Tag: music education

Confronting Our Complicity: Music Theory and White Supremacy

Posted on January 6, 2021 by - Commentary, NewMusicBox, Toolbox

A photo of a wrecked classroom with paint peeling from the ceiling, desks turned over and broken.

For many students, the traditional music theory core curriculum is an undesirable and yet unavoidable part of their college music experience. It becomes something to be suffered through, survived rather than savored. A critical source of this frustration is the disconnect between their musical lives inside the classroom and those outside it. Despite the fact that the majority of our students do not listen to Western art music regularly, nearly all of the core curriculum is based on it. Consequently, as students progress through their degree, they must endure the constant friction between the music they want to study and the music they have to study, between music they value and what music theory as an institution values.

In “Teaching Inequality: Consequences of Traditional Music Theory Pedagogy,” I described how a theory curriculum devoted to a single style is inherently limited and inherently limiting. When we restrict ourselves to Western art music, we forgo the opportunity to speak about basic yet essential musical elements such as groove, timbre, improvisation, and post-production in styles where these are powerfully foregrounded.

Why then do we as a discipline remain so averse to change? Despite the passage of time, the evolution of taste, and the advent of new styles, new techniques, and new technologies of music creation, the topics we teach and the examples we use rarely reflect this. Instead, today’s leading theory texts cover more or less the same material as those we used as students, as those our teachers used as students, as those our teachers’ teachers used as students. The theory curriculum at too many institutions remains largely standardized and largely stagnant.

This is a problem.

Our unwarranted privileging of Western art music—a style constructed by white people as white, despite the historical and ongoing participation of people who aren’t—enables the dismissal of other styles of music and the people associated with those styles through unfavorable and unfair comparisons. How do we reconcile this with our many statements extolling the virtues of diversity, equity, and inclusivity? Why do we continue to rely on a deeply flawed pedagogy?

We continue to rely on the traditional pedagogy for three interrelated reasons. First, given our extensive training in Western art music, we’re reluctant and often unable to divest ourselves from its contents. Second, because institutions prioritize research over teaching, we prioritize research over teaching. Finally, we’re unwilling to confront our investment in the whiteness of the curriculum because we’re unwilling to confront our investment in the whiteness in our lives.

When we rationalize our use of the traditional pedagogy by appealing to its contents, we attempt to transform a subjective preference into an objective truth. The specific set of skills that one acquires through studying Western art music becomes the necessary set of skills for any consequential study of music. But basing an entire core curriculum on any single style requires making major concessions about the musical elements we can talk about and the informed ways we can talk about them. Being able to harmonize chorales “correctly” means nothing if you’re looking to get up, get into it, and get involved. Conversely, asking if you can take it to the bridge won’t help you avoid parallel fifths.

Any argument that centers tradition must address whose tradition and why. Simple historical inertia—the replication of what we were taught as students—isn’t sufficient. If we appeal to “art for art’s sake,” we need to be explicit about whose art and, consequently, for whose sake. We need to talk about the metrics being used to determine what counts as art, who selects these metrics, and their reasons for doing so. We need to talk about how white male identity politics has shaped Western art music.

Our decision to use the traditional pedagogy is also motivated by how this impacts our careers. Institutions place a disproportionate weight on research relative to teaching, and this incentivizes perpetuation in the classroom, rather than innovation. Because the classical style is highly codified and relatively easy to teach, we can allocate more time and energy to research while still hitting established learning goals. Unfortunately, our longstanding pedagogical dependence on Western art music has conditioned us to expect certain results without asking if they matter, much less how they do, or to whom.

Contingent faculty have even less institutional incentive—and often less agency—to challenge the curriculum at the schools where they teach. The instability of employment and higher turnover rates means that any traction for innovative pedagogy is hard to establish and harder to maintain. In general, changes to the status quo, when they occur, tend to be fairly isolated.

Nevertheless, theory’s established historical pedigree does not absolve us from the moral necessity of questioning what it is we’re actually doing in the classroom. Well-established marginalization is, after all, still marginalization, and the generation of predictable results does not in itself mean that we are teaching our students what they should be learning. The bald assertion that the traditional pedagogy provides any and all necessary and fundamental knowledge needs to be defended, and I don’t believe it can be.

We present music almost exclusively by dead white European men under neutral course titles like “Basic Musicianship,” allowing the two to conflate into a tautological definition of what qualifies as “Real Music,” and re-inscribing racial and gender hierarchies in the process. We present Western art music as an unassailable good and our teaching of it as unassailably good. We present Western art music as an intellectual art form, a high art form, a better art form, and we do this in the service of an ideology that positions white identities, ideas, and ideals as superior.

We want to continue using the traditional pedagogy without acknowledging how it upholds white supremacy because we don’t want to acknowledge how we uphold white supremacy. We consistently downplay or deny the privileges whiteness provides and we consistently downplay or deny the ways we protect those privileges.

  • Today’s leading theory texts cover more or less the same material as those we used as students.

    Dave Molk

  • Any argument that centers tradition must address whose tradition and why.

    Dave Molk

  • Listening to Western art music is not racist in itself. ... Canonizing only white composers of Western art music is racist.

    Dave Molk

Listening to Western art music is not racist in itself. Studying Western art music is not racist in itself. Teaching Western art music is not racist in itself. Canonizing only white composers of Western art music is racist. Requiring all students to use a white lens to approach, understand, and critique music is racist.

As Michelle Ohnona and I wrote in “Promoting Equity: Developing an Antiracist Music Theory Classroom,” we need to engage with music and with the social and cultural mechanisms that shape it. We need to look past individual intent and acknowledge the cumulative impact of supporting a pedagogy that holds that a core curriculum based solely in Western art music is acceptable. To present this status quo as the natural order of things, without critique, is to uphold white supremacy.

The 2020 presidential election once again laid bare the ongoing thrall of white grievance and the pervasiveness of white supremacy. We can’t be impartial about this—oppression within education is a reflection and a reinforcement of oppression within society, and when we fail to address injustice, we ensure its continuance. Let us push back against the claimed inevitability of this insupportable curriculum.

The best thing we can do for our students is to embrace an engaged, transformative pedagogy in which, as bell hooks eloquently writes in Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, “our work is not merely to share information but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students.” This requires at least a realignment and probably a rethinking of what higher education is supposed to be.

