My name has a few different meanings, depending on who it is that knows it. My mother told me I was named after her doctor, Donald Lee. I was the last baby Donald Lee delivered before retirement and it felt fitting to my mother. To him, my name might have meant the end of an era, or the beginning of one.<\/p>\n
I had a hard time accepting my name when I was younger because it felt so White and so old on my young, Black frame. Amongst my classmates\u2014Brittney, Takeisha, Kimberly, Latoya, Michelle\u2014I felt like an oddball. I\u2019d only met old White women named Donna. The day I met a young Black Donna at an IHOP was the day I met with a major symphony orchestra timpanist to talk about an unfair situation that affected my career as a percussionist. It was January 2020, and I wouldn\u2019t be able to follow up the conversation with a former teacher until after the worst of the pandemic. I was stuck for two years in an unfinished-business limbo, two years evenly split.<\/p>\n
A lot happened the day I met my first Black Donna. Facing for the first time a conversation that I had been needing to have for ten years\u2014a conversation with an old, White man about how I felt he had derailed my music career, and why me being a woman and Black was at the center of it. Meeting Donna, my waitress at IHOP, meant that the name Donna existed in more ways than one.<\/p>\n
To the musician, my name can mean music. It can mean Charlie Parker, or it can mean be-bop. It can mean a time in history that meant something to so many people. It could mean Miles Davis depending on one\u2019s religious beliefs (I believe in the Bird). When I tried and failed to play \u201cDonna Lee\u201d for the first time in 4th grade on a set of bells, I began to think that my name meant something intricate, something people can\u2019t do without practice, not even me.<\/p>\n
Or it can mean a literal translation. The translation of Donna in Italian is \u201can Italian lady.\u201d It is a nobility title, a reference to the lady\u2019s class: Donna is in the aristocracy. If I were in Italy, I would be called Donna Donna Lee. In all honesty, I found refuge in that. It made me feel better when I was treated like an inferior, like I didn\u2019t have enough class to be in the spaces classical music placed me.<\/p>\n
After a classmate of mine told me that I am also a Donna (in spirit) in addition to being named Donna, that my name fits me, I was joyful. Not because of what is Italian in it, but because of what is Black in it.<\/p>\n
My classmate is a Chiambeng. Chiambeng means \u201csound the bell,\u201d he explained to me. A writer currently getting his MFA in fiction at Columbia University, Thomas Chiambeng explained to me the Cameroonian legacy of his name\u2014how he is identified as it, by it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the beginning, before the invasion of words, they studied music,\u201d he began.<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n
Families had their own identities specific to the music they played. They might be gifted in healing, or experts over roots and herbs. One family knows the plants, another family knows the animals\u2014raising the animals, domesticating them. All these skills were passed down, and everyone knew what a family was good at. To generations growing up in a family, skills became natural. There weren\u2019t schools to learn music so those ordained, in a sense, to pass it down\u2014the composers\u2014they played during village festivals over bonfires and other public events, passing down both the music and the natural ability to play and hear it. A child could find themself playing the harp or inventing an instrument from the back of a tree\u2014a hollow log\u2014and start playing. The patterns played and the emotion of one\u2019s voice mixed with the tone of the music to pass their message, it changes accordingly.<\/p>\n
Passing the message of someone\u2019s death is different than passing the message of someone\u2019s birth, similar to how we intone our voices. People intoned the music differently. And there is hierarchy in the music. Personality, status\u2014a princess, for example, is born, and the sound of the music indicates a royal birth. A king\u2019s message has its own tone, and a queen or prince just as well. There were bright, joyful rhythms and melodies for wedding announcements, grief-stricken music for funeral announcements. They communicated with swells of emotions massaged into a strum of a harp, a striking of tom-toms, or a rhythmic yet melodic wooden keyboard.<\/p>\n
Houses weren\u2019t compacted together, but spread across large expanses of farmlands, and by bushes, and by narrow paths. A gong is heard from the path to send a message in such a way that those on their farms and far away bushes knew exactly what it meant, even if they didn\u2019t necessarily hear the inflections of the voice singing along with it. Through the rhythmic and melodic patterns, neighbors heard their voice.<\/p>\n
