The Magic of Improvisation: A Musician’s Journey to Public Health

Jemila Dunham  |  CHC Program Associate

When I reflect on my first introduction to the concept of “mental health,” I immediately think back to being raised by a mom who happens to be a psychiatrist. Thankfully, she had excellent boundaries and never treated me or my sibling like patients, though I have no doubt that she used some of her training to diffuse the occasional argument or help us navigate tough emotions. We were her children and so, without burdening us with medical or theoretical terms we were probably too young to understand, she used her knowledge to teach us how to identify our feelings, how to seek outside support, and how to process and work through the various challenges life brings. Looking back now, I feel a deep sense of appreciation for the ways that I benefited from having a parent with that kind of expertise who was willing and available to share it. 

As a young person, my early immersion in an arts-rich educational environment revealed a deep interest in music, and, with my parents’ encouragement, I started my journey, first on the violin and then the alto saxophone, before finding my way to the electric bass. In my school classes and various after-school and summer programs, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to learn about music in the city responsible for birthing jazz. Speaking of the word “jazz,” it is worth noting that many musicians here have followed the lead of New Orleans trumpeter Nicholas Payton and adopted the term “Black American Music,” or #BAM. It was coined in an effort to bring the art form back to its roots, hence its appeal to some musicians and music lovers. I could certainly go on about this, but that’s an entirely different story, so I’ll get back to this one.

I studied under New Orleans legends like the late Edward “Kidd” Jordan and the Jordan family, Brian Quezergue, Jonathan Bloom, Germaine Bazzle, Donald Harrison Jr., and Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah.

I watched with awe and admiration as they used their gifts to not only create incredible music but to also mentor the youth of New Orleans to be the next generation of culture bearers and change makers. Where my mom had provided me with the tools to process my emotions, my music teachers gave me the language I needed to express them.

When my junior year rolled around and I began to think about where I wanted to apply for college and what I wanted to do with my life; I was unsure, to say the least. I mean, as an adult, I struggle with indecision, so I think it’s kind of a wild thing that we ask young people to essentially decide what they want to be at 16 or 17 years old. Nevertheless, I had to make some kind of decision for this next step in my life. Maybe it was my mom’s subtle influence, but I’d developed my own interest in human psychology and understanding why we are the way we are. People had always asked my sibling and I if we thought we would become doctors like our parents, and with application season looming, I honestly began to wonder if I should consider going into the medical field. It was around this time that my band director, Kent Jordan, first asked me,

“Are you considering going to school for music?” 

I absolutely had not considered it. 

As much as I had studied music and performance up to that point, I hadn’t really thought about the fact that I could actually be like my mentors and pursue a professional career in music, and I certainly had not considered that I could go to college for music. After all, I was thinking of following in my mother’s footsteps and becoming a psychologist or psychiatrist, a career considered by most to be the more profitable and stable of the two. But realizing what this meant, that I could use college as an opportunity to continue my education in something I deeply loved and be a representative of my city’s cultural and musical heritage, I knew what I wanted to do. Within the week, I set my therapeutic aspirations aside and shifted my focus towards studying music in college.

After a very affirming campus visit, I applied and got accepted to the Berklee College of Music (the other Berklee, as I like to say) and in the late summer of ‘09, I packed up a reasonable amount of my belongings, including my beloved hollowbody bass, and traveled with my family to Boston to get settled for my first semester. It wasn’t long after the semester began that I had an epiphany. While I had been nurtured in the jazz (or BAM, if you prefer) tradition, I always felt a little bit out of place in the genre. I had enormous respect for the art form, always marveling at my peers who excelled in it, but the idea of being a jazz bassist was intimidating and, at times, a little scary. When I arrived at Berklee, it was immediately apparent that

I could actually play whatever I wanted! My god! The catharsis!

It seems like such an obvious thing in retrospect, especially because I had always listened to all kinds of music, but it just hadn’t occurred to me that I wasn’t limited to playing jazz music. That instead, I could take what I had learned in New Orleans and use it to explore new genres. That revelation kickstarted a four-year process of intense study that fostered enormous growth in my musicianship.

