Dr. Kiki: 0:01
What socioeconomic status you have, starting to really look at the ways that you hold power and space in our society, and then seeing ways that you can use that in a purposeful way to hand the mic over to somebody that may not have a voice or have that ability to take that mic.

Chaowen: 0:25
Hey there, welcome to The Conductor’s Podcast. I’m your host, Chaowen Ting, a conductor with over 20 years of experience working with professional symphony orchestras, opera houses, new music groups, and vocalists. I’m also founder of Girls Who Conduct and have mentored hundreds of conductors from across the globe. I created The Conductor’s Podcast to share all the behind-the-scenes secrets with you while I interview conductors, musicians, and business gurus from around the world. This is a space created for conductors, conducting students, musicians, and non-musicians who are curious and interested in learning more about the profession, craft, industry, and business.

Chaowen: 1:11
Shy away from the real talk? No way. Money, hardship, growth, and the rollercoaster of a conducting career are all topics we discuss here. I will give you simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies to help you take action on your big dream, move through the fear that’s holding you back, and have a real impact. Now, pull up a seat, make sure you’re cozy, and get ready to be challenged and encouraged while you learn.

Chaowen: 1:46
Hi there, welcome to another episode of The Conductor’s Podcast. I’m your host, Chaowen Ting, and I’m thrilled that you’re tuning in with me today. When it comes to podcast, I know you have a lot of choices, and I’m really glad that you chose to tune in today, as we have a great episode, as always. In today’s show, we will be discussing decolonization, one of the trends that the world of classical music is slowly embracing in recent years.

Chaowen: 2:16
In politics, the process of decolonization can be very broad, from colonies becoming independent countries recognized by the international society, to recognizing how the colonial powers have taken advantage of the colonies, to changing the language used when referring to native people to “the indigenous”, to colonized people regaining confidence in and respect for their own culture and traditions. This is a long and somehow painful process, and also very individual to each country and to each person.

Chaowen: 2:57
However, my guest today, Dr. Kiernan Steiner, or Dr. Kiki, as she is known, will focus our decolonization process on a personal level and discuss how we can apply the same principles to free our own mind[s], how we can become independent from stereotypes or social rules that were imposed upon us, and [how] to find our own voices. As a transracial adoptee, she will also speak to us [on] how her journey of finding her biological family has shaped who she is now, a truly lovely story to hear.

Chaowen: 3:38
Dr. Kiki Steiner is a holistic vocal coach, decolonization consultant, and choral conductor. She empowers others to connect with their own voice[s] through releasing shame around one’s voice and facilitating self-led healing. Dr. Kiki’s ancestors are from the Philippines, Ireland, and Germanic Europe, and [she] was raised in southwestern Wisconsin. Dr. Kiki’s doctoral research focused on power structures within choral music education, which has led her to create decolonized virtual spaces for creatives, artists, and educators in order to activate creativity and hope for the future.

Chaowen: 4:26
Welcome to the show, Dr. Kiki, I’m so thrilled to welcome you to The Conductor’s Podcast, and I can’t wait to share your story and experience with my audience.

Dr. Kiki: 4:35
Thank you so much for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for a long time and [am] just excited to be here.

Chaowen: 4:42
So before we get started, though, would you please give everybody a brief intro–just a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are right now?

Dr. Kiki: 4:49
Yeah, absolutely. Hello everyone. My name is Dr. Kiernan Steiner, also known as Dr. Kiki or Decolonizing Kiki on Instagram. I am a holistic vocal coach and conductor and decolonization consultant, and [I] recently earned my doctorate at Arizona State University in choral conducting. And my ancestors come from the northern mountain regions of the Ilocos region of the Philippines, as well as Ireland and Switzerland and Germanic Europe. I am currently on a path of decolonization and integrating what I’ve learned through my research and scholarship and sharing these lessons and what I’ve been coming across in my personal life as well as my professional life to help others on their path of decolonization and personal empowerment.

