Julie Duty

Using Music for Its Higher Power
Educator Julie Duty on creating opportunities and removing barriers.

Her music journey and thoughts on education

Education is the place where children learn about the world beyond their families. It often provides a child’s first experience with music, and for most, their only opportunity to participate in group music-making. And for children and adults with disabilities, the opportunity to participate in music can be life changing. Those are the reasons why Julie Duty decided to become an educator, and why she says today, “My relationship with education is everything.”

Duty first took up the saxophone when she was just seven years old. Her father also played sax and her grandfather was a pianist in a band. “I wanted so much to be a part of what they did,” she says. “I would sit on an egg crate at their parties to play my horn. My feet didn’t reach the floor and I could barely reach the right-hand keys of my alto sax, but I’d play the music I’d learned, and my grandfather would play everything else around my part. I thought I was a very big deal!” In third grade, Julie joined school band. To this day, she vividly remembers the feeling of belonging. “I found my ‘fit’ in music, and I truly believed I was needed there,” she says. Though she attended Arizona State University on a saxophone scholarship, she started out as an engineering major with a music minor. “Every time I left the engineering college and walked back to the school of music, I felt relieved and home,” she says, explaining why, after her first semester, she changed her major to music education. In 2014, Duty founded United Sound, where she currently serves as Executive Director, with a mission of “removing barriers and fostering social change through music.” At this point in Duty’s life she feels it’s more important to create opportunities for others to make music — especially those individuals who would otherwise be left out. Her current work centers around ensuring access for people with disabilities in school and community ensembles.

Her thoughts on diversity awareness

Based on personal experience, Julie believes that gender equality issues have changed over time. “When I was in high school, I participated in several groups — mostly jazz — where I was the only girl, and the pressure was intense. It was the ’90s and it was more acceptable to make gender-related comments and criticism back then. As an adult, especially working in such a male-dominated field, it’s really easy to feel like you don’t belong because you’re a woman, and men over a certain age still make comments regularly. When something inappropriate happens, you often have to choose between reacting or letting it go for the sake of your larger agenda. We all hold implicit bias, even against ourselves, as well as different communication styles and work expectations.”

Duty feels that there is a massive shift happening in education to empower students to be more independent. “At United Sound, we train teachers to structure their classrooms with universal design in mind so that everyone can feel welcome,” she says. “We’re [also] building up minoritized composers with more skills and more open doors, while teaching educators about the importance and opportunities that come with diversifying their repertoire.” In her view, the biggest changes that need to be made to empower women and girls are the systemic ones — often the ones that aren’t immediately apparent. “Teaching girls that it’s okay to speak up, not to apologize constantly, that ‘good’ does not always mean compliant, and that appropriate boundaries [need to be maintained] are great first steps. As educators and employers, we should be looking internally at our own implicit biases and working to level the playing field at all times.”

Message to the next generation

Julie Duty’s message to the next generation of women is this: “Check first to see how you’re in your own way. After you solve those issues, then build a team and get to work moving the barriers between you and your goals. If we can use music to build relationships, or to help someone feel more comfortable in their environment or more at peace with themselves, then I think we’re using music for its higher power.”