students were in the room with us and vice versa.

So we would wait a half second, and get instant feedback. And that, for musicians, it's priceless because not only did it bridge us musically, but personally. It built huge amount of trust because Rebekah, you're a musician. You know what it is like to have strangers rehearsing with each other. And when you can rehearse with each other and know that you can trust the feedback and not be offended by it, or feel concerned that your defenses have to go up.

We established such rapport so quickly between our schools and our faculty and students that it brought our friendships instantly together to the point where then when we finally got on the same continent together, our first trip in July 2012 was to Durban, and that was the first trip of the project before UKZN team flew our way. When we first got there, the friendships were already solid because of all the rehearsals we had and the critiques we'd shared and taken in good faith, the growth we'd had. And so Kathy Howard, who was one of our assistant provosts at VCU who came over said when she came over to visit at Durban and heard one of our first concerts, she said, “you can't tell which students are VCU and which students are UKZN. They all love each other. They hug each other. They act like each other. They rehearse each other. They talk just like each other.” And that was the entire hope of the project, was to really bridge our cultures and learn about each other, which we did in so many ways, visiting historical museums, etcetera. But this idea of writing music for each other and then getting a chance to critique it and accept that information in real time, that was something that Source-Connect offered us that we couldn't do otherwise. And we did it about a dozen times between February, 2013 and March, 2015. So it was a huge opportunity for us to be communal when flying would've cost an additional thousands of dollars in between the trips.

Neil: Yeah, I must say as well that, Rebekah, I just looking through all emails and and Tony's catch up notes. I remember inquiring with our with our IT people on campus trying to figure out whether we had the infrastructure to actually support such a thing. It took a little bit of back and forth just trying to figure out if we had the right connections and all of these kinds of things.

But I must say I was really happy to discover that actually we were quite well set up. I think actually one of the cable points interestingly happened to be in our music school, like one of the few that we had on campus and actually in my office.

And that was because historically our, where our music school is now, it used to be the old administration building where they used to deal with all kinds of fees and all of that stuff.

So I'm not sure if that had anything to do with it. The thing is I don't often have to deal with IT people unless my computer is not working or I have some kind of issue. But like I say, it was just great to be able to pull them up and then figure out that in Durban, South Africa, we actually had the technology up and running to be able to do this because it was such a long time ago. And we tend to be behind the curve when it comes to bandwidth and and just technology generally. So that was also like a really happy surprise on my end to discover that actually no, we could make this work from our end as well.

Antonio: And on my side which I think I shared with Rebekah, there was only one place anywhere near us that had no firewall, that we could do this high speed connection. And it was in the jazz band room, which we had built like a decade earlier. And. There was no other place. I would bring the ethernet and computer out of those places and try, and they would always break up.

I'd just try it on my own. But it was perfect. It was exactly where it needed to be, just like it was for, so it was meant. And then when Rebekah, when you contacted us and said, that early on that in 2012 that you were going to offer us a chance to be part of your education program and have really for the cost of a dongle, for the iLok dongle, which must have been $60 or $70 maybe a piece for two dongles, we were able to use your Source-Connect for three years. And that was incredible because this was an extremely expensive process and getting new funds approved for anything, of course, was quite challenging. So when you came through to us with that opportunity, it was another one of these kismet opportunities that we just couldn't believe could make it possible.

So thank you again for that.

Rebekah Wilson: It was an absolute honor. You were pioneers trying hard things back when the world wasn't ready for what you were doing, and what was the reaction at the time?

Antonio: Neil, your reaction to the community around you regarding the project?

Neil: In terms of the project, it was quite it was quite miraculous actually, because I must say that after Darius retired.. he's such a personality and he looms large, like historically. So people were wondering what is gonna happen to this jazz program at the university? So I must say in many respects, Tony's email, out of the blue, was in some respects a lifeline because this exchange that went on for three years was something that put us very much back in the limelight. And it was the idea that we could have this jazz program of international reputation and still be operating at an international level. It was such a fantastic experience for all of us besides sharing our story and being able to discover that we had so much more in common with the folks at VCU than we had differences, I remember clearly a drum student of ours who's now a great musician Lelo Mazibuko. I remember him having a lesson with Tony Matucci, the drum teacher at VCU, and he came out of that class and one of the things he was most impressed about was the fact that Tony was using the same drum teaching resources as his own teacher back in Durban, Bruce Baker. And it really made him feel as if he was learning at a high level institution, a place that was not second class in any way.

And, for the community around us we just did so much. We created so much new music. All of those commissions, we released a CD. So it really garnered a lot of attention and a lot of good work amongst the jazz community in Durban. And like I said, it was really a shot in the arm, just the right thing at the right time to keep us going.

Antonio: It might have been a shot in the arm, but don't let Neil sell himself or the program short. They were doing international exchanges in the years prior to me with Sweden, I remember and having international artists coming in regularly. But certainly our new partnership was something on such a scale and such repetition of opportunities over the three year period: it was very intense. And for our side, of course, our students and faculty were so enamored of all the UKZN faculty and students who came in and everyone enjoyed and embraced them when they would visit, but the learning opportunities were huge also, I remember one of my students in particular after the first time they had a chance to hang with UKZN students.

