Beth King, 44, is deputy director and director of development and communications at Intonation Music, a Bronzeville-based organization that helps Chicago youth make music on their own terms. She believes that music is community, and that community is where meaningful change starts.
My father, who is legitimately kind of a con man—when I moved in with him at 13, he was a professional gambler—was so excited. He was like, “Every job in the world is sales. You have to connect with people and make them invest in your story or way of doing things.” I always thought, “That’s gross.” But now as a fundraiser, when people ask “How the hell can you do that?” I tell them, “I’m providing people with opportunity. This is the greatest job in the world.”
We don’t require students to learn how to read music, so it’s really playing by doing. And because they play every instrument, there’s a lot of camaraderie and peer learning and teaching. If you played drums last week and I’m playing them this week, you know how you struggled and you can help me.
- A compilation of Intonation Music bands released in 2019
When the pandemic hit, we had two big goals. One was to reach out to our families to figure out what technology they had at home and what kind of programs the students wanted while the lockdown was going on. The second was to keep every instructor working during the lockdown.
The communities we serve are majestic—it’s been the greatest privilege of my life to get to work in Bronzeville and get to know its history and community—but they are incredibly divested of arts and education resources, among other things. This city is deeply segregated, and so many Chicagoans don’t know much about Bronzeville. But what this neighborhood has contributed to American music is insane.