Chaowen: 5:50
And I want to congratulate you earning the doctorate, because I know it’s super hard.

Dr. Kiki: 5:56
Thank you so much.

Chaowen: 5:58
Yes, it’s a lot of hard work. So before we dive into the conversation about decolonization–because I have a lot of questions to ask–I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the program that you just finished at ASU? How was it like, would you recommend it to others, or like how did you feel about it?

Dr. Kiki: 6:19
Yeah, great question. In my search for schools, when I knew I wanted to go after the DMA, I was really interested in schools that combined conducting with a music education focus, so I was really excited when I saw that Arizona State University had that opportunity. And so I was able to be quite involved in both areas of choral conducting and music ed. Then when I was able to look into the coursework, I was even more excited to see that there were opportunities to take classes in social justice and looking at these different systems of oppression within education systems, and learning about sociology and cultural implications for music education and what’s happening in the classroom.

Dr. Kiki: 7:13
And when I was able to talk to all of my professors and share my passion for social justice, there was support there; there was an interest and there was a lot of encouragement. So I was just so grateful to have a committee that was on board with the new research that I was sharing with them and the passion that I had for decolonization, as that started to come through.

Dr. Kiki: 7:40
During my time there, though, what I was so excited about was the collaboration between all the different areas–so not only the music ed and choral areas, but also the the wind band and the orchestral and the opera areas: you create a whole conducting cohort with the conductors in those areas, and you take classes on repertoire and other areas together throughout your three years there, or however long it takes you to complete the degree. Yeah, just to have that collaboration and seeing our professors, our colleagues working together in these different ways and sharing our different backgrounds and our knowledge with one another through that doctoral experience was really, really special, and [it] definitely made a huge impact on me as I was conceptualizing my own teaching philosophy and where I wanted to see this degree take me.

Chaowen: 8:40
That’s great. So you talked about that when you had to find a doctoral dissertation topic, that you wanted to go into the decolonization journey. [This is] probably a chicken and egg question: Did you have the idea that you wanted to research on this before you went into your doctoral research project? Or was it through your research that you realized this is something that you’re passionate about?

Dr. Kiki: 9:04
Yeah, great question. So during my master’s degree, that was really when I was opened up to this idea that research could be something that I could really speak my truths through, and go after these topics and issues that are really close to home for me. So I’m a transracial adoptee; I was adopted as an infant and raised and born into a predominantly white family and community. And so that experience growing up really shaped how I was seeing myself and, you know, growing up–just struggling with who I was in the mirror and struggling with the different ways I was expected to show up in my family or in my school or in the choral ensemble that I was a part of.

Dr. Kiki: 10:00
As I started to do my research, I was really using these different topics, these different papers to explore my own identity and the oppressive structures and systems that we find in our society. So I was able to write about Palestinian hip-hop and how black American music has been used across the globe to speak to these oppressive systems and structures. And then I was also able to write and research about Margaret Bonds and The Ballad of the Brown King in my choral repertory classes. So I was able to really start to see all of these various musicians, composers, [and] conductors using music as a way to fight for social justice.

Dr. Kiki: 10:52
And so I thought for a long time that my purpose was going to be collecting these various works and writing about them and sharing them with the world and bringing awareness to that as a conductor. Then as I got through my doctoral program, or during my doctoral program, I started to be in reunion with my biological father, who’s Filipino, and is from the island of Oahu, in Hawaii, the kingdom of Hawaii. And so in that reunion, I was able to really start to unearth and unpack my own identity, which I had not been able to do my whole life, due to my adoption.

Dr. Kiki: 11:31
And so I was finding out what it means to be Filipino, what it means to experience eating and cooking Filipino food, and connecting with my ancestors and my ancestry through this relationship with my dad. And as I was learning about Filipino history, I was learning about Spanish colonization of the Philippines for 350 years, and making those connections to how I was even finding myself as an adoptee born and raised in southwestern Wisconsin on Ho-Chunk Nation lands, and how I found myself in choral conducting in the choral ensemble world at all. And so it was really through my personal exploration of my family and myself that I was able to then integrate into my research and my passion for social justice. And seeing that decolonization for me is the path that I see us being able to manifest our own liberation with.

