‘Have voices heard that are often not heard’: Berklee professor creates first-of-its-kind class

BOSTON — Berklee College of Music in Boston is one of the top music schools in the world and has produced hundreds of Grammy-award-winning artists. It was home to many famous students, like St. Vincent and Melissa Etheridge, but it never offered a songwriting class focused on feminism—until now.

In this intimate classroom—a class of Berklee College of Music students are penning their personal feelings and creating songs based on their own experiences.

Professor Valerie Orth created the first-of-its-kind songwriting class called ‘The F word in Sex and Equity’—teaching students about feminism and discrimination and how it impacts our lives.

“So songwriters in the class learn how to write authentic songs about their own lived experiences, and how to have other feminist writers and artists influence them, how to heal themselves, and how to empower others through songwriting,” said Valerie Orth, the Assistant Professor of the Songwriting Department at Berklee College of Music.

Orth encourages students to be vulnerable and talk about their experiences through songwriting—with a goal of understanding who they are and how they want to be presented through their music.

“I think that this is a really important topic that we’re writing about feminism, and also just to have voices heard that are often not heard,” said Orth. “Whether it’s our songwriters, women in the class, as well as just empowering others by what we’re writing.”

The students are writing five original songs that are performed and critiqued by their classmates. The students tell me they learn from each other’s ideas and consider this less of a class—-and more like a therapy session.

“Sometimes it feels selfish because I think a lot of times women are told talking about yourself is selfish, but it isn’t, and it’s important,” said Annalise Marlin, a junior at Berklee. “And you have so much to say and so many thoughts that go on in your brain every day, especially mine.”

While these students say feminism is an underlying theme through a lot of music, they are trying to create more songs in a positive light.

“Define who you are and as you see what you’ve experienced, and then you get to heal from it all and kind of go in a full circle,” said Marlin.

From Ani DiFranco to Patti Smith—this class is recognizing female trailblazers and building on that to create their own stories.

“What we don’t acknowledge in history, we tend to repeat,” said Tammy Temiloluwa Thompson, a Senior at Berklee. “So it’s important to have a space that feels safe for people to have, ask questions about things they don’t know about, and share experiences that are very vulnerable so that we can find a way to, like, move forward and come up with new solutions.”

With the opportunity to marry their love for music and what it does for their soul—-they say the goal is to have their messages benefit others down the road.

“I think this was a really good opportunity to practice doing that,” said Thompson.

Many students will get the opportunity to take this new class. It will be offered in the summer and fall semesters—with Orth hoping to bring it to other colleges and also making it available online.

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