CW: Racism, white supremacy, ableism, PTSD, abuse
Abstract
In this article I will share the emerging intersectional methodological framework I have developed for my PhD project at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. The project, titled A violent accumulation of identifications: composing in/through/with the Latina/o/x diaspora, includes a portfolio of compositions, narrative portraits of seven Latina/o/x participants, and a 40k word dissertation. The framework is steeped in the Black and brown feminist epistemologies and ontologies of Sylvia Wynter, Patricia Hill Collins, Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot, and Edgar Rodriguez-Dorans and I also weave into this neuroqueer and disabled perspectives. This approach developed organically alongside the PhD project in order to investigate Latina/o/x sound artists’ use and non-use of their identities in their creative practice—identities including but not limited to race, parenthood, gender, disability, sexuality, hobbies etc—and, in particular, to evaluate dialectical tensions some artists may be experiencing. In her work Wynter (2001), via Fanon, writes that sociogeny may be a type of framework that can perhaps bridge the gap between biology—specifically phylogeny and ontogeny—and the socio-cultural fields. Wynter develops this idea further and specifies that sociogeny should be rooted in ‘the study of words (in effect, the study of the rhetoricity of our human identity)’ and that it needs to happen in liminal ‘transcultural’ spaces by a minoritarian subject from a minoritarian perspective (60). It is from here that I make my case for a Black/brown feminist sociogenic methodological research framework to study our own minoritarian and or global majority south lived experiences within the fields of western European classical music (WECM) and computer music. The preliminary findings of my PhD suggest that some WECM and computer music sound artists may experience a type of forced epistemic (self)harm as their identifications are stripped away through the construction of a work due to white affective mechanisms. The methodological framework presented here then may help in rethinking our creative, research and pedagogical practices in WECM and computer music.
Introduction
Identities that flounder are the bearers of psychic truth. They bear witness both to the infinite complexity of psychic life and to our deepest implication of the ills of the world through which we must continue to struggle. … Only if you confront the ‘mess’ of things, delve beneath the surface, let in the silenced voices of history clamouring at the gate, is there the slightest prospect of understanding, let alone transforming, the nightmares of our contemporary world (Rose, 2023).
In this article, I share the emerging intersectional methodological framework and methods I have developed for my PhD project at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. The project, titled A violent accumulation of identifications: composing in/through/with the Latina/o/x diaspora, includes a portfolio of compositions, narrative portraits of seven Latina/o/x participants, and a 40,000 word thesis. In short, the project is mainly concerned with ‘the mess of things’ sound artists in the Latinidad face when engaging with creative practices through what George E. Lewis (2002) calls white ‘Eurological’ frameworks. More specifically, I am interested in what occurs as we become more aware of the ‘collectively held [Latina/o/x] sense of self that shapes’ (Parker, 2018, p. 443) each of our creative practices. This stems directly from Wynter’s (1995; 2001) work where she developed a sociogenic philosophy on the development of Black consciousness that occurs within ‘the aberration of affect induced in the black by the massive “psychoexistential complex” in which [they find] [themselves] entrapped…’ (54). She writes,
Seeing that because all modes of human conscious experience, and thereby, of consciousness, can now be seen to be, in all cases, the expression of the culturally constructed mode of subjective experience specific to the functioning of each culture’s sociogenic sense of self, the same recognition can now be analogically extrapolated to the species-specific sense of self expressing the genomic principle defining of all forms of organic life (2001, p. 95).
Here, Wynter makes an argument for how racial metastructures within various cultures can and do affect the development of one’s consciousness and she gives examples in her chapter that include a case of Western anti-Black colonialism and a case of Black autophobia within a Congolese context and the fear of albino skin. Parker describes this as, ‘…how a body perceives itself in racial terms reliant on a comparison with other bodies matters fundamentally not only to a person’s living but to the character of the life of the species’ (443-444). From Fanon’s awakening of how the colonial Black ‘other’ had been inscribed on his skin and psyche, Wynter expands sociogeny to the study of Black consciousness rooted in that moment of awakening. It is from here that I depart and build on Fanon and Wynter’s philosophy (and many others) to explore the sense of self, the Latina/o/x consciousness, of composers, and computer musicians (whom I collectively refer to sound artists in this article).
The primary research questions I engage with are:
What are the experiences of Latina/o/x sound artists like in WECM[1] composition and computer music?
How do our identifications in race, gender, ethnicity, disability, parenthood, and sexuality, etc., inform our practice, if at all, and vice versa?
If identities and the mediums are interacting in some way with each other, what are the processes or mechanisms that instigate and affect these interactions? What are the consequences?
I chose a methodological framework and mixed methods with roots in Black and brown sociology, critical race theory, and Black Feminist Thought to explore these questions because what is being investigated is not a static phenomenon. Both the act of making music and identification may be understood as fluid, social, phenomena that may change depending on many factors. Therefore, I felt it necessary to build a framework that could use music composition (whether acoustic and or electronic) as a tool of narrative research that, ‘explores the dynamics and constructions of the meaning [Latina/o/x sound artists] make of their lives’ (Ozias, 2023, p. 35). Additionally, as Ozias notes via Chase, ‘the sociologically oriented narrative inquiry’ allows me to focus ‘on the larger oppressive metanarratives and possibilities for social change’ (ibid) within WECM composition and computer music.
When I began the project in 2021, I had not yet defined the methodology because I wanted to form one organically through the portfolio’s development and the interview process.[2] The inclusion of interviews was only confirmed at the end of my first year and as a consequence of questions I received at conference presentations. In these presentations I spoke about the restrictions of staff-based notation I had encountered in my career. For example, when I used Mariachi pitch logics or Mariachi screams in a composition, often my cultural and racial identities were stripped away when performed by white performers (Díaz, 2016; Díaz, 2023). While my presentations focused on issues I faced because of my identifications in queerness, brownness, and neurodivergence, I was asked by white audience members to talk about issues white (and white adjacent) composers faced. I perceived this as them wanting me to expand the scope of my project to include the experiences of white composers.
This was upsetting primarily because I was being asked to think through a ‘white racial frame’ (Ewell, 2023) for white people. In one instance I was asked to speak about how Scottish folk composers may face the same issues I face. My response was that although the issues may be the same, how the issues are experienced are completely different due to one’s identifications and their relation to the ‘white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy’ (hooks, 1997). The encounter between a white Scottish folk musician and staff-based notation will not be experienced as oppression because white people are not oppressed in our current western, white, hegemonic, socio-economic society.[3] I realized through these presentations I could embed forms of resistance into the methodology and methods, helping me to counter questions that seek to submit me into a white racial frame.
I accomplished this by turning the project into a narrative-based inquiry and by focusing on my own communities’ realities. I asked the participants of my study to speak about their experiences by using their Latina/o/x identity as the primary site of inquiry—similar to Fanon and Wynter focuses on that moment of awakening. I see this as an act of resistance against the white supremacist metanarratives and as a way to focus the research and its reception on what it is like to be brown—just as Wynter writes ‘What is it like to be “Black”’. I am ultimately asking for what intersectional brown consciousness, joy, oppression, etc., in WECM and computer music looks like today for the participants. What happens when we compose or code in/through/with our Latina/o/x identity?
From my own creative practice and through informal conversations I have had with other BIPOC artists and academics, I began to theorize that the structures of WECM music composition and computer music may be acting as a filter. If we begin to understand the various mediums we use to organise sound with (notation, code, DAWS, etc.), and if we understand these as an active rather than neutral media object with a capacity to absorb societal anxieties (Jameson, 1979), then we can perhaps begin to see that the mediums are never neutral and may interact and affect our identities in various ways. Interviews, ‘rhetoricity,’ are then key to providing evidence of this from multiple perspectives.
In addition to exploring the relationship between Latina/o/x identification and creative practices, I am also concerned with how white ‘affective technologies’ (Leonardo and Zembylas, 2013) may be embedded in our mediums in order to reproduce 19th century and contemporary white, middle and upper class, values and modes of social control (Bull, 2019) and the epistemic quagmires and or violence that may occur. These mediums have been historically ‘hyper-encoded’ (Zembylas and Niederauer, 2017) by and for the European white, cis, het, man. It will be important to note the cumulative effect our industry’s epistemic ignorance and discrimination has on our individual practices. What is it like for Latina parents to exist in WEMC? What I it like to be disabled and Latina/o/x in our industries? What is it like to compose as a trans Latina person in our industry? What is it like to have to code in English (which may be your second language)? What is it like to have to submit to US digital imperialism in order to participate in a field? These encounters may then lead to some artists experiencing dialectical tensions[4] as they become more aware of their identifications, how the white racial frame in WECM perceives them, and the ‘collectively held sense of self’ that arises from living within the ‘totalizing negativity-in-relation’ (Parker, p. 444). This ‘negativity-in-relation’ is something participants described in their stories through their struggles with diaspora and gender identification. Some expressed not feeling ‘American’ or ‘Mexican’ or ‘Puerto Rican’ enough. This is what leads to an identification based on a constant negative definition within the Latina/o/x context of the participants. From this there may be, for example, a forced distance placed between an individual and their Latina/o/x identities to assimilate into the ‘white composer’ ideal.