With a transformative pedagogy, we recalibrate our classrooms into spaces where we acknowledge the humanity of our students and are explicit about how the work we do in the classroom relates to their lives outside of it. We talk openly with students and with each other about racism, sexism, ableism, classism, and other forms of identity-based oppression. That this call to arms isn’t a new one only underscores its urgency. That these discussions aren’t necessarily easy only underscores their urgency.

As we teach students how to hear, interact with, and think about music, let’s also teach them to think critically, ask questions, self-reflect, and to care enough to do so. Let’s open their ears, eyes, and minds to voices and people that have been marginalized, to the stories that surround and support the notes, to the unheard music. We need to teach the humanities as a practice you take out into the world.

As with any enterprise involving the sowing of seeds, some will germinate immediately, some only after the passing of several years, and some not at all. This is okay. Now is the time for planting.

Leveraging the Quarantine to Create an Online Music Camp

Posted on July 9, 2020 by - Commentary, NewMusicBox

Young composer at keyboard wearing headphones

“So is your father an entrepreneur to have worked with you through all of this?” asked Benjamin Taylor, composer and founder of the Music Creators Academy.

“That would be my mother.”

I remember my heart racing two months prior to that call on one of my regular walks around the neighborhood with my mother. Only a day before our walk, my plans to attend the Brevard Music Center’s Summer Institute had been canceled due to COVID-19, and we were already planning out the logistics for me to host my own summer camp.

“The demand is there,” I said, “I’m evidence enough of that! But this could be the biggest project I’ve ever undertaken…”

The Composers Collaborative Project (CCP) is an online series of lectures designed for the benefit of composers of all ages and skill levels. It has been my project of the last three months, and my attempt to leverage the quarantine to create a unique opportunity for composers seeking a path to continue developing their skills. The CCP currently features fifteen professional composition professors and freelancers – each teaching a 90-minute masterclass tailored to their individual strengths and passions. It has been one of the most exciting, nerve-racking, and fulfilling things I’ve ever attempted.

April 6th. The first email of many. If I was going to make this thing work, I would need a business entity. So I reached out to Steve Goldman, founding member of the National Young Composers Challenge (NYCC), in hopes of establishing a sponsorship or partnership. I wrote the email, took a deep breath, and pressed send.

Even though no professional partnership emerged from the conversation, Mr. Goldman was incredibly supportive and put me in touch with another NYCC judge, Dr. Alex Burtzos. Luckily for me, Dr. Burtzos had experience organizing festivals. He suggested that the best chance I had at seeing the project succeed was to turn it into a fundraiser. And with that, he introduced me to New Music USA’s Solidarity Fund. Though the Solidarity Fund would end earlier than I had expected, my mother and I decided to follow Dr. Burtzos’s advice, and – encouraged by their Solidarity Fund and other programs – evolved the project into a benefit for New Music USA.  And with a warm conversation and a plan secured with their Development Manager Miles Freeman, my next step would be to find our teachers.

From the beginning, I was concerned that it would be difficult to find anyone interested in giving their time for the project. What I discovered instead was the incredible generosity of the composition community. The support was overwhelming. I started with teachers that I knew, and reached out to others they recommended from there. In a short time, we had enough support to schedule two weeks of masterclasses!

“It’s common for young composers to think of established composers as superstars. In reality, most composers are relatively unknown outside of the new music community… They will generally be excited to hear about your interest in their work, and much more open to donating their time than you might think.” – Alex Burtzos, on our call

As a high school student, it’s intimidating reaching out to any college professor. Imagine now if that professor was a Grammy award winner, or was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, or is known around the composition world, or has judged the competitions you’ve entered, and so on! The humanity of the people I have worked with has been one of the most surprising parts of this process.

An example involving my initial conversations with Dr. Marcos Balter comes immediately to mind. I always do my best to research a person’s title before reaching out to them. In his case, I made the mistake of using ‘Mr.’ instead of ‘Dr.’. When, in the next email, I realized my mistake and apologized, he responded that it was no problem at all and that I could call him Marcos! I was blown away.

With the panel of teachers squared away, I needed to build a website. In many ways, this was a family affair. I worked on the layout and graphic design, my sister took care of the photography, and my mother wrote out the copy. Stuck in the house, my sister and I worked with what we had to create professional-looking backdrops: we rearranged my room and created props out of old manuscripts and an easel from years ago. The end result, I must say, I am very proud of.

  • The Composers Collaborative Project is my attempt to leverage the quarantine to create a unique opportunity for composers seeking a path to continue developing their skills.

    Brendan Weinbaum

  • I discovered the incredible generosity of the composition community. The support was overwhelming.

    Brendan Weinbaum

  • Of course, we were not the only ones creating a camp.

    Brendan Weinbaum

  • I will not be able to judge the success of the project until the very last minute.

    Brendan Weinbaum

Of course, we were not the only ones creating a camp. This brings us back to Benjamin Taylor’s quote from the beginning. Days before launch, I traded details with Joseph Sowa, a professor of the Music Creators Academy. He described his program as “a band camp with a heavy dose of creativity” for middle- and high-school students. I was antsy for sure; nervous at the prospect of competition. Nevertheless, both Dr. Sowa and the project’s founder, Benjamin Taylor, were incredibly kind, and given our conclusion that the two programs were meant for different audiences, we agreed to support one another in what ways we could.

This brings me another one of my favorite stories from this whole experience. Somehow neither I nor Dr. Sowa had told Dr. Taylor that I was a high school student. When we had our call and I referred to him as “Dr. Taylor”, he laughed and responded, “Should I call you Dr. Weinbaum?” He thought I was a composition professor! Now that’s a compliment if I’ve ever received one.

Launching the website and social media accounts brings us to where I am today. For the past few weeks and for the next few weeks, I have dedicated myself to promoting the event however I can: Email, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, group chats, etc. I have had to stretch myself to get my head around many of these platforms; nevertheless, the results have been promising so far, and I continue to hope for the best!

Regardless, my heart still races. People generally prefer to wait until the due date to sign up for an event like this (as I have discovered talking to many people), and so I will not be able to judge the success of the project until the very last minute. If that doesn’t keep someone in suspense.

The lectures will take place from July 20-31 and registration will remain open throughout. If you are interested in learning more about the Composers Collaborative Project, please visit our website or send me an email. I would love to hear from you!

Website: www.composerscollaborative.com

Email: info@composerscollaborative.com

Third Coast Percussion: The Collaborative Process

Posted on May 1, 2020 by - Conversations, Cover, NewMusicBox, Podcasts and Discussions

David Skidmore, Peter Martin, Robert Dillon, and Sean Connors (Photo by Saverio Truglia)

In the first couple of weeks following the global lock down, we hadn’t completely figured out how we were going to produce the extensive NewMusicBox Cover conversations that we launch on the first day of every month—we were too busy finishing up work on our talk with Nathalie Joachim which we were lucky enough to record just a week before all this began. But we knew that these in-depth conversations about new music were something we had to keep going somehow, especially since the next one was slated for May 1, the 21st anniversary of the launch of this publication online. What to do? So much of what has made these conversations so exciting is the intimacy, empathy, and camaraderie that emerges from an in-person encounter, often in the homes of the people with whom we are talking. But we’re also well aware that this method of recording these talks also comes with limitations. There are tons of exciting people making fascinating music all over this country whom we have wanted to feature on these pages, but we’ve usually been limited to folks who either live in the greater New York Tri-State area, are a possible day trip along the Northeastern Corridor in either direction, or have come to NYC for a performance (and those talks are obviously not at home and so run the risk of feeling less personal).

I’ve long been a fan of Third Coast Percussion which marks its 15th anniversary this year and I’ve been eager to talk with their four members for quite some time about their collaborations with Augusta Read Thomas, David T. Little, Donnacha Dennehy, Philip Glass, and more recently Devonté Hynes (a.k.a. Blood Orange) and JLin, as well as their own compositions. (I’m particularly enamored with TCP member David Skidmore’s immersive Common Patterns in Uncommon Time.) However, TCP is based in Chicago and is constantly touring around the country, so the dots never connected.

Then very soon after concerts started getting cancelled all over the country and we all began sheltering in place, TCP started presenting live stream concerts on their YouTube channel which were really motivational, particularly their second one on March 28 which—in addition to featuring the amazing pieces written for them by Glass, Hynes, and JLin, plus an awesome original by TCP’s Peter Martin—was a fundraiser for the New Music Solidary Fund which New Music USA administers. So I just had to figure out a way to make them the May 2020 NewMusicBox Cover somehow! Thanks to the Zoom platform and the fact that each of these four guys—Dave, Peter, Robert Dillon, and Sean Connors—was tech savvy enough to record themselves separately with microphones and camcorders, we were able to record a substantive conversation online from five different locations that looks and feels almost like we were all together… almost.

We talked about a very wide range of topics. They started off by sharing stories about how TCP introduces audiences to percussion instruments and how they each came to devote their lives to making music. Then we engaged in a heady series of dos and don’ts for writing and performing percussion music. After that, we spent a long time exploring some details of the staggering range of music they have nurtured from an extraordinarily wide range of creators including in-depth commentary about some of their own original compositions. Finally, we had a heart to heart about what they all have been doing to cope in these unprecedented and uncertain times that everyone has been thrust into. I hope you find what they each had to say as poignant and inspirational as I have.

[Ed. note: To accommodate a broad range of experiential modalities, we’ve included audio links for the entire conversation as well as a complete text transcription. Click on “Read the Full Transcript” and you will also be rewarded with a few video clips from the talk and well as several performances! To facilitate access, both the audio and the text have been divided into four discrete sections, each of which is self-contained, in order to make the experience somewhat more manageable since the total discussion ran a little over 100 minutes. We encourage you to bookmark this page in your browser and return to it multiple times rather than going through all of it in one go, unless you’re extremely intrepid! – FJO]

Glass Half-Full, Mug Half-Empty

Posted on February 11, 2020 by - Commentary, NewMusicBox

A glass of water that is half full (or empty), a mug with the caption "Do Epic Shit," a Black Lives Matter button leaning against a Buddha statue, and some books (Stavey Abrams's Lead From the Outside, Alex Haley's Roots, American Indian Stories, Dorothy Roberts's Killing the Black Body, and Uwem Akpan's Say You're One of Them), and another button ("She, Her, Hers") on a shelf in Anthony Tidd's home.

“The best investment for one year is to grow grains; the best investment for ten years is to grow trees; the best investment for a lifetime is to educate people. What you gain from one year’s growth will be grains; what you gain from ten years’ growth will be trees; what you gain from a hundred years’ growth will be people.”—Guan Zhong

To me all problems, and not just those found within the music biz, are best solved through education.

To every civilization education is paramount. The noblest job is that of the teacher. One could look at many problems today, and rightly place them at the feet of this nation’s failure to adequately invest in the truth and real education.

Question: Are our venues and arts institutions (whether for profit or non-profit) free to do as they please, or do they bear some level of obligation/duty to the communities in which they reside?

If art venues and institutions abandon their vital role within the arts scene/ecosystem, leaving the next wave of creative young nest-less, what will that mean for the arts overall in the next twenty years?

My friends and acquaintances sometimes call me “Pie-in-the-Sky-Guy”. What this means is that I’m the kind of guy who is always coming up with some new hare-brained scheme, usually in an effort to bring forth “improvement”, based on my core belief: We should all endeavor to leave things equal to, or preferably, better than we found them. I’m not sure where I first heard this ethos expressed, but it still makes a lot of sense to me.

We should all endeavor to leave things equal to, or preferably, better than we found them.

Thinking this way requires an abundance of optimism because more often than not, most of the ideas that I propose are either ignored, or met with a series of no’s. However, occasionally, while the powers that be weren’t really paying attention, I got to do some cool stuff.

Knowing this, it’s hard to write about the Philly scene in a positive light. Though I would really love to, there’s that nagging thing, the truth. The Philly Jade that so many of my peers suffer from is real. Just like real jade, this Philly Jade took years under intense pressure to form, and in most cases it formed because such peers actually cared about their city and everything that it could and should be. Many of them, some of Philly’s brightest, have already left for greener pastures. I feel it nipping at my heels right now.

The simple truth is that we Philadelphians live in a city which is over 40% black, and over 60% of color, but where over 90% of resources are allocated to neighborhoods which are either primarily white or on their way to becoming so via gentrification. Long before the recent headlong rush towards gentrification of its inner city neighborhoods, Philadelphia had a long history of underserving its communities of color, and an even longer history of undervaluing their contributions to the city. This all may be uncomfortable for some to hear, but it is also the truth. While some of us are fortunate enough to avoid this truth most of the time, people of color live in a racially tainted reality which touches every aspect of their lives, whether acknowledged or not. Such statistics should put a pretty big dent in anybody’s optimism. Mine is dented, but not gone, yet.

Philadelphians live in a city where over 90% of resources are allocated to neighborhoods which are either primarily white or on their way to becoming so.

If I were to think glass half full, I would say that Philly has a seemingly endless supply of talent. Philly is the kind of city where one might be living next to the inventor of the light bulb for 20 years and never know it. Everywhere I look there’s some amazing talent, poised to take things to the next level. Some of these amazing people are my colleagues, and others have been my students over the years. I am certain that there are many more that I am yet to meet.

I often find myself bumping into Philly’s music royalty, sometimes Jamaaladeen in Paris, or Orrin Evans at the North Sea Jazz Fest., or back in December at the Village Vanguard, Johnathan Blake, drummer and son of the great jazz musician John Blake. Pentad, Johnathan’s band, played the Vanguard for the first time. This amazing band featured Dezron Douglas on bass, David Virelles on piano, Joel Ross on vibes, and Immanuel Wilkins, one of my first students in the Creative Music Program, on alto saxophone.

A poster for Pentad's December 2019 gigs at the Village Vanguard. Pictured from left to right: Immanuel Wilkins (alto saxophone), Joel Ross (vibraphone), Johnathan Blake (drums), David Virelles (piano), and Dezron Douglas (bass).

They sounded fantastic, and thus, to those lucky enough to experience Philly musicians on stages around the world, there’s never any doubt regarding the outstanding level of musicianship that this city has and still continues to produce. Through mentorship and education (both formal and informal) many of these great musicians have managed to sustain a hundred year old enduring and ongoing tradition, which some call jazz, but which I more often call creative music.

The Philly area has also been home to a number of excellent jazz based music programs for young people, including Camden Creative Arts High School (Camden is Philly to me), run by Jamal Dickerson, the Clef Club of Jazz, run by Lovett Hines, and the Creative Music Program, run by myself at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.

In the case of CMP, this program has provided opportunities for outstanding musicians such as Marcus Belgrave, Doug Hammond, John Patitucci, Danilo Perez, Linda Oh, Gary Thomas, Melvis Santa, Wayne Krantz, Miles Okazaki, Wycliffe Gordon, Sumi Tonooka, Tyshawn Sorey, Jen Shyu, Eric Revis, Steve Coleman, Vijay Iyer, Matthew Garrison, Yosvany Terry, Jon Batiste, Jonathan Finlayson, Greg Osby, Kokayi, Lee Smith, Kris Davis, Odean Pope, Cyro Baptista, Steve Lehman, Marcus Gilmore, Rajna Swaminathan, Nicholas Payton, Orrin Evans, Dafnis Prieto, Greg Hutchinson, Anwar Marshall, Laurin Talese, Eric Wortham, Joanna Pascal, Steve Tirpak, John Smith, John Swana, Erica Lindsay, Josh Lawrence, Venissa Santi, Khary Shaheed, Ursula Rucker, J.A Dean, Brent White, Tom Lawton, Tim Motzer, and so many others to pass on their unique approaches, experience, expertise and even life lessons to thousands of students for over 9 years. This list is long because I have to pay homage to those who helped to make this program great, however the clef club has an even longer list of amazing musicians, which goes back much further to the club’s founding in 1935.

Both have had an immeasurable impact on the Philly scene and for students, such as alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, who recently graduated from the Juilliard School of Music and is now one of the most exciting young players in NYC. Or, pianist Joseph Block, who won the 2016 Essentially Ellington Competition while still in the program at 17, and who today at 19 still studies at Juilliard, whilst being one of Wynton Marsalis’s go-to arrangers for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. There are many more, like Maya Keren, Nazir Ebo, and Yesseh Farrah-Ali, who you’ll surely hear about very soon.

One might reasonably expect based on such a stellar track record, high level endorsements from MacArthur fellows, Grammy recipients, Doris Duke recipients, and directors of some of the most prestigious jazz programs in the nation, that the future of such programs would be somewhat guaranteed.

If I were to think mug half empty, then I would say that in Philadelphia what is reasonably expected often does not come to pass. Musicians and music programs are often held hostage by the ill-advised decisions of people who neither possess the history, knowledge, or empathy to understand why such programs are important. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Philadelphia’s brightest young artists will either: a) decide to exit the arts; b) decide to exit Philly; or c) stay in the arts and in Philly, probably to the detriment of their careers and overall happiness. This of course is not considering the millions of highly creative children in Philly and around the world, who will never even get an opportunity to explore the arts in the first place. Some of the most successful and vital music programs in the city (including the aforementioned) have the hardest time finding either institutional support, or funding, or both. The fact that all of these programs are primarily focused on a historic black art form (jazz) is not insignificant.

Musicians and music programs are often held hostage by the ill-advised decisions of people who neither possess the history, knowledge, or empathy to understand why such programs are important.

Some people may believe that all artists are destined to suffer. I do not agree. While we can’t all be Wynton or Beyoncé, this doesn’t mean that all other artists don’t deserve a living wage, or the same path to a fruitful career that lawyers, doctors, and accountants expect, upon leaving school. After all, arts degrees are just as expensive and school loans sleep for no one.

The fact that we as artists do not enjoy the same prospects as our STEM counterparts has less to do with the true importance of the arts within any advanced civilization (art is one important metric by which all past civilizations have been judged), and more to do with the aforementioned dubious decisions taken by “the powers that be”, both inside and outside of the arts world. Besides this, we should also acknowledge that within the arts, as in all other fields, opportunity (and thus compensation) is more often sharply divided along strict racial and gender lines. In this respect Philadelphia is one prime example.

When the new owners of Ortlieb’s Jazzhaus decided to redefine their business model (once again), more or less completely abandoning the establishment’s jazz legacy, turning the space into a multipurpose black-box, focusing on DJs, local funk and rock bands, and entertainment that they considered more befitting of the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood that is Northern Liberties, it sent shockwaves throughout the arts community. Like so many venues they went from being a home for creative music to becoming yet another establishment that sells alcohol (with music accompaniment). (Exhibit A) Their description on Google reads, “Local funk, jazz & rock performers provide the soundtrack for burgers, burritos & beer drinking.”

Many of the elders on the Philly jazz scene at the time recalled earlier days, when they themselves were teens and were eager to learn all about the music that Miles, Ella, and ’Trane had played barely a generation earlier, and Ortlieb’s, like any other jazz club, was a good place to start. Jazz enthusiasts could listen to any number of the greats who would regularly perform or stop though.

