| Education and the Diversity Dilemma, Pt. 1 |
| Sunday, 08 July 2007 | |
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Education and the Diversity Dilemma For the past several years, I have been trying to complete a book, the working title of which is “A World History of Black Music.” It is a survey that traverses seven continents and spans more than a millennium, starting as far back as the ninth century, when three black Moors (two of them slaves) became prominent and influential musicians in Spain. The book follows previously unexplored paths and little-known lives, such as that of the sixteenth-century composer of African descent who taught, composers, and performed music in the Vatican, and those of the scores of blacks who were active as composers of sacred music in late eighteenth-century Brazil. Through my visits to various libraries and inquiries in Europe, and in conversations with European scholars (many of whom find the music of the Black Diaspora of intense interest), I continue to unearth new aspects of this ever-expanding story. I enlarged the project’s initial scope (the 15 chapters with which I’d started eventually swelled to 27) out of a sense of obligation to the music profession—and to young people, who would otherwise not become aware of these hugely important, yet neglected contributions and influences. Yet I wonder where such a book will fit into music education today. Most particularly, what meaning does it have for the education of American youth in this shrinking would of ours? Chamber Music magazine’s series of articles on racial diversity, of which this essay is a part, raises the issues of why audiences and practitioners of American classical music remain overwhelmingly white within a society that is no longer so—and asks what to do about it. We all agree, of course, on one major obstacle: over the last quarter-century, social ills and political decisions have decimated arts education in the public schools (and in many private ones as well), so that at least one generation of young people has come into adulthood lacking exposure to any music by that heard through commercial mass media. In response to this problem, many performers and presenters have tried to fill the gap with outreach programs; but by definition, the problem with outreach is that after you reach out, you retreat. Presenters and performers can’t do it all. I think a great deal of responsibility—and part of the solution—rests with college and university music departments and graduate schools, because that is where people can be trained and encouraged to work toward correcting the situation. These are the institutions that define the values and concerns—the very content—of music education and pass them to coming generations of scholars, performers and music teachers. Why do some of us musicians become academics? Occasionally I hear such comments as, “I’m here to teach the music I love—and that’s eighteenth-century French opera.” But too often, this narrow view robs the students of the expansive knowledge required to traverse the diverse terrain of today’s expanded world, to make sense of its values. Why can’t we significantly integrate into the present curriculum works and information beyond those of the vaunted European Canon? Some say, “I wish I could, but it’s not my responsibility. I just don’t have the time for it.” Rather than taking calls for diversity as threats to our established values, society might benefit more if we acknowledged and embraced the validity and importance of musical ecumenicism and fostered it along with the classical tradition that we also cherish. The current-day, unfortunate rush to tenure, too, is having a deleterious effect on the situation. Cultural and critical theory dominate scholarship, while broad musical exploration and discovery suffer. The rush to specialize and publish keeps young scholars—just beginning to develop their intellectual powers—tied to their narrow dissertation topics, making it difficult, and in some cases impossible, for them to conceive and launch broader, more exploratory projects. Curricula in most universities and colleges are better than they were 15 years ago, but in others they are as narrow as they were in the 1960s. A few are pioneering a movement that seeks to “blend” fields of study in their doctoral programs, with musicology and ethnomusicology being studied together. (Here, I am thinking of music departments at Berkeley, University of Chicago, and University of Virginia). Others desire to add music theory and music education to the mix. Also showing promise in this regard is the MayDay Group, an independent faction of scholars founded in 1993 by music educators Thomas A. Regelski and J. Terry Gates and which promotes the maintenance of contact and interaction “with the ideas and people from other disciplines.” (reprinted with the permission of Chamber Music magazine and Samuel A. Floyd, Jr.) Stay tuned for the conclusion of this article next week. |
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