The preliminary findings of my PhD suggest that some Latina/o/x WECM and computer music artists may experience a type of forced epistemic (self)harm as their identifications are stripped away through the construction of a work, through their identification’s development, and thereby through the development of their Latina/o/x consciousness. This has very specific implications for how and why we should rethink our creative, research, and pedagogical practices.
Below I will first provide a brief overview of white affective neutrality in WECM composition and computer music. This will contextualize my decision to use the methodological framework I have built. Then I will expand on the methodology and methods of the project before finishing with preliminary results. I am thankful to all the scholars whose work I have engaged with and who have laid the foundations for me to do my work.
Introduction footnotes:
[1] In this article, WECM is an abbreviation for Western European classical music.
[2] Although I went through with an organically forming methodology, this proved annoying when I had to go through ethical approval for the interviews. The ethics committee did approve my application but had recommended I met with my supervisors to discuss methodologies as I had not submitted a well-defined one.
[3] I recognize that there are historic laws in Scotland that attempted to ban Gaelic language and culture but as I have explained, these actions were nowhere near as hostile and oppressive as that of European colonialism and imperialism which effectively carried out a genocide against Black Africans and Indigenous people throughout West Central Africa, India, China, the Americas, and Europe for hundreds of years. Today, Gaelic language and cultural organizations in Scotland receive funding from the government for events and national education programs and schools. While there is disparity and class struggle in Gaelic communities, there have yet to be reparations given to the Black Scottish communities nor have there been investments in Black education and culture at the same level as current investments in Gaelic.
[4] Dialectical tensions are moments of cognitive dissonance that may occur in, for example, white-led institutions where minority identifying people are invited into the institution while experiencing institutional harm from racism, sexism, etc. The effect of living in an environment with constant dialectical tensions are the splitting of consciousness and identity as Fanon (1967), Du Bois (2018), Anzaldúa and Moraga (eds) (2022) have written on.
Literature Review: White Affective Neutrality in WECM Composition and Computer Music
One of the startling findings I have witnessed in the interview data from my study is the commonality of white affective mechanisms amongst the participants’ stories. Some of the participants will recognize discrimination and name ‘whiteness’ as a phenomenon that has impacted their career in one way or another. And it is not just in a negative way, as some participants have articulated benefiting from whiteness in circumstances where they had to assimilate—though the process of assimilation was itself described in the negative. Regardless of the type of experience the sound artist had, behind these situations are cultural mechanisms, social codes, that often signal moral white superiority and are used to differentiate oneself from the BIPOC musical other (Leonardo and Zembylas, 2013). To grasp the participants' sense of self and their identifications through their Latina/o/x identity, it is first crucial to comprehend what ‘white affective neutrality’ and affect are in order to understand the significant impact it has on their identifications and creative endeavors.
‘White affective neutrality’ as defined by Leonardo and Zembylas (2013), is a phrase that is useful in describing how whiteness, through affect, maintains white supremacist racial structures through the manipulation, protection, and vigilance of the white-racial self and its ‘pureness’. ‘Affective technologies include the mechanisms through which affects and emotions come to be instrumentalized, containing certain social norms and dynamics of inclusion/exclusion with respect to one’s self and an Other (151).’ The authors make a distinction here between affect and emotion and write, ‘…emotion may be understood as more discursive, more aligned to semantic and semiotic signification…affect, by contrast, may be understood as less discursive, less available to signification, and more pertaining to the body (162).’
By understanding the operation of whiteness as affective technology that maintains certain norms and structures, we are provided with an important linkage among embodiment, affectivity, and whiteness. This enables us to consider the interconnections of bodily “whiteness” and the symbolic whiteness of social and discursive structures, such as race dialogue [or in WECM, the programming of all-white, male concerts]. What this means is that exclusion, abjection, hatred, and other emotions about non-white individuals are at once embodied, affective, and socially produced. Whiteness, then, must be approached as a function of affective modes of constitution and affirmation through the systematic generation of disqualified, abject, non-white individuals (160).
Through these mechanisms, whites and white adjacent people can position themselves, their culture, customs, etc., as ‘neutral’ and distance themselves from being labelled as racist, avoiding racial dialogue, all while reproducing white supremacist structures and behavior. An example of white affective technologies includes when a person clutches their purse as a Black or brown person walks by them. Another is when a person locks their car door as a Black or brown person walks by the car. These actions are presented to us as neutral actions of safety when in reality there is no danger. The actions are the consequences of white cultural norms and are used to distinguish between one’s ‘white self’ and the Black or brown ‘other’. Keep in mind that one does not need to have white skin in order to ‘act’ white and or use white affective technologies. Below I will describe various ways white affective neutrality and affect manifest in WECM and computer music.
Zembylas and Niederauer (2017, p. 43) write in their book that when asked about their education and process, the white composers they interviewed ‘find themselves in a culturally hyper-encoded referential space, which is structured in part by the canon and in part by morals, and which they view with varying degrees of ambivalence’. This ‘hyper-encoded’ space that sound artists find themselves in operates within what hooks (1997) called the ‘white supremacist capitalist patriarchy’. These white sociological, political, economic, and cultural structures have affected the fields of WECM and computer music by privileging what scholars have defined as the white, male gaze (Armitage and Thornham, 2021) or the ‘white racial frame’ (Ewell, 2023). In both WECM and computer music this has resulted in the long-held belief that music is a white, masculine, and intellectual activity that is pursued in silence (Ahvenniemi, 2022; Armitage and Thornham, 2021; MacMillan, 2022). This white approach has stripped physical, social, cultural, and political concerns from the act of making music. I do not claim that these entire fields are inherently in whiteness; however, I do argue that enough of it is controlled by white affective neutrality to warrant the development of studies and unique research methodologies to understand the whiteness of the ‘hyper-encoded referential space’ we work in.
Many of the participants in my study talked about how the act of writing or learning music is simultaneously a constructive and destructive activity. Most participants expressed joy about their practice or about how much they loved learning WEMC and computer music histories and techniques. While the process of writing may be joyful, some participants also spoke about types of physical and epistemic (self)harm because of how their identifications are stripped away and or restricted through the construction of a work or from specific structures in notation and computer music. Behind the epistemic (self)harm is the white affective mechanisms within WECM and computer music which I will expand on in the findings section.
Another effect of whiteness in our fields can be witnessed through white canon fundamentalism in contemporary orchestral programming statistics (Deemer and Meals, 2022), gendered programming and discrimination (Doolittle, 2018), and through what Ewell (2023) has identified as WECM music theory's ‘white racial frame’. As a result of these white structures, the creative practices of marginalised sound artists have been largely understood through a white, male, gaze and its implied and or inherent apoliticalness, asocialness, and aculturalness. Ewell makes an unassailable argument that music theory pedagogy and research in the US has relied heavily on white composers and music theorists which has caused a severe generational ‘epistemic ignorance’ of the music and theories from BIPOC cultures (pp. 82-97). This epistemic ignorance I argue is foundational to the construction of white affective mechanisms in WECM composition and computer music. As I shall share below, when whiteness positions itself in a state of neutrality (or universality), it becomes almost impossible to challenge. I hope that by showing ‘the mess of things’ Latina/o/x sound artists confront in their practice, we can begin to understand the (silent) hostility we face and its possible effects on us. An all-white male concert program, syllabi, or textbook may not seem like an act of racism or white supremacy, but it is a form of epistemic exclusion, ignorance, and violence. Ewell writes,
Thus what can be ‘known’ is defined by white, propertied men. Their ‘moral status’ was ‘equalized’ in the sense that, in premodernity, white propertied men could easily be any number of rungs below the nobility or the church, while with modernity such men became ‘equals’. And it is precisely these white men who, in the nineteenth century, when our American music institutions were beginning—like the New York Philharmonic in 1842, the Metropolitan Opera in 1883, the Peabody Institute in 1857, the New England Conservatory in 1867, and the Yale School of Music in 1894—defined what was meant to be studied and performed in these institutions. In other words, what was proper to ‘know’ (83).
Although I may have to speculate about certain aspects of white affective mechanisms in WECM composition and computer music, Ewell provides an excellent analysis and framework for how white supremacy and colonialism in WECM (and by extension computer music) created a pedagogical practice of perpetual ‘epistemic ignorance’. This pattern of ignorance is what, in part, has entrenched these fields within white affective neutrality which actively suppresses the musical epistemologies and ontologies of marginalized creators. I ask, via Sharpe (2016) and Beltrán (2020), how might these acts of suppression and exclusion be necessary for the survival of the current white supremacist structures in WECM and computer music? Do people really care?
