A fun story.
I’m a half-Tatar by blood. Tatars are a small scattered central Asian muslim nationality with white skin and black, vivid, slightly alongated eyes. During my childhood, every summer I was living with Tatars in Crimea (then Ukraine), learning to appreciate Tatar cuisine, their love to wine, and the delightful grace which they carry in their poor lifestyle. Like Uzbek and Mongol, Tatar women often wear braids in their hair.
Traditional central Asian braids are made at some length unlike the afro braids:
I wanted to feel closer to home and my ancestors at some point of a time, and braids were my answer to the inhumane “melting pot” kind of thing. When living in CA it’s next to impossible to find a hair master who knows to do the Asian type of braids. So, couple of years ago I hired an Ethiopian immigrant lady, and she made me a beautiful hairdo the afro style. Being the symphony and opera freak, I indeed attended all the concerts in the season with my new fashionable braids:
Usually (no braids) the patrons at the opera and symphony are very interactive and tend to discuss performances, trade rumors, and give compliments to appearance. When I showed up in braids hanging off the hand of my white Jewish husband… There appeared a persisting bubble of silence around me. People would respectfully turn their eyes away as if I had not existed. I felt being inappropriate to the place and to the public. Only one young women came up to compliment me during the whole three month season, and weirdly offered her glass of wine.
I feel horribly guilty for all the people who are made to feel this way in the classical music world. People of color clearly are made to feel no kind of belonging when attending to the most beautiful of arts. Cheers to all the amazing musicians who made it through a war zone to the stars! We all think that racism exists only somewhere out there, when it maybe passing unseen under our very noses.
A quick reminder, that the classical music composers were mostly poor people, who themselves were by many occasions turned away from the high society. So they created an artistic legacy which was meant to be unreachable to the common minds in its purity. Composers like Bach and Beethoven wrote letters to God in the language of the soul, having no color or class privilege in mind.
But now the only “socially acceptable” non-whites in the classical music bubble are Asians. Asian musicians proved their ‘worthiness’ by maniacally dedicated practice routine. And, BTW, most of international students of Music in Europe and America arrive from wealthy Asian families. Many don’t need to have a job to make a living, and they can study with the best teachers in the world. Asians made themselves be welcome.
I was stunned to learn during my grad studies at Mills college, that some of Music professors and quite a few music students can’t read music notation. And they don’t need the traditional notation and the music of the past to be creative. At one seminar students were given to read an article from 1970th stating “Bach, Brahms, and other idiots…”
How did this come to pass?
The demise of classical music began with the introduction of an entity of Music competition. It’s not enough to have a doctorate and a 30-year field experience to secure a decent job for a musician. Practically, the whole music profession is about winning a competition. From marketing prospective this scheme assures that:
– everyone who succeeded will support performing arts organization. Unfortunately, there are too few of those to make a difference;
– everyone who tried and was stained as a ‘failure’ resents the industry and is not very likely to support classical music organizations;
-everyone who were not privileged enough to even try (parents couldn’t afford a music instrument, for example) resents those who succeeded and those who failed altogether. Is even less likely to support classical music organizations;
– the government isn’t even aware that such organizations exist and are in a critical need of support.
Here we come: Neiman Marcus, diamond retailers, and the classical music world just boarded one and the same boat of inevitable bancrupsy due to… irrