On Oct. 11, Bothell, Washington, a suburb a half-hour northeast of Seattle, will celebrate Bernadette Bascom Day. The day is a tribute to the soul singer, who was the first artist signed to Stevie Wonder’s record label, and who has performed with music icons like Al Green and Elton John.
That’s not all she’s being celebrated for. Bascom is a long-time music teacher in the Bothell area who developed a method to help kids with speech disabilities find their voices. She founded the nonprofit Speak! Music as Language in 2007.
“I'm so honored. It really is humbling, but it also is really validating, and it lets me and a bunch of other people know that we have moved forward,” she said.
Speak! will put on a fundraiser gala at Bothell’s McMenamins Anderson School to celebrate Bernadette Bascom Day, and to help expand the reach of Bascom’s work. Funds raised will go towards the development of technology and infrastructure to bring her methodology to more kids with special needs.
“These young people want to be a part of life like everybody else,” Bascom said.
Propelled toward music
Bascom grew up in Baltimore. She’s the daughter of noted civil right activist, Rev. Marion C. Bascom, who she said taught her “that we're responsible for others,” she said.
Rev. Bascom was worried about his daughter’s desire to go into the “rough and tumble” world of entertainment, a path Bascom was clear on from a very young age.
“I broke the coffee table down at three years old, singing and performing, and I always knew, and I never let it go,” Bascom said.
Certain moments in her early life propelled her even more toward music, like befriending Stevie Wonder at age 15. She met him while doing radio voiceovers and introducing a DJ at an event.
“I had little ins to things nobody else did, and I figured out where he was staying,” she said.
Bascom and her brother went to Wonder’s hotel and knocked on the door. They hit it off immediately, and it turned out that a relative of Wonder’s road manager was a member of Rev. Bascom’s church. That “in” granted the Bascom kids access to him whenever he was performing nearby — but Wonder had no idea Bascom could sing.
A few years later, at 19, Bascom got her big break when she was invited to join People’s Choice, a Philadelphia-based soul-funk group with a recent hit single. She discovered Seattle while on tour with the group, and fell in love with the city’s lush environment and progressive culture.
“I actually saw couples, mixed-race couples, holding hands…It was like what I had dreamed of in Baltimore,” she said.
She moved to Seattle soon after and joined a prominent local R&B band called Epicentre, and in 1979 bumped into Wonder again while performing in Vancouver B.C. with the group.
“He was like, ‘What are you doing now? And I said, ‘I'm a singer.’ And he goes, ‘You're a what? Why didn't you ever tell me?’ So I said, ‘Why would I tell Stevie Wonder I could sing?’”
After Wonder heard what she could do, he made her the first artist he signed to his label, Black Bull Music, Inc.
Back to Seattle
Bascom didn’t remain on the label or in Los Angeles for long, but Wonder’s seal of approval helped her establish a fruitful career as a solo artist. She and Wonder remain friends to this day.
“He’s hilarious. The very person you see on stage, that’s him all the time,” she said.
In the early-1980s, Bascom returned to Seattle and recorded her charming anthem “Seattle Sunshine” and its soulful B-side, “I Don’t Wanna Lose Your Love.” Then she moved to Las Vegas, where she spent 18 years performing six nights a week on the Vegas strip with a variety of artists.
In 2004, she returned to Washington, first to Bellevue and then Bothell. She has been performing and teaching in the area ever since, mentoring singers and rappers through one-on-one instruction. She has also taught music in universities and schools, particularly in Bothell’s Northshore School District.
During her tenure there, something special happened when she began teaching kids at Secondary Academy of Success, an alternative high school in the district. She saw major boosts in confidence and self-esteem in teens as she taught them to sing and perform onstage.
“Once a child's been on stage in a beautiful gown and gloves up to their elbows, doing ‘The Supremes’ — even the boys — [they] never would be the same,” she said.
That transformation was in the back of her mind when she was asked to teach music to children with special needs a short time later.
“I was performing at Highway 99 [Blues Club], and I'm walking through the audience, and a beautiful woman grabs my arm, and she says, ‘have you ever thought about teaching children with disabilities?’ And I went, ‘No, I hadn't, but I'd be honored to try.’ And so that began a group called the Wranglers. It was about 25 of them,” Bascom said.
It was arranged for parents to bring these children, many of them nonverbal or minimally-verbal, to a nearby senior center on Saturdays to work with Bascom. She helped the students achieve communication breakthroughs by teaching them vocal performance skills, like breath support.
“Breath allows you to have a magic carpet for the words to tumble out on. Because if you haven't breathed, you don't have anything for the words to float out on,” she said. “They get that, it's all over.”
Defining her method
The results prompted Bascom to formalize her work and create The Music Project, which eventually became Speak! Music as Language.
The four pillars of Bascom’s method support proper breathing, improve verbal pacing, tone facial muscles, and create association between words and melodies. The method also provides caregivers with tools to learn her techniques so each child’s progress can be reinforced at home.
“We need to have what I call a home-to-school, school-to-home continuum,” she said.
In 2013, a documentary KING 5 made about her method, “Bernadette’s Touch,” won an Emmy Award, and over two decades her work has touched thousands more young lives.
“One child went home. Her father came to me crying, and I said, ‘What's the matter, Brad?’ He goes, ‘Elena came into the kitchen and said, So, Dad, how was your day?’ He'd never heard her speak,” she said.
In 2020, Bascom developed a prototype of a smart phone app with Microsoft that would allow students to practice her techniques on the go. But, new technology has emerged in the years since that she’d like to incorporate.
“That's what the fundraiser is for, to pay for all of that technology to be built because now they have AI. They got avatars,” she said.
Bascom also hopes the gala on Oct. 11 will help her license her methodology, and then train and pay teachers to take it to schools and hospitals around the country.
In true Bascom fashion, the gala invitation stresses mingling and getting to know each other — no formal sit-down required. Bascom herself will perform, as will some of her students and special guests like local singer Wanz, who recorded with Macklemore.
“Find love with someone with a different ability,” she said. “Get to know someone with a different ability. Sing with someone with a different ability.”
“Bernadette Bascom: The Life of A Voice” community gala will be held on Saturday, Oct. 11.
