NY Times expert demolishes ‘racist’ Philip Ewell
NewsThe preposterous New York musicologist Philip Ewell has a book out, detailing some of his more outlandish ideas – that Mozart and Beethoven were barely above average in talent and the Jewish analyst Heinrich Schenker was a Nazi.
A linguist called John McWhorter, whose specialist fields are creole languages, sociolects and Black English, has taken issue with Ewell in a NY Times opinion piece.
Among other things, McWhorter writes:
Philip Ewell’s “On Music Theory, and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone.”,… an expansion of his widely read 2020 article “Music Theory and the White Racial Frame,” is an impassioned argument that the study of music theory is infected by racism….
Ewell’s original article was a major spur to the movement to decenter whiteness in musicology. …
But Ewell is seeking something more revolutionary than this: a complete overhaul of musicology’s focus, procedures and expectations in which much that is designated “white” is treated with skepticism and much that is not is presumptively welcomed — although Ewell offers few concrete examples of what this additional non-“white” material might be.
Indeed, much of what Ewell recommends seems to entail relaxing requirements and expectations. In this, he joins similar calls in other fields, where sociopolitical intent is elevated over fact finding, linear reasoning and basic curiosity …
We are encouraged to contemplate a physics without “white” empiricism and a math where getting the correct answer is optional. And here Ewell proposes a credentialed expertise in musicology that does not require the until now customary abilities to play the piano or translate from any foreign language and where one is allowed, if desired, to get a degree on the basis of beat making or sound recording, which do not require the playing of any instrument.
Regarding the piano, for example, Ewell thinks it “enforces a commitment to whiteness and maleness,” and thus playing it should not be expected of those who teach music theory….
There’s more here.
The bigger question is why Hunter College, a public university in New York, sees fit to employ a man of Ewell’s provocatively racist views.
Ewell may have a hard time dismissing him, because McWhorter is not, um, ahem, you know, w**t*.
Dr. McWhorter is very highly regarded and credible. His colour doesn’t come into his argument; just intellectual heft. He’s precisely the kind of threat to intellectual pygmies that they understand him to be!!
And by “w**t*” you mean educated in music theory or possessing any expertise on the topic?
Yep. Enough to challenge discredit a mediocre careerist when he sees one
I love McWhorter and have followed him for years. He’s not a conservative, but he is repulsed by the wokening of America, including with regard to race.
Ditto x one thousand times. He loves music and actually teaches a course on that subject at Columbia.
Billy: ’My neighbor’s dog barks as hell. I made a recording of it and my neighbor has sent it to Grönköpings Musikhögskola. The defense for his PhD will take place next week.’
Cousin Gilda: ’It’s very exciting and inclusive that Nero [the dog’s name] can get a PhD. Nero will surely pass the defense of his thesis. I don’t think any faculty opponent would dislike sweet Nero’s thesis, especially when he’s showing his beautiful teeth, drooling around and peeing on his territory’s limits in the auditory.’
Billy: ‘We all love you, Nero!’
Another Bark??!! Surely there’s only been just the one.
This just makes me extremely angry.
People have to be informed that this stuff is a deliberate and organized attempt to destroy the cultural basis of Western civilization (liberalism, freedom of speech, there being an objective component to truth that must in part be empirically supported, individuality, due process, “beauty” etc.). This movement, which is an amalgamation and fusion of post-modernism, marxism, critical theory, deconstructionist gender studies, and CRT (among other theories) has been breeding in the halls of academia for years and is now having actual effects on society. The violently destructive stupidity we see from these “woke” cult activists is not just a chance happening but is a deliberate tactic since they believe reality is just determined by language and that everything is just a power game. language is viewed as only a tool to power; the motto is: if you have to tell exaggerations, lies, be a hypocrite, act sociopathically, or make things up, then so be it because the ends justify the means
A classical musician I know, told me about how during a staff meeting at a music school with a DEI grant manager/consultant, that he said to the music teachers that “Things won’t change until all of you die”; He also was a black man who seemed to know nothing about classical music and was talking to mostly white music teachers who already were teaching music lessons for next to free to inner city poc youth for decades.