One of my students came up back to me and said, "so Professor Garcia", he said, "when I write music, I've been trying to write music. That sounds good, but my South African friends, they're trying to write music to say something". That's worth a hundred thousand dollars right there! So it changed the culture of a lot of what our students were doing because they had a whole different look, a whole different angle on what motivated students and faculty from another location with the same motivations to express themselves. And so our students, you could tell the difference night and day between what happened before 2012 and after, in terms of the impact on them, not only as soloists, but as composers in the United States at VCU.

And then of course, establishing these lifelong relationships, which our students and faculty—there are so many intertwining relationships that remain here this, dozen years after the project's ended—that's a tremendous impact. And then South Africa noticed, the United States noticed, in that when Neil and his team came over, at one point we went and visited the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, the American History Museum. They all welcomed us. I went with my team, visited the South African Embassy in DC and then, a few years later, when it turned out that Nelson Mandela had passed away, the South African embassy contacted us at VCU and asked if I would bring some students to perform at the national celebration of Nelson Mandela's life in The National Cathedral in Washington DC.

And that was entirely unanticipated and a wonderful communal opportunity for my students and I to do that. And there were other unanticipated collaborations that came out of this because of all the goodwill that we had sowed. And Source-Connect was an opportunity to just accelerate all of these opportunities because we didn't have to hesitate and wait to try to find means to do this or to exchange that and relay this. We could just plan a date and get together and in real time, share music and thoughts and opportunities or a couple of times we just got 16 of us or so together just to talk, just to share ideas and hopes, which was extremely valuable in a time that, none of our students knew anything about Durban, South Africa.

I should say this, about Neil, I think we both discovered that our students knew even less about our own history when we took our students to the Civil War Museum. And when Neil took his students as well as mine to the museum about apartheid and went through the exhibits and we discovered that most of the students, college age students on his team, they said our parents don't really talk about that time. And our grandparents, it was a very uncomfortable time. And so they learned about their own country.

And then my students , there were all kinds of things they'd never learned about racism and civil war and oppression in the United States. So it ended up being not just learning about another country, but learning about our own countries as well.

Rebekah Wilson: There stories are really bringing me to tears. I didn't know the depth of this, just what I gleaned on the outside of offering tech support touched me so much. And now I just feel really deeply honored to, help being a small part of this .

Antonio: A large part of it. The impact of this was profound. And in terms of a university offering resources, this was a one year project. And because of the success of it, which VCU also recognized at the end of year one, it received a VCU Community Engagement Research award, which is normally given in the sciences.

So for an arts project, for a music project to gain an award for the entire university that normally goes to the sciences, shows the impact in the university. This is a one year seeded program, and yet the university seeded it for two more years.

And the impact could be measured in hard dollars. That we managed to shake loose academic funding for this for two more years because the administrators were moved by this. And I took a lot of pictures and Neil had colleagues who took a lot of pictures and videos and he contracted people.

We worked together to get everything documented and we would send these to our administrators, and one of my administrators said, "the stuff that people are doing over in chemistry and physics, this stuff is great, but that's nothing like watching a video of your students performing with these students from South Africa."

That's so impactful. You can just feel how this project has been successful. I can look at test tubes and I can't feel that, I can look at calculus equations and I don't feel it. I can understand that a lot of people say it's wonderful. But the impact of this project on everyone was profound and we were grateful to everyone involved, so many people involved to make it happen.

Neil: Yes, it's difficult. You can't really overestimate the impact of this kind of international experience on the students because it was a full circle moment for me when we went to the Library of Congress and because when I was a student, Darius and Cathy Brubeck, would take groups of students across to the IAJE, International Association for Jazz Education Conference every year. And then they would normally take us through New York and we see some of the clubs and so on. And we spent some time at at Dave Brubeck's house as well. But the first time I went overseas, the first time I ever saw snow, all of those things was on one of those trips. And really it impacted me in such an incredible way.

It just changed my whole world view. The size of my world became, exponentially larger. So to be able to do that for my own students through this exchange was really special. And it's interesting now, all of these years later so many of those students have gone onto the most remarkably successful careers as jazz musicians, I think beyond what I or they could ever have imagined.

A lot of these guys—international touring musicians, recording artists, amazing teachers—they're just doing the most fantastic fantastic things. And I think that's so much of that kind of confidence of the size of what they are doing has to do with this particular experience because it was the first time I think that they saw what was possible. So like I say, it's not something that you can overestimate.

Antonio: And that sense of community that we built as I mentioned with our students, become more and more comfortable about writing music that meant something. Many of them were writing music about their interaction with and reaction to racism and oppression. And those pieces of music that emerged were very powerful for all of us.

And it would rebound in different ways. I would run a high school band and program various music from African American and African heritage as I always would. And at one point I remember had an eighth grader and his mom came over to me after a rehearsal. And he said, "it's very difficult to hate people when you like their music". There's another hundred thousand in benefits! So we spent a great deal of our, personal and financial investment, making sure that people understood how much how we can understand and like the music of people.

But all people come from a culture and that's how they express themselves. And, anyone who loves the music of another culture is gonna find it very difficult to despise the people who make it. And that is a truth that just needs to be spread as much as possible, especially now.

And so when I would see those kinds of things come back all the time it just, reminded me again of the constant ripple effect of this project. It goes in ways that we couldn't have anticipated and for which we're very grateful.

Rebekah Wilson: Thank you both for reminding me why I get up every day and keep doing this 20 years later.

Antonio: Us too.

Rebekah Wilson: Thank you so much.

Antonio: Our pleasure.