Chaowen: 12:36
What you were just sharing was just amazing, because I found out I had a cousin three years ago–that she was adopted as an infant, but no one in her family knew about it. So her biological mom is my dad’s younger sister. We knew that she has a history of mental health issues, and when she was very ill, at the end of her life, she talked about wanting to go to the United States to see her kids. Everybody thought she was just crazy, until like three years ago, we found out she actually gave birth to a child who was adopted.

Chaowen: 13:14
And my cousin’s adoptive family was in the US Army, so they were stationed in Taiwan when she was adopted. So she actually grew up in Taiwan for the first three years of her life, and then she grew up in Arizona. But just this thing was like, no one knew about it; everyone was shocked. And one thing that was really shocking for me is: so my cousin married a Jew, so their daughter is half Taiwanese, like biologically Taiwanese, and half Jewish, and she is now in high school. And a few months ago, I saw her drawing; it’s a portrait of herself in the mirror.

Chaowen: 13:58
So in the mural, she was half Asian and half Jewish and half something else. And she wrote in the description to say: it’s been difficult for her to find her identity because her mom is Taiwanese, but her mom didn’t grow up in the Chinese culture. She didn’t know anything about Chinese culture growing up, but they are seen as Asians, when she was also expected to behave like white people–like her white peers–or to be Jewish from her father’s side. So I was wondering if you could share a little bit about like kind of growing up, did music play an important part in finding your identity or anything that you’re open to share? I know this is very personal.

Dr. Kiki: 14:44
Absolutely. Thank you for sharing so much of your sacred stories as well, with your family. I’m really honored to be able to witness and hear these stories, because I know how personal they are. And absolutely music was my therapy, was my lifeline in so many ways. And that’s really what I’m returning to through my decolonization journey; it’s teaching me that through sound and frequency and vibration, how incredibly healing it is to engage with music. We know the emotional connection is so helpful in helping us humans express these feelings that we have within us that sometimes it’s so hard to put words to, or to come up with those words ourselves.

Dr. Kiki: 15:36
So as I was growing up, I was raised in a very musical family. I started taking violin lessons by the time I was three years old. I was in ballet and tap dancing lessons; I started piano when I was eight. I was singing and dancing all of the time. And as I continue to unpack my adoption journey and realize the the trauma that comes with that separation of that genetic mirroring, as well as the cultural connections, as well as the, you know, connections to even mother land and mother tongue–the fact that I don’t have access to knowing Tagalog at this moment, the official language of the Philippines.

Dr. Kiki: 16:27
And in those different ways that I feel like I have lost out on knowing who I am, I feel like music has always been the thing that has reminded me of who I am and brings me back to myself and reminds me that there’s so much within me: that I carry my culture with me, I carry the islands of Hawaii and the islands of the Philippines within me, within my blood, because I am a product of and descendent of my ancestors, who have gifted me the gift of song, the gift of bringing communities together with music.

Dr. Kiki: 17:08
I know that in pre-colonial Filipino culture [and] in current Filipino culture, we love to sing karaoke, and we love to come together and dance and to celebrate with food. And so my desire to bring people together, for instance, in a choral ensemble–it to me is no doubt inherently Filipino and something that I was always seeking out and searching for. So as I reflect on my childhood and think about how music continues to play such a role in my life to finding my identity, it is so central to my decolonization.

Dr. Kiki: 17:48
And my work now revolves around helping others access their voice and release shame around their voice, so that they can create this deeper connection with themselves and their identity and release themselves from so many of these boxes that we feel that we have to live up to, right? Whether that’s the Jewish box, or the Taiwanese box, or for me, it’s the Filipino or the white box, or the choral conductor box, and how we can be liberated from these ways that we feel like we have to show up in our society.

