JoAnn South Ottley (B. 1935): Her Life and Contributions as a Teaching Artist to Vocal Music Education

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the life and work of vocal performer, teaching artist, and music educator JoAnn South Ottley (b. 1935), and trace her development from the early formative years through a successful singing and teaching career. This study is divided into a prologue, eleven chapters, and an epilogue. The chapter titles are as follows: Genealogy, Early Childhood, Childhood to Marriage, The Balancing Act, Building Foundations, Concentric Circles in Voice and Life, Paradigm Shift, Dissemination of the New Paradigm, LifeSong, and A Woman Interrupted. Raised by loving parents who resided in small ranching communities in Eastern Utah, JoAnn was unaware of the musical culture which would shape her career. She and her husband, Jerold Ottley received Fulbright Scholarships to study music in Germany. Afterward, JoAnn sang for symphonies and opera houses across the United States and internationally. Her teaching career began with private voice students, and eventually included teaching voice and related subjects as a music faculty member at the University of Utah and later Brigham Young University, Hawaii. JoAnn’s humble beginnings gave her a unique perspective as a singer and voice teacher in higher education. She noted issues of social injustice in the education and career possibilities for singers and observed a lack of balance in the lives of many performers. JoAnn taught with the intention to share the transformative nature of singing with her students, while encouraging them to live life fully. She identified the injustice inherent in university vocal education programs caused by unrealistic program goals to find the “one in a thousand” who might be able to succeed in the highly-competitive, specialized world of classical singing. She advocated for supporting and preparing “the other 999.” As a woman of faith, JoAnn worked to balance her life through a spiritual lens. As an autodidact, she studied diverse subjects. JoAnn made connections between all aspects of life and the ideas discovered through her personal study of cutting-edge theories in neurology and physics. Excited by discoveries in New Physics concerning the vibrational context of the universe, she extrapolated that singing was vitally more important to singers and their audiences than the limiting, self-serving goals that vocal programs in higher education promoted. Rather than enjoying and sharing the transformational and unifying power of singing, many music students and professional singers lived in states of fear, competition, and failure. JoAnn synthesized these disparate ideas and created possible solutions for the problems within the accepted paradigm for a singing career. JoAnn’s unique educational background in music made her less acculturated to the unhealthy practices she observed in the field. She became a voice for change. The lack of social justice and the disillusionment observed in many music programs of higher education, eventually led her to leave university teaching and develop and disseminate a new paradigm for singers. This shift in paradigm integrated JoAnn’s various life experiences, strong spiritual beliefs, and personal study of New Physics. JoAnn and other like-minded singers in her community built an organization called “LifeSong” based on her new paradigm for singing. Though the organization eventually disbanded, many students and colleagues associated with JoAnn and LifeSong continue to utilize and share her new paradigm for singing.