Big Classical - The Un-Accidental Whiteness of Classical Music
Jan Tarasin, Self Portrait, 1978 Color Serigraphs
There are a couple of things that happen in the few conversations about racism I’ve had with white people that stops me from continuing. A kind of blank stare and polite nod, and sometimes a pursing of the lips. It makes me want to suck my words right back in. Why should I go on? Obviously, they’ve never experienced racism, and most perpetuate it without knowing it, so how do I talk to you about something you have no experience with or know you’re participating in?
I have a hypothesis for the stare-and-nod. It’s based on working with access and ableism around vision loss for a show I created:
I have my full eyesight and could close my eyes or take my glasses off for awhile to get a tiny glimpse of vision loss. I also have a degree in optometry, was a practicing optometrist, and my own mother lost her vision. But, I know for sure I do not know what it is like to live with vision loss.
If you’re white-presenting, I can see you don’t even have an equivalent to closing your eyes or taking your glasses off to get even a tiny glimpse of racism. Understanding it will be a lot of mental and emotional work for you.
I share this personal thought experiment as I notice the range of responses from arts organizations to the current Black Lives Matter movement and reflect on my own experience in classical music.
For context — I am a Chinese-Canadian violinist who had a tenured, title-chair position in a Canadian orchestra. I now freelance in Toronto and create and produce music-driven multi-disciplinary shows.
Before I go on:
1. I wanted it to just be about the music, I did.
2. I have work to do too.
During the height of the BLM protests, I asked on social media where classical music’s response was to the current anti-racist movement. Maybe I missed it, but it seemed many theatre companies were already addressing it, talking about where they stood and how they would move forward. I hadn’t noticed anything from classical music. To be fair, I have become more engaged with the theatre world in the last few years, and know my online world is largely controlled by an algorithm, but I still freelanced in classical music and my network was still primarily classical musicians.
The question was meant for what I’ll call “Big Classical Music.” If you are an organization (ex. orchestra, festival, opera, conservatory) that has a group of people you call “Management,” you’re probably getting a good amount of public funding and you’re probably taking up a lot of cultural space — literally and figuratively. You hire a lot of musicians, artists and administrators and that is power.
The more I learn about the system of racism, the more I cannot ignore the insidious racism in classical music. Insidious is probably not the right word — obvious, tolerated and accepted are more accurate. I’m trying to understand how, in 2020, Big Classical has managed to not be held accountable.
Classical music’s reputation is that it is for, let’s just call it — the rich, white and older. This is the demographic of most of the audience and individual donors. The stage also looks predominantly white, despite screened auditions. This points to bigger problems way before getting to the audition, but I’m going to try to stay focussed here.
That’s a pretty tight feedback loop of affirmation. White people watching white people perform music composed by white people for white people. Did I mention that musicians in Big Classical orchestras are tenured and unionized? Is there anything that could lock the culture in any further?
In an article in The Arrow Journal entitled, Why People of Colour Need Spaces Without White People, Kelsey Blackwell writes,
“If your community is mostly white, it is not by accident.”
I keep thinking about this because it applies to me too, and I am not white. I am 100% Chinese, born and raised in Kitchener, Ontario. If I do not make a concerted effort, I take in almost entirely white culture. Like I said, I have work to do too.
And if I haven’t made it clear yet, in the Big Classical community, it is definitely mostly white and, in my experience, not by accident.
In a recent New York Times Events discussion between Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham, the hosts of the podcast Still Processing, Morris spoke about wanting all Americans to feel what it is like to be treated like Black people. For,
“white people to experience what it feels like to be …at the whims of the police.”
I can’t help but think of when an adult is teaching a child empathy. Remember when you were a kid and you hurt someone and an adult asked you, “How would you feel if they did that to you?” Such as, made a joke that actually denigrated you and lumped you into a humiliating stereotype and everyone around you did nothing/laughed it off because that person always says things like that/they didn’t mean it that way/they’re old and also, is it up bow or down bow because there’s only one more minute until the unionized break in this rehearsal?