James MacMillan (2022) gave a talk at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland on the notion of silence within a composer's practice and its relation to religious silence, or ‘God's silence’. He encouraged us all to live in silence and to listen for it. I questioned him about this and asked him about composers who may struggle with intrusive thoughts, may have more than two jobs, or are a parent, and silence, as described by MacMillan, just is not something they can genuinely experience. MacMillan's response was that he had no comment on this. His understanding of silence, I would argue, is white, ableist, and privileged (Coyne, 2020; DiMascio, 2003). Silence, as MacMillan described it, is simply something that is not obtainable by many different kinds of people, including some of the participants of my study. He constructs the compositional practice as something that happens alone, in solitude, and in silence. Rebecka Sofia Ahvenniemi (2022) via Lydia Goehr notes that ‘the norms and expectations that are still associated with classical music today, these being the practices around composing, performing and listening to a musical work’ can be traced back to nineteenth-century, white, romantic notions (p. 159). I argue these norms and expectations are at the heart of WECM’s white affective neutrality. We are asked to assimilate into them through the act of composing, the pedagogy of WECM, and the professional industry itself. The participant interviews provide ample data to support this argument and I will share excerpts of one narrative portraits, as well as examples from my practice, in later sections.
When we explore what silence, composition, and race means through an intersectional lens, we can begin to understand how silence is racialized in certain times and spaces where, ‘The branding of racial and religious minorities as loud is a common prejudicial trope’ (Wagner, 2018). Silence and whiteness have also been ‘rendered neutral in Western culture’ which then creates a ‘myth of white silence [that] forces Americans to consider who has to explain themselves, and who has the right to remain silent’ (Coyne, 2020). HaCohen (2013) traces a similar myth of white aural supremacy in her book The Music Libel Against the Jews ‘as [a] historical categorization of the Jew as a producer of noise in a Christian universe conceived of as dominated by harmonious sounds’ (11). Coyne makes further connections to how white silence ‘dominates its surroundings’ and has ties to the notion of mastery (PAGE). This is how I argue that MacMillan’s definition of silence is a white affective technology with the subconscious aim of controlling the bodies of BIPOC composers. The connection between white silence and mastery of one's environment in MacMillan's practice, further exacerbated by the connection he made between religion and silence and assuming that we all have complete control of our environmental, psychological, social, and economic surroundings, begins to reveal, for me, a compositional practice deeply tied to colonialism, the slave-master relationship, and the contemporary white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy.
From another point of view, Steedman (2011) explores a theoretical framework to understand a historical ‘concept and practice of political autonomy centered on a notion of mastery, which is inextricably linked to race, gender, and class hierarchy’ (PAGE). He writes that during the years of 1880-1910, Atlanta was a place where Southern Progressives used systematic tactics to civilize the recently freed slaves. White Southern Progressives thought that, ‘Under the guidance of a paternalist state, Black Southerners might, over a sufficiently long time span, be brought to the level of civilization Whites were thought already to have achieved’ (341). It is important to note that white affective mechanism, though subtle, are a long-term project of white supremacy, assimilation, and oppression. We do not have this language or knowledge in WECM or computer music and this is a main reason I have sought the discourses of other fields in my study. Of course, as we shall see further below, the civility White Southerners wanted to impart never included true equality but instead what Beltrán (2020) has argued as being a ‘Herrenvolk democracy’ which relies on the oppression of BIPOC people for it to sustain itself. There are many similarities between a ‘Herrenvolk democracy’ and the hierarchies and systems of power we have in WECM and computer music. It is beyond the scope of this article to tease out these notions, but they are further explored in my PhD thesis. I ask again, how are oppression or exclusion in WECM necessary to uphold its current white supremacist structures?
Joanna Ward, in her article ‘Redefining Compositional Practices Under Contemporary Capitalism’ reviews several notions of the ‘tortured genius trope...often applied to historical [white] composers’. Ward traces how the separation between intellectual and emotional labor was connected to masculinity and femininity respectively. Because composition was seen as a white male intellectual labor, women and other racial minorities were excluded from WECM ‘where mental capacity is held to be a [white] masculine trait, and therefore [white] femininity, in oppositional definition, is attached to the body and feeling’. Ward notes that this ‘Cartesian dualism’ ‘led to a situation where composer-geniuses are conceptualized as a mind only’ completely erasing the body and the physical labor from the composition discourse as well as the physical labor needed to make time for composing such as the cooking and cleaning. Because of this, the body ‘is simply ignored’. This is another example of how the white, racial, frame has in WECM composition positioned itself within a neutral and universal reality which should, in theory, be accessible to anyone regardless of identifications but statistics of BIPOC orchestral programs and PhD students suggest that this type of compositional practice that dismisses the social and physical concerns of a person is inherently inaccessible to many (Deemer and Meals, 2022; DONNE; THAT UCU REPORT 2016). Composition, as historically defined, pushes us toward the ‘tortured genius’ trope with very little acknowledgment of contemporary oppressive modes. But we can see evidence of these modes outside of WECM through statistics such as the lower graduation rates of BIPOC students in the US (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019), the higher BIPOC infant mortality rate of BIPOC patients seen by white doctors (Greenwood, 2020), racist hiring practices (Racism Still Plays Huge Part in Employment Market, 2023), and the BIPOC pay gap when compared to their white co-workers (Froud, et al., 2023).
Many of the participants of this study shared stories of how their mental and physical health has affected their creative process. Through Ward's main question in her article, we can begin to reconceptualize what it means to be a Latina/o/x sound artist. Ward writes, ‘What would a model of compositional practice which was inherently, profoundly, and radically accessible to anyone look like?’. She notes different ways a composer can refuse ‘on a personal level’ in order to explore a practice that is more accessible. Ward draws scores on an iPad which makes the ‘physical process of score-making more flexible...and less physically demanding’. She recycles musical material ‘project to project’ reducing research and development time and the overall workload. She allowed herself to ‘create more intuitively, without the analytical justifications which we are taught are necessary to make work good and legitimate’.
An intersectional lens, however, may reveal key differences in how these are experienced in practice between Ward’s whiteness and the participants' Latina/o/x identity. An iPad may be out of several participants' budgets, but paper and pencil can be substituted though this will change the aspect of the physical. Embracing recycled material and letting go of the analytical foundations we were taught may end in a Latina/o/x composer being labelled lazy or stupid and seen as exploiting an opportunity. Although Ward makes valid points, resistance in ever day life may affect people with different identities in distinct and often hostile ways. Resistance in and of itself, I would argue, can be a privileged activity depending on many circumstances. If we were to increase resistance in any one aspect of our creative practices, we would be challenging the very space, the very cage of the diaspora, that the white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy has allowed us to exist in. In other words, white normativity constructs a perception of Latina/o/x people as always having to work harder than their white counterparts otherwise we are labeled lazy.
Historical examples suggest that if any of the Latina/o/x participants of this study used similar tactics as Ward, it may lead to them being perceived as lazy within the industry rather than an act of resistance—an intellectual labor (Flores, 1941). Similar to how second wave feminism ignored what feminism meant to Black and Brown women (Moraga and Anzaldúa, 2015), and in particular Black queer and trans women, I want to ask how Ward's question, which is asked from a privileged white perspective, can be applied to the experiences of Latina/o/x sound artists. How can we resist without risking our already precarious positions within WECM and computer music's white racial frame? And, is it about resisting or is it about overcoming the white affective mechanism, and if so, how? Can resistance in our creative practices be a white affective mechanism? And is it about resistance, or is about inviting white people to dismantle whiteness and to interrogate the philosophy of whiteness?
Coloniality and its effects on marginalised artists in WECM and computer music has been studied by several scholars. These studies focus on how coloniality continues to negatively affect collaborations between WECM institutions and BIPOC artists (Peerbaye and Attariwala, 2018; Ross, 2020), how Black and Indigenous artists' creative practices and careers are affected by coloniality (Ewell, 2023; Kendall, Kisiedu and G.E. Lewis, 2021; G.E. Lewis and Polzer, 2020; Robbins, 2023; Robinson, 2020), and how identity formation is still shaped by it (Dharmoo, 2019; Salmon, 2017). Dharmoo (2019) notes that the new music scene in Quebec is culturally,
homogenous and predominantly white... People of colour or Indigenous people who self-identify as part of the scene tend to employ an artistic discourse that serves, caters to, or is compatible with the dominant culture's perspectives or interests. Cultural differences tend to be assimilated, adapted, or reformatted to better fit the genre's [white] definitions and boundaries (3).
Relevant to this study is Dharmoo’s argument and first-hand observation of how BIPOC WECM artists assimilate to serve the ‘homogenous and predominantly white’ field. He notes that within WECM merit is attributed ‘...based on how the scene senses and understands [it], which in turn are based on dominant culture's own ways of sensing and understanding’ it (12). Dharmoo points out that the dominant culture may be affecting BIPOC artists passively. This is one of the main reasons for using a mixed methods approach for my study. To fully grasp how identity may be affecting the participants' practices (and vice versa), we need to investigate their music from their perspective with interviews and have a strong understanding of their practice and cultural context. This will allow us to see how they define their sense of self in their practice and how their identities interact with this, if at all, amongst the white WECM spaces. Both Ahvenniemi (2022) and Ward (2021) note that the historical definition of a ‘composer’ has ignored aspects of a composer's body and social world. Composing has historically been a masculine and conceptual type of labor (Armitage and Thornham, 2021; Ward, 2021). Interviews allow for the practice of composition to be situated and re-contextualized from that white historical perspective to within the unique intersectional realities of the Latina/o/x participants.