Victor North and George Burton performing at Ortleib’s

Better times: Victor North and George Burton performing at Ortleib’s

After twenty-three years of attending and performing at the same venue, I imagine that those once teens began to feel like Ortlieb’s was their home, in much the same way that children, who were raised in the same house for years, might. Needless to say, these musicians, and the jazz community they built around such institutions, felt betrayed when said institution decided to abandon its role, its community, and them.

What happened to Ortlieb’s is indicative of a change in the culture which is sweeping our cities, partly brought on by gentrification (a favorite tool of White Supremacy), but also equally due to important changes in the overall goals of society as a whole. Just as the children of White-Flight are precipitating a rapid return to the inner cities, the resources, real-estate, neighborhoods, and culture within these big cities is being repurposed.

We see this clearly in what is presently happening to landmark Philly venues such as the Painted Bride. Though the Bride has been home to a number of creative movements within the city over the decades, even whilst surrounding properties changed hands and demographics shifted towards the entitled and wealthy, how does a grass roots community organization keep the lights on? How does any venue survive gentrification while staying on mission and retaining its authenticity? The Bride’s solution is to become a venue-less arts organization by selling its building and using the proceeds to fund an endowment. It would go from being an able bodied participant within the Philly arts scene to a bodiless “arts ghost.” What Philly and the arts community most needs is space and stages, the very thing that the Fringe sought to acquire and that the Bride stands poised to lose.

How does any venue survive gentrification while staying on mission and retaining its authenticity?

It is true that, due to years of being underserved by their host cities, many historically black neighborhoods are in a drastic state of disrepair, and so in some cases any new investment is welcomed and much needed. But, everywhere one looks, from North Philly to South Chicago, this investment has come at a price, and that price has invariably been the ongoing excise of black people, black influence, and black culture.

An Uber driver I rode with a few weeks ago commented on this. My home is in Brewerytown, which I feel is the present epicenter of the aggressive gentrification that is happening along Girard Avenue in North Philly. This Uber driver said, “It feels like all of this is part of some master plan!” He was an older black gentleman who had grown up in the neighborhood, and I could hear the pain in his voice, as he looked around and spoke those words to the soundtrack of John Coltrane’s “Impressions” playing on WRTI. It was like a scene from Do The Right Thing, except this was his life, in the third millennium.

If I had a dollar for every time an older black musician has expressed their belief that they are being pushed out of jazz, a music which they developed and which primarily came out of their struggle and community, I wouldn’t be so upset about spending $180 at Whole Foods Market for a week of basic groceries. No reasonable person can dismiss such fears, because we live in a country where since its founding, black people have been constantly pushed out of, well, everything. Why should jazz now be any different?

We all know that nationwide, American culture has changed. The numerous studies concur that people now read less. A new generation, raised on social media and reality TV, are now accustomed to everything being served up in bite-size chunks, which require the least amount of effort or attention span possible. We are suffering from a national form of attention deficit disorder, brought on by fifty years of flashing images on TVs, which rarely last over 3 seconds each. And the latest onslaught; a smartphone powered social media frenzy, is breeding a generation of introverts who live virtual extrovert lifestyles via Facebook or Instagram. Inevitably this trend has carried over into much of the “new” music available, which has primarily been created for people who in general “listen” less, and find the mere idea of any sort of learning curve antithetical to their primary goal of being thoroughly entertained.

Much of the “new” music available has primarily been created for people who in general “listen” less.

Within black music the once groove has been stripped down to a pulse. The lyric is always easily discerned upon the first listen. The melodies and harmonies are reminiscent of the sorts of I-IV-V nursery rhymes that were once reserved for toddlers. Even the exciting cadence of hip-hop, the most recent and last frontier of true mass-appeal-black-creativity, has been slowed to a syrup-infused crawl, where rhyming schemes which end in the same word are now considered clever. Emcees don’t even attempt to free-style anymore, and stellar improvisers, such as Rakim, Black Thought or Kokayi, are seen as anomalies. Astonishingly, each year music moves further and further in the same downward direction (or at least it has over my entire lifetime), and each year I wonder, “Have we reached the bottom yet?”

A view of The Painted Bridge from the street.

The Painted Bridge before “pre veil”.

I said I wanted to stay upbeat, and not tip the balance of this piece too towards the negative. So, thinking glass half full again, I would say that there’s still some incredible creative music being made right now elsewhere on the planet. American popular music may no longer be what it once was, but deeper underground, artists are forging ahead, pushing the envelope and reinventing art at the highest level, even if most of us may never get to hear it, or become aware of its existence. Thus, we could, in theory, change things for the better overnight by simply finding and supporting more creative music, made by more creative artists.

Ars Nova, an organization created by long time Philadelphian curator Mark Christman has worked hard to provide new and non-traditional spaces for creative musicians, many of whom are already well established outside of Philadelphia. Through his organization, Mark has managed to tap into audiences, who otherwise would have been ignored by the big venues and promoters. Ars Nova has presented some of creative music’s most prominent artists, such as the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Vijay Iyer, Steve Coleman, Mary Halvorson, Steve Lehman, Kris Davis, and many others.

Over the last five years Ernest Stuart’s Center City Jazz Festival has managed to bridge the gap between live music enthusiasts and avid jazz listeners by programming shows, which straddle the “boundaries” between “jazz” and other genres such as rock, pop, and hip-hop. Based on its broad definition of jazz, his festival has managed to bring out audiences, who hail from varied walks of life, but who all come together to support both local and touring artists. Ernest has managed to do this year after year while literally “flying by the seat of his pants”, often not knowing whether he will have adequate funding to make the festival happen again and pay his staff until three weeks before the first show.

A flyer for the 2019 Center City Jazz Festival (on April 27, 2019 at Time Restaurant, Franky Bradley's, Fergie's Pub, Chris' Jazz Cafe, and Maison 208)

A flyer for the 2019 Center City Jazz Festival.

Sittin’ In, the concert series which I created and curate at the Kimmel Center, also focuses on providing creative music with a regular space. Audience development, and giving creative artists a place where their works can be exposed to new audiences, are both vital components of any healthy arts community. Over the last eight years, Sittin’ In has provided this and more to the community. My hope is that this model might one day be expanded, becoming something which happens more than once a month at a single venue, as this only just scratches the surface of the very great need in Philadelphia, and beyond. Like Ernest, as a black creative musician and curator, I’m often left feeling like I’m trying to plug a huge breach in the Hoover Dam with a toothpick. Like Mark, I spend my days saying no to people who I know deserve a yes (at least some of the time).

