A diversity warrior says classical music has not changed
NewsA new front has been opened in the diversity wars by Kristina Kolbe, assistant professor in Sociology of Arts and Culture at Erasmus University Rotterdam and a visiting fellow at LSE’s International Inequalities Institute.
In her new book, ‘The Sound of Difference: Race, Class, and the Politics of ‘Diversity’, published by Manchester Univertsity Press, Kolbe maintains that classical music is not trying hard enough to diversify.
Sample promotional text:
As the gap between rich and poor continues to widen, and white supremacy and ethno-nationalism gain further traction, cultural institutions become ever more vital spaces for achieving both creative and social justice.
Yet these very spaces are themselves often riddled with inequalities tied to race, class, gender, or disability. While a host of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategies have been embraced to address these issues, their actual effectiveness in dismantling inequalities is heavily debated, most notably by feminist, decolonial and critical race scholars: see eg, Ahmed (2012), Gray (2016) and Saha (2018), amongst many others.
In my book The Sound of Difference: Race, Class, and the Politics of ‘Diversity’ in Classical Music, I turn to the field of classical music to explore how and under which institutional conditions diversity initiatives may challenge exclusionary structures – and when they might unwittingly reinforce them. Classical music has long been tied to Eurocentrism, elitism and institutional whiteness – and institutions like opera houses, orchestras and conservatoires still tend to serve as places of “highbrow” culture, where access to both consumption and production is often mediated through race and class: see eg, Bull (2019), Ewell (2020) and Scharff (2018). This makes the sector particularly apt when it comes to studying the role of diversity in the cultural industries.
… One central argument developed through these data is that diversity can function as a “non-performative” concept, to use the term coined by feminist theorist Sara Ahmed. This means that diversity policies often only signal change without actually enacting it.
This seems to hold true in particular for a hierarchised field, such as classical music. To be sure, my research highlights how diversity projects can sometimes help tackle institutional inequalities, for instance by opening up spaces for creative collaborations, for critical political dialogue, and for reviewing unequal labour conditions in the sector. Too often, however, diversity discourses contribute to the endurance of white middle-class social dominance. In these cases, discourses of diversity, openness and inclusion help conceal continuing structural regimes of inequality – and even actively contribute to the remaking raced and classed hierarchies. In classical music institutions, this happens especially when potentially transformative creative practices are absorbed back into the dominant production logics of white, “western”, highbrow institutions, reducing diversity work to merely a formal gesture…
There’s more here.
Disgusting & stupid.
“…… institutions like opera houses, orchestras and conservatoires still tend to serve as places of “highbrow” culture, where access to both consumption and production is often mediated through race and class..” A pure lie as there never was. Opera houses, orchestral concerts and conservatories are accessible to anyone capable of paying a ticket or school fee (for which there are, by the way, scholarships). Classical music is also entirely accessible through the media: radio, internet, and through CD’s. In concert halls and opera houses, nobody is refused entrance on the basis of class or race – this is a woke fantasy. That ‘highbrow’ is put in inverted commas reveals the motivation behind this woke nonsense; it is taboo to consider an art form as high art, because this excludes people not willing to try a bit of effort. Referring to Ewell gives away another thing: ignorance, Ewell is a fake, as any serious professional in the field knows all too well.
“Too often, however, diversity discourses contribute to the endurance of white middle-class social dominance. In these cases, discourses of diversity, openness and inclusion help conceal continuing structural regimes of inequality – and even actively contribute to the remaking raced and classed hierarchies. In classical music institutions, this happens especially when potentially transformative creative practices are absorbed back into the dominant production logics of white, “western”, highbrow institutions, reducing diversity work to merely a formal gesture…”
Translated: those folks in the field are hypocrites, they make the sounds of diversity and inclusion but behind the façade they keep to the dominance of racist and elitist hierarchies.
Where social injustices exist in the classical music world, they are not the result of the ‘elitist, hierarchical dominance structures’ but simply the result of injustices in society as a whole, and they sip through into the music world. You cannot solve those societal problems within the music world, they have to be solved in society. This young ignorant lady should focus her social lens on the real problems and keep out of a hierarchical, highbrow art form of which she obviously has no clue.
She should read my book where a chapter is treating the exact subject she tries to tackle, but then from the view point of a professional, not of a dilettante.
