Some months ago I attended a series of meetings hosted by the Mellon Foundation and The League of American Orchestras. The meetings were focused on how professional American orchestras might get more musicians from ‘underrepresented communities’ into their ensembles. For the purposes of the gathering at least, Black and Latino musicians were a primary focus.
Going into the meetings there were a few points I was trying to land. One of the main ones was this: unless orchestras change, ‘diversifying the stage’ means that orchestras will have more Black and Latino bodies, but not necessarily Black and Latino minds.
What do I mean, ‘bodies but not minds’? I mean the default setting in American orchestras is to have musicians – Latino, Black, White, Asian – be the hands of our organization and other people be the brains*. It’s a model that has structure, culture and buy in from all corners.
In Managing and Organization, an Introduction to Theory and Practice the authors (Klegg, Kornberger and Pitsis) look at the metaphor where “brains are usually seen in the ‘head quarters’ (headquarters), the hands on the factory floor, and so on all working in a harmony designed by the brain.” They point out that, as a concept, siloing hands and brains inevitably means there is “little scope for innovation to arise from anywhere other than the top. If good ideas arise elsewhere the odds are they will not be captured. Often they are not sought.”
Don’t get me wrong: more diverse bodies on stage matters. As I heard it from one chief executive: the stage is the most outward facing facet of our organizations. In many ways it’s like our storefront window. It helps to tell a story about who we are, what we’re doing and why it might matter. It allows (or doesn’t allow) folks to project themselves onto what they’re seeing and hearing. So, no doubt, having stages that more accurately mirror our communities will have an impact.
But without a change in culture and design it won’t necessarily impact our agendas, our critical thinking, our creative processes.
Lots of folks are expressing excitement over an arriving generation of players who listen to and can play with the music of Beyoncé and Jay-Z as well as Bach and Mozart. I’m excited too. My question is: what happens if these musicians don’t just play with the music of Jay-Z and Beyoncé – what happens if they think like them too?
What happens if they expect to play more than one role in their creative output?
Good news: there are practices out there to learn from. In more than a few places – like Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh – musicians are playing this out in real time.**
(*Shout out to my brother Justin Laing who dropped the ‘hands and brains’ metaphor on me while we were talking about a prominent orchestra’s bitter contract negotiation. We turned one of our other talks about the arts into an article, you can find it here.)
(**Update in response to some emails: This wasn’t intended as commentary on the orchestra strikes in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. I was thinking of musicians whose practice I’m a fan of. Musicians like Brian Prechtl, Joseph Conyers, Penny Anderson Brill and Sam Bergman. Although just published, this post was written months ago.)
Orchestras are one of the most authoritarian, patriarchal, nationalistic, regimented, and hierarchical art forms that exist. Their structure depends on conformity, on marching in step, on accepting a fundamentally undemocratic power structure. This mindset is readily observable among orchestra musicians, who are conditioned to conform and march in step from their earliest training.
No one has come up with a viable method of changing this situation and its many rather vulgar anachronisms. Musicians can take a larger role in programming and management, and they can perform pop music or modern pieces where they can act out a bit, but for the most part orchestras will remain orchestras. Rather than update orchestras, the better approach might be to forget them. A horse and buggy will never fly, no matter how much you update it.
I can’t say that I disagree with a lot of what you’ve written, William. Authoritarian, patriarchal, regimented, hierarchical – all true. And although I agree that the design of our organizations reflect many of these same attributes, I don’t think that making the music – decoding scores into sound – depends on organizations that reflect these same attributes. That’s just how we’ve designed the organizations that house orchestras. Not a small thing for sure, but not intractable. There are a lot of really interesting things happening in the world as it relates to organizational design – lots of models and information orchestras as organizations (as opposed to ensembles) can draw upon. Just as an example of far out things that are happening – check out what Zappos is doing.
In terms of a viable method to change the situation, I’d say method might not be the right descriptor – I doubt there’s a recipe that can be discovered and followed. I think what will make change viable are the people involved in orchestras. Finally – believe me, there are more than a few times I’ve wished I could forget orchestras! In my case though, I’ve got the codes for this music tattooed on my nervous system – I couldn’t forget orchestras if I tried. Thanks for the thoughtful comment.
I look forward to your posts as you work on unraveling some of these problems. It’s a great idea for a blog, and much needed. You might want to read this if you ever have time and interest:
http://www.osborne-conant.org/prophets.htm
I will definitely check out the link you posted – thanks for the support, William.
You know, it’s a silly and trivial thing, but I remember when I was noodling around on viola a while back. I felt as comfortable as one could with so ergonomically vicious an instrument as a viola … as long as I bowed with my left hand. When I tried to do it the “right” way, I couldn’t even hold the bow and kept dropping it, and my neck kept seizing up. Now, coming from a science background, I knew for a fact that as long as the instrument was also mirror-image, it wouldn’t make a difference, and that bowings and fingerings wouldn’t change at all. As long as everything was mirrored, it wouldn’t be a problem.
Except for the supreme cartoon shitstorm that gets kicked up even when something so silly as merely playing on the other side comes up among classical musicians. Even something as unremarkable as that prompts screaming fits and attacks — I was stone-cold shocked. Is it because it would cause someone to stand out among the uniformed servants’-clothing we-all-wear-black-so-we-all-look-the-same aesthetic? Is it because of an “I suffered, so you will, too?” mentality? What?
I still have no idea what the hell was up with that and quite frankly, the absolutely freakish response to it unnerved me enough that I ended up on Irish flute playing folk music (and sneaking in some opera of course because hey, Italian), in a world where no one cares which side you hold the flute on and it’s considered a normal if minority thing to buy a “ciotog” flute.
I mean, Jesus Christ. Even just distinguishing oneself from the faceless orchestral entity by playing on the left side is a transgression worthy of all-out assault. Even that one minor noncomformity warrants such a rabid response.
I love classical music but overall … man, they are some crazy-ass bots in that world. I’ll continue to enjoy the music, but you can keep the culture.
Great ideas on a topic that’s discussed often with not much substance. Looking forward to reading more!
Thanks, Louise!
“What happens if these musicians don’t just play with the music of Jay-Z and Beyoncé – what happens if they think like them too?”
Great to discover you sharing these thoughts online, Alex! I love this blog post, especially this question that you pose.
Hi Heath – thanks so much for the comment and support!