I decided that I really wanted to pursue the violin when I was 12 after my Dad took me to a Regina Carter concert. Classically trained turned Jazz violinist, Regina Carter became my inspiration. Finally I had someone who looked like me who played my instrument! Not only did I love the Jazz that she played, which inspired me to one day try to play it myself, but I was also encouraged because I felt like I could have a place in the music world as an African American female violinist.
At first I thought this post was just going to be about Regina Carter being an insprational figure to me, but then I thought I would write briefly about what 21CM means to me. 21CM focuses a lot on diversifying the types of music we play and making classical music more accessible, but what about diversifying the type of performers? The reason why Regina Carter was so special to me was because I had never seen a violinist who looked like me before. I was so inspired by her because I thought I could one day be her. I find the lack of racial diversity in classical music and in music schools disturbing. I support 21CMs goal to make music more diverse and accessible because I hope that little kids like me who loved music can feel like they have a place and that they can make a creative contribution no matter what race they are.
Maybe I won't end up playing Jazz and being like Regina Carter in that aspect, but I hope that I can be like an role model like Regina Carter was for me for some other little black girl who wants to play the violin. And that is why I am part of the 21CM program.
Do you think that this should be an important goal for 21CM? To push not only for diverse styles of music but also for having more diversity in music schools as well as the professional music world? I sure hope that as we continue to have a wide range of musical styles represented at our school (Maya Beiser, Roberto Sierra...maybe one day Regina Carter...:) but that we also begin to see more racial diversity in our guest performers and our incoming students here in our School of Music.
I couldn't leave you without a little Regina Carter...
What strikes me about classical music is in fact its diversity. Every culture has its own music, so the fact that Western classical music is an amalgamation of historically Western music that within itself contains so many different cultures (French, German, English, Russian) plus some (many composers were inspired by Eastern culture-- pentatonic music, philosophical texts and religion-- and you have composers today such as Roberto Sierra and Chen Yi not from Europe)... In a way, it makes sense that a lot of classical musicians are of Caucasian descent because that's the primary demographic of its origin. But yes, I would love to see more diversity (especially out here at DePauw) because diversity opens our minds to new ideas and ways of thinking to inspire and enrich our music-making.
ReplyDeleteOne of the big challenges is that the white classical music establishment was so threatened by music from black culture that we effectively created a two-culture system.
ReplyDeleteMy high school was incredibly diverse, so it was always striking to me to look at the primarily white music ensembles. One reason for the racial divide was because of the way race was connected to economic status in my town. The white families were overall more well off than the black families, which allowed the parents to pay for instruments and lessons, encouraging an interest in music. I think this issue extends past my hometown, since black families are much more likely to be of lower socioeconomic status.
ReplyDeleteOne way that my school battled this issue was by creating a program that rented out instruments to low income elementary and middle school students interested in music. The organization also recruited high school students to go to the middle schools on a biweekly basis to teach music lessons to these students for free. I was a part of this program for four years, and I think more organizations like it would really help diversify music programs at the pre-collegiate and collegiate level.