Orchestres anti-coloniaux : une réponse culturelle à l’impérialisme de la musique classique occidentale

So thrilled that my piece, “Anti-Colonial Orchestras: A Cultural Response to Classical Music Imperialism,” has been translated into French by Liko Imalet and Luc Le Maignan of AMECAS (Amicale des Etudiants Caribéens Africains et Sympathisants) at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne!

AMECAS

L’un de mes projets de recherche les plus longs consiste à retracer l’évolution des orchestres dans le monde. Pas seulement l’orchestre européen, mais tous les orchestres du monde, y compris les grands ensembles des peuples autochtones, les orchestres de personnes esclavagisées, les orchestres folkloriques d’Europe de l’Est, et plus largement les groupes que je commence à appeler les orchestres anti-coloniaux.

Les orchestres anti-coloniaux sont des orchestres qui se sont formés souvent immédiatement après les indépendances, ou bien en opposition directe à l’impérialisme culturel de la musique classique occidentale. D’une certaine manière, cela fait écho à l’objectif des orchestres folkloriques soviétiques (ainsi que des orchestres folkloriques d’autres États communistes). Mais ils diffèrent en ce que beaucoup d’entre eux n’étaient pas nécessairement des groupes parrainés par l’État ou du moins pas des groupes forcés de se former pour contrer directement l’impérialisme occidental. Cet arcticle offre un petit échantillon de certains de…

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BBC Radio 3: World of Classical

This Sunday will see the premiere broadcast of the three-part BBC Radio 3 feature, World of Classical, that I've been working on over the past year. Each episode focuses on some core themes (e.g. Music Notation) in Global music histories and makes connections between different music traditions and how those themes were approached or used. …

Anti-Colonial Orchestras: A Cultural Response to Classical Music Imperialism

One of my longest research projects is tracing the evolution of the orchestra. Not just the European orchestra, but all the orchestras of the world including indigenous large ensembles, slave orchestras, Soviet folk orchestras, and groups I'm starting to refer to as Anti-Colonial Orchestras. These are orchestras which formed often immediately after independence, or in …

Slave Orchestras: Classical Gabfest Interview Transcript

Here's an edited transcript of The Classical Gabfest Podcast (Episode 10) where I was interviewed about Slave Orchestras from November 2020. I've linked relevant content/sources within the text and the podcast link for the episode has other related links listed. The interview is the third segment and starts at about minute 00:34:12 and ends at …

US Orchestras and Large Ensembles

The Orchestra as an institution is constantly evolving and taking many different forms all around the world, but like the White Male Classical Music Canon, we tend to only see canonical ensemble types and treat them, like the repertoire canon, as universal and neutral.

Colonialism, White Supremacy, and the Logic of Exclusion of Colored Bodies in Classical Music

As I'm working on this bibliography of white supremacy and colonialism in classical music, I've come to a few things that has helped me understand the logic of exclusion of colored bodies in the field. Here are a few main takeaways. 1) Sources for information about Slave Orchestras are in formerly colonized countries or mémoires …

Classical Music and its Slave Orchestras

It was just five years ago that Dr. David Hunter revealed his discovery that Handel repeatedly invested in the Royal African Company, a slave trading company in Britain. A year later, Musicologist Hannah Templeton wrote that some of Leopold Mozart's patrons were likely slavers or heavily invested in plantations in the West Indies. In that …

Made in Thailand: Composed in America

Last week on Monday I was over at mae's1 house helping her clean out her kitchen while we were listening to the late Suthep Wongkamhaeng2 (สุเทพ วงศ์กำแหง), one of mae's favorites. As I was drying dishes, a song came up in the playlist and mae said she used to sing it to me as a …

Diversity, Inclusive Programming, and Music Education (part 4): Immigration

This is the fourth of a nine part series about Diversity, Inclusive Programming, and Music Education. Many of the ideas and themes here build on past pieces of this series, so reading them is suggested (for series overview, visit this link. part one: Intro; part 2: Postcolonialism; part 3: Assimilation). As this piece follows up …

Diversity, Inclusive Programming, and Music Education (part 3): Assimilation

This is the third of a seven part series about Diversity, Inclusive Programming, and Music Education. Many of the ideas and themes here build on past pieces of this series, so reading them is suggested (for series overview, visit this link. part one: Intro; part 2: Postcolonialism). As this piece follows up on ideas brought …

Diversity, Inclusive Programming, and Music Education (part 2): Postcolonialism

This is the second of a multi-part series about Diversity, Inclusive Programming, and Music Education (for part one, click here). As this piece follows up on ideas brought up in the previous post it's suggested you read it first. Also, as I mentioned at the conclusion of that piece, it might be useful for you …

Diversity, Inclusive Programming, and Music Education (part 1)

In 2011 Tyler Thompson, a fifteen year old African American sophomore at the Oakland School for the Arts, made some waves in national and international news as a singer of songs in Mandarin. In 2004 he had already made national news for singing in a children's Chinese Opera. Here's an AP Video Piece from '11 …

Colonialistic Diversity: Decentering Eurocentric Orchestras and Normalizing *all* Composition

As I get into the second month of #NotBeethoven tweet thread, you may have noticed a couple things. First is that I occasionally feature composers outside of the Western Art Music (WAM) tradition(s). Second, the natural consequence of this is I have to highlight Composers of Color and Non-Eurocentric Instruments and Ensembles.1 A couple of …

2020 is the year of #NotBeethoven

So last night and into this new year I listened to Dora Pejačević's Symphony in F sharp minor, Op. 41 (1918) in prep for what I'm calling my year of #NotBeethoven.* This is in response to Some. Of The. Pushback. To. making 2020 the year to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth. https://youtu.be/940dNX5zHEU Some …

White Males Orchestras and America’s Other Orchestras

A couple years ago I discovered a series of pieces title "America's Other Orchestras" at Arab America and it helped me to solidify some thoughts I've been having about how we have discussions, and the narratives we create, about Orchestras and Classical Music. These are thoughts that were percolating at least since I first wrote …

Classical Music, the Perpetual Foreigner Trope, and Colonialism

So a few days ago I started a thread on twitter about Classical Music and Colonialism. I've never done twitter thread before--never really considered using the social media platform as a way to convey more in-depth ideas. After having spent some time this past year following a few twitter users pretty faithfully and seeing how …

Diversity in Classical Music vs Diversity of Classical Music

Diversity in Classical Music has been a hot topic lately, especially given the recent announcements of upcoming seasons of organizations and the pushback many are getting recently. With the introduction of the Women Composer Database and the Composer Diversity Project, therea a push for aggregating disparate lists of composers to decenter the White Male Canon …

Decolonizing the Musical Mind

A few weeks ago, I started re-reading Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o’s “Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986) and for some reason this time reading it brought me back to the time when I quit playing the cello (right out of music school). A couple weeks ago, I mentioned here on my …