By using the methodology I have designed, we may then be able to understand the mechanisms by which white affective neutrality operates within WECM and computer music. If we can understand how these mechanisms operate and how they interact with our practices, we may then be able to build a more equitable creative practice where one does not face epistemic violence, exclusion, or erasure. This methodology then is not dependent on substituting, for example, white European excellence for Mexican excellence. It is not a methodology based on the need for greater representation of Latina/o/x artists; rather, this methodology actively calls for the restructuring of what we do and how we do it—a reimagining of our world(s) without performative solidarity and EDI policies. It is here that I invoke Muñoz’s (2009) term ‘futurity’ from his book Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. Muñoz writes,
Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desire that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present. The here and now is a prison house. We must strive, in the face of the here and now’s totalizing rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there. Some will say that all we have are the pleasures of this moment, but we must never settle for that minimal transport; we must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds. Queerness is a longing that propels us onward, beyond the romances of the negative and toiling in the present (1).
Many of the Black and brown feminist thinkers I cite below share similar sentiments about using art and or research to imagine a better future. Dr Jaipreet Virdi (2024) recently further developed ‘futurity’ by asking us to imagine a ‘deaf futurity’ in which disability is not something that needs to be cured. Virdi asks, ‘What happens when we stop stigmatizing disability and start seeing beauty in difference?’ She argues for a type of research framework that is reflexive, having the capacity to center different marginalised perspectives when needed and asks us to reframe how we think about disability in such a way that we begin to ‘wrap the varied auditory spectrum into the fabric of everyday life’. Disability is everyday life. How can we begin to wrap the varied Latina/o/x spectrum of identifications into the fabric of everyday life of WECM and computer music?
I firmly ground my emerging methodology in/through/with their work as I attempt to reimagine a better industry not just for Latina/o/x artists, but for all fellow BIPOC artists. Below I break down the various influences and parts of the methodological framework and how I have applied it in practice. I will breakdown the epistemological and ontological assumptions. Then I will review the research paradigm and finish with the beliefs underpinning the methodology. I will also provide a short overview of the methods. Through this, I hope to communicate a sense of urgency for why we need more research projects in sound art using similar methodologies in order to further dismantle the white, universalist portrait WECM and computer music have situated themselves in—not least because of the rising authoritarianism throughout our societies and the dismantling of universities and whole music departments and schools.
Methodology and Methods
The brief literature review I provided above uses a range of references that aims to connect perspectives that have often been ignored in WECM and computer music. But what I find missing in the discourse of WECM and computer music is a critical intersectional lens capable of confronting not just the white, male, gaze, but also its affect. Alcoff (2006) writes,
Social identities are not simply foisted on people from the outside, as it were, but are more properly understood as sites from which we perceive, act, and engage with others. These sites are not simply social locations or positions, but also hermeneutic horizons comprised of experiences, basic beliefs, and communal values, all of which influence our orientation toward and responses to future experiences (287).
From this I postulate about what a white identity is in WECM and computer music and whether more white artists researchers should be wrestling with what this means, whether a ‘philosophy of whiteness is necessary for political [and therefore artistic] purposes’ (Parker, 2018, p. 442), and, for whites to consider, as Alcoff (2006) writes,
…an ever-present acknowledgment of the historical legacy of white identity constructions in the persistent structures of inequality and exploitation, as well as a newly awakened memory of the many white traitors to white privilege who have struggled to contribute to the building of an inclusive human community (223).
What is white identity’s perception, its hermeneutic horizons, beliefs, and communal values? What does it mean to ‘perceive, act and engage’ through white identity? If this type of reflection was normalized within our artistic and research practices, and we had more white artist researchers thinking in/through/with their whiteness, I wonder what the field would feel like. I wonder what conversations we would be having and what type of art we would be making. Instead, we have apolitical musical studies (though, not all the time!) which disconnect themselves from any racial meaning and thereby place themselves within a white universalist portrait. A brief look at composition PhD dissertation titles submitted at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland rings familiar white universalists tones:
Music as theatre, music as performance : six new works (Walt, 2011).
Explorations and extensions of composition practices : investigations into malleable forms, integral non-standard instrumentation, and rhythm theory (Forman, 2011).
Composition as the creation of a performance, music as a vehicle for non-musical thought : six new works (Butler, 2016).
An investigation through composition of the relationship between stasis, goal-direction & drama (Broom, 2016).
A Woman Who Writes Music - A Creative Feminist Autobiography (Hollingworth, 2020).
Other submissions not listed are simply titled as ‘Portfolio of original compositions.’ I have been able to access the ones in the list above and none of them offer a critical analysis of the intersection between their race, identity, and their process (most of which are white). To say race is not a part of the studies above is akin to saying that their art is apolitical. Race, and every single other identity that any one of the artists above have, are phenomena that cannot be turned off like a light switch. Identity cannot be excluded from a musical research investigation or an artistic work in the same way a cancer cell can be dissected and analyzed under a microscope separated from its host body. By ignoring the implications whiteness may have had on their practice, these PhDs then sit within a white universalist portrait which carries with it uncommunicated epistemic and ontological assumptions.
I do not mean to dismiss any of the above studies that may have focused on rhythm, timbre, or texture, and used these organizing principles to form a type methodology that is perceived as ‘apolitical’, but rather to illustrate that we simply do not have a robust identification discourse in WECM composition and computer music—at least at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland though similar findings are easily found at other places of study in the UK, US, and Canada. Alcoff (2006) offers a possible explanation for this pattern of generational exclusion and white ignorance. She writes, ‘As whites lose their psychic social status, and as processes of positive identity construction are derailed, intense anxiety, hysteria, shame, and resulting forms of projection and displacement are occurring’ (221). Essentially, analyzing one’s white identity is too much for any one person as facing it could constitute the ultimate white epistemic suicide of the contemporary collective white identity since ‘…the history of white identity, just as is the case with black identity, is coterminous with European colonialism’ (222). For whites, there is no history ‘prior to domination’ (222). White death (whether real or epistemic), epistemic exclusion, and epistemic violence have never been normalized in the West. Any attempt to change the perception ‘that whites, collectively, are better than nonwhites’ results in overwhelming anxiety (Alcoff, 2006, p. 221). Sharpe (2016) and Beltrán (2020) conversely argue that BIPOC death is a part of this white anxiety and necessary to uphold white identity, democracy, and cultural hegemony. The literature review above makes the argument that that the suppression and exclusion of BIPOC composers is a part of the current white supremacist structures within WECM.
Because of this, I advocate for a brown-specific and Black/neuroqueer/disabled-informed methodological framework that aligns with an intersectional interpretive paradigm and that compliments the epistemic and ontological assumptions articulated here. This framework is designed to acknowledge and interrogate the presence of white supremacy from the very beginning and to center the minoritarian experiences of the Latina/o/x sound artists.
Epistemologies and Ontologies
I have borrowed epistemic and ontological assumptions from Patricial Hill Collins’ (2020) ‘Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment’. A primary reason I relied heavily on Collins is that much of her work also describes how my own Mexican American family makes and validates knowledge. While there is no monolithic experience within Latinidad (Beltrán, 2010) there are commonalities that we share amongst our communities, families, and friends regarding knowledge claims. Collins outlines ways that ‘Western or Eurocentric epistemologies’ are upheld in the US through ‘dominant knowledge validation processes’ (p. 253). In any one field, she writes,
…knowledge claims are evaluated by a group of experts whose members bring with them a host of sedimented experiences that reflect their group location in intersecting oppressions. No scholar can avoid cultural ideas and his or her placement in the intersecting oppressions of race, gender, class, sexuality, and nation. In the United States, this means that a scholar making a knowledge claim typically must convince a scholarly community controlled by elite White avowedly heterosexual men holding U.S. citizenship that a given claim is justified (p. 253).
She continues,
When elite White men or any other overly homogenous group dominates knowledge validation processes, both of these political criteria can work to suppress Black feminist thought (p. 253).
Furthermore, Collins, via Kuhn (1962) notes that because of ‘widespread notions of Black female inferiority, new knowledge claims that seem to violate this fundamental assumption are likely to be viewed as anomalies’ (p. 253). I carry these observations by Collins on Eurocentric academia with me and hold them especially close when I am discussing or presenting my research. I have been gas-lit in conferences and bullied on social media for sharing some of my thoughts and experiences. I am fully aware that I am Latinx and not Black and do not claim to have had the experiences Collins has in academia. What I can relate to is the violent assimilation which occurs through the colonizing force of WECM (Agawu, 2009) and computer music (Nassar, 2018). and how the elite, white, (usually) heterosexual men in our fields have attempted to dismiss my identifications and knowledge claims.
