What should a university music school of the near future consist of? Think 3-5 years from right now. Be specific and boldness is encouraged. What would it include particularly towards the aim of dismantling the white racial frame of music theory and history? Consider the following quotation in relation to your work on your instrument:
The practice that neutralizes the common sense intuition of the most privileged members of society as objective knowledge.
To start off, we’d need to address the music and composers behinds these teachings of “music theory”, which would be dead white European men. Obviously we’re not trying to cancel them and never listen to Schubert again, as Adam and Phil Ewell states in their video of Music Theory and White Supremacy, of course not. But what needs to be addressed is the supremacy and racial ties these people had on our learning of “music theory”, and how we can fix the problem of thinking they are the only “geniuses” when it comes to the composition of music. This means adding more people of sexual and racial identification to music teachings, relating to other cultural forms of music from around the world, suppressing the stereotypical art forms not completely, but realize its not the only form of real and proper music, and drop that damned figured bass. That also answers how we’re going to dismantle this white racial framework we have with “music theory”, we’re going to make it KNOWN, we’re going to look at other music written by under appreciated artists, and we’re going hopefully start teaching curriculum that isn’t solely stuck in the past. Lastly, the quote in regard to my instrument totally exemplifies our racial framework to music. I can tell you right now the only songs on my repertoire list that I have been given as a vocal student are written by white male composers. But due to the conventionalized way of learning music, my common sense intuition was neutralized, and I never thought what I was doing was ever racist or wrong, because that’s what I was told to believe and how I thought I was going to develop important musical skills. So this objective knowledge does identify us as privileged members of society I believe, and as the people that originally supported this style of learning, are going to need to play a part in changing it.
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