Dancing Trumpeter Kiku Collins
Mixed Asian Media - June 22, 2022
By Julian Iralu
Kiku Collins joined me for a zoom conversation from her New York City apartment, shortly after returning from a tour with Gloria Gaynor in Dubai. Kiku is a professional trumpeter in the pop, jazz, disco, and R&B genres. She has worked as a model for Paul Mitchell, performed on commercial soundtracks for Sprite, Ikea, and Burger King, and toured as the trumpet and trombone player for Beyonce. As a half Japanese female trumpeter, she also serves as a conversation facilitator among marginalized brass musicians.
When I began playing trumpet at age 9, I could count female trumpeters with albums on one hand. I first heard Kiku’s trumpeting in 2011, the year Spotify was launched in the States. Kiku’s playing excited me, not only because she was a mixed Asian trumpeter like me, but because I understood the jazz industry has even greater barriers for women than the classical world.
Growing up, Kiku felt like a total outcast in the classical music world, navigating the weirdness surrounding gender and its perceived relation to musical performance. Kiku shared, “It was just the nature of when I grew up. We were not accepted at all. We had to play 50 times better than the guys to get any sort of recognition.” Kiku also had to navigate assumptions that because she was Asian she should play piano or violin.
After completing her time at Manhattan School of Music, Kiku swore off music, tired of playing a “man’s instrument.” Kiku sought to redefine herself. She looked into temp jobs, as well as castings. One of her first experiences was corporate modeling at banks. She later worked as a model for Paul Mitchell for eight years.
Kiku was asked to walk the runway for an international beauty show and told, “We don’t have an Asian, anybody with Asian hair to be in the show.” They found the half Asian texture of her hair easier to work with than full Asian hair. Kiku was short for runway standards (which have only increased since). Because she was shorter than the other models, she learned to walk in ginormous heels. Kiku shared, “In that case being different was good. If I looked like their models they never would have asked me because I was too short.” This experience of walking in large heels also prepared her for later in her career when she would dance on stage wearing stilettos as she toured with Beyoncé’s band.
In June of 2020, I was invited to join a closed Facebook group called “Female/Trans/Non Binary brass players.” This closed Facebook group has connected brass players internationally and started important conversations about harsh reality of gender based discrimination, marginalization, sexual predation within the brass community. The group has approximately 3,000 members across the globe and about 100 posts per month. It’s full of answers brass musicians can’t find elsewhere: what lipstick doesn’t interfere with brass playing and where to find comfortable professional dress pants that don’t restrict breathing. This forum celebrates and uplifts current and historical non-cis male brass players. I was excited to see Kiku’s involvement and leadership within this group and asked her to speak with me about how female/trans/non-binary and other marginalized people operate in and out of the brass music industry.
When Kiku faces adversity, perhaps brought about by her gender or race, she’s found the best way to advocate for herself is through her playing. At a house band charity event a well known vocalist walked in. When he saw Kiku, the only female musician in the band, he said, “I hope you can handle this tune.” It took Kiku a moment to process that he was talking to her. She flipped through her music and picked a part at random that she had never played before. She went for it, nailed it, and replied, “I think we are gonna be good.'' The vocalist didn’t speak to her again for the entire rehearsal or gig. Kiku still had fun at the gig. She danced extra hard for him.
Looking back, Kiku doesn’t understand why he picked out the one different person in the room and if he targeted her because of her gender, race, or both. Kiku joked to me, “I think I can handle this chart OK, even with my half Asian, female eyeballs, and the inferior chops I was given because of my gender, I think I got this.”
Kiku shared in Female/Trans/Non Binary Brass Players that when she was younger, she often felt she was hired as a token female/Asian. She wrote, “These days I feel as if I’m hired for being me — but I have had quite the career to help in that.” I asked Kiku how she dealt with those feelings, especially earlier in her career. She spoke about “The Four Agreements” and how it’s helped her navigate differences. We all deal with our own differences in every aspect of life. People will make assumptions when they see you and create an entire narrative about you, even if you don’t know each other. The first agreement is “Don’t make assumptions.”