Behind the sorry attemps of people like this ignorant lady lies the populist world view of cultural relativism, which tries to deny the reality that there are cultural expressions that are better than other cultural expressions. In the arts, there is not such thing as equality, because achievement in an artistic field is fundamentally heirarchical, it could not possibly be otherwise. Of course the arts are elitist, that is their nature – except modern art and contemporary music as cultivated by the circles concerned, there, anything goes, and equality and diversity as defined by woke is completely achieved. But in the world of classical music, hierarchies are necessarily upheld, otherwise the whole field would crumble and sink to the level of the tastes of people who write books about woke ideals.
If diverse people have difficulty accessing classical music events, the causes lay outside the field. There is already done very much to help to overcome obstacles, and where they don’t work, again, the real causes lie in society, not in the concert world.
To summarize your argument (such as it is): there are problems of inequality in society as a whole, so discussing ways of dealing with inequality in a particular area is pointless.
You talk of yourself as a professional, and Dr Kolbe as a dilettante. Have you taken the trouble to find out about Dr Kolbe’s professional qualifications?
I don’t know whether it is your arrogant condescension to “this young ignorant lady” or your illogical thinking that annoys me more!
A person can be very highly qualified , but still spout absolute garbage.
I say! Enough examples here, and also on this site.
Sally
“To summarize your argument (such as it is): there are problems of inequality in society as a whole, so discussing ways of dealing with inequality in a particular area is pointless.”
No. I think his argument is that, while there are problems of inequality in society as a whole, the way to remedy them is not to destroy the classical music that some of us–including, it must be admitted, people who are–can I say this word?–white, love.
Paul Brownsey – do you really believe that, for Mr Borstlap, classical music is so fragile that it can be destroyed by diversity, equity and inclusion?
From what I can see and hear, the world of classical music has been enriched, not destroyed, by progress towards these goals.
Why does he feel so threatened?
It is not a matter of *fragility*. I took him to be saying that classical music can be destroyed by demands that it be merged with and/or watered down by other types of music; by demands that performances of classical music have to be made ‘accessible’ to people who don’t like classical music or who are unfamiliar with it and who want, instead, to hear other sorts of music. There is a peculiar assumption among some arts administrators, that a form of art is failing if it doesn’t appeal to everyone and that it’s ‘elitist’ or ‘highbrow’ to support it in those circumstances.
Indeed.
It is not the art form that is fragile, but the understanding of the layer of administration staff who run music life. After all, they are not musicians, they concern themselves with the task of making musical events happen, so their attention is geared towards the wrapping paper, not the content. Because of the nature of modern society, they have to look at music as a product that has to be sold, otherwise their own job gets into wobbly waters. Their talents are needed for administration, not for music.
GuestX: All institutions are fragile. You seek to destroy them, and so you play sophistic, psy/op games that grew tiresome generations ago. “Why do you feel so threatened?” However, such games only work in situations where you can coerce people into submission.
Declaring diversity as the ultimate ideal means you then can’t declare ideals in any field of human endeavor.
She took a position at the International Inequalities Institute. Shame on her!
vegetable rights and peace.
Lady, please just go away, far away, and find a different outlet for your neurosis.
Let’s take a look at Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement:
DH0. Name-calling (“you are an ass hat”)
DH1. Ad hominem (attacks the characteristics or authority of the writer instead of the substance of the argument)
DH2. Responding to tone (criticises the tone of the argument instead of the substance of the argument)
DH3. Contradiction (states the opposing case without supporting evidence)
DH4. Counterargument (contradicts and then backs it up with reasoning and supporting evidence)
DH5. Refutation (finds the mistake and explains why it’s mistaken using quotes)
DH6. Refuting the Central Point
So, which level is this argument on?
Maybe at the level of common sense?
I am sure the author will welcome your well-meaning criticism. Do email her and say that she has “neurosis” and it is “common sense”.
DEI is the cult of anti-civilization.
Industries which have bona fide occupational requirements cannot be subject to this. Professional sports, for instance, require a specific set of skills. The desired change is going to take several generations, like all cultural shifts. It should come as no surprise the world of Western Art Music is no exception. What we should be doing is making music more attractive and relevant to challenged or underrepresented groups, especially with kids, teens, and colleges. This way the pool of people who can meet the skills required to do the job will be more diverse over time. As it is now, only the privileged few can afford instruments much less private lessons, or conservatory tuition. In a perfect world, classical music would represent all backgrounds well, and if the field remains relevant to our culture over time, I hope this can be a treasure for all.
