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#20 Editor’s Letter: The Death & Rebirth Issue

Fabi Reyna, founder & CEO introduces the last issue of She Shreds Magazine and discusses moments, and reflections from the the last eight years.

June 27, 2020
Written by
Fabi Reyna
Dear Shredders,

Where do I begin? So much has changed since I made the decision to close this chapter of She Shreds. In that time I have found myself in between feelings of grief and relief, and trying to find answers to questions that I’m now realizing, at this very moment, have stayed consistent throughout the last eight years: 

How do I properly acknowledge and support the transformation and the collective understanding through community that this manifestation has grown into? How do I respectfully honor the thousands of girls, women, non-binary, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and male-identifying allies who have found inspiration and evolution alongside these pages? What purpose do we, as the collective voice represented in this space, serve to the world around us, and how does the world around us affect and navigate our collective voice?

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Like all of our previous releases, this issue shaped itself in a lot of ways. Long before COVID-19, our intention for the “Death and Rebirth” theme was to leave behind what was no longer serving us as a community, and to identify and introduce routines to strengthen our goals over the next decade. However, little did we know that we’d be producing this issue in a space between those two words: the death of World A and the rebirth of World B.

We are experiencing a historic moment in time, when the entire world is currently shedding layers of what life used to be and living in a daily unknown of what’s to come. Alongside a global pandemic, we’re also witnessing a climate crisis, the continuous murders of innocent Black men and women by police, and horrific cases of brutality against women around the world.

As crushing as that might be, it is significant to why we’re all here in the first place: justice. In 2012, the She Shreds community banded together to demand justice in visibility and to be acknowledged and treated as the musicians that we are. In 2016 that demand was reframed to include justice in representation and equality, and to hold the industry accountable not just for their acceptance, but for the unapologetic inclusion of who we are, what we look like, and how we sound. 

Today, as we face social upheaval in 2020, I believe that we’re all fighting for justice in truth: the death of cycles that harm us, and the rebirth of our practices—not as something that we eventually lose and forget, but as daily commitments through our actions.

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In my eight years of living in and researching communities of guitarists who have been underserved and underrepresented, both historically and contemporarily, I’ve come to three conclusions that I feel are important to document:

  1. The biggest misconception of how the guitar and the player are portrayed is that our expression is singular and our practice is strictly cerebral (ie. you can’t be a good player unless you know and follow the technical rules and guidelines). On the contrary, what I think you too will find in the interviews featured in this final issue is that we, as musicians, are the voice of the earth. Our purpose is to translate the pain, joy, needs, and desires of the world around us in a way that the masses can easily digest. We are the historians of our time.
  2. There is a difference between the way that we (those who have been historically excluded from guitar culture) learn, connect, and express through our instruments from those who this guitar culture was created for in the first place. That method of skill building is what I’ve learned to be best described as Intuitive Technique.
  3. The writers of history have always found a way to erase the accomplishments of women, and especially those of Black and Brown women. Right now is one of the only times in history when the space for Black and Brown women to be recognized as guitarists and musicians is not only accessible, but acceptable and encouraged on a mainstream level—a change that our She Shreds community no doubt played a leading role in.
And so, how do we continue to carry these truths for generations to come?

What I have found during my time spent raising awareness for her is that it’s only a stepping stone in the journey of unifying us. Moving forward, our mission as She Shreds Media is to provide the tools and resources that guide musicians through unexplored musical and cultural landscapes. Our vision is to continuously refine, redefine, and reimagine the possibilities of how music connects us, thus ensuring an inclusive and accessible global music community 100 percent of the time. 

From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank all of our magazine subscribers, readers, sponsors, contributors, artists, bands, and everyone else who put a piece of themselves into this mission. Because of you, we did exactly what we intended to do with this publication: distribute awareness, redefine shredding, and reimagine the world of guitar.

Shred Forever,
-Fabi

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Comments

  1. so are you GONE, gone?

    i loved what you did, and loved being able to tell my many female bass and guitar students that there were resources for them that they couldn’t find anywhere else.

    thanks. my hope is that your work will carry forth into the world at large in hope for its betterment.

    edward a sotelo

    Comment by edward a sotelo on June 27, 2020 at 1:54 pm

  2. Excited for this new phase for She Shreds.
    I will continue supporting this great project. if you need a hand holler!
    Gaby

    Comment by Gaby Sue on June 28, 2020 at 11:55 am

  3. […] are thrilled to announce issue 20: The Death and Rebirth Issue (read more about this in Fabi Reyna’s Editor’s Letter). Our final issue features two exclusive cover artists H.E.R. and Willow; featured artists Buffy […]

    Pingback by She Shreds Media on June 29, 2020 at 7:25 pm

  4. We can look at the example of matter and energy: https://tvzionapk.com/ At the very beginning of evolution matter is born out of pure energy, and at a certain time it dissolves again into its pure energy origin. In that way all phenomena goes round and round. On the human level when being born we are manifesting our body and mind, which is together with and never separate from our basic energy of both. When we are dying the body in connection with the mind changes to a very subtle bodymind energy, into the final stage of dying, and from there starts a new process of creation: first we manifest a bardo-body, which is not solid but is an energy-body, from there we eventually manifest a more rough body, that of a new incarnation. In this way Buddhism looks at birth and death always as a circle with no interruption, no ‘disappearing’. The circular movement of existence is more like an on-going transformation or pulsation from energy to matter and from matter to energy at different levels of subtlety.

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  5. The biggest misconception of how the guitar and the player are portrayed is that our expression is singular and our practice is strictly cerebral.
    airgunmaniac

    Comment by David on August 25, 2020 at 7:16 am

  6. I hope yall put out anthologies of the print issues one day!!

    Comment by Ethan Smith on September 10, 2020 at 3:56 pm

  7. I will continue supporting this great project. Thanks

    Comment by topairguns on July 4, 2021 at 1:56 am

  8. Okay now this was interestingalthough i am a noob but it helped me a lot

    Comment by Gleath on July 6, 2021 at 9:25 am

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