The long and short of it: we’re not trying hard enough to make it too diverse for them to like it.
Zack Ferriday trawled through the brackish, putrid swamp of a white nationalist message board, and found an unsurprising number of classical music fans. It’s pretty clear why they like it: all the composers we hold up as “great” are white men, and in a way, it provides a sonic safe space for people who believe the only people we should be celebrating ever are white men.
Most diversity initiatives happen on such a local and small scale that those ideas don’t reach the larger landscape of classical music. Then, of course, there’s the affirmative action fallacy: someone asks why there isn’t more music performed by non-white people, and the reply is that music isn’t chosen based on race or gender, it’s chosen based on how good it is and how it fits the ensemble—implying that a) the asker’s thinking is flawed because they seem to think music should be included just based on the composer’s race, and b) none of the music they listened to that wasn’t by white men was “good” enough to merit inclusion.
“It shouldn’t take the Chineke Orchestra to bring Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges to London, or its cellist and 2016 BBC Young Musician of the Year, 18-year-old Sheku Kanneh-Mason to donate money to his former school to ensure accessibility to classical music for all. We’re all too well aware of classical music’s checkered past when it comes to nationalism, so why is it that even now, 18 years into the 21st century, the likes of Karajan continue to be unambiguously celebrated as greats, as the “emperor of legato,” whatever that means, while racial bias is counteracted on a small-scale basis, somewhat distant from the money and opportunity of the classical music mainstream.” – “White Noise”
Knit and Listen 