So, what’s the problem?

Back to mug half empty. The problem is jobs and money. Who holds those jobs with the power and capability to affect real change, and in whose pockets the majority of the money available for the arts ends up. There is certainly a shortage of arts funding in the U.S., but what little money there is out there rarely ever seems to find its way into the pockets of artists of color.

Cities which may have once had 30–40 buildings dedicated to the arts 20 years ago, now have five (at the most), and of those five, most (regardless of their 501c3 status) behave more like corporate entities than arts institutions or venues, making almost every decision about their bottom line, whilst all trying to sell the exact same thing over and over ad nauseam. This results in new artists and new creative music being deprived of a pipeline to audiences and revenue. It is the definition of a catch 22 situation.

Small venues are a vital part of any viable music ecosystem which deals with progressive music.

In the music world small venues, such as John Zorn’s The Stone or Rio Sakairi’s The Jazz Gallery, are a vital part of any viable music ecosystem which deals with progressive music. Creative music is not “a numbers game”, and nor should it be expected to be. Living music, a.k.a. new music, requires testing grounds/labs, where musicians can get together and try new things in front of audiences without having to satisfy the sea of criterion (specified by non-creative administrators, who themselves are mostly detached from the art) necessary in order to get the grant. Artists need spaces free from as much red tape as possible in order to create, and these spaces need to come without the expectation that said artist must consistently pack the house.

Audiences need places where they can go, and occasionally be one of the six lucky people who get to experience the next new thing. That new thing could be Charlie Parker on the precipice of establishing be-bop, or Steve Coleman on that same precipice 50 years later establishing m-base. These artist may go on to consistently sell 400–2000 tickets per show in the future, but they need to be able to start with 6.

The idea that Billie Holiday regularly sang “Strange Fruit,” one of her greatest artistic statements, to American audiences of 1800 plus, packed into halls that were originally designed for orchestras, is both ridiculous and antithetical to the very idea of creative music. The same goes for Thelonious Monk, Sarah Vaughan, Miles Davis, Abbey Lincoln, John Coltrane, and a host of other great innovators.

The difference in the mission of an arts institution and that of a straight forward venue, such as those run by Live Nation should be obvious to anybody who is lucky enough to secure any job of note in the arts or music industry. Venues operate based on supply and demand. Their primary motivation is money, and so they chiefly operate based on conditions dictated by the market and bottom line. To such venues it makes no difference whether the artist is Beyoncé or The Rolling Stones, so long as they believe that they have a better than good chance of selling enough tickets to make the maximum amount of profit. There’s nothing wrong with such venues. They have their place.

Arts institutions exist to preserve, promote, and continue high level art.

Arts institutions exist to preserve, promote, and continue high level art. Their survival is intrinsically linked to the survival of true artists and the viability of the various communities which create said artists. Education is probably the most vital role for such an institution; To educate audiences about the art they present, to educate future generations so that there will be future artists who can create said art, to educate society over all to the true importance and the vital role of art, so that art will continue to hold a position of reverence within society, ensuring that it will be supported in the future. We can call education by many different names; Free concerts, Marketing, Audience Development, Workshops, Meet and Greets, Youth School Year Programs and Summer Camps, etc., but it’s still education. Like education facilities, their mission is primarily social in nature, and like schools, colleges and museums, arts institutions bear a solemn responsibility to the communities, cities and nations in which they reside. Ticket sales are of course linked to the survival of these institutions, but they are secondary to the important social role they play. Unfortunately some of our arts institutions are fleeing from this social role towards greater profitability.

Without true arts institutions and small venues which are committed to this ethos, all venues will just end up repeatedly booking “sure bets,” acts who themselves will likely end up afraid to stray from whatever successful formula got them the gig in the first place, innovation will grind to a halt, and this will be a terrible place for the arts and civilization to be.

To me all problems, and not just those found within the music biz, are best solved through education.

American cities like Philadelphia may still be rich in talent, but today they are unfortunately poor in arts infrastructure; organizations populated by those who are committed to the mission of furthering art. The same is also somewhat true of our schools, colleges, and entire education system, which we must trust to stock tomorrow’s institutions with the next generation of well-informed influential thinkers. Without education there can be no meaningful change in culture. Education is about the future. Who do we want to be in ten, twenty, or thirty years? What do we want to achieve in twenty five, fifty, or one-hundred years? Some may still see the arts as unimportant or trivial, but we will be defined tomorrow by what we choose to support and celebrate today. Of all the investments that any nation can make in its future, education is by far the most effective. And, any education curriculum which is concerned with truth, progress, the realizing of potential, and the overall uplift of its students should feature creativity and critical thinking as central tenants. Without the ability to think critically, discern what is true, and create new solutions we are doomed to repeat the same old history over and over again.

Support for the writing of this article was provided by the ASCAP Foundation Irving Caesar Fund.
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Promoting Equity: Developing an Antiracist Music Theory Classroom

Posted on January 29, 2020 by - Columns, Commentary, NewMusicBox

Photo by Sam Balye via Unsplash of a crowded classroom from the back of the room showing a diverse group of students

By Dave Molk & Michelle Ohnona

Making Whiteness Visible in the (Music) Classroom

“Teaching Inequality: Problems with Traditional Music Theory Pedagogy” described how the near exclusive and yet unnecessary reliance on Western art music, institutionalized as white and as male, upholds white supremacy within the music theory classroom. In “Promoting Equity,” we present strategies on how to begin disrupting this normalization of whiteness, starting with making it visible. We should think of this disruption as a process rather than a product—antiracist describes actions, not states of being. To supplement the ideas presented here, we’ll also suggest additional resources in the conclusion that might help you in your own practice.

Naming: A Way to Begin (some reflections from Dave Molk)

As a white man, speaking of whiteness in the effort to de-center it runs the seemingly paradoxical risk of re-centering whiteness. Even in the midst of calling out unearned privilege, I reap its benefits—the presumed authority associated with this aspect of my identity ensures that my voice sounds louder and carries further than the majority of those who do not share it.

And yet, the problem of not speaking up is a form of complicity in the face of ongoing oppression. Calling attention to an injustice forces a decision from those who practice willful ignorance: a decision between confrontation and conscious evasion. Naming is a way to begin, a way to make perceptible something that so often goes unrecognized. As whiteness becomes noticeable, it becomes noteworthy, and we can recognize its ubiquity as unnatural and intentional.