The beauty of it is how people got to understand it. There are so many languages that divide Africans, meaning inter-kingdom communications depended on the compositions of Black composers in the past. Chiambengs are the family of the gongs, their name rooted in this music of the past. That hypersensitivity of the music meant that it was more than sound, more than who they were identified as<\/em> (family of the bells), and by<\/em> (playing the gong)\u2014this hypersensitivity meant what instrument their family identified with<\/em> (the name itself).<\/p>\n \u201cThey don\u2019t do any of this anymore,\u201d Chiambeng says, but he knows this was custom because he was taught the family history of it. Being taught has given my own name new meaning just as well. Imagine my elation when I came to understand that my name is the title of a Charlie Parker tune. After growing up listening to the jazz of my father, a saxophonist, and of my brother, a saxophonist, encompassing four decades of jazz. Even more, that the be-bop era is my father\u2019s favorite. Add the complexity of then learning that I wasn\u2019t named after that tune, but after my doctor who delivered me last as I was the last child of my mother, the youngest of 8\u2014intentionally.<\/p>\n And yet despite these impactful meanings, the one that meant the most was meeting another Black Donna\u2014both the timing of it and the shared identification of it. I wasn\u2019t alone anymore.<\/p>\n But sometimes I learn names too late. It wasn\u2019t until after leaving the conservatory I attended in New York City pursuing a B.M. in Classical Percussion Performance that I learned the name Julia Perry (1924-1979). I learned about both her and the percussion ensemble piece she wrote, and that the Manhattan School of Music percussion ensemble played and recorded it under the director Paul Price in 1965. I learned that at Spelman College, an HBCU in Atlanta, Georgia. Homunculus, C.F. for 10 percussionists<\/em> (1960) is the piece, which means there were 10 highly trained percussionists most likely not of color performing repertoire by a Black woman. Duncan Patton<\/a>, the recently retired principal timpanist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and faculty member at Manhattan School of Music (MSM) for over 30 years says<\/a> that of the small handful of Black percussion students who apply to MSM each year, three have enrolled in his 30 years of teaching.<\/p>\n Perry\u2019s 5-minute Homonculus<\/em> sneaks up on you, starting with what could be a percussion version of strings tuning on stage. Snare drum and woodblock softly tussle with one another, both trying to tune to an evasive A440. The piece grows\u2014matures, matriculates\u2014from scrapes on cymbals, a hide-and-go-seek marching of the timpani, and tom-toms to plucked strings on harp introducing the melodic: xylophone, vibraphone. Celeste and piano drive snare drum and woodblock to a determined end.<\/p>\n Yet while I was at MSM, I didn\u2019t feel as though I belonged, hadn\u2019t felt that way for over a decade. Not because I didn\u2019t love it, wasn\u2019t one of the best, didn\u2019t live and breathe it every day for most of my life, but because oftentimes (not all the time), I stood to the side and watched close relationships amongst percussionists rather than having any, treated like an outsider, sometimes aggressively as inferior.<\/p>\n At Interlochen Arts Camp when George (let\u2019s just call him George for now) put his mouth to my ear and whispered a chant while I played a Bach partita on marimba in the practice room.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u00a0s<\/em>uck. You\u2019ll\u00a0n<\/em>ever be able to play this. You\u2019ll\u00a0n<\/em>ever be any good,\u201d his lips occasionally brushing the black skin of my earlobe in repetition. \u201cYou\u00a0s<\/em>uck. You\u2019ll\u00a0n<\/em>ever be able to play this. You\u2019ll\u00a0n<\/em>ever be any good,\u201d\u2014the sharp sting on the \u2018s\u2019 of suck and \u2018n\u2019 of never.<\/p>\n I kept playing, remaining locked into the only two lines of the piece I could play without needing to stop just to drown him out. Up until then, I hadn\u2019t yet learned how to play a fugue, layers unfolding what it means to feel free. What first seems like a melody trapped in repetition opens and opens like a surgeon cutting into a chest cavity. First skin, then tissues\u2014fat\u00a0tissues\u00a0padding and protecting\u2014then rib cage, heart, blood vessels. Each more complex than the next.<\/p>\n Classical music, and even more, Johann Sebastian Bach, wasn\u2019t supposed to belong to me, but I had made it mine. I had forced it into my hands, those first two lines, the only two lines I could play and didn\u2019t know I memorized until my mental practice room built a fortress all about me. George had invaded my only refuge. He tried to take it, colonize it, gentrify it: he came, he saw, he attempted to conquer, but failed. Failed because Black composers like Julia Perry existed and Black composers exist in the future.<\/p>\n George was competitive, as we were all trained to be, but George had something extra, something personal. Winning something ahead of him was like a personal offense to him. He could have lost to someone to whom he would bow gracefully and accept his defeat, but he lost to me instead, treating it as though I made his mother cry and maybe I did. Maybe his line of ancestry, maybe the mitochondria only traced through the line of mothers going genealogically back to wherever they came from were pained to see me taking what they had already taken from me.