Chaowen: 18:28
So I think it’s important that we talk about the word “decolonization”, because as much as I hate it, words have meanings and implications. When people see a certain word–like people have different feelings when they see diversity, for example. When we talk about [being] passionate about diversity or inclusion, that might resonate differently with everyone. So you have this website, Decolonizing Kiki; how did you start with it? And I know you’re really kind of realizing things through your actions, but what’s your definition, or what are you trying to accomplish?

Dr. Kiki: 19:08
Yeah, great. So decolonization, to me, is really summed up in how we are relating to one another. So in pre-colonial Filipino culture, the word “kapwa” is used to describe community, unity, oneness–and that oneness is seeing the self in the other, seeing the self within your relationship to the land, relationships to our family and friends and all humankind, relationship to the natural world around us, and seeing that we have a responsibility and accountability as human beings on this planet to care for one another, to care for our land, really returning to a more indigenous perspective on the world that is free from capitalism and colonization.

Dr. Kiki: 19:08
Here in the United States known as Turtle Island, we are a settler colony–or it’s a neo-colony these days–but started with settler colonialism, as well as an enforced slave trade with Africans, as well as forced labor and migration and genocide of Native Americans. So we have this relationship of the settler, the enslaved African, and the Native American, and we are all descendants or immigrants to this country that have descended from this system. Once we start to position ourselves and unpack our relationship to that triad, we can better understand what our personal responsibilities are to decolonize ourselves.

Dr. Kiki: 21:03
And so for me, I recognize that I am a settler on occupied Kickapoo lands at this moment in central Illinois; I recognize that there is not a presence of Native American tribes in this area because of forced migration, genocide, and many other ways that Native Americans have been treated in this country. So I hold that every day as I walk around the the lands that I find myself on, to remind myself that it is my responsibility to work towards land back, that it’s my responsibility to return this land to a place that is not just humans extracting from, but humans taking care of and realizing that we are in a very important relationship in cycle and system that really requires all of us to work together, to care for one another.

Dr. Kiki: 22:05
And that starts first with ourselves: so your relationship to yourself and how you understand your own positionality and your awareness of your power in the society that does still have hierarchy and capitalism infused in all areas of our lives. And so unpacking these really big concepts for ourselves first, and then being able to really see how that can inform how you want to show up in the world, how you want to show up for your family, how you want to show up for your community.

Chaowen: 22:44
Definitely, so I know that you spent a lot of time researching around this idea of decolonization in your dissertation. So do you want to share a little bit about your research and how we can apply those ideas into our practice and our work as a musician? And even as a conductor?

Dr. Kiki: 23:05
Yeah, absolutely. So in the heart of the dissertation, I wrote a script, kind of like a play script, that had a conversation with myself about decolonization, about how decolonization was connected to my Filipino culture, and how those had implications for me. So again, as I mentioned, decolonization is such a personal thing. I made the topic myself, so that I can speak from my experiences, and so that I wasn’t putting words or speaking for other communities and other marginalized identities that I don’t find myself in. I can have so much awareness and compassion and desire to be inclusive, but when researching and talking about decolonization, I wanted to be certain that I was not speaking out of bounds, but hopefully expanding the conversation so that others can see themselves where they need to and find themselves wherever they are on their path.

Dr. Kiki: 23:30
So the actual dissertation was a play script of me as a 17-year-old Kiki kind of going back in time, talking to her future selves, who I call Ate Kiernan One, Ate Kiernan Two, Ate Kiernan Three, Ate Kiernan Four. And “Ate” (pronounced “ah-tei”) in Filipino culture and language is like an aunty or an older sibling. And so that “Ate” label that I gave my future selves was a reclamation of my cultural identity, a reclamation and declaration of who I am and who I see myself as wholly.