What I have borrowed here from Collins is a form of confidence in my own identifications and to be skeptical of when I am labeled a ‘complainer’ or an ‘anomaly’ because of my knowledge claims and the claims of the participants. And, to always interrogate the epistemic and ontological assumptions underpinning the questions of researchers who seek to label my research as an ‘anomaly’. It is through both Collins and Wynter’s work that I have begun to ask, ‘What is brown consciousness in WECM and computer music?’ and to think about how one might research this question. I also no longer work or care to convince anyone of the knowledge claims in my work who may identify with the white Elite in WECM or computer music. Instead, I focus on making knowledge in/through/with my brownness and communities. Once I figured this out, I began to shape the epistemic and ontological assumptions in the study.
After criticizing dominant Western epistemologies and ontologies, Collins further defines the ones specific to Black feminist thought. Two of these include the importance of lived experience and its impact on what and how Black academics research (pp. 257-260) and the use of communal dialogue in assessing knowledge claims (pp. 260-262). Both of these are embedded in my study in different ways. My own lived experience and the encounters I have had in WECM and computer music informed the formation of my PhD proposal. It was from anecdotal evidence amongst my various communities that I began to suspect staff-based notation and computer music may have inherent systemic issues worthy of a PhD project. These were informed from my experiences as a 1st generation ‘Mexican American’ (though I identify as Mestizx) who taught themselves piano before beginning an undergraduate degree in classical piano. The interviews serve as a site for communal dialogue between the participants and me. Although I am primarily listening, there is an exchange of knowledge that occurs in the interview and we assess and recognize our knowledge claims together. From the interviews, I construct a narrative portrait built directly from the transcriptions. The narrative portraits are shared individually with each participant ahead of publication so as to ensure I do not misrepresent them. This check and balance system involves more work than a typical methodology which relies solely on a researcher’s interpretation of the data. But it is imperative when attempting to resist dominant, western, methodologies and to accurately contextualize the creative practices of the participants with their social worlds. This also helps to decenter the power I hold as the lead researcher.
A third criteria Collins uses is ‘an ethics of caring’ which has three separate components. These are ‘an emphasis placed on individual uniqueness’, ‘appropriateness of emotions in dialogues’, and ‘developing the capacity for empathy’ (p. 263). I have embedded these components in my approach to interviews and in the data analysis. The project celebrates participants’ similarities and differences equally. I attempt to de-center my own experiences, being both a participant-researcher, and put an emphasis on the group without dismissing each participant’s uniqueness. Each participant will have their own chapter in the thesis chronicling their journey. I have welcomed and made my own emotions and biases clear to the participants and note this in the analysis where relevant. This has become more common in social research where the line between participant-researcher is blurred (Bhachu, 2019; Rodriguez-Dorans, 2022; Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1997). In several of the interviews, participants used the phrase, ‘You know?’ to signal a shared experience or emotion without any need for further explanation (though in several occasions I have asked the participants to elaborate if there was any sort of ambiguity).
I believe that by making room for emotions in the research, we then develop empathy (Collins’ third component)—not just in the interview session itself but in the analysis as well. I think that by using empathy in this way, as a research tool, I can make the case for the use of this methodology more urgent. One example that has developed organically is that I have had a short gossip session with most of the interviewees after the formal interview is done. We have what we call ‘el chisme’ or ‘the gossip’. Some of them initiated this by asking me ‘¿dame el chisme?’ Through this I developed trust and empathy. Finally, within this ethics of care also exists an ‘ethic of personal accountability’ and how Black women are ‘agents of knowledge’ (pp. 265-269). I have built accountability into the project by sharing the narrative portraits with the participants before publication. I will always be open to critique of the final work—the PhD thesis. The PhD submission will not be the final stage of this work and I expect for there to be points in the future where I can further develop these ideas with the participants. I understand that the findings may only be applicable to a specific set of circumstances, set of people, and specific time. While Collins argues for Black women as ‘agents of knowledge’ my project focuses on how people within the Latinidad are ‘agents of knowledge’ and what this means within the context of WECM and computer music.
Research Paradigm
I will now move to the intersectional research paradigm which encompasses the ‘interpretive framework…used to explain social phenomena’ (p. 252). I knew from the beginning of the project that I would be investigating identities and their interactions with creative practices. Because of this, I needed a paradigm that could examine what occurs when identities intersect with each other, and, when these identifications intersect with creative practices—all while assuming that identities and creative practices are social phenomena. I looked to Kimberle Crenshaw’s seminal 1989 article, ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex’, where she laid the foundation for a type of analysis that could explain the ‘multidimensionality of Black women’s’ oppression in the US judicial system. This is opposed to a ‘single-axis analysis that distorts’ and privileges ‘dominant conceptions of discrimination [that] condition us to think about subordination as disadvantage occurring along a single categorical axis’. In other words, Crenshaw looked at the consequences that occurred from when Blackness intersected womanhood. This approach is relevant to my study because as a research paradigm, intersectionality focuses on how specific encounters are experienced because of one’s identification. This offers a way for us to see the differences in lived experienced and break down the historical and contemporary background of the white universalist ideology underpinning WECM and computer music.
In this study I invited the participants to use their Latina/o/x identity as the site of inquiry through which we would intersect WECM and computer music. The Latina/o/x identity was front and center in the research and from there we then began to layer other identities and experiences. Some of the layering occurred in the interview. Some of this occurred in the analysis. Some occurred in the making of the portfolio of works. I will use intersectionality in a similar way to tease out the differences that may exist in the data to extrapolate how different forms of Latina/o/x identification may lead to significant differences in one’s creative practice depending on the various forms of oppression or privilege we have in any given moment.
Methodological Framework
My penultimate task in this section is to share the methodological framework I have built for the project. That is, ‘the broad principles of how [I will] conduct research and how [the intersectional] interpretive paradigm [will] be applied’ (Collins, p. 252). Because methodologies are in some form the underpinning theory of how research is to be conducted, I let myself be heavily influenced by Gloria Anzaldúa’s work Making Face, Making Soul Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color (1990). Anzaldúa writes,
Theory originally meant a mental viewing, an idea or mental plan of the way to do something, and a formulation of apparent relationships or underlying principles of certain observed phenomena which had been verified to some degree. To have theory meant to hold considerable evidence in support of a formulated general principle explaining the operation of certain phenomena. Theory, then is a set of knowledges. Some of these knowledges have been kept from us—entry into some professions and academia denied us. Because we are not allowed to enter discourse, because we are often disqualified and excluded from it, because what passes for theory these days is forbidden territory for us, it is vital that we occupy it. By bringing in our own approaches and methodologies, we transform that theorizing space (xxv).
Here, Anzaldúa articulates the affect of the accumulation of whiteness and its epistemic ignorance in academia—revealing a proclivity for whiteness and the white male gaze. To combat this accumulation of whiteness, which has led to ‘certain methodologies [becoming] coded as “white” and/or “male” and thus [actively working] to disadvantage’ (Collins, 2000, p. 297) BIPOC, disabled, and gender minority perspectives, I looked to Daniel G Solórzano and Tara J. Yosso’s (2002) article, ‘Critical Race Methodology: Counter-Storytelling as an Analytical Framework for Education Research’.
Their methodology consists of five elements including ‘the intercentricity of race and racism with other forms of subordination, the challenge to dominant ideology, the commitment to social justice, the centrality of experiential knowledge, and the transdisciplinary perspective’ (pp. 25-27). My study includes all five of these elements in its methodology. The participants’ race and cultural heritage is central and is, as I have said above, the site of inquiry through which we intersect our creative practices. This also occurs in my portfolio of compositions where I use my identifications as a method to investigate how notation and live coding intersect. We also focus on other forms of subordination within WECM and computer music such as sexism, transphobia, anti-immigrant sentiments, parenthood, etc. By working through these issues, I hope to provide an urgent reason to rethink WECM and computer music pedagogy, creative, and research practices—thus, aligning the project with the social justice aspect of Collins, Solórzano and Yosso’s frameworks. One aspect I am excited about exploring is being able to provide policy recommendations for universities and conservatoire programs who may be interested in dismantling their white structures within composition and sound art programs.
Methods
The final part of this section will briefly go over the mixed methods of the project and reaffirm why my own positionality as a researcher-participant is important to the study. The methods include interviewing six Latina/o/x sound artists, a survey sent to WECM programmers, and a portfolio of compositions. In the interviews I asked questions about how the participants came into their practice before moving on to the various identities and experiences they wished to speak about. In all instances, there were more stories than there was time. I limited the interviews to between one and two hours. The participants range in racial, ethnic, and cultural heritages including Dominican American, Puerto Rican American, Mexican American, Latina/o/x, and Chicana/o/x, etc. I let the participants define their own language, so I do not provide definitions for any identities. They ranged in ages from 20s-40s. Two participants are trans. Three are cis women. One is cis male. Educational background ranges from having a bachelors in music through to a PhD in music at both conservatoires and universities. I transcribed the interviews using noScribe and built a narrative portrait of each participant. The programming survey was sent to anyone who programs historical and contemporary WECM music in the US, UK, can Canada. This data helps to further contextualizes the participants’ experiences. The portfolio of compositions chronicles the evolution of my own practice and explores identification as a method of composition. It is in the portfolio where I specifically use neuroqueer and disabled-informed creative methods to inform my own practice and to let my identities define how and what I compose. I explore this further in the conclusion through my piece Violent accumulation. The data from all methods is then presented in an autobiographical format in what Solórzano and Yosso call a counter composite narrative which ‘draw on various forms of “data” to recount the racialized, sexualized, and classed experiences of people of color’ (p. 33).
