UPDATED: Sept. 10, 2018 at 12:17 p.m.
Nine years ago, James Abbott and his wife, Beth, listened as members of their son’s special education department said Alex — then a preteen — was no longer allowed to participate in art and chorus classes, citing disruptive behavior. With an art teacher for a mother and a music engineer as a father, Alex’s two passions were suddenly being taken from him.
Alex has Down syndrome and is on the autism spectrum. And nine years ago, his school district said they were unable to accommodate to his needs.
James — a professor of practice for music industry and technologies in the Setnor School of Music — in August concluded his seventh summer leading the Music Technology Access Project program at SU.
The roots of MTAP’s origin, James said, trace back to that spring day. Lying in bed late at night, James brainstormed ways he could take his background in audio engineering and music and channel that into a program that would best serve students like Alex.
Despite the program’s late night conception, James said he didn’t need to do much convincing to get his coworkers on board.
“I mentioned it in passing to my colleague, John Coggiola, and I got through two sentences and he said, ‘Yeah, we’re going to do this, right?’”
MTAP works alongside students with physical, cognitive and sensory disabilities from Syracuse schools to create, produce and record music at SubCat Studios, near Armory Square.
Kaleb Dorr, a social media and marketing manager at SubCat Studios, said the studio has had an active role in the MTAP program since Abbott first proposed the idea more than seven years ago.
“We were in Skaneateles before here, we moved here in 2011,” Dorr said. “From there, we got really involved in the Syracuse community, whether it be with schools or with the local musicians here.”
Working with students at the camp, Dorr said, reminds him of the influence music can have on someone’s life and sense of purpose.
“Just seeing the smiles on their faces and watching their dreams come to life and their ideas,” Dorr said. “It’s amazing to see their reactions. I still get that way too. I’ll record something myself or somebody else will and then we hear it back, and it’s just such a great industry.”
Courtesy of Natalia Russo
Graduate students from Setnor spend three weeks training with James and Coggiola on how to use the equipment, before taking the helm and leading campers at the summer session. After the students learn how to use the studio equipment and practice recording on it, a band comes in to perform with them their final week. Sophistafunk — a Syracuse-based band composed of some of Abbott’s former students — has spent the last four summers working with MTAP.
While the core message of the program has remained the same, Abbott said the biggest change has been the cultural shift in how individuals and administrators alike think about what is truly considered “inclusivity.”
“The way we teach the course, the way we do the camp, the process that we bring the graduate students and then with the campers through, a lot of that is the same,” Abbott said. “The thing that’s a little different now is that I don’t think it’s as revolutionary anymore.”
When Abbott first began the program, inclusivity was not on the forefront of education curriculums the way it is now. The concept of integrating special education and music garnered blank stares from many people Abbott encountered.
But campus is not the same environment it was a decade ago, he said. MTAP rose in prominence alongside another differentiated education program —InclusiveU — and has since opened up the SU community to members who would not previously have been accommodated for.
“It was interesting how the trajectory of the access project program came as the seeds of the InclusiveU were being planted here,” Abbott said. “These last couple of summers, we’ve had a couple of students from the InclusiveU there as campers, too.”
The importance of these education plans, Abbott said, was not to ostracize students with special needs or pigeonhole them into one learning method. If anything, the program is designed to acknowledge the differences in the learning process and adjust accordingly.
“I’m used to people who learn differently than I do,” he said. “I think having someone like Alex and this project … it’s made me really watch for those moments when I can make something better for a particular person. I never hesitate to do that.”
For this group of students, music is so much more than a hobby. Every camper, Abbott said, has an “incredible, deep, profound love for music.” When working with professional musicians such as Sophistafunk, Abbott said that love turns into Beatlemania.
“To see the looks on their faces when they walk into the studio and start working with them, it’s a mind-expanding thing when they’re there and they’re performing,” he said. “It’s very gratifying to see and to know that it has that level of impact.”
Not every student starts out with that sense of unbridled passion on full display. Some people, like Alex, freely show off their encyclopedic memory of Radiohead’s discography for anyone who asks about it. But some students can take longer than others to fully immerse themselves in the program.
One student was quieter than some of the others, more withdrawn and less interactive. But Abbott could see in his eyes an attentiveness and a close observation, despite his lack of participation.
As they were preparing to record the first of their songs, the student walked up to the bongos, sat down and played — in perfect rhythm — to the entire track. Abbott and his colleagues in the control room sat back in their seats, in complete awe.
Maybe he would not have discovered his passion for percussions, save for MTAP. But the what-ifs did not matter in that moment, Abbott said.
He said individuals with disabilities are 99.99 percent the same as their peers. For people too often defined by their .01 percent difference — in that recording studio, the student found his home.
“For someone who’s ridiculously talented at it,” Abbott said, “it just pours rocket fuel on him.”
Cover photo courtesy of Natalia Russo
CORRECTION: In a previous version of this article, the department who told Alex he was no longer allowed to participate in art and chorus classes was misstated. Alex was told by the special education department. The Daily Orange regrets this error.
Published on September 9, 2018 at 10:34 pm
Contact Kelsey: [email protected] | @writtenbykelsey
