A LU M N I U P C L O S E
Who’s Telling Your Story? Artist and scholar Danielle Brown ’97 elevates diversity in the arts BY CHRISTINE YU ’94
DENISE SIMON ’94
W
hen Danielle Brown ’97 resigned from her position as assistant professor of music history and cultures at Syracuse University in 2014, she wasn’t sure of her next step. Would she be a writer? Would she perform music? The one thing she knew for certain was that she wanted to tell stories and help others do the same. That November, she founded My People Tell Stories, a publishing and production company. But Brown isn’t interested in storytelling for storytelling’s sake. To her, it is critically important that people of color tell and interpret their own stories because, as her company’s tagline plainly states: “If you’re not telling your own stories, someone else is telling them for you.” During her decade-plus in academia, Brown was troubled by the lack of representation by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in music studies, particularly in her field of ethnomusicology, which she describes as the “anthropology of music.”
During her decade-plus in academia, Brown was troubled by the lack of BIPOC representation in music studies, particularly in her field of ethnomusicology, which she describes as the “anthropology of music.” 30
ANDOVER | SPRING 2021
“It’s predominantly white people researching people of color. Not only that, but historically there’s been this sense that people of color can’t write about themselves because they’re not objective enough to do so,” she says. In response, she published East of Flatbush, North of Love: An Ethnography of Home in 2015. In it, she describes growing up in East Flatbush, a West Indian community in Brooklyn, N.Y., and threads music throughout, from calypso to hip hop. “I really wanted to tell my story in a way that was accessible and in line with the storytelling traditions of the culture in which I grew up,” she says. Growing up in New York City, Brown’s household was filled with music. She sang and at age 7, began playing the piano. After attending a performing arts middle school, Brown entered Andover as a junior, joining older brother David ’95. She continued to explore music, performing at the student coffeehouses during Black Arts Weekend and Latin Arts Weekend. And she appreciated Andover’s diversity in comparison to other boarding schools.