Now these nihilist, neo-racists are coming for classical music. Time to wake up.
This is all of course so useful to real power (the moneyed elite), since it provides a distraction, divides and conquers, and puts a happy face on what is actually the real issue (Wealth inequality at the level of oligarchy and its undermining of democracy). Don’t listen when they tell you that they ‘just want social, racial, and sex/gender justice’, What they actually want to do is to inflame latent racial tensions to create the perceived need for their “services”, and to do so while unknowingly serving the money elite, while at the same time getting cushy DEI positions, narcissistic recognition, and careers based on little to no constructive beneficial substance.
The USA is on the top of the cliff and other English-speaking nations will surely follow, just like the lemmings they are.
Standing Ovation!
In addition, Schenker was not a biological racist. Ewell distorted quotes to make Schenker look like one. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4020545 When Schenker is talking about races, he is referring to national peoples–The French, The English, etc, who defeated Germany in WWI.
Ewell’s “white racial frame” theory is based on Schenker being a biological racist. Ewell’s whole theory falls apart because Schenker was not a biological racist. This is fact, not interpretation or opinion.
Very polite response. But don’t ever expect entrenched academic musicologists to change their minds. Their funding and therefore livelihood depend on their continued insistence on their bigoted views, and they will fight you to death before they admit their view is not worth pursuing (funding). Unfortunately, unlike in scientific fields, there are no clear criteria by which we can discredit their theories. The only way to deal with them is to ignore.
Plus ca change , plus ce que la meme chose……
Plus ça change, plus c’ est la même chose.
Touche – sorry my keyboard won’t do the acute accent !
Yes. The duet song performed by Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney stayed at #1 on the charts in America and UK, 41 years ago today, and for all the changes over the years the song’s message and sentiment are still needed today. Mr. Ewell should listen to the song and apply its meaning to his work.
Here is another view, from the pianist Ethan Iverson, in which he writes that “Ewell himself is utterly and bewilderingly committed to seeing music in European terms.” https://iverson.substack.com/p/tt-257-new-book-by-philip-ewell
While Iverson is stuck in academic jazz of the distant past.
Billy: ‘My neighbour liked the idea of a physics without “white” empiricism and a math. He built a doghouse for Nero using such technology. Poor Nero got the roof of the doghouse on his head last night and is seriously injured.’
Cousin Gilda: ‘We are afraid that Nero will not be able to attend his PhD defense next week. We are currently fundraising for Nero. If you want to contribute, call [—] and Nero will woof for you.’
Ewell was a completely obscure figure in music theory and musicology until a band of aggrieved reactionaries and issue-shopping MAGA pundits decided to make a cause celebre out of him. Their hysterical paranoia about a Hunter College professor single-handedly destroying Beethoven is comedy worthy of someone’s academic satire.
I can’t imagine what you’re basing your statements on. The type of stuff he’s espousing has been written about widely across all swathes of media, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, NPR, etc. Google his name. You’ll find your MAGA conspiracy theory is nonsense. I wish you were right but sadly these types of ideas have been consuming much of the oxygen in the musicology/classical music world in recent times. If you don’t believe me….once again….there’s a thing called google. Check it out.
I’m not sure John McWhorter is a useful voice in this debate. He is just as extreme in the opposite direction. He asserts, for example, that black attitudes, rather than racism, are what hold African Americans back in the United States. Such unnuanced and one-sided arguments are a trademark of his writing. His thought, however, is grist for the racial resentment that is common among SD anonymous commenters.
McWhorter was a fellow of the arch-conservative Manhattan Institute which was a main force in establishing supply-side economics in the USA. This included the outsourcing that destroyed our industrial capacity; union busting; radical privatization that proposed even the creation of a privatized military; the elimination of social security; the elimination of all public arts funding; and a shift of wealth to the rich based on false notions of trickle-down economics that have proven disastrous for the American middleclass. These ideas, along with grotesque rationalizations about the problems with race in America, all lie behind McWhorter’s jeering at Ewell, but nuance and reason do not get hits on social media.