Dr. Kiki: 25:01
And in this conversation with my future selves, I am playing with time. So Ate Kiernan One comes from a similar time period as Kiki at 17 years old. She’s graduating from high school and ready to go off to college to sing in a choral collegiate program. Ate Kiernan Two is teaching high school choir. And so these are all tied to the lived experiences that I’ve had in my career and my educational experiences. And then Kiernan Three was in my master’s program at Mizzou. And then At Kiernan Four was kind of my current self as an about-to-be-graduated doctor of choral conducting with this understanding of decolonization, so kind of the more sage guru of the Ates.

Dr. Kiki: 25:56
So Kiki is having a conversation with herself and asking them, what should I be looking for in a collegiate choral program for me to feel supported, included, to find a place of belonging, and a place of home in this choral ensemble? And so Ates One, Two, Three, and Four, they all start to pick apart these words that we find in choral descriptions, choral ensemble descriptions a lot of the time. So it was really an analysis of the language that we use around the choral music education world, and how that can create boundaries and barriers for individuals that may see themselves on the outside of the choral music worlds, but would like to be invited into and find that sense of belonging within that community.

Dr. Kiki: 26:50
So problematizing words, such as flagship ensemble–what does flagship mean? What does the historical connotation have? It’s militaristic; the military is all all about power and a lot of authority. And so how does that kind of word influence the people of that ensemble? Do we want to feel like there is a sense of authority and a sense of hierarchy within our programs? And so I was making all of these claims about the language, saying that we can become more inclusive and more aware of the ways that we exclude others, by the ways that we speak about what we do and how we unite our communities. Because I don’t believe that we inherently, as choral directors or choral conductors, want to be exclusive. But we have inherited a tradition that comes from Western Europe, that comes from quite hierarchical patriarchal societies, and it’s all infused in what we do. And so if we aren’t aware of how even words are affecting our students or prospective students, then we don’t even know how we may be causing more harm than good.

Chaowen: 28:18
That is absolutely wonderful, because sometimes it’s really hard to see the problems until someone [points them] out, because it’s been used for so long. So do you mind sharing some tips or some examples for not just choral conductors, but for anyone organizing ensembles or even just organizations? What kind of words or what kind of tones [should we] avoid to be more inclusive and welcoming, without implying that some types of members might not be as qualified or welcome?

Dr. Kiki: 28:56
Absolutely. So to just be really specific at first: a lot of ensembles in the past, if they are treble choirs or bass choirs, will use gender terms. So right away, a very specific task, I would say, is to look at ensemble names that still use words such as men and women, or that gender our ensembles, because we know that the voice is not gendered, and that our voices are capable of very different sounds and ranges, and that our choral ensembles are really built around: if it’s a treble choir, it’s for treble voices. So that doesn’t mean that all treble voices identify as female or a woman or femme in any way. We can have all human beings [be] part of a treble choir that have a treble voice. All human beings that have a bass baritone, baritone, tenor voice can be part of an ensemble that is for that voice. And so just starting to expand the ways that we use our words that have traditionally been connected and linked to gender.

Dr. Kiki: 30:10
But other ways to look at our organizations and our words, the ways that we’re relating to one another, I think really comes down to compassion and finding that compassion first for ourselves, for the mistakes and the flaws and the ways that, you know, we want to resist, that we want to be perfect–all of these ways that we want to fit into a really nice, pretty mold, and giving ourselves compassion for the fact that we are human. We are unlearning so much; we are starting to hear and learn so many more perspectives, and it takes time for all of that to be digested and to be integrated into who you are today. And so [we should] first give ourselves compassion that we will make a mistake as we walk this journey. We will make mistakes as we maybe say words that we’re trying to remove from our vocabulary.

Dr. Kiki: 31:18
But what can we do to first pause and take a breath and realize that we’re human, and that there’s a lot of feelings and energy that courses through our bodies when we make a mistake, because we’re taught that there’s only one way to be, one right way to be–that there aren’t multiple ways of being? So taking that breath and starting to reflect on the ways that you hold power within your positionality.