I played soul music, indie music, rock music, R&B music, afro-latin music, funk music, pop music, blues music, and jazz music. I recorded on various student projects, dabbled in songwriting and arranging, and even learned a little bit about engineering.

I started to really figure out how I wanted to approach the instrument and the types of things I wanted to say musically. I’d finally begun to find my own voice as a bassist.

At Berklee, I met some of the greatest friends and musicians I’ve ever known, many of whom are now well-established and lauded in their respective fields. One such friend is pop artist extraordinaire and budding actor Betty Who. We met early on in our time at Berklee, becoming fast friends, and in our last semester of school, as she was getting ready to dive into her post-college music career, she asked me to be in her band. I eagerly accepted and since then, I’ve been Betty’s bassist for 13 opening and headlining tours and multiple festivals all over North America, the UK, and Australia that allowed me to see new parts of the world and play with some of the best musicians of my generation. In between my adventures with the Who Crew, I would come back home and continue to connect with my friends in the New Orleans music community, as well as meet new folks whose excitement about being in the greatness of the city was rejuvenating.

“I was immediately inspired by the joy and excitement and creativity in the young people I saw play”

In the summer of 2016, my best friend invited me to the dress rehearsal of a music camp where she’d been volunteering in preparation for their camper showcase the following day. That music camp was Summer Rock Camp, hosted by an organization called Girls Rock New Orleans, which had started its chapter of the international music camp alliance just two years before. I was immediately inspired by the joy and excitement and creativity in the young people I saw play that day and decided that I absolutely had to volunteer the next summer. Sure enough, I was teaching bass at camp the following year and having the time of my life. It’s so easy as an adult to get caught up in rules and conventions and expectations when creating art, but this camp reminded me how important it is to give kids the tools and the opportunity to express themselves with little to no limitations. It was so transformative that after my first year as a volunteer, I joined the organizing team and since then, I’ve been able to directly contribute to our mission of helping to build the collective power of our girls, trans, and gender non-conforming community within Greater New Orleans.

Suffice it to say, those 7 years between going to college and early 2020 were filled with musical explorations and adventures that shaped so much of who I am as a musician.

And then the pandemic began. 

With the music industry grinding to a halt, I found myself faced with thequestion of who I was outside of my musicianship. Over all those years, my interest in psychology and mental health had remained quietly in a corner, peeking out every now and then, but now I had the chance to really explore what that could mean for me. So, as I often do when I am having an existential crisis, I went to my mom for advice. That was the first time I heard about IWES.

The focus on community-based work piqued my interest immediately and reminded me of all of my musical mentors and the impact they had and continue to have in our community, particularly with young people. So I reached out, being mindful to let them know that I was very much a musician and very much not a mental health or public health professional, hoping that maybe there was a way I could bring my non-traditional skillset into the work.

Luckily, I was welcomed into the organization and encouraged to explore ways to integrate my musical experience with our various programming, which I appreciated because

I love my community; its history and vibrancy and its heart are unlike any other place in the world.

But we also have many difficulties we’re facing and it often feels overwhelming to think about where to start and how to help. As a bassist, I view my role in a musical setting as one of foundational support, something I believe applies to my working style in general. I do my best work when I’m helping to support the implementation of a vision, and as a program coordinator at IWES, I’ve been able to do that in so many ways. Our reACTion and Bounce Back portfolios, which put art at the center of the emotional well-being and healing of our community’s young people, have been a deeply fulfilling way to do what I feel I’m best at with focus and clarity, in a professional environment I’m becoming more and more confident in.

This role has helped me to become more familiar with the beauty and challenges of New Orleans and has opened my eyes to more ways that I can make a difference here. It’s in taking on this new role in my life and career that I feel like I’ve found a balance between two of the areas of focus that have been clearest and most natural in my life, and I look forward to seeing where this journey takes me next.