<\/p>\n Interlochen wasn\u2019t just about enjoying our crafts. We were given a window to see and understand that there were people all over the world who were better than us, and who we were better than. Every week we competed for chairs in the orchestra, drilled to focus our craft on triumphing over someone else. But to win the international concerto competition was the goal, the ultimate prize, an uncontestable recognition of superior skill that George wasn\u2019t being trained to accept. Instead, he wanted to train me to not feel deserving of my achievement.<\/p>\n George was jealous. We all were in one way or another. George was also filled with rage for not just that he was beat, but by whom he was beat\u2014because he was beat, like everyone else, in a myriad of ways. Did he taunt everybody?<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t know Julia Perry\u2019s name for over a decade after this collision with superiority. Imagine what it meant to learn that Donna is an Italian lady, an aristocrat\u2014of noble birth. Then imagine what it meant to learn Julia Perry\u2019s name, that she composed for percussion, that my percussion ensemble, the one I played with for two years before transferring to Spelman College\u2014imagine what it was like for me to learn that I am of noble birth as an African American rather than as a translation for an oppressive aristocrat in Italy.<\/p>\n I did, however, feel like I had been translated. Take the name Donna out of time, put the genealogical name on a new me, then translate my translated name and what you end up with is a Black composer in the future. It was through my instrument that I found new meaning in my name like my classmate Thomas from Cameroon described to me. Just like what my name might have meant to the doctor that birthed me, the end of an era or the beginning of a new one, learning Julia Perry\u2019s through my instrument was the beginning of a new era for me.<\/p>\n I am be-bop. I am classical. I am the daughter of a mother who is trained in classical flute and a father on jazz saxophone. I am the sister of a bassist, a trumpeter, a saxophonist, and a guitarist. I am a family legacy\u2014third time soloist with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. I am a percussionist and as a writer, a Black composer in and of the future.<\/p>\nAmongst my classmates\u2014Brittney, Takeisha, Kimberly, Latoya, Michelle\u2014I felt like an oddball. I\u2019d only met old White women named Donna.<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
Donna Lee Davidson<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\t
To the musician, my name can mean music. It can mean Charlie Parker, or it can mean be-bop. It can mean a time in history that meant something to so many people. It could mean Miles Davis depending on one\u2019s religious beliefs (I believe in the Bird).<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
Donna Lee Davidson<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\t
Families had their own identities specific to the music they played. They might be gifted in healing, or experts over roots and herbs. One family knows the plants, another family knows the animals\u2014raising the animals, domesticating them. All these skills were passed down, and everyone knew what a family was good at.<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
Donna Lee Davidson<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\t
There are so many languages that divide Africans, meaning inter-kingdom communications depended on the compositions of Black composers in the past.<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
Donna Lee Davidson<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\t
It wasn\u2019t until after leaving the conservatory I attended in New York City pursuing a B.M. in Classical Percussion Performance that I learned the name Julia Perry.<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
Donna Lee Davidson<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\t
Classical music, and even more, Johann Sebastian Bach, wasn\u2019t supposed to belong to me, but I had made it mine. <\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
Donna Lee Davidson<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\t
Interlochen wasn\u2019t just about enjoying our crafts. We were given a window to see and understand that there were people all over the world who were better than us, and who we were better than.<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
Donna Lee Davidson<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\t
Just like what my name might have meant to the doctor that birthed me, the end of an era or the beginning of a new one, learning Julia Perry\u2019s through my instrument was the beginning of a new era for me.<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
Donna Lee Davidson<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\t
I am be-bop. I am classical. ... I am a percussionist and as a writer, a Black composer in and of the future.<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
Donna Lee Davidson<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>