If there is actual discrimination that is a different matter, and it should be dealt with immediately, with all legal means, and never ever swept under the rug. Many people want to blame shift if they cannot win an audition, too. “I didn’t win because I am ____!!!” It is not an easy profession and there are no guarantees, except that there is always room at the top.
Most importantly, those who wish to make a change should get out there and make a difference in a person’s life (a kids’ life especially), and show them why music is unique and wonderful.
Well said!
Regardless of what you think about this issue, we probably all agree that we should hear more Ginastera, Villa-Lobos or William Grant Still at the concert hall
Perhaps, if their music were better than it is. They each wrote one or two pieces that I enjoy, but beyond that, the quality drops off precipitously.
On a related note, it seems we’re being force fed a bunch of Florence Price’s music lately, which I find to be uniformly uninteresting.
If Price’s music is found wanting, it is not due to her decendence, but to her talents. But who is to say that it is not also due to the fact that she could not develop these talents to their full blossoming due to her descendence? There are so many obstacles for any artist to overcome and decendence, environment, personality, are just a few of them.
It is very probable that much true compositional talent is suffocated by education, location, media culture, etc. and these have nothing to do with race or diversity.
Do you really think you are the arbiter of musical quality? Is music you do not like objectively bad?
Oh, and I do wonder if you know how to read a score? I remember someone trying to claim that Beethoven’s ninth symphony is the pinnacle of all the music in the whole world. In fact he never read a full score ever
Agreed. And now the BBC is force-feeding her ‘protegee’ one Margaret Bond, purely because of her race and professional victimhood.
It’s far left, racially obsessed fanatics like her, who play a big role in making Asian people feel invisible.
American conservatories and collegiate music schools are full Asians and Asians are far more numerous in American professional orchestras than are Black and Hispanic musicians. There were many Asians in the music school I went too 30 years ago. There isn’t a realm more welcoming of Asians than the classical music world, in fact many of the ‘star’ concert musicians are Asian. There are esteemed Asian conductors as well. Do Asians suffer racism and hate in the larger world yes? Yes most definitely. In the classical music world? Nope.
Some would argue that Asians may suffer racism if they have a masterclass encounter with Pinchas Zukerman.
Classical music is Eurocentric? Who knew?
Yes it’s shocking news, because the art form was born and developed mainly in Europe.
Also there are rumours that Indian traditional music is Indiacentric, worse: that it is held in high esteem mainly in India.
Mongolian throat singing seems to be mainly located in Mongolia, and I hear there are already action groups trying to rectify that injustice.
Kristina Kolbe is, of course, white.
In the US, she’d be the kind of well-off white person living in a wealthy, exclusive white community, where many homes have gates and major security systems. And outside her gate would be a large sign saying “BLACK LIVES MATTER”. See eg Rosie O’Donnell, Oprah Winfrey (!!)
So… she’d be a typical jew? Calling herself a “fellow white person” only when the disguise helps her subversion, then magically a poor oppressed minority hiding behind a pile of shoes when called out on their endless anti White attacks?
Perhaps it is unfair to comment on a short extract of Kristina Kolbe’s new book, but from what has been presented here, her thesis displays all the well meaning but vacuous virtue signalling that she accuses the classical music world of exhibiting. I get no sense of what changes Ms Kolbe is actually advocating, other than a vague idea that things haven’t gone far enough. Is it the performers, the audience, the management, or the music itself that fall short of her ideals?
I see no reason for classical music to ”diversufy”. If you don’t like it, try or create something else. If you like African drums, Balinese gamelan, Cuban salsa, Kraut rock, hip-hop etc, go to the real thing.
Exactly! Villa-Lobos should have gone to the real thing instead of writing symphonies; he’s not welcome in our navel-gazing parade.
guest1848
You mean Heitor Villa-Lobos, the Brazilian composer of French-styled music that he claimed to be inspired by the Amazon river’s waves and somehow by the native people’s soul of which he knew absolutely nothing, and that he called ’patriotic’ and ’nationalist’ in the years his country had a wannabe-Fascist regime? Well, I know and like of some of his pieces called Bachianas Brazileiras, even if they are very, very kitsch.
