2024 Spring Newsletter
¡EN ACCIÓN!
2024 Spring Newsletter
What’s happening with Yakima Music en Acción
Why music? Why YAMA?
We interviewed pairs of long-time YAMA students and their parents to gain family insights into the questions!
Ayde Stephanie Torres, violinist, 10th year in YAMA
“YAMA gave me this hope of being able to make so much more of what I thought was impossible to become possible for me to do.”
Rafael Torres
“When we met YAMA, especially at the beginning, we were constantly reminded
that music is really good. It’s a really nice way to express your feelings and also relieve your stress and emotions. When she was going through some hard times, YAMA was the place she needed to be because it was part of her health.”
Osvaldo Sandoval, violist, 5th year in YAMA
“I keep coming back every year because I grew addicted to playing my instrument. I really love playing it. Music has helped me grow as a person. When I first started high school, I didn’t know many people, then I got to know a few kids who were in the orchestra. Like I grew connections with them because of that mutual connection we have with music.”
Maria Cortez
“He really kept to himself and he hardly spoke. Now he has the ability to converse with others so much more than before. Yo miré que con la música se refugió. I saw that he’s found refuge in music.”
Dianna Murillo, violinist, 6th year in YAMA
“I’m all YAMA. I’m in it forever. When I get here, I feel happy and calm. When I’m here, I feel good about myself.”
Cexyriver Espinosa Orozco
“La música le ayudaba bastante. Music has helped her a lot. She has a really strong attitude, and music has helped her understand her feelings.”
Finding Harmony and Joy
KIMA news feature shares how YAMA uses collaborative music-making to help inspire our youth and do Yakima good.
A Letter from Our Directors
“YAMA means family.”
Year after year, we’ve heard students share that “YAMA means family.” Hearing this is encouraging, since connection and interdependence are core values of our community. It has also given us pause. There is such a diverse range of experiences within families, where love and affection flourish alongside challenges and complexities. When YAMA musicians claim fellow students and teachers as chosen family, we wonder how hearing “YAMA means family” lands for family members who don’t participate in YAMA. Does this elicit joyfulness at the expansion of this young person’s social network? Does this extension of family feel inclusive, or is YAMA yet another site of cultural disconnect in an immigrant family?
Our Winter Showcase spotlighted key members of our YAMA family: talented students performing with their orchestras, new staff members practicing new roles, and alumni now in staff leadership positions. With our attention so focused on them, it was a huge surprise to see in the audience not only the alumni who were home on college break and there to hear their siblings perform with their respective YAMA orchestras, but also to see so many additional alumni and their families – who had no biological family members performing – all of whom came out on a blustering December evening to be reunited with their friends and former teachers.
It struck us then – after the initial bubbling over of joy at seeing alumni as young adults and reconnecting with their parents, some of whom we had not seen in years because of the pandemic – this reminder that love is abundant and exponential, and that means family can be too. To have multiple families is to have an expansive web of interconnected relationships, all of which have a deep bond of emotional intimacy, in all of the beauty and complicatedness that emotional intimacy brings. What a privilege it was to witness and hear these sentiments reaffirmed by the alumni and families who joined us that night to nurture these interconnected relationships that we have built together over the last eleven years, that will only increase in number as more young people grow through YAMA each year, and as each of those relationships continue to evolve and grow.
Sincerely,
A. S. Pualani, Program Director
Stephanie Lin Hsu, Executive Director