The problem of not speaking up is a form of complicity in the face of ongoing oppression.

White people are overrepresented as faculty in the college classroom. The belief that race is a non-white problem, something that affects “others,” is itself a white problem with a disproportionate and negative impact on people of color. Whites are responsible both for this ignorance and for redressing it—claimed neutrality only masks our ongoing racism. There is no opt-out.

An antiracist approach must be intersectional—meaning that race, gender, class, sexuality, and other aspects of one’s identity where oppression exists are inextricable from one another. An antiracist approach names these forms of oppression and their manifestations inside and outside the classroom.

When I talk with my students about white supremacy in higher education, I name my whiteness. When I talk with my students about sexism in higher education, I name my gender. I acknowledge that I receive unearned privileges because I am an able cisgendered white heterosexual man and I name some of these privileges. I name the pressures I feel to stay silent and the perils in doing so. If I’m not willing to do this in front of my students, I can’t expect them to be willing to do it during the course of their lives, either.

Questioning the Curriculum

The process of developing an antiracist music theory classroom begins with reflecting critically on what we are doing in the classroom and why. What exactly are we teaching, both in terms of the immediate material and the underlying messages? Why are we including this particular material on the syllabus and why are we teaching it in this particular way? Whose goals does this actually serve, and what exactly are those goals? What disciplinary habits are we unquestioningly reproducing in our syllabi, teaching, and assessment methods? What role does whiteness play in our pedagogy? What role does sexism play? Who and what is missing, and why? Ask these and similar questions at the start of each semester and continue to revisit them as the semester unfolds.

What role does whiteness play in our pedagogy? What role does sexism play? Who and what is missing, and why?

Developing an Antiracist Music Theory Classroom

I. Centering the Student

To develop an antiracist music theory classroom, we should begin by acknowledging that the classroom is not a neutral space and that each of our students is a complex individual whose background knowledge, social identity, and relationship to music and music education is unique. Being able to connect with students from different backgrounds requires a flexibility in approach, an awareness of privilege and of power dynamics, and the understanding that these things matter. We can empower our students and encourage them to be active participants in their own education when we validate their musical experiences.

During our first meeting, I explain to students that I am not the sole source of knowledge for the course and that our work together will be more successful once we all realize that everyone has something valuable to contribute to our learning community. I state that there are no guilty pleasures in the classroom and that we will not self-deprecate. Hearing these messages said aloud helps students to understand that different musical backgrounds are a source of strength and that our class will work best when everyone feels comfortable contributing.

Questions to ask:

  •   Why do we presuppose that challenging our students is mutually exclusive with validating and empowering them?
  •   What is the relationship between the work we do in the classroom and the lives that our students and we lead outside it?
  •   What is actually necessary in what we teach? How are we defining necessary and who are we considering when we do this? What do our students actually do with this knowledge?

Strategies to incorporate:

  •   Create the syllabus with intention and invite feedback from a trusted colleague. Discuss pedagogical choices with students.
  •   Continue to ask who is included and who is not.
  •   Invite students to situate themselves in relation to the course material. Create opportunities for them to tell us what they need. Listen. Respond.
  •   Build trust and community by allowing ourselves to be vulnerable. We can’t expect students to be open if we are not open ourselves. Acknowledge the hard conversations. Empathize.

In Practice: Big-picture conversations

The classroom is not a neutral space.

To help students recognize that music is, in addition to “the notes,” a social and cultural product, I devote the majority of three classes each semester to a round-table discussion of big-picture ideas. I explain that, while I will facilitate as necessary, students should engage in dialogue with each other and not with me. These topics become reference points as we continue through the semester, and we keep these conversations going via online postings and explicit connections during lectures. The final paper asks students to continue realizing the political in the personal by situating themselves more deeply within these big-picture issues.

These discussions provide a way to begin uncovering pervasive biases and various forms of systemic oppression that influence our ways of thinking and modes of interaction. Even when I provide readings ahead of time to help students begin to think about these issues, I deliberately leave space in how to interpret the prompts. This allows students to approach the material from their own experiences and allows the class to learn how these big-picture issues can manifest in different ways. My role is to push us below surface-level engagement, to make visible the underlying assumptions. Teaching only the notes is a political decision with real consequences—in the absence of interruption, injustice replicates. The following are prompts that I use:

  • What makes music good?
  • What exactly is “the music itself”?
  • What is authenticity in music?
  • Disparities faced by women in music.
  • Connections between music, race, and racism.
  • The efficacy of protest music.

II. The Polystylistic Approach

A polystylistic approach uses the particular strengths of many different styles of music to create a sophisticated working knowledge of how music can be put together. Through a polystylistic approach, we also gain ways to talk about the social and cultural issues that are inseparable from music. Using examples from other genres within a pedagogic framework that still prioritizes Western art music is not the answer—inclusivity becomes tokenism when we reinforce a stylistic hierarchy. While including “everything” is neither possible nor productive, we must be clear that the decision not to include a particular style is not a dismissal of that style.

Inclusivity becomes tokenism when we reinforce a stylistic hierarchy.

If we restrict ourselves to a single genre, then we develop a monochromatic music theory. We forsake the opportunity to speak well about some musical phenomena and the ability to speak at all about others. Our understanding of what music is and what music can be will necessarily be limited by the aesthetics of the single style that we study, and we miss our chance to make music theory more relevant to more students.

Questions to ask:

  •   What is truly foundational knowledge and what is style-specific? How do we justify the inclusion of style-specific material in a basic theory curriculum? What is the explicit purpose of this style-specific material, is it warranted, and are we going about teaching it in the best way?
  •   If our students turned on the radio to a random station, could they engage with the music as a result of our pedagogy? Would they, as a result of our pedagogy, be dismissive of certain styles? Does our pedagogy disrupt such dismissive attitudes or reinforce them?
  •   If we require most/all majors and minors to take music theory, how can we convince them that music theory has value for what they do and who they are?

Strategies to incorporate:

  •   Be explicit about why we are teaching a polystylistic curriculum. Explain to students the traditional model and name its problems.
  •   Solicit suggestions from students for material to incorporate. Get to know what they’re into and help them to articulate reasons why they like it. Use the familiar to open doors to the new.
  •   Use moments when theory terminology breaks down to point out the shortcomings of theory, then work with students to create better ways to talk about the musical phenomena in question.
  •   Attend to inclusivity both in terms of genre and practitioners within genre.