“he called ’patriotic’ and ’nationalist’ in the years his country had a wannabe-Fascist regime?”
You’re not the first person I’ve seen who can’t separate government from nation. Consider moving to China, where you will be in good company!
Yes, I think associating individuals with governments is a bit thick. I live in Canada and am not keen to be associated with either the vacuities of the Trudeau regime or the horrors perpetrated under Harper when he ruled the roost.
Similarly, I do not automatically assume that all Gazans support Hamas, or indeed that all Israelis support Netanyahu.
And before anyone starts spurting that if that’s the case they should show it, does anyone suppose that all Russians support this was in Ukraine?
I, and all the British who have despaired under successive incompetent governments, at least have the privilege of saying so without fear of untold horrors befalling them. Not sure that’s true in a lot of places, and that may include Villa-Lobos’ Brazil. Most of us love our country; rare are those who love it more than our liberty.
Some years ago I had a flinch of interest in Balinese gamelan and went to various performances in tropical institutes and museums and cultural centres. To my surprise most of the players were always these eastern brown types with funny clothes. They seemed to be very exclusive and keeping to their own kind, also it were men all the time. Now, I prefer men anyway everywhere, but so many of them again and again and all looking the same got really frustrating. It was most disappointing, they were the same type all the time, and after a while I also found the music always the same, keeping to its own sound again and again so I lost my interest. I think they were underdeveloped and had no clue about diversity.
Sally
LOL do you mean Brown people from the East or Eastern coastal elites from Brown university. Either way your post is hilarious, love it.
She’s not wrong…
This lady (is it a hate crime to assume so?) could use help from ChatGPT to construct more coherent sentences. Frustrating that instead of proper academic research of very important moral and social issue of inequality we have such “professors” delivering verbal diarrhoea.
This is an extract from a highly cited paper in another field:
Since these criticisms were made, a growing body of work in sociolinguistics has opened up far more fluid ways of thinking about language, identity and belonging. Key here has been Rampton’s (1995) work on ‘crossing’ — ways in which members of certain groups use forms of speech from other groups — or ‘styling the Other’ — ‘ways in which people use language and dialect in discursive practice to appropriate, explore, reproduce or challenge influential images and stereotypes of groups that they don’t themselves (straightforwardly) belong to’ (1999: 421). Instead of focusing on a ‘linguistics of community’, (which is often based on a circularity of argument that suggests that a speaker of x community speaks language y because they belong to x, and the fact that they speak y proves they are a member of x), this work focuses more on a ‘linguistics of contact’ (cf. Pratt 1987), ‘looking instead at the intricate ways in which people use language to index social group affiliations in situations where the acceptability and legitimacy of their doing so is open to question, incon-trovertibly guaranteed neither by ties of inheritance, ingroup socialisation, nor by any other language ideology’ (Rampton 1999: 422).
If you think that all that was word salad, the entire field of humanities is a word salad to you! Or do you just think anything that disagrees with your views is word salad?
Such texts are attempts to describe very simple phenomena in an academic elaborate language so that the subject acquires an air of respectability and scientific weight. It is an art in itself, and since so many academics are forced to produce papers and get them published in academic journals, polishing this ability has become a must. But the subject remains the same simple thing that almost never deserves such treatment.
It sounds as if you have just described the tenor, substance and rhetoric of the great majority of your own comments on Slippedisc. You live in a bubble that doesn’t even exicst. And for anyone still commenting on DEI: In many institutions, including performing arts theaters and schools, DEI offices are the only offices concerning themselves with how people with disabilities can get in the door (or if it’s just too heavy to be opened).
If my comments are too difficult for you, why reading them? Why not try an easier website, there is enough on the internet.
Don’t give up! Keep trying!
Your posts aren’t even grammatically correct. But you’re right, I should leave you here where you actually feel you have some importance.
Yes it’s really frustrating to have to work for someone who has such silly relaxation hobbies. It’s most distracting, especially the laughing.
Sally
Don’t you make grammatical mistakes in your second languages?
Maybe they are, but to be fair, the issue of physical accessibility and alterations made to sites to accommodate wheelchairs in particular was being addressed long before BLM came along.