The liminal ‘transcultural’ space the study focuses on includes both the space between a person’s Latina/o/x identification and their practice and the space between themselves and their environment(s). It is in this space, I argue, that cognitive dissonances may occur in the form of dialectical tensions. My own positionality and background includes being a 1st generation Mexican American, Mestizx, brown, Latinx, nonbinary, queer sexuality, and neurodivergent via CPTSD. I capitalize on my own marginality here and the ‘set of knowledges’ I have acquired from my own lived experience to empathize with the participants and ultimately amplify their stories and experiences while being careful of my own biases.
I hope I have made my case clearly and effectively for the need to consider using alternative methodologies in practice/arts-based research within WECM and computer music. My methodological framework attempts to center perspectives which have historically been ignored and erased through systematic and generational epistemic ignorance and white affective mechanism. I hope that by using an intersectional interpretive paradigm, complimented with the epistemic and ontological assumptions articulated above, I can show the urgency in needing to use these tools to undo how the white supremacy has and continues to affect what we study, learn, research, and perform. This methodology aims not only for increased representation within academia but also for a comprehensive and meaningful reconfiguration of our pedagogy, research, and creative practices. Instead of merely repackaging the familiar themes of equality, inclusion, and diversity, it strives to avoid the trap of white affective neutrality that has entrenched our fields since time immemorial. Thus, the aim of the project is not only to study the lives and experiences of the participants, but to use our stories to provide a method of accessible resistance for fundamental change. Below, I share one of the narrative portraits and preliminary results.
Preliminary Results: Avelina’s Narrative Portrait
In this section I will share one of the narrative portraits followed by the analysis where I show the framework from above in practice. The name of the composer has been changed for anonymity.
We began our zoom session on a cold and windy day in Glasgow. It was mid-May 2023 yet the temperature ranged from 5-12℃. Avelina kept her video feed off because it was the early morning in her time zone, and she was staying in a hotel. She had been traveling to hear the rehearsal of a new piece. I kept my video feed on and looked at the camera as though I could see her face. Though I could not read Avelina’s body language, from her voice I sensed kindness, confidence, and subtle humor. We began our session with one question, ‘I’d love to hear about how you got started with classical music.’ From there, Avelina shared her story. I constructed the following narrative portrait from that session.
Avelina’s Narrative Portrait
I joined the middle school band playing flute but then moved to trombone because I had a lot of trouble making a sound on the flute. I then decided to go to college for music education. While at college I started composing and quickly moved from the education focus to the composition focus.
The first piece I wrote that was more than just a 30 second ditty was a draft of an orchestral piece. I also wrote a wind quintet thing which are two of the worst things to write when you’re just beginning! It's not like they were terrible, terrible pieces, but it was actually really helpful in that it forced me to learn orchestration really quickly. There's a lot of stuff I'd write for strings and chamber music that I wouldn't touch in an orchestra piece. I'm not going to try to get ten people to try to bow their tailpiece in the same way. No! That's not happening (laughs).
Two of the most rewarding recent experiences for me have been working with the International Contemporary Ensemble and New World Symphony down in Miami. These were really good experiences. One of the ensembles is there more for pedagogical purposes in addition to the artistic purpose. I'm having to make a piece to serve both of these different groups. One is a large chamber group, so it is still chambering and you can talk to the players. Most of the players are orchestral players right next to the International Contemporary Ensemble players. There's a little bit of line walking that's required, because you're not sure what kind of things or techniques they might be familiar with and which ones they're not.
For me when I compose, there’s the artistic intent of a piece and also, not a commercial intent, I don’t know, where’s-a-niche-that-this-piece-can-fit intent. I imagine, for example, a solo flute piece and whether it could get done by college flutists or a professional? Should it be 80% for college flutists and 20% for professionals that’s ridiculous? I like thinking about my composing in this way because I don’t want young flutists to hear a piece and then be put off by my music by failing. Then it’s not going to be fun for me or them.
I don't tend to have a strong consistency in notation, because I know some things that are just fully notated—especially the larger the ensemble. But then as you get into chamber and solo stuff, like, I have a piece for guitar that is just a graphic score with six small, two-line, sets of stuff for each of the movements, which is pretty far in the direction of not notated, because there's nothing representational or allusion to standard notation. Versus other stuff that's just fully notated. In general, it tends more towards the notated side, but it stretches out a bit. And I mean, there's improvised parts and stuff within mostly notated pieces, too. But even within a piece, it can vary quite a bit. Rehearsal time and money tend to affect this. Unless they're college orchestras. Because if they're a professional group, then obviously everyone has to be paid for everything that's up there. And, you know, they have Brahms to rehearse, so gotta get going with that.
The other part I was going to say for previous experiences is, to speak to that, is I just got back from a reading with an orchestra, which was a really, really good experience. The cohort was all black and Latina artists. I was actually the only Latina artist, and then the other three featured composers were black. But a lot of what we were talking about was about notation and the kind of implicit limits of the orchestra. Because this is something that we were all running up against in different ways. It's kind of interesting, because I was just having a lot of conversations about this and how rehearsal time limits things and there's a certain guise of objectivity and impartiality to it that allows for what we call systemic racism. It's not necessarily the most pernicious kind, but it still is to some degree systemic racism. A conductor can reject a piece by a composer of color who is coming from a different cultural angle from the perspective of, ‘We don't have enough time to rehearse this.’ And because they do that, it's a fair thing for that person. But because they did that and the 50 conductors before them also did that, the players never learned how to play music in that style or how to approach those things in a way that they did with the same kind of familiarity that they might approach something like Brahms or Shostakovich.
The way that Western notation works for rhythm is just not very good. Rhythm is organized in a lot of other cultures by a pulse map, by identifiable rhythms that have specific names, or can either be cell rhythms that are put together into something... Those kinds of rhythm structures, where it's a set of specific rhythms over a period of time, a series of pulses, just doesn't work with the Western conception notation. Where it is about meter, which isn’t rhythm but a background layer of it. This frame doesn't work when the actual organizing principle is the specific rhythm being played over the course of 17 pulses that may be regular or irregular. As a result, the notation is pretty terrible at working with those kinds of things. You're often not working with that kind of the same regular stuff. Like, it goes okay with the rhythms that do fit in within, like, a Western metrical structure. For anything that's an extended structure, it doesn't work. It only works for those kind of microstructures. And then you're trying to reconstruct larger rhythmic structures from these things and they don't always line up. Or to make them line up, you have to start using things that in Western notation are, like, quote, unquote, "weird."
And rhythm, style, and articulation. I mean, the style thing is, to some degree, always a really big thing. I can write notes that might be the notes that you would hear in a style. But if you're not playing them in that way, then it's just.. I think we've all heard people who don't really know how to play jazz. I was also just thinking in the lens of heritage for a bit. I'm Mexican, too. In some way, it influences the kind of things I end up picking a lot of times. And it's just a function of time. Sometimes you don't have time to get into a whole thing. So, you don't. It's unfortunate, but it's also true. Trying to explain things that people don't know anything about, like from my heritage, there's a certain degree to which it's not possible. And you have to dumb down things. Or you have to have a lot of time. And as an emerging composer, you don't really get that time. So a lot of times the thing that is easiest and most expeditions to use in composing is the more European influenced thing. I like to use the word waltz, for example, because it is in the style of the colonizer. Which makes it more affable to the settings I’m in. And the further away you get from this, like a Mariachi… It’s just a function of time as I said earlier.
The less notated piece is the more you're making a performance practice for that piece. If it's a completely non-notated piece, you can also develop a performance practice across your work if you're doing non-notated pieces in similar ways. It’s a pretty big ask. When you ask someone to play a Beethoven piece, a performance practice that has had hundreds of years to develop, a performer in our world today can tap into it very easily. But you don't necessarily have the same kind of thing for contemporary composers. Especially ones that are working in different kind of traditions performers are often not brought up in.