Why should a white person learn to develop a sensitivity to the matrix they live in and benefit from without having to do any work? If you’re a Big Classical orchestra musician, you have a tenured and unionized job, with an audience that looks mostly like you, and holds you up as a kind of “artistic elite.” Why challenge yourself to examine your implicit bias or white fragility? Once you have that knowledge, you might have to do something about it. You might have to make space.
After a new music concert, chatting in the lobby with colleagues, a board member of a long-standing new music organization told us the Artistic Director of said organization “didn’t want to deal with it.” “It” being gender parity or giving voice to marginalized people of any kind, as the funding bodies were now asking for. The board member was leaving anyway after 10 years, but the Artistic Director — he didn’t want to deal with it. The board member and the Artistic Director were both white. The following Artistic Director? Yet another white person, just a bit younger.
I ask myself, can I love playing and participating in this music and still be a part of its glaringly white culture? The same culture that stereotypes Asian musicians as being robotic and playing without emotion while also hoping we might save the art form? Could this be the same culture that accuses me of causing the pandemic while holding me up as the “model minority” (quiet, apolitical and hard working) to drive a racial wedge between races to oppress Black people?
Exactly how much do you think I like playing Mozart?
How about just wanting to feel like you can also belong in classical music? Baritone Andrew Adridge recently gave his thoughts on being a Black opera singer in Canada:
“I have often pondered on my own reality as a young Black opera singer and I have realized that the way the industry is currently structured, I have no business hoping to be in it. I have never seen a Black artist in Canada at an attainable level. I didn’t know there were Black opera singers until I had at least three years of voice training. I didn’t even see another Black singer on a stage until I was in my second year of undergrad. The fact that this is my reality and that my white colleagues don’t even need to think about this is a problem.”
He goes on to call for,
“Authentic Representation… when that underrepresented person can actualize a path to belonging.”
Notice he doesn’t say “a career path.” He says, “a path to belonging.” This gives me the same feeling I had when I was on the jury of an Ontario Arts Council program for only BIPOC artists. I understand the program needs to exist because of implicit bias, but I resent the fact that it has to exist.
Agreeing with an American Federation of Music stance or asking Orchestras Canada to make an anti-racist policy is not going to make that happen, Majority-White-Folks-Industry. Someone like Andrew is not going to be rehearsing with a “policy,” he’s going to be rehearsing with you.
“If your community is mostly white, it is not by accident.”
Divesting from whiteness also appears to mean divesting from classical music as it is right now. I don’t say these words lightly. I strived for many years to be a part of the main industry where you have at least a shot at a decent wage.
If you have a position in an orchestra, you are, for the most part, stuck spending 3–6 hours a day sitting next to the exact same people about 9 months of the year. If you were to call a colleague in/out and they didn’t like it, well — ending that musical phrase together is going to be a bit tense, isn’t it?
If you’re a freelancer, and depend on the work (that has a prevailing narrative of scarcity), are you really going to risk losing the gig by saying something about anything, let alone racism? Probably not.
I am in a privileged position to disengage because I don’t depend financially on working in Big Classical. My gradual move away from it had many factors, but the lack of response to the Black Lives Matter movement hasn’t helped the cause. Why am I not being “quiet and apolitical” now? Because for the first time, albeit catalyzed by a pandemic and weeks of global anti-racism protests, I feel like there is a chance of being heard, and for the first time the energy of articulating all of this feels possibly worthwhile.
It will feel weird and complicated to still play the music but not support or try to get jobs with the major institutions that currently uphold it. That does not mean I hold them less accountable, particularly if they receive some of the highest amounts of funding from Canada Council for the Arts.
For all the superficiality of social media, I think BIPOC can tell when an authentic, self-examined statement has been offered.
Here’s an example: https://whynot.theatre/black-lives-matter/
Here’s another: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/foundation/press/153860/open-letter-of-commitment-to-our-community
And as someone who now hires artists, I know I can also do better.