And although many organisations were trying to raise their game on other aspects of what is loosely lumped as “diversity,” from affirmative action to aggressive hiring and promotion of women, and a liberalising view of gays, the whole DEI culture we now languish under is also post-BLM.
That is true! Once I was too late for buying a ticket for a concert, but when I returned in a borrowed wheelchair, I was given access without any ado and could sit-out the concert free.
Sally
This is the definition of a bullshit job. She would be so much better off doing something useful and honest, like working in a kindergarden or a retirement home.
“Classical Music” is such a minority activity by itself..how many people participate in or watch concerts every year? Very few. We should be grateful anyone wants to be there and push the boundaries out just to get people to play, sing, listen etc..
Please let’s not get into specific quotas, just try and get more and more people, of all kinds, to be part of our magical “world”
Master Sergeant Waters in A SOLDIERS STORY from Charles Curtis’s play says he did everything the white man said he needed to do including listening to “that symphony stuff” and still they hated him. August Wilson never got that close to the truth about racial animosity.
But I don’t like that either and I’m white and blond. I’m confused.
Sally
I do not agree with Kristina Kolbe that more diversity is needed in classical music. Classical music is tearing itself apart trying to be more diverse, such as trying to integrate with Jazz or becoming more atonal. These are ludicrous ideas, as was Jimi Hendrix’s idea of integrating Western rock music with Africa’s Makossa. No, what classical music needs, in my opinion, is to get back to its roots. Why not have an online presence devoted to classical music called Mod-Erato (Erato was the ancient Greek goddess of music), which could give YouTube a run for its money.
Did you know that Ravel tried integrating with jazz?
Ravel did not integrate jazz but took some thematic material and lifted it up to his own, highbrow artistic level, and in the same time conjuring-up images of situations where jazz took place, on his tour through the USA in the twenties of the last century. He treated jazz as exotism, like his treatment of other exotisms like the Spanish or Arabian variety. I don’t think that is ‘integrating’.
I think you’re right, and it got me thinking about what you might want to call integration – after all you could also say that Bartok took material from Eastern European folk songs and treated it as classical musicians do, and more people will think that Bartok integrated folk music than Ravel integrated jazz. So I am not exactly sure what can be considered as “integrating”
Thinking about it, I think you are right about Bartok.
Maybe ‘integrating’ is a better term for two or more different musical styles which are combined on an equal level.
Both today would be accused of cultural appropriation.
Bartok literally came from Hungary
Sticking with Hungarian folk music reveals him as lacking in diversity.
“lifted it up to his own highbrow artistic level” – there you have it, hierarchical musical elitism in a nutshell.
“exotisms” – another example of unconscious eurocentricity (Spain, of course, is in Europe, but no doubt you are referring to Moorish influence).
Yes, it is hierarchical musical elitism, and the exotism stems from the same position: the ‘tourist view’ of the European looking to music of non-European cultures as if from the outside, not penetrating into its inside. But such tourism can produce great works, like Debussy’s Iberia (which, by the way, Spanish composer De Falla described as essentially very Spanish in spirit), or Ravel’s Sheherazade song cycle.
This hierarchical musical elitism produced a superb musical tradition stretching over the ages the works of which are still feeding the souls of millions of people all over the world, especially (!) non-European cultures like China, Japan, S-Korea, the UK. How come? So much lacking in diversity!
[another example of unconscious eurocentricity]
It’s not unconscious. Read.
And I suppose Jazz must be an “exotism” either because it’s non-European or because it has roots among non-white people. For goodness sakes don’t integrate! Really, you sound ridiculous.
We know that Ravel was extremely racist, as shown by his piano concertos. Almost ALL composers of the Western tradition were racist because they were all white and totally ignored all the black composers. Not only that, they were all products of suppressing regimes. Shame on them…..
How about a concerto for two thumbs 1847. Almost anyone could play that.
Maybe it worked because he wasn’t obliged to integrate jazz, he did it with his own will and inspiration…and the feeling it was something new…
Indeed – he recreated jazz within the context of his own style. But that is cultural appropriation so: away with it.
Well, a paid witch-finder isn’t going to accept that all the witches have been found, is she? Bad for business.
What about talent? That is what determines joining a great orchestra. Not DEI stuff.