In Practice: Sampling

To create the two-semester basic theory sequence I used at Georgetown University, I drew primarily from electronic dance music, hip-hop, jazz, pop, rock, and Western art music. These were styles I had formal training in or had devoted significant time and effort to research. When developing a polystylistic approach, the point isn’t to arrive at the optimum mix of styles, but to use a plurality of style to decenter whiteness, to make the material more relevant to more students, to give students a more realistic idea of how music works, what music is, and what music can be, and to provide an entry point for talking about the social and cultural issues imbedded in the music.

To make space in the syllabus to include a segment on sampling, during which I recreate Daft Punk’s “One More Time” from Eddie Johns’s “More Spell on You,” I don’t teach voice leading of the classical style. Sampling lets us talk about a number of important musical topics that don’t come up in traditional pedagogy, including studio production techniques, sequencing, DAWs, riddims, breaks, royalties, and questions of legality, authorship, and ethics. These are more immediate and meaningful to my students than the voice leading norms of a particular style. They’re also more applicable to their careers, and are therefore more important for me to teach.

To make space in the syllabus to include a segment on sampling, I don’t teach voice leading of the classical style.

I use the following guiding principles to contextualize our theory classroom, stating them during our first class and returning to them throughout the semester in order to emphasize their importance. Although we may find these truths obvious, we should still name them for our students—actually saying these out loud underscores the degree to which these points matter.

  • Music theory is descriptive, not prescriptive.
  • The tools we use guide our interactions and shape our interpretations.
  • We don’t have a sophisticated way to talk about a lot of musical phenomena. These shortcomings belong to the tools we use and not to the material.

Putting It Together: The Blues

Willie Dixon’s composition, “Spoonful,” offers a number of intellectually rigorous ways to engage with both the musical elements that work within it and the social and cultural forces that work upon it. What musical elements tend to be foregrounded in “Spoonful,” and how do they function? How about a tune like “Blues for Alice”—what elements tend to be foregrounded and how do they function? What are the advantages to calling both “Spoonful” and “Blues for Alice” a blues? Is it possible to identify a prevailing blues aesthetic? How might we describe it? Define it? What do we learn about the blues specifically and about the concept of genre generally as a result of this process?

We might compare and contrast Howlin’ Wolf’s rendition of “Spoonful” with Cream’s. We might talk about differences in instrumentation, in the use of space, in guitar technique and tone, in the timbres of the drums, the organization, the energy, and eventually realize we’re not even beginning to scratch the surface of the musically important material presented in these two versions of the tune. We might wonder why this type of deep and engaged critical listening isn’t what we talk about when we talk about ear training. We might wonder about biases in traditional ear training and about ways to overhaul that component of traditional music theory pedagogy.

The blues lets us engage with issues of appropriation in ways more immediate and more relevant to students than would be possible using Western art music. In light of these two versions of “Spoonful,” we might ask our students, who can sing the blues, and why? Who should sing the blues, and why? Who gets to determine this? Again, why? What does it mean that Eric Clapton built his career on the back of black music even as he espoused racist vitriol? Is this something we can reconcile? Something we should? What does it mean to separate the art from the artist? Is it actually possible to do so? By allotting time and space within the classroom for students to wrestle with these issues in a musical context, we prepare them to recognize how these issues can manifest more generally.

Talking about the blues in the music theory classroom provides an organic way to bring big-picture ideas into the conversation. Angela Davis develops a constructive framework for thinking about classism, sexism, and racism in Blues Legacies and Black Feminism as she traces the development of black social protest through the music of the classic blues era and into jazz. Sharing with students the lyrics to “Prove It On Me Blues,” “Poor Man’s Blues,” and “Strange Fruit,” encourages them to understand the work of Gertrude ‘Ma’ Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday as simultaneously musical, social, and cultural. An introduction to this history lets students re-contextualize social protest as it manifests in other, more recent styles of music in the United States, both inside and outside black communities. We can, of course, talk about form, chords, scales, improvisation, and other elements that we tend to find in a music theory classroom when we talk about the blues. Indeed, we must—but we must also push these conversations further.

Concluding Thoughts

As educators, our failure to engage the potential of our classrooms to be sites of antiracist learning and practice is not only a question of social injustice. When we omit, overlook, or unknowingly disregard the work of musicians of color, we commit disciplinary injustice, and do a disservice not only to the students in our classroom, but to our discipline writ large. It isn’t enough to study how music is put together—we should also study why it is put together in the way that it is.

It isn’t enough to study how music is put together—we should also study why it is put together in the way that it is.

We should ask how our pedagogy supports the development of critical thinking and engaging with difference, and how we might better incorporate this into our coursework. We should ask how social and cultural forces shape what we study in the classroom, how we study it, and how these forces impact our lives. We should ask how our coursework aligns with the goals of higher education, and why we remain complacent when it doesn’t.

We are all racialized within this society—conservatory and non-conservatory alike. When we abdicate our responsibility as educators to do this work in these spaces, in spite of significant institutional barriers, we ensure the ascendancy of injustice. The ability to step away is itself a mark of privilege that should be brought to bear on fixing the problem, not perpetuating it. We can all advocate within our spheres of influence to advance the cause of justice. The suggestions offered here are possible starting points for critical reflection about the work we do in the classroom and the reasons we do it. All work must have a beginning—may this be yours.

Suggested Resources

Sara Ahmed’s On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life.

Sara Ahmed’s “Declarations of Whiteness: The Non-Performativity of Anti-Racism.”

James Baldwin’s “A Talk to Teachers,” The Fire Next Time.

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s Racism Without Racists.

The Combahee River Collective Statement (see also Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s book, How We Get Free).

Kimberlé Crenshaw’s “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color.”

Angela Davis’s Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday.

Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility (original article)

Engaging Students
Philip Ewell’s “Music Theory’s White Racial Frame.”

Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Ethan Hein’s work on pedagogy, including “Toward a Better Music Theory” and “Teaching Whiteness in Music Class.”

bell hooks’s Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom.

Lauren Michelle Jackson’s “What’s Missing From ‘White Fragility’” and everything she links to.

Adrienne Keene’s Introduction to Critical Race Theory course page.

Ibram Kendi’s Stamped From the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist.

Gloria Ladson-Billings’ contributions to the concept of culturally relevant pedagogy.

Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider.

MayDay Group.

Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race?

The Oxford Handbook of Social Justice in Music Education is a valuable starting point for finding important conversations, contributors, and resources for bringing social justice into the classroom.

Beverly Daniel Tatum’s Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?