Most of the dumbing down happens implicitly in the composition process. A lot of times it's a subconscious filtering. I only bother thinking of ideas that I can do because it would be too torturous to think of an idea that you couldn't do. It's not so much in reaction to something as it is like a preemptive thing. It’s not necessarily from one experience but it's like across pieces. Like I do something in one piece and if that gets some pushback in the future I don't have ideas that are like that anymore. A lot of times it's rhythmic. I had this thing that happened with one orchestra. There was a rhythm with nested tuplets and some of the players were just not having it. And it's always the stuff where the rhythm isn't actually that complicated. It's in 3/4 with some nested triplets nested in triplets. (She quickly vocalizes the rhythm) It's not a difficult rhythm to hear or feel but it looks bad on the page because it doesn't line up and stuff. Because Western notation you can't just say it starts here and it stops here. It has to be within this regular defined thing. But it's mostly to do with just how it looks on the page. Because it was an immediate reaction. I got an anonymous comment from one of the violists of the group saying, ‘It's absurdly rhythmically complex and isn’t necessary.’
I mean the comment from the violist isn’t necessary. For me the funniest distillation of this whole situation and what I thought to myself is, ‘No, of course not. We're playing contemporary classical music. Nothing we're doing is strictly necessary.’ Like the only ‘necessariness’ around any of this is the one that we create. So what is their comment? My rhythm is necessary because that's the rhythm in the piece and we're here to do the piece. There is no existential ‘necessariness’ to that or any specific rhythm or any specific piece. That's how literally all composing ever works. Not that it's necessary but you have to make decisions about what you're doing and those things are the piece.
When it comes to racism, a lot of times there may be a slightly feeling of condescension when some people tell me, ‘Oh, you did a really good job.’ Most of my experiences in this, because I haven’t been doing this for very long, don’t come from organizational issues but more so from audiences and the general classical world. It can be painful when you’re also in some ways beholden to audiences and donors who are often the groups that are most likely to harm you in a bigoted way. And you have to be beholden to them and interact with them and stuff. You have to play the game. It’s not even so much about if something does or doesn't happen. It’s just that having to think about the possibility of it happening is just always mentally stressful and tiring. And it shouldn't have to be. Because there is the possibility of that at all times. And the fact that you don't even know if you'll be able to do anything if something happens. Or if you're just going to have to sit there and not say anything. As someone just goes on some goes on some racist fucking tangent.
I think for me especially as a person who's an emerging composer…I don’t know if this is just in my head and am consciously aware of this…but like a lot of times if someone breaks out in some kind of way with a piece, you’d better be willing to write something like it five more times or ten more times. And have it be something that people identify you with. And the danger of it is, if you get pigeonholed as some type of thing related to your identity it is endless and inescapable. And I don't know, I may be subjugating myself too much to the powers that be…but if you become that trans woman composer who writes about being a trans woman, to a lot of people that is all you will ever be. And anything you want to say about anything else isn't valid. But if your first break-out piece is free from anything, then you can write pieces about being trans a bunch. Then people won’t assume all you do is write pieces about being a trans woman. You don't get commissioned for pieces that you haven't written in a very large sense. When people commission you, they often base their decision on what you've done before. And they’re not writing to commission from something that is completely different than that. They're doing the commission for a piece that's in that general idea. So, what they think of you is as relevant in terms of what you get commissioned for. If people think of you as a composer where the Latina identity is very important, then that's what you'll get commissioned for. If people think of you as a composer where gender is really important to you, that's what you get commissioned for and so on. And I don't know. Obviously that's a part of who I am. But it also feels like there's a certain ghettoization around that. And I don't want to like feel like I'm stuck having to write about things even when I don't want to write about them.
My thing for DEI is there's two different threads or maybe like polarities of DEI stuff. And there's a certain kind of spectrum. And the spectrum is between what a lot of people in majority groups miss about the function of DEI. You are meant to celebrate the artists that are being involved through this. But DEI itself is not a celebration. The whole reason DEI exists is because of hundreds of years of racism and sexism. Don't celebrate that you've been doing a DEI initiative for five years. The whole reason that you're doing a DEI initiative is because you're working on a bed of hundreds of years of white supremacy. DEI is reparations. Not a fun Sunday club.
Analysis of Avelina’s Narrative Portrait
Avelina, in her interview, shares many identifications with me including Latina, Mexican, trans woman, emerging composer, and artist. Of particular note is how Avelina negotiates her identifications within her WECM career. It is important to her that the industry, audiences, ensembles, conductors, etc., know her as a composer first and foremost. The rest of her identifications are secondary, and she will only use them under the right circumstances. Avelina notes,
…the danger of it is, if you get pigeonholed as some type of thing related to your identity it is endless and inescapable. …maybe [I’m] subjugating myself too much to the powers that be…but if you become that ‘trans woman composer’ who writes about being a trans woman, to a lot of people, that is all you will ever be. And anything you want to say about anything else isn't valid.
Here she describes what I argue is a white affective mechanism that directly interferes with her identification and subsequently affects what she will and will not compose. An absence of identification is forced on Avelina because of the way minoritarian identifications are fetishized, prejudiced, and othered. This creates a forced distance between Avelina and her minoritarian identifications in heritage, culture, and gender within her creative practice, her career.
Avelina elaborates further how she is segregated from her identities. It does not occur in one instance but through a series of moments in her career. She says,
Trying to explain things that people don't know anything about, like from my [Mexican] heritage, there's a certain degree to which it's not possible. …Or you have to have a lot of time. And as an emerging composer, you don't really get that time. So a lot of times the thing that is easiest and most expeditions to use in composing is the more European influenced thing. I like to use the word waltz, for example, because it is in the style of the colonizer.
Avelina here experiences a type of forced cultural assimilation due to the limited amount of time and the epistemic ignorance WECM has for Mexican musical performance practices. It is not the case that one person is telling her to assimilate into whiteness, but rather, the assimilation occurs through subtle cultural norms within WECM such as the limited amount of rehearsal time given to emerging composers, the lack of knowledge the musicians hold of Mexican music practices, and the fear of how one may be perceived if you do ask a musician to do something that is Mexican in style. We can also begin to understand this more meaningfully by intersecting her gender through her heritage. The DONNE 2021-2022 report notes that of the 20,400 compositions scheduled that season, only 2.1% were by BIPOC women (as far as I am aware, no statistics exist on trans women composers). 87.7% were written by white men (including composers who are both dead or alive). We can see the real-world impact of the 2.1% allocated to BIPOC women such as Avelina through her narrative portrait. This includes how WECM’s epistemic ignorance of Mexican musical performance practices put an additional strain on what and how Avelina is able to use rehearsal time. Despite Mexican music being a product of Spain’s colonization and therefore an extension of the Eurological, Mexican musical performance practices are widely ignored within the US WECM sector. She describes the tension and frustration of existing in this white liminal space when she says, ‘Sometimes you don't have time to get into a whole thing. So, you don't. … And you have to dumb down things.’
The limited resources allocated to her in the sector prevent her from even attempting to compose with her unique epistemologies and ontologies. Instead, she must use ‘the style of the [white] colonizer’. In doing so, unfortunately, she is forced into the sector’s complicity of epistemic ignorance. This is a direct consequence of the white affective mechanism and what causes forced epistemic self-harm. Not only are we made to submit by white affectivity, but we then become complicit in our own identity’s destruction and help to support the next generation’s subordination.
When Avelina is forced to let go of her own identifications, she is being forced to submit to the ‘white racial frame’. This frame has had several hundred years to develop and continues to hold a monopoly on the WECM composition epistemologies and ontologies—both at conservatoires and universities as well as throughout the professional sector. How are emerging composers like Avelina supposed to exist as themselves in these ‘negativity-in-relation’ circumstances? She says,
When you ask someone to play a Beethoven piece, a performance practice that has had hundreds of years to develop, a performer in our world today can tap into it very easily. But you don't necessarily have the same kind of thing for contemporary composers.
Avelina articulates the difficulty of trying to form your own compositional style when you have minoritarian identifications that you may wish to engage with in your practice. Unfortunately, the white, male gaze still has a severe impact on her practice by controlling her through various affective means. This causes an absence of identification in circumstances where there is a very real danger she may be verbally and or physically assaulted. She says,
It can be painful when you’re also in some ways beholden to audiences and donors who are often the groups that are most likely to harm you in a bigoted way. And you have to be beholden to them and interact with them and stuff. You have to play the game (italics is author’s choice). It’s not even so much about if something does or doesn't happen. It’s just that having to think about the possibility of it happening is just always mentally stressful and tiring.
This experience of hypervigilance is common amongst many people who have immigrated to the US but it also well documented amongst queer, trans, and nonbinary communities who often have to interact with conservative communities such as WECM. Intersectionality will help us to understand that Avelina may be experiencing hypervigilance due to both her heritage and gender identities when in WECM spaces. The white affective mechanisms in Avelina’s narrative impact her compositional practice, rehearsal space, psychological and physical wellbeing, and how she markets and labels herself. These mechanisms cause rifts to form between who she is and who she must be to ‘play the game’ and succeed in the industry.
