Rant about classical music

An email list to which I subscribe has recently had an . . . illuminating discussion about racism in classical music, specifically with reference to the VPO. I've been wondering about this issue myself, and thought I'd try my hand at a bit of polemic. My thoughts are influenced by Suzanne Cusick's work, but also by Judith Butler's idea of performative identity (she's talking about gender, but it seems to me to apply to anything). I'm also just (finally) reading Christopher Small's Musicking (Wesleyan UP, 1998) which I find spot on in many respects and a bit dodgy in others.

What follows is what was going to be my post, but I've decided to sit on it for a bit longer.

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I think one of the problems here is that it's very hard to generalize across entire continents. I do not recognize in William's descriptions the Europe in which I grew up and in which I currently live. It seems to me there are differences between countries, between regions within a given country, between urban and rural areas, and all sorts of other local factors that broad statistics do not account for. The corner of Europe I grew up in bears no resemblance to William's comparative paradise with regard to funding and diversity of audience for classical music. It isn't like Turin, it isn't like Germany, and nor is it like the Met. The ticket prices are outlandishly low (kids prices currently start at 3 pounds to see an OK professional chamber music ensemble playing a programme of Elgar, Ravel, and Takemitsu), but still the audience is largely white, aging, and middle class.

The issues go beyond ticket pricing. I think racism and sexism are absolutely endemic within classical music, and in a sense it's no surprise: the music most valued in the concert hall was largely produced by historically racist, sexist, bourgeois or elite cultures. The whole premise of classical music is based on exclusivity and elitism. It's not surprising that kids in the area I grew up in tend to think classical music is not for them, because historically it hasn't been for farm kids. I'm not excusing it and I do think the whole system should change, but changing the institutionalized racism, sexism, and classism etc does not necessarily mean that suddenly there will be a change in who plays classical music and in the diversity of the audience.

In terms of education, my experience as a music student and a music lecturer in Europe (Scotland, England, the Republic of Ireland) has been that classical music is the music of white, educated, middle and upper classes. In my 12 years in the education system as undergraduate, postgraduate, teaching assistant and lecturer in three different universities in three different countries I have known exactly five students who were not from white, middle class backgrounds. Three of those are white working class students, one is middle class British Asian and the other a Korean American whose parents are both university lecturers. Throughout my university student days, all the music faculty in those different institutions were white. I had one black lecturer when I took a course in anthropology: the only time in my life I had been taught by someone who wasn't white. Regrettably, there is nothing abnormal in Britain and Ireland about my experience. Academic music and classical music in Britain, at least outside London, and in the Irish Republic, is overwhelmingly white.

This is a certainly problem with the institutionalized racism, sexism, classism etc. There should be no barriers, explicit, implicit, structural, or whatever: anyone who wants to should be able to participate in classical music and in music in the academy. I do not take issue with this. Diversity is paramount. What bothers me is that so often the call for diversity within classical music is based upon the assumption that poor people, black people, and other disenfranchised people, need to be able to access classical music because of the intrinsic superiority of classical music to any other kind of music. Apparently white middle class people need to rescue poor, black inner city kids from the horrors of non-classical musics. These disenfranchised people need the transcendental experience that apparently only classical music can offer. In Suzanne Cusick's words, the ideal classical music listening experience is one that is "socially mobile, freed from physical work, seeming to encompass all possibilities in a unified whole . . . a sonic experience of the middle class self." I might add that at least in Britain and Ireland this is the white middle class self. This is the musical subculture of a certain strata of white,
educated, bourgeois people. It is one of many music subcultures--one of many white music subcultures. And in a sense, the idea that it should be universal is a *kind* of cultural colonialism--the idea that everyone should share the values of the white, educated bourgeoisie promulgated by attending the typical classical music performance. At its worst, educational outreach work could be seen as a kind of recruitment into bourgeois whiteness.

There's more to this, then, than racism, sexism, classism. It's about identity, about values. It may be that the barriers are knocked away as they should be, and yet little changes. If this happens, it's nothing necessarily to worry about, just as I'm guessing many wouldn't be worried that, say, in the event of all the institutionalized racism, sexism being removed from hip hop, white Scottish girls didn't move en masse into hip hop. Classical music, in my opinion, needs to become just one among many diverse, valued musics. It's going to have to lose its status as the pinnacle of artistic achievement, and that's going to be painful. But it has to happen. Just as it is hard to realize the oppressive nature of whiteness, or to come to terms with the compromises one has made in developing a gender identity, so it's going to be hard to disentangle the intersecting hierarchies embedded in classical music and within which classical music is embedded.

There is state funding for music in the UK and in Ireland; it could be much better, but there is some money. William is right in some respects: the Royal Opera House has had pots of state funding, and very controversial it was too. The tabloids were up in arms. Prices this season at ROH range from 5 pounds for one of about 45 seats with a compromised view of the stage up to 180 pounds for one of the best 140 seats. Most classical orchestras get some kind of state funding. There are a host of contemporary music ensembles run by young professionals that don't get any state funding at all and can barely survive. But
there is racism and classism and very likely sexism in the way the arts funding is divvied up. In an ideal world there would be more money, and every music organization--whether for bhangra, gamelan, contemporary art music, classical music, opera, whatever--would get a decent share. But that's not what happens. Excellent contemporary musics such as free/open improv that actually do cross class lines in the UK, if not so much race, rarely get state funding at all. National arts funding shows where a state's priorities lie, and at the moment the art forms favored by white educated middle classes get a good proportion of the very limited pot.

There is institutional discrimination elsewhere too. Why are a disproportionate number of black contemporary composers considered jazz musicians and therefore not eligible for royalties for their compositions? Gerry Hemingway and Anthony Davis were part of the same scene: Hemingway had no problems registering as a composer & collecting royalties; Davis eventually had to change sheet music publishers to achieve the same result. That's an example from the US, but I'd be utterly amazed if there weren't similar examples from the UK.

So, yes, all the institutional discrimination should be swept away, but also ideally the new institutions should be totally unrecognizable. Diversity in music terms means equal access, but it also means equal respect for diverse musics

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Must think about this some more!