Dr. Kiki: 32:03
So whether you find yourself as a cisgender male, what socioeconomic status you have, starting to really look at the ways that you hold power and space in our society. And then seeing ways that you can use that in a purposeful way to hand the mic over to somebody that may not have a voice or have that ability to take that mic, to provide financial support and reparations to those who have not had that opportunity to have access to these types of financial securities. And really imagine ways that we can invest in our community, so that we can see a truly diverse community that is inclusive and that is free from these relationships that cause people to be exploited or extracted from, but really, for everyone to be them their whole selves–in our classrooms, in our boardrooms, in our staff meetings, so that we don’t need to feel the shame or guilt or this constant stress about how we are showing up in these spaces.

Chaowen: 33:29
So I know that you offer sessions through your website, do you want to maybe talk about some of the services that you have?

Dr. Kiki: 33:36
Yeah, absolutely.

Chaowen: 33:37
And your podcast?

Dr. Kiki: 33:38
Yeah, great. So right now I’m sharing and offering four-week voice activation sessions, where I work [one-on-one with] clients to connect with their voices deeper and to personalize the sessions in order for them to release shame around their voice and really become comfortable with the sound of their own voices. One of my theories is that the divisiveness in our communities and the miscommunication within our communities is due to a lack of access to our voices, to being able to feel comfortable to express ourselves, to find that safety within ourselves to say what we truly want and desire.

Dr. Kiki: 34:25
And so I work with my clients to create intentions for these sessions. Not about a goal–about Oh, I want to perform this at the next concert–but, I want to use my voice to self-advocate for what I need, to self advocate for my dreams. So we set intentions, we meditate, we give thanks to our voice for being an instrument for us to utilize–as a way to speak up for change, as a way to speak up for ourselves–and then we go into different breathing techniques, just helping ourselves oxygenate the body. We sometimes don’t give ourselves that opportunity to just take a breath, like we just did, and to remind ourselves that our body really just does need to take a nice deep breath sometimes.

Dr. Kiki: 35:23
So we breathe, we get the body ready, we stretch, we embody ourselves, we sing songs that affirm our identities–who we are and who we see ourselves becoming. And then we reflect, we journal, we share, talk story, and we end with affirmations about our voices and affirm our relationship with our voice and that it is always there for us to express ourselves and to speak up for what we really need and want in our lives. So that is the voice activation session.

Dr. Kiki: 36:00
And I’m also starting a new podcast. The first few episodes are out. It’s called Decolonizing Kiki: The Podcast, and I share conversations with creatives, healers, other academics who are also on their decolonization journeys, and how their creativity has been impacted by their decolonization journey. Because I’ve been so, so inspired by decolonization to expand what we consider to be creativity.

Chaowen: 36:36
And if you’re listening in a car or at the gym, we will put everything in the show notes so you won’t miss it. But I wanted to make sure that the listeners hear from you: other than following you at Decolonizing Kiki, where are your website and your social media handles?

Dr. Kiki: 36:54
Perfect. Yeah, you can find me at www.kiernanmsteinermusic.com–I’ll have that spelled out in the show notes–and on Instagram @decolonizing_kiki. And in the link in my bio, you can access all of the current offerings. I also am offering personalized one-on-one tarot and Oracle Card readings, and other ways to work one-on-one with me. So look forward to hearing you all there.

Chaowen: 37:25
Thank you so much for coming. And I loved every minute of our conversation.

Dr. Kiki: 37:30
Thank you so much.

Chaowen: 37:35
So here you have it. And I hope you’ll join Kiki and me in a journey of decolonization. I remember seeing a post on Instagram awhile back with something that read, “You don’t have a decolonized ensemble just because you programmed a work by a black composer”. I’m paraphrasing, but the idea is the same. Each person would have their own interpretations of [what] decolonization means to them, and there are many ways to leave your life and walk the talk.

Chaowen: 38:06
Next week, when we enter the second month of the year 2022, we will shift our focus a little bit and discuss how to run effective and efficient rehearsals by using your words and voice well. If you’re loving the show, please don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review. This will be the greatest encouragement for me, and I will see you next week at the same time, same place. Bye for now.