In 300 words total, engage the following questions.
What should a university music school of the near future consist of? Think 3-5 years from right now. Be specific and boldness is encouraged. What would it include particularly towards the aim of dismantling the white racial frame of music theory and history? Consider the following quotation in relation to your work on your instrument:
The practice that neutralizes the common sense intuition of the most privileged members of society as objective knowledge.
A simple change (thus making it an easy change in my eyes) is to do what they mentioned in the Adam Neely video and include music examples from multiple cultures inside the textbooks for all-level courses. Like they do with science majors, they could design upper-level courses that build towards a major in a specific style. I mean, we already have BMus degrees that specify instruments; I really don’t see why we can’t add a “in the style of__”. I do think to get a general style degree it would require a few more class, as each culture’s music has eons of history and different nuances to it.
I think another cool idea would be to have an exchange program, even if it’s just for a semester. It would be a total immersion into a culture and their music, which I believe would be much more authentic than learning about it through a textbook. Also, it gives you the chance to network world-wide.
Should none of these ideas be implemented, then at least I think there should be a required class (or even a seminar) for all music students that highlight the fact that what they will be learning at this University is the harmonic style of 18th century European musicians, a fact that I’m still boggled by. That video just blew my mind open, and it’s not because I didn’t know that we were repeatedly studying one style of music, but the fact that I didn’t consciously recognize that. I know other music exists (I even listen to many different Asian artist), but to recognize how much all music I know is compared to the works of Bach, Mozart, ect is a bit upsetting and sad. In hindsight, it’s really stupid to compare two different styles of music to see what’s better (which, since it’s art and art is subjective in the first place) is so very, very dumb.