Kiku shared, “When you get to the gig, people may be looking at you. They are nervous, but it’s not about you at all, it’s about their own insecurities.” Other musicians at a gig are dealing with an inner dialogue, perhaps wondering, “Am I going to screw up? Will the new female horn player steal the thunder?”
Kiku has decided when someone looks at her when she walks into a gig, it’s all about them. It has nothing to do with her or who she is. She has learned to let go of feeling paranoid, stopped imagining judgments coming from others when they are most likely thinking about where to put their stuff or where the bathroom is.
Professionals in the music industry emphasize how one person can make or break your career. This leads to a culture of hesitancy around speaking out against sexual predation. I asked Kiku for her ideas on addressing uncomfortable/inappropriate comments within a professional setting, particularly freelancers without access to HR.
“Personally if someone says something inappropriate, I ask them to repeat it as if I didn’t hear it. You’d be amazed at the percentage of changed statements or questions. They’re not going to repeat it; it puts them on the spot. But plenty of people will say the same thing again. When that happens, I just say, “you might want to rethink saying anything like that in the future.’” Kiku also suggested making it a little personal but in a kind way. When people yell at each other in a public forum, you can address it in a public forum. It’s important for the people around to hear it as well. Replying with something like, ‘How’s your daughter doing?’ might help them make the association.
Kiku also shared her thoughts for supporting marginalized voices in an academic setting. In Female/ Trans / NonBinary Brass Players, members have the option to submit posts anonymously. Kiku mentioned the benefits of this, and how academic institutions should create a safe space for students to share anonymously, so those who feel vulnerable can access support without advertising their identity.
To wrap up my conversation with Kiku, I asked her about her career, curious to know the story behind the glamor. Kiku’s audition for Beyoncé took place over the course of four days. She remembers thinking that she was too old, that everybody in the room looked so young and cute. The audition took place during a demanding period of her career when she was mixing her first record.
The first day of the audition took place in a huge concrete room. Kiku sat for four hours, and was not allowed to play as the room was so full. Her horn was as cold as ice. She almost left. For her audition she was requested to play along with horn lines from one of Beyoncé’s recordings. The lines were easy to pick up on, but she was asked to solo. Kiku remembers thinking, “There’s one chord. How am I supposed to solo over one chord?” She felt as though she had played terribly and did not think she would hear back for the next round of auditions. The man walking her out commented, “You know how to play that thing.” She responded, “I thought I did until today.” He assured her, “I’ll see you again.” By the third audition, Jay-Z was there. The room was full of sax players from all over the country but no other trumpeters. Kiku remembers thinking, “I have no way out. I have nobody to lose to.”
Kiku’s tour with Beyoncé was full of learning curves. When she played for a jazz trumpet friend, Lew Soloff, in NYC, he told her, “You're the loudest trumpeter I know. That’s not good. How do you get through?” He knew that playing 12 hours a day at a high volume might not be sustainable and encouraged Kiku to rely on the sound guys and the mic up process to make sure she was heard. They would adjust to her, she didn’t need to adjust to them.
Everybody else at the gig had an instrument they could simply pick up and make a noise on, but the trumpet is an instrument that requires a warmup. She’d have to wake up far earlier than anyone else. With 12 hour playing days, she’d wake up swollen and have to keep ice nearby.
She was terrified when she was first expected to dance while playing. The range of motion a sax player has is different from a trumpeter. Kiku had to put in serious work to master isolated movement: to manipulate her body to match the sax section without compromising her own playing. Now, Kiku says, no one can stop her from dancing.
Julian Iralu is Naga-American from the Angami Meyase clan in Nagaland India. She grew up in Gallup, New Mexico. She is a 2022 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow and 2022 Gish Jen Fiction Fellow. Her work has generously been supported by The Naga American Foundation, GrubStreet and Boston Writers of Color. Her creative writing centers around family violence, the horror of the everyday, and the Naga diaspora.