Simple as that, Professor Kolbe.
As usual, she means it’s not black enough, although she doesn’t spell it out. I see classical musicians of E Asian heritage everywhere but these warriors just airbrush them out of their consciousness – just another example of the racism that they claim to abhor.
How does “race, class, gender, or disability” translate in your one-track mind to “not black enough”? To say nothing about the inequalities of wealth (“the gap between rich and poor”).
If you don’t think that “white supremacy” and “ethnonationalism” are increasing present-day problems, you have not been following the US election campaigns.
“How does “race, class, gender, or disability” translate in your one-track mind to “not black enough”?”
Because, so far as race is concerned, the presence of other minorities in significant numbers does not register with these warriors and does not qualify as “diversity”. I thought that much was clear.
I have to confess that I have not associated the US election campaigns with the origins of classical musicians. But then I do not regard the US as the centre of the universe. Sorry about that.
She’s right about one thing: we need more diversity in the classical arena but NOT because of any DEI nonsense. It’s because many of us who love orchestral music are bored to death with the constant replaying of the great European classics. There’s a new disk, Venezuela!, of music by composers from guess where? But it was recorded in Liverpool. And it’s terrific! Exciting, tuneful, beautiful, atmospheric. There’s so much music out there that just languishes on the shelves because some conductor has to do the Beethoven 9th…again. For far too long the classical business has pretty much ignored the wonderful music from South of the Border – Mexico, Central and South America. There have been a few conductors who tried to bring it to us. I still miss the late Eduardo Mata who was driven out of Phoenix nearly 50 years ago when critics (yes, there were some then) complained about too many “Mexican Hat Dances” at the concerts. Yes, more diversity!
At $87, ‘The Sound of Difference: Race, Class, and the Politics of ‘Diversity’, if anyone actually buys this book, they can write the first review.
Rather than calling for more funds for arts, providing affordable music education for children (including minorities), giving more exposure to academic music on the media, commissioning new works, let’s see what the author offers.
Spaces for creative collaborations (surely there are none in the field of academic music), critical political dialogue (melange of a Mahler’s symphony with rappers’ sometimes ethically dubious but surely diverse and politically critical songs?), and reviewing unequal labour conditions (wow. Will she criticise her peers who, not being directly involved into music-making but rather preaching and moralising, extract considerable sums of money from what is allocated for arts?).
I don’t want to say that this characterises the author’s expertise (and, in a way, it does). I want to stress that her tone shows, as I see it, her rather unfavourable attitude to classical (academic) music. And taking stance is not good for a researcher. Unlike activists, they (ideally) have to be impartial.
Getting published today is easy – just because it is well laid out doesn’t mean you have actually brought squat to the situation …
Getting published today is easy? Are you referring to the technology that allows for self-publication? Because publishers I know are all struggling, which makes is very much harder to penetrate their critical shields. Just for starters, how many people have you seen reading a book on the bus or tube lately?
I have seen an elderly lady on a bus on 13 February 2004 reading a book. Around her, people did not dare to sit close to her.
[Just for starters, how many people have you seen reading a book on the bus or tube lately?]
Who knows? I’ve read hundreds of novels on my phone, and even a few epic poems.
Young white male artists would disagree. There are many excellent young male musicians who are pushed aside for less prepared artists in the name of “diversity”. How many orchestras are forced to push less deserving artists because of political agendas? If “diverse” is the thing that matter most, how is this called equallity? All are equal but some are more equal than others?
Yes, that is the problem. It is very difficult, of not impossible, to make sure people are hired / chosen / selected purely on merit. And since it is much easier to make a judgement on someone’s diversity accreditations than on artistic merit, and given the sad fact that in music life, people very often go for the wrapping paper instead of content, it is obvious that it often happens that being male and white and European and being very good, is an obstacle.
Change doesn’t happen overnight. As we all know, seasons are planned at least one or two years in advance. There are an awful lot of very conscientious MDs and artistic administrators out there mindfully fulfilling DEI quotas in order to provide opportunities for those who had previously been under-represented or ignored. But also, let’s not overlook those who don’t fit the DEI criteria either. Mediocrity within an organization can result from creating this kind of narrow scope if more viable candidates are purposely overlooked. Such a slippery slope.