Conclusion, Research Implications, and Final Thoughts
In this article I have made a case for the importance of using identification as a research method—or at least as a tool leading in the creation of it. I began my study wanting to investigate the relationship between identification and one’s creative practice. This project is inevitably about how Latina/o/x artists experience, perceive, act, and move through WECM and computer music. I quickly realized that a reflexive methodology and methods would be necessary and one that carried with it the epistemological and ontological assumptions of the Latina/o/x community. Wynter (2001), through her sociogenic philosophy, provided the initial justification for studying minoritarian perspectives by a minoritarian researcher—a researcher capable of understanding ‘the aberration of affect induced in the black by the massive “psychoexistential complex” in which [they find] [themselves] entrapped…’ (54) which inevitably influences our ‘sense of self’ and the development of our racial consciousness (95). Collins, through Black Feminist Thought, provided the epistemological and ontological assumptions necessary to recognize and validate the participants’ claims alongside and with their identification. An intersectional interpretive paradigm allows for further nuance in the interpretation of the data. Finally, a methodological framework combining Anzaldúa, Collins, and Critical Race Methodology (CRM) provides the necessary foundations to do the research. CRM consists of five elements including ‘the intercentricity of race and racism with other forms of subordination, the challenge to dominant ideology, the commitment to social justice, the centrality of experiential knowledge, and the transdisciplinary perspective’ (Solórzano and Yosso, 2002, pp. 25-27). I weave together these various lineages to uncover what it is like to be Latina/o/x in WECM and computer music today.
One of the major implications to have come from my PhD project is to have developed a compositional method which uses identification as method—or at least as a means for generative creative output. Many of the participants and myself described various ways we have had to negotiate our identifications in the compositional process—resulting in epistemic (self)harm, dialectical tensions, and a forced distancing between ourselves and our identifications, our histories, our cultures, etc. To avoid this, I have developed a method which centers an identification or group of identities and from which I let influence the score, form, instrumentation, rhythm, performers, collaborators, target audience, venue, etc. I can loosely describe the method through several steps below, though I am still developing and refining it:
I first pick an identity or group of identities I want to focus on.
I research these identities in various ways including but not limited to from reading about their historical genealogies, listen to the works of other similarly self-identified artists, reading artists biographies, reading poetry, non-fiction, watching films, through discussions with friends and colleagues, and through self-reflection, etc.
I refine and reflect on what my identities mean to me within the context of the work I am building.
I then select the type of score that would best suit the identities.
Perhaps at this stage I begin to outline goals for the piece that have to do with audience reception, my own artistic goals of the piece, text I wish to use, a library of sounds I want to explore or make.
I then begin exploring sounds, text, drawings, visuals, etc., and perhaps begin to build short sections of what could be in the piece. The form has become self-evident in at this stage.
At this point I begin to consider possible venues that would suit the work based on the goals I identified in step three. This may also impact the form of the piece and other organizing principles. I also begin to consider the target audience and how best to perform the piece for them which may inform the venue choice and other aspects of the piece.
From these I organically construct larger sections until I have a sense of the internal logic of the piece.
I finish the piece and perform it at the chosen location.
I break down this process in my PhD through the various portfolio pieces. An example of this can be seen in my piece Violent accumulation: part one (2023b). I chose to work with my identities in WECM composition institutions, anti-assimilationist logics, Latinx, and Mestizx—specifically, forms of resistance and protest I have inherited from these identities. My goal was to disrupt concerts with all-white and or all-male composers at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS). I chose the zine form for the score which has a history of resistance amongst many marginalised communities. The zine is eight pages long, including the back and front covers. The back cover features the drag queen Divine. On the front are three pictures of Haydn and a screenshot of an all-Haydn concert at RCS. Inside are statistics from the DONNE 2021-2022 report which focus on how little performance time BIPOC composers get. There is a text-based score that invites people to interrupt concerts with all-white and or all-male composers. The score instructs people to begin reading James Baldwin’s ‘Nobody Knows My Name’ or ‘In Search of a Majority’ until the ‘whiteness has been destroyed’.
The piece has been banned at RCS. Vicky Gunn, the academic registrar, notified me at a meeting that any performances of the piece would violate the rules and codes of RCS that I have agreed to follow. If I were to perform it, she would need to follow-through with consequences because I would have disrupted the learning environment of the orchestra, I would have shamed people for their complicity in white supremacist behavior, and I could have caused damaged to staff and student’s dignity at work and study. I see this as a white affective mechanism that has made me submit to the white supremacist pathology of the institution or risk being terminated/suspended from the program. No action was taken as Vicky realized that rules and codes, affectionately names ‘The Red Book’, had never been shared with PhD students which meant I was unaware and unintentionally breaking the rules.
From this we can see that there are also implications about conservatoire and university policies that need to be reviewed and changed to support true equity rather than performative EDI policies that continue to uphold white supremacy. While RCS may have made me submit by threatening the continuation of my doctorate degree, we can see the racist logics behind their actions by using intersectionality and the framework I have built. All-white and or all-male concerts are unquestioned and fully supported by senior management. The epistemic ignorance in these events, as well as that of syllabi and all-white departments, is not recognized as problematic. I never imagined I would be using this to describe a situation at my institution for my PhD project. But it is clear to me that RCS senior management’s response to Violent accumulation effectively ended my PhD’s line of protest-informed inquiry. In my portfolio, I had explored anti-assimilationism, race, gender, disability, and protest and resistance. One staff member has anonymously admitted to me that the conservatoire must care for their white conservative patrons who prefer all-white and all-male composers. This experience for me, ended my PhD’s intellectual endeavors and any possibility of further inquiry in/through/with RCS.
Peerbaye and Attariwala (2018) offer fantastic advice to white-led orchestras, and by extension other white-led new music organizations, about how to provide equitable and inclusive opportunities when collaborating with BIPOC musicians. Attariwala writes, ‘the two most significant terms that underpin the current situation facing Canadian orchestras [are] ‘systemic inequity and coloniality, and the wide spectrum of ensuing problematics, from hierarchical structures which reinforce sexism and racism, to exoticism and cultural appropriation, to “universality” and internationalism’ (5). And she asks orchestras to ponder important questions including, ‘Who belongs in the orchestra, and whose music belongs in the orchestra? What is the relationship between orchestras and other musical cultures? Can those relationships exist equitably and according to current definitions of cultural ownership and sovereignty?’ (5). Attariwala also implicates administrative teams when she writes,
While administrators described a sense of helplessness in cultivating diversity in their orchestras, pointing to the untouchability of the screened audition or “the pipeline” of training and education, Attariwala argues that orchestral administrators and artistic directors have agency in defining the vision of what the art form could be in Canada (5).
This is an important reminder that I think we often forget when attempting to do EDI work. I have consulted new music organizations with EDI development in informal and formal settings. I have yet to see one organization implement the suggestions I and my teammates in these various projects have made. In one example, an organization hired an all-white board of trustees after having had many laborious conversations with them in the span of two years.
A few of the recommendations Peerbaye and Attariwala (2018, pp. 42-51) suggest include:
Being ready to ‘revise or reinvent’ colonial hierarchies in orchestras such as guest artists given permission to speak to the musicians directly instead of going through the conductor.
Giving the guest collaborator the power to define the rehearsal and performance conventions as much as possible.
Being mindful of ‘process-based work that occurs in other disciplines such as dance, theatre, and opera, non-traditional collaborations allow for on-going editing of the work.’
Ensuring that process-based work is not perceived by musicians as ‘unprepared’ since ‘orchestral musicians are used to being involved only in the final stages of [the] artistic production’ process.
Reimagining what an ethics of collaboration means when there are cross-cultural collaborations.
Writing into collective bargaining agreements the needs of the orchestral musicians to support such collaborations.
Encouraging students to be ‘bi or multi-musical’ proficient within our training programs at universities and conservatoires—this would also increase the diversity in a program’s staff hiring.
Rethinking racialized expectations so that orchestras and audiences do not expect, for example, for an ‘Indigenous composer’s music to “sound” different.’
Having robust and independent protocols for dealing with racism, sexism, and abuse in addition to support for victims.
Many of these recommendations work to subvert the white affective mechanisms I have identified in my study and I hope that more organizations begin to consider them.
As Avelina said in her interview,
The whole reason DEI exists is because of hundreds of years of racism and sexism. DEI is reparations. Not a fun Sunday club.
Finally, these experiences have led me to believe that we need more white people studying whiteness and dealing with their own cultural affects instead of continuing to live in the safety of white neutrality. I am tired of measuring whiteness for white people. I am tired of having to exist in opposition to it. I am tired of being labeled a complainer only for my intellectual and emotional logics to be dismissed. I am tired of being angry. I am tired of it all. How can we ever exist as ourselves when whiteness affords white people, and those living in whiteness, a place to hide? We know that identities are ‘…sites from which we perceive, act, and engage with others’ (Alcoff, 2006, p. 226) and Alcoff does begin to form a philosophy of whiteness in her book Visible identities: race, gender, and the self. I believe my research here shows the urgency white researchers and artists in WECM and computer music need to begin wrestling with what whiteness is, work through whatever shame there is, work to understand what whiteness needs to survive, and to help continue dismantling it. It is white affect that has proven to be one of the biggest hurdles faced by the participants in my study and the biggest obstacle I have faced in my PhD, whether through the writing, research, or creative process. More work must be done in this area and it must be done by white people.
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