BTW, of the 29 notable fellows at the Manhattan Institute, only 3 have been women. Birds of a feather…….
Seems Dr. McWhorter is landing some goals. Great to see!!
Below are a number of reactions to my post. Seeing McWhroter as a conservative is nothing new. His 2000 book, “Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America” established it in the eyes of many intellectuals.
The NYT Reivew of Books provides cogent criticism of McWhorter and his methods. The words also describe much of the racial hostility seen in the comments section of SD:
“He often leaps to broad generalizations from personal experiences and observations that are, most often, inadequately explored. … McWhorter breezes by without considering whether his response reflects his own limited exposure to African-American culture and his inability to see black life in America without polemical lenses.”
The review adds: “Too often McWhorter does what many blacks accuse whites of doing — he draws a conclusion from any negative encounter he has experienced with another black person and assumes it is the norm; whatever violates it is the exception.”
And most tellingly and important: “He rightly defines the black majority as middle class, *but never imagines that population beyond the confines of the argument against affirmative action.* … He too often appears simplistically to divide the race into two camps — those under spells of victimology and separatism and those like himself.”
And further: “McWhorter often celebrates the economic advancement of blacks as evidence that racism in the United States is not as severe as many claim. One is left wondering why he or anyone should celebrate the rise of the black middle class if the majority of those well-off blacks are locked in the cults of victimology and separatism — and choked by anti-intellectualism — as he contends. That thought underscores the great frustration in reading ‘Losing the Race.’ Even when I find myself disagreeing with McWhorter, I could not help thinking of more solid, substantial and constructive ways to state his argument.” …
And in summation: “His argument remains captive in a closet of his own experiences, with scant assessments of academic studies, and data on the test-score gap that are never explored with the rigor they deserve.”
See the entire article here:
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/11/26/reviews/001126.26dentlt.html
As another example of how McWhorter fits with the racial hostility here, has posited that anti-racism has become as harmful in the United States as racism itself—an obvious caricature of the ongoing civil rights movement. By centering in on Ewell, we see whose playbook is being read by many of the commenters here. They use Ewell as a norm and as an easy target for promoting their racial hostility.
We see why so many of the commenters here with their barely veiled racial resentments and cowardly anonymity grasp at McWhorter’s polemic in response. It’s like the strange cultural practice of having two black boxers beat each other to death for the entertainment of a bunch of howling whites. It also illustrates why McWhorter’s polemic is so harmful; its just what white racists need to continue their denial.
In what follows, note how racial hostility is enabled by anonymous cowardice. It reveals so much of the underbelly of where Trumpistan is headed.
“As another example of how McWhorter fits with the racial hostility here, has posited that anti-racism has become as harmful in the United States as racism itself—an obvious caricature of the ongoing civil rights movement.”
No, he is not talking about the civil rights movement. He is criticizing third generation anti-racist scholars like Kendi. Ewell is a Kendi follower.
Do you have anything other than ad hominem attacks?
I’m sorry, but you seem to be saying that just about every stance ever taken about any issue by anyone at the Manhattan Institute is carried around by McWhorter and should be taken into account when he speaks about some of the madness taking place in classical music education.
It’s hard to believe I read that right.
As I said above, I’ve followed McWhorter’s writings for a number of years. He’s been all over the place on any number of issues during that time. Right now he comes off as more conservative because he believes the woke takeover of American institutions is such a massive and urgent problem that he has a duty to speak out on it. I would imagine he was hired by the Manhattan Institute – also the long-time home of the great Heather MacDonald, who has been the subject of posts on this sight – to do just that because he does it so well.
Heather MacDonald is a vitriolic white supremacist who celebrates police brutality and endorsed Donald Trump. The only think “great” about her is her neo-fascism.
The Heather MacDonald who was pro Patriot Act, pro torture, lied to Congress about crime stats of undocumented immigrants, denies racial bias in policing, wants stop and frisk reinstated, defends Trump as ‘not racially divisive’? That Heather Macdonald? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Mac_Donald
You’re an idiot, william.