Her publications.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9aRVCeUAAAAJ&hl=en
That list has a heavy smell of ‘cultural relativism’: a fight against elitism, and hoping for a world of equality in the arts, seeing hierarchical suppression everywhere.
We need more both hands amputee pianists who have suffered so much intolerable discrimination, if they could be poor, black and trans, it would really help for statistics….
What is the end goal of DEI warriors like her? The answer: there isn’t – because there isn’t such a thing as “enough” diversity, “enough” equity etc. It’s a sisyphean task to try to please the woke crowd as they’ll always be looking for the next thing to raise outrage about.
Well that’s some 5 min I’ll never get back..
Just poor scholarship. The performing arts in general are bastions of diversity and equity. Orchestra members, orchestra administration, conductors, soloists and chamber groups, etc. etc. are perhaps the most diverse of all “industries” in the world. People buy tickets for what they want to hear and women are fully embraced in classical music. Ms. Kolbe’s work should be disregarded.
I read highbrow in quotation marks and that was enough for me.
Classical music is rotten, old fashioned and lives in a world of its own. You have many abusive conductors, mediocre management for whom employment laws are ink on paper, anachronistic programming, cult of personality, mediocre people turned into stars and more.
It is a business on a life support
What about the 30 to 40 million children learning to play the piano in China? Are they not diverse enough for you?
Apparently not.
They are not diverse at all, they are all Chinese!
Sally
“Institutional whiteness”
Why do these criticisms never apply to paintings for example. It’s always music in the firing line, yet it is readily available now more than ever and free unlike expensive exhibitions in galleries.
Music has many different styles as does Art. Are Botticelli and Picasso elitist and posh and in need of diversity?
Anyone can access the Arts online. The question is why don’t they.The more people are told that certain composers are highbrow, the more they will be put off. It is utterly ridiculous.
Music has been around for centuries and will continue to be so. Children are heavily influenced by their parents and their ingrained views which prevent instrumental learning.
‘ I’m not having that row in my house’..child wanted to learn the trumpet.
‘That’s what girls do, you’ll get bullied ‘..son wanted to learn the cello.
Parents pass on their prejudices all too easily. ‘ I’ve never needed algebra/ physics in my job’ and so the bias continues for another generation.
Were the Kanneh Masons of this world to appear on programmes such as Strictly, then far more people would appreciate the diversity that already exists.
Barriers stop audiences believing that film music is symphonic.For some it’s socially acceptable to like musicals, Bocelli and Andre Rieu but not opera and concertos.
The opportunities to experience the vast range of music and performers are there for all to enjoy but for their hard held views.
I couldn’t even make it through that promotional text without my eyes glazing over, why would I want to read a book by her?
“Diversity Champions” are some of the most idiotic people in music. Especially when they can’t actually play their instrument well.
Slow clap for the comments section. Material for her next book..
“Assistant Professor in (sic) Sociology of Arts and Culture” says it all.
Western Classical music has it’s roots in entertainment for the various European Courts of the 18th century. It was socially restricted but only part of the audience could be described as “highbrow”. Despite that origin we know that composers of the time had mass popularity when giving public performances. Opera in Italy especially was popular entertainment from it’s Inception.
Crossovers between “popular” music and Classical music have existed since Vivaldi and Beethoven used folk tunes.
The real gap opens up 19th century with the “Tinpan Alley” type of music hall and the first recorded music, but even then Carouso and others were superstars, and Classical composers were incorporating early jazz in their work. Radio and records opened up cheap access to a wider audience, if they chose it, and didn’t and still don’t despite all the outreach efforts. It is interesting too to read in the BBC Music magazine of the popular music enjoyed by Classical musicians.
People in non-European cultures have adopted Western Classical music, particularly East Asians. It wasn’t forced on them. They have their own traditions, of greater antiquity. Does one attack Indian or Chinese classical traditions for exclusivity? Why choose a Western tradition if you hate what you believe it represents? Try jazz.
Class has always limited opportunities but many musicians and composers have always found a route through thanks to sponsorship. It isn’t easy to succeed as a pop musician either.
Good comment.
Apart from one aspect: the ‘entertainment quality’ of serious music in pre-19C music is very different from what we, in modern times, have come to understand. The court musical events were always serious business, to underline the legitimacy of rulers, and the artistic level and sophistication was considered an absolute ‘must’, so: at the time, highbrow artistic works were ‘entertaining’ as such. Example: Monteverdi’s operas.
