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.

All Opera Companies in the US

This is just a short post about the new list I'm compiling of all opera companies in the US that I started a couple days ago. While it's nice to see how much activity is being done in the opera scene since 2000, this won't show us the overall trajectory of opera in the US …

Opera in the 21st Century

This is an update from my post about New Opera organizations formed since 2000 a little over a week ago and the list I've been compiling since then. To date I've found over 100 organizations which produce opera.  Most of these are actual opera companies with a handful of what look like festivals or presenting …

Sampling Bias in discussions about Classical Music

  This might as well be placed out there since we have Andy Doe's recent post calling us to challenge the Classical Music Crisis folks. As I said in a previous post, we are generally terrible at reasoning with numbers–especially big numbers. This post deals more with the collection of the numbers inflects the Classical …

Negativity Bias and the “Classical Music Crisis”

  Marketing consultant, Mark Schaefer, discusses how Negativity Bias can have a profound effect on how we perceive industries and businesses in a world of social media. He uses the recent #McFail incident to illustrate how the bias operates: And even when one of their social media experiments did not go as planned, the company …

Why New Music Louisville: The Evolution of NuMuLu (part 1.5) – New Solo Cello Repertoire and Extended Techniques

As I was looking for scores for my students who performed at the ISSMA Solo and Ensemble Contest this past Saturday, I came across a number of my collection of sheet music for new solo cello works. I've not looked through them until lately as I've started up my two lastest new music projects (The …

Why New Music Louisville: The Evolution of NuMuLu (part 1)

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've started a new organization that focuses on featuring and promoting new and experimental music in the Kentuckiana region. In that post I mentioned the Chello Shed which was a similar kind of initiative I started in late 1996  after I finished my degree in cello performance in …

WPA Federal Music Project and the CWA’s contribution to Orchestras

In my post about the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) I took a look at how many orchestras were funded prior to the WPA Federal Music Project and the WPA Music Programs. During the FERA period, there was a short period of time where an actual job creation program existed, the Civil Works Administration (CWA). …

The Classical Music Crisis during the Great Depression

In a recent post I described how the Classical Music recording industry practically floundered during the Great Depression.  What was the live performing scene like?  Looks like it was pretty dismal.  Here's a synopsis by Kenneth J. Bindas (1988): By the late 1920s, the golden finish began to tarnish. In 1928 the sound track for …

Aging of Orchestra Audiences: Life Expectancy, Family Life Cycles, and Proportional Rescaling of Life Cycles

[C]lassical music has historically played to an adult audience, it’s just that the passage into adulthood—as indicated by first-marriage age—has been getting later and later, and the length of adulthood—as indicated by life expectancy—has been getting longer and longer. This was one of the quotes by Matthew Guerrieri I posted in the first post of …

WPA Federal Music Project and America’s Musical Rebirth

A snippet from Bindas' dissertation: As a result of these activities, the Project helped stimulate a musical re-birth in the country.  By 1938 many recognized that the country was in the midst of a musical re-birth, and the FMP received much of the credit. (Bindas 1988, pg. 66) What were some of those activities? The …

WPA Federal Music Project and FERA’s contribution to Orchestras

In Cornelius Canon's dissertation, "The Federal Music Project of the Works Progress Administration: Music in a Democracy" (1963) we get the most comprehensive overview of the impact of the WPA Federal Music Project. As Kenneth Bindas states in his 1988 dissertation, All of this music belongs to the nation (which he published in book form …

Was there ever a “Before the crisis” in Classical Music

He's at it again. Yes, the classical music crisis, which some don’t believe in, and others think has been going on forever. This is the third post in a series. In the first, I asked, innocently enough, how long the classical music crisis (which is so widely talked about) has been going on. Answers poured …

Questions about the state of Classical Music

I had started another blog post but decided to wait on writing that one as I realized that it would be one that may take a few hours to write and not being as young as I used to be I should probably sleep on it some before digging in to it. As it stands, …