Bravo!
Why do you hang out on this blog if you think it’s a domain of racists? Your modus operandi in differences of opinion is resorting to disgusting aspersions…..SD readers are racists, etc. You don’t like what John McWhorter says….let’s lie about him. For the record as far as McWhorter’s world view, should I take your word for it or McWhorter’s who describes himself as a liberal Democrat. The other day on a post, you wrote this bilge:
“As usual, the ability to post anonymous comments on SD reveals startling attitudes. The overwhelming majority go beyond objecting to or questioning the BON statement and hint at racial hostility.
One get the impression that classical music might serve as a symbol of white supremacy in the minds of many its patrons”
When I asked you what you were referring to you couldn’t cite a single post. Instead you resorted to your playbook…. more dispersions:
“If you stood by what you say, and if it had any substance, you’d use your real name and not a pseudonym.”
If you really believe all the stuff that you write about others, it makes me wonder what’s in your heart….
Btw, I don’t know much about the Manhattan Institute but I decided to factcheck your claim since you spread disinformation on here….like misportraying John McWhorter. Not surprisingly, your numbers about the Manhattan Institute appear to be made up:
https://manhattan.institute/scholars
See the list of “notable people” in the wiki article about the insitute: 26/3.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy_Research
Well I wondered where you came up with the term “notable fellows” since that term doesn’t appear on the Manhattan Institutes’s website. So now I know you found that on wikipedia. So yes….someone on wikipedia has declared that the Manhattan Institute has only three female “notable fellows”, whatever that means. You do know that anyone can post anything they want on wikipedia, correct?
You’re giving more credence to the people listed as “notable” on Wikipedia than the actual list of scholars on their website? That’s pathetic.
Thank you for the very convincing counter-arguments.
lol
One of the female fellows at the Manhattan Institute is Heather MacDonald. She has written extensively on the same topic as McWhorter. In her essays called, “Classical Music’s Suicide Pact,” she cites Ewell and others who are pushing the progressive narrative that all things of the European heritage are racist.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/classical-musics-suicide-pact-part-1
She is also well known for her Covid denialism and fervent support for police brutality, racial profiling etc. especially by the NYPD.
Nice mischaracterization. She believes in a morality of results and does a great job of putting forth data and facts that demonstrate that the BLM and Defund-the-Police approach to law enforcement has been absolutely disastrous for black people in many American cities.
Nice mischaracterization, yourself. Caught out in lies about crime, denies racial bias in policing, defends torture, supports racial profiling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Mac_Donald
You need to do a post on this article, Norman. It is very good.
“He asserts, for example, that black attitudes, rather than racism, are what hold African Americans back in the United States.” That is a grotesque oversimplification of what McWhorter says, a cartoon. I’ve read a fair amount of his work with admiration and pleasure, if by no means always agreement.
As I read him, McWhorter certainly does not deny that racism is real, and has stunted the progress of people of color. What he does argue is that Blacks will not find it profitable to attack this racism head-on to solve their predicament, any more than Italians climbed out of poverty by attempting to criminalize the rampant anti-Italian sentiment that was rife in early 20th century America. He argues that a much more promising strategy is to find ways to succeed in spite of that racism. You can argue whether that is right or wrong; I certainly am not in a position to pass judgement on it. But if you want to argue with him, a really good starting point would be to provide an accurate representation of what he is actually saying.
I am by no means a fan of the Manhattan Institute, but that is no excuse for the intellectually slipshod guilt-by-association you indulge in here. Yes, McWhorter is a fellow there. Yes, the Institute as a whole is smitten with what I would also regard as rather destructive free market fundamentalist orthodoxies. But McWhorter is on record as rejecting these ideas; as far as I can tell his politics are by and large mainstream Democrat.
And if McWhorter had a hand in staffing the Manhattan Institute, if he is in some way to blame for the rather paltry female representation there, I would love to see the evidence that this is the case.
“Birds of a feather” is not an argument to be taken seriously.
Good lord- do you ever give it a rest, Osborne?