Also at the end of the 18th century when public concerts came gradually into being, composers and performers aimed at the highest artistic standards and were measured against each other on those grounds. Mozart’s ‘Akademien’ were meant ‘für Kenner und Liebhaber’ but belonged to the very best he could achieve, if it were mere entertainment, he would never have tried his hand at sophistication. Only for some specific occasions he provided some lighter music – the divertimenti. Haydn is another example, who took his art very seriously, praying before he started his daily composing routine. That world was entirely different from ours in terms of values.
She’s right by the people in the music world are so cut off from reality, and their exceptionalism is so strong that they think they’re above employment law, society, normality!
With regard ‘diversity’ :
1. People making money from some ethnic-based group is not diversity!
2. Where is the diversity in programming? Filling your programmes with a majority of dead composers and minimalist, pop sounding tosh is not diversity.
3. Positive discrimination in auditions is not diversity. You should take the best.
You want diversity? Just create excellent education for everyone.
All those Florence Price additions to concerts mean nothing?
I believe there is well-meaning criticism (not the name-calling) on Slipped Disc saying that the audience remains mostly white when Florence Price is featured
We have to force all blacks to listen to their own symphonist – but she writes white music, so there will be a new problem.
Yes, they mean nothing. And stupidly compared to Dvorak when in reality at her best she sounds like him at his worst. Sad!!!
I think sounding like Dvorak at his worst is quite an achievement.
And then: what if she had had the opportunities to further develop? To my ears she sounds like a very gifted beginner.
Sure.
Kolbe: “As the gap between rich and poor continues to widen, and white supremacy and ethno-nationalism gain further traction…”
Oh, brother. I bet Kolbe becomes tinged with bigotry when a non-white (or non-male, non-straight, non-native, non-Christian, etc) person favors politics she disagrees with.
Look at the way her type has treated author JK Rowling.
Some time ago I read somewhere an opinion by a Black concert-goer re efforts by venues to be more DEI, also in their communications targeting people of colour, that she does not want to be told by white people how to spend her free time in a meaningful way. She refuses to be patronized as she is not a child and can make her own cultural choices.
Ironically, such well-intended efforts turn-out to be actually racist.
Might have been me, although I know plenty of black people who feel this way.
I’ve been complaining about this patronising attitude for years but, if anything, it has got worse since Minneapolis.
UK Census 2021 – Population make-up, England & Wales:
White 81.7%
Asian 9.3%
Black, Caribbean, African: 4%
Mixed or multiple ethnic groups: 2.9%
Other ethnic groups: 2.1%
Let’s keep things in proportion!
“In the field of classical music, various diversity, equity and inclusion (dei) strategies have been embraced to address inequalities tied to race, class and gender, writes Kristina Kolbe. Such initiatives undoubtedly improve demographic representation. But do they succeed in tackling the underlying power dynamics that sustain these inequalities in the first place?
“As the gap between rich and poor continues to widen, and white supremacy and ethno-nationalism gain further traction, cultural institutions become ever more vital spaces for achieving both creative and social justice.
[N.S.: “and white supremacy and ethno-nationalism gain further traction”: That’s a bald-faced lie. The White Holocaust Project, of which Kristina Kolbe is a part, is in full gallop, with normal Whites throughout the West reduced to fifth-class citizens.]
“Yet these very spaces are themselves often riddled with inequalities tied to race, class, gender, or disability. While a host of diversity, equity, and inclusion (dei) strategies have been embraced to address these issues, their actual effectiveness in dismantling inequalities is heavily debated, most notably by feminist, decolonial and critical race scholars: see eg, Ahmed (2012), Gray (2016) and Saha (2018), amongst many others.
N.S.: There’s no such thing as feminist, decolonial, and critical race “scholars,” and they certainly don’t “debate” anything.
The problem with Kolbe and her allies isn’t that that they have a neurosis, but that their evil.
Kristina Kolbe appears to know nothing about music, the arts, or anything else. All she has are racist, sexist epithets and slogans, and she and her comrades use the same ones, no matter what the topic.
Her CV says it all. She is a waste of time herself and spends her life wasting everyone else’s time.
She looks insufferably smug.