{"id":25114,"date":"2015-10-20T12:47:31","date_gmt":"2015-10-20T16:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/busm\/?p=25114"},"modified":"2015-10-20T12:47:31","modified_gmt":"2015-10-20T16:47:31","slug":"rocking-with-the-bu-medical-campus-band","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/2015\/10\/20\/rocking-with-the-bu-medical-campus-band\/","title":{"rendered":"Rocking with the BU Medical Campus Band"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4>Ensemble fuses genres, fuels camaraderie<\/h4>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"650\" height=\"366\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IoXCqS0z_UQ\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div class=\"banner-container banner-has-html\">\n<div class=\"full-width full-width-video \">\n<p class=\"caption\">In the video above, members of the BU Medical Campus Band perform and talk about the rewards of making music together. Photo by Esther Ro (COM&#8217;15)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article three-col nosidebar-story cf\" id=\"post-86494\">\n<div class=\"entry sc\">\n<p>As everyone knows, getting into medical and dental school is fiercely competitive. And for those choosing academic medicine, that M.D. tacked to their name promises admission into an almost military-style hierarchy. But at the BU School of Medicine, the Henry Goldman School of Dental Medicine, the School of Public Health, and Boston Medical Center, there is one place where everyone, from cardiac surgeons to shift nurses to third-year dental students, shares equal status and carries equal weight. It\u2019s the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/about\/diversity\/programs\/bumc-band\/\">BU Medical Campus Band<\/a>, and since 2011 the faculty, students, and staff comprising this ragtag jazz-rock-country-world music fusion ensemble have been letting off steam on many Sunday mornings at the School of Medicine Bakst Auditorium.<\/p>\n<p>They also occasionally take the stage for paid performances, with the proceeds from several of them going to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/today\/2011\/stress-rx-med-campus-band-rocks\/\">Berklee College of Music scholarship fund<\/a>. (A group of Berklee musicians returned the favor with a performance benefiting BMC.)<\/p>\n<p>Last week, the band played at a MED young alumni reunion at Boston\u2019s Taj hotel. They\u2019ll next perform publicly on Monday, November 16, at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.midwaycafe.com\/\">Midway Caf\u00e9<\/a> in Jamaica Plain at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>The band was the brainchild of lead guitarist and harmonica player Rafael Ortega, a MED professor of anesthesia and a BMC anesthesiologist, who is game to jam in any style, be it soul, rock, jazz, or the reggae and calypso of his Dominican Republic childhood. Like his bandmates, a Sunday morning on-call might have him swiftly trading his jeans for scrubs. Ortega says the Sunday schedule was initially a tough sell for spouses and significant others. But the music makes this high-powered, Type A bunch so happy and so centered, they joke that the jam sessions have become their church.<\/p>\n<p>The band is \u201ca great venue for faculty, staff, and students to interact,\u201d head and neck surgeon\u2014and singer and guitarist\u2014Anand K. Devaiah, a MED associate professor of otolaryngology, told <em>BU Today<\/em> shortly after the band started. Ortega says the ensemble now \u201clives permanently at the medical school,\u201d and accepts musicians playing any instrument as well as any person moved to sing or clap cymbals. \u201cWe\u2019ve had saxophones, violins, Spanish guitar, harmonica, timbales, congas, djembe, and bongos.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Not only are there no auditions, but band members have been known to call, \u201cC\u2019mon up and join us\u201d to people who poke their heads into the auditorium where they rehearse. Depending on who shows up that day, the band can segue from blues to heavy metal. \u201cWe don\u2019t have a recognizable sound,\u201d says Ortega, MED associate dean for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/about\/diversity\/office-of-diversity-and-inclusion\/\">diversity and multicultural affairs<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The ensemble is a hit among colleagues and administrators alike. The BUMC Band functions as something of an equalizer\u2014a student might be playing the bass line for his professor of surgery. As for, to put it delicately, the reputedly outsized egos of people in certain professions, these are preempted by the music, the camaraderie, and the sheer fun factor. Ortega has called making music \u201ca laboratory for all of us, to negotiate and make compromises. We must try to keep egos in check.\u201d He describes the band as therapy and says it\u2019s become such a popular diversion that it\u2019s even used as a recruitment tool.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne faculty member chose our institution so he could play drums,\u201d Ortega says.<\/p>\n<p>This<em> BU Today<\/em> story was written by <span class=\"byline\">By <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/today\/author\/susan-seligson\/\">Susan Seligson<\/a>. Video by Jason Kimball<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Faculty, students, and staff comprising this ragtag jazz-rock-country-world music fusion ensemble have been letting off steam on many Sunday mornings at the School of Medicine Bakst Auditorium.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124,91],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25114"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25114"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25116,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25114\/revisions\/25116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}