Your comment is full of fallacious arguments, including ad hominem (attacking McWhorter personally), red herrings (McWhorter believes x therefore we can’t believe him on y), and genetic fallacy (McWhorter’s position can be dismissed because he is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, which is bad). Seriously man, do better.
You’re wrong and he’s right.
Case closed. Next?
McWorter should’ve ignored Ewell, his colleagues at CUNY do.
Ewell’s department at CUNY have PhD programs in musicology AND ethnomusicology, if his colleagues thought musicology was too white and not diverse enough, they would’ve combined the two programs and just called it “musicology”.
But everyone KNOWS there’s a difference between the two fields, in terms of methodology, analysis, theoretical tools, history, and yes, ethnicity and culture.
Ewell specializes in Shostakovich, if a PhD student came to him to do a thesis on the Russian composer but insists on learning only Swahili and Yoruba and doing his research in the Congo, Ewell would show him to the door of the ethnomusicology faculty.
Dr. McWhorter is an absolute champion and I regularly watch him online with Professor Glenn Loury. Dr. McWhorter has a great love of music too!!
JK (Joanne Kathleen) Rowling and her recent, ongoing tussle with activists resentful of her for merely saying that people who give birth to children are known as women or females, speaks volumes about just how ridiculous (or how so-called woke) the cultural-political parameters have become in today’s world. Rowling is quite progressive in her own right, so she’s a case of hard left versus soft left.
If your understanding of Rowling’s transphobia is summarized so simply, I think it’s clear you haven’t really been paying attention.
Here’s my Op-Ed:
Ewwwwell, the ‘musicologist’ who judges musicians not by the content of their music but by the color of their skin.
Ewell is now accusing McWhorter and Don Baton of not reading his book. “There have been two hit pieces where it was obvious the authors didn’t read the book.” https://twitter.com/philewell/status/1658927856221667329?cxt=HHwWgoC-oZGG2YUuAAAA This from a man who committed academic fraud by distorting Ewell and Eybl quotes.
I show my age, but what we need is a ‘coloured’ Stockhausen or Cage… Ie someone who is influential (or influentially good) despite trying to do something completely new.
Anthony Braxton?
Where does Ewell say that Schenker was a Nazi? The only references to Nazism in his notorious article are in a summary of the views of Martin Eybl, about “the Nazi implications of Schenker’s prose”. He does argue that Schenker held racist views, and there is very little doubt about that.
Where does Ewell say “barely above average”? He just says “above average” (in an attempt to counter the “towering genius of western civilization” caricatures of Beethoven and Mozart, a view that he says his father held).
Can we trust John McWhorter, with his known agenda, to give an accurate summary and unbiased review of Ewell’s book?
I understand the view that conservatories should maintain the western classical tradition; but there is also a view that they should reflect the realities of music-making in the contemporary world, which might involve welcoming other musical genres and traditions, and not adhering to a hierarchy that has white European pre-twenty-first-century on top.
“Preposterous musicologist”?? Isn’t that redundant?
The Barbarians have won, abandon all hope
…and he’s writing all this using the *shock* *horror* English Language, the ultimate bastion of white colonialism the enslaver of thought, with its rigid spelling and grammar?
can someone explain why the grifter Ewell is even being discussed? The guy just spews out woke word salad bingo?
One wonders where the term “snowflakes”.
The hard right literally brought us slavery and concentration camps. Many in these forum relativize the former as simply a part of the development of civilization and the latter as a mistake we ought to move on from (whoops, sorry, our bad.)
But if a Black person dares question anything or even deliberately challenges the prescribed status quo? These A$$**** claim the end of times, the arrival of the apocalypsis and the crumbling of the very foundations of “culture”.
Whites truly are afraid the former colonies would want to do to them 1/100th of what was done to us.
But worry not, seeing your panicked faces when orchestras play Hip Hop or Rock will do for now.
Another idiot has entered the chat
https://moltodoloroso.com/philip-ewell-go-down-in-history-part-i/
‘outlandish ideas’. what the hell did you read? obviously not the book. the numbers and data clearly back him while you’ve got no evidence whatsoever. [redacted]