I think we can all agree that actual change in Big Classical will be slow and only with consistent effort, but it also must come from all sides — institutional, top-down, individual (board members, donors), and musicians in and outside the rehearsal. One Black conductor and one Black singer cannot do all the heavy lifting. I hope Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser and Measha Brueggergosman are being paid well for their advocacy work right now.
On second thought, since we’re toppling statues and defunding police, maybe I should ‘ask for it all’ as Morris does — a full dismantling and restructuring of Big Classical.
When I made that show with all levels of vision in mind, I interviewed people with vision loss and read books by blind authors. I consulted with blind theatre artist Alex Bulmer, who is now a co-director on the show, and I reached out to the Canadian National Institute for the Blind and personally invited people with low vision and blindness to attend. For every remount of the show, understanding and creating access for this community is a new effort (new venue means new considerations), and requires time and resources. I cannot do it alone.
In the conversation between Morris and Wortham, Wortham talks about the work white people, not Black people (or Indigenous or any other racialized people), need to do to fix the systemic problem of anti-Black racism and oppression. Empathy is, in fact, not enough and actual work of dismantling the system needs to be done. But, she doesn’t trust white people to “fix what they broke.”
Intellectual knowledge and policies are one thing, like knowledge of eye anatomy and being taught in optometry school, “losing your vision causes anxiety.” The work of imagining vision loss for myself meant truly taking it into my consciousness. Putting real access initiatives into place meant following through with consultation, resources and concrete actions. With all of my knowledge and efforts, how many people with low vision and blindness have experienced this show since 2014, when I first performed it? Maybe a handful. I suspect it’s because there isn’t a lot of trust built up yet, but I’ll continue to try to make that space.
What might a restructuring of Big Classical look like? How about an Indigenous takeover of the Four Seasons Centre, the immense, multi-story glass building in downtown Toronto made with the “finest level of acoustics” that currently only houses opera and ballet. Instead of free noon-hour song cycles and chamber music, how about free noon-hour Deaf performance art. A drop in the bucket of possibilities.
So, rather than looking for the next person in the top <1% of the world to play another undoubtably impressive Tchaikovsky violin concerto, maybe ask why Tchaikovsky continues to be programmed to begin with. Who is it serving? How else will we know the full potential of Canadian culture unless space is made available and resources are redirected?
Big Classical — you are part of the system. I would love nothing more than to have a real conversation about this without the stare-and-nod. Please get to work. Or better yet, just fully move aside.
In addition to the references below, I am sharing essays by Gregory Oh and Bradley Powell in response to the current Black Lives Matter movement and classical music:
http://gregoryoh.com/writing/the-de-risking-of-western-classical-music/
https://medium.com/@powell.brad/a-new-normal-for-north-american-orchestras-682337135acb
System of racism: 17min30 Dr. Robin DiAngelo discusses 'White Fragility' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45ey4jgoxeU
The Arrow Journal “Why People of Colour Need Spaces Without White People” By Kelsey Blackwell
https://arrow-journal.org/why-people-of-color-need-spaces-without-white-people/
Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham on empathy:
Implicit bias: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/making-people-aware-of-their-implicit-biases-doesnt-usually-change-minds-but-heres-what-does-work
White fragility: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-sociologist-examines-the-white-fragility-that-prevents-white-americans-from-confronting-racism
Saving the artform: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-future-of-classical-music-is-chinese/2019/03/22/2649e9dc-4cb5-11e9-93d0-64dbcf38ba41_story.html
Model minority myth: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0123-wu-chua-model-minority-chinese-20140123-story.html
Ontario Arts Council Skills and Career Development Program: https://www.arts.on.ca/grants/skills-and-career-development-indigenous-arts-pro
American Federation of Music: https://cfmusicians.afm.org/news/a-letter-from-ray-hair-on-black-lives-matter
Orchestras Canada: https://oc.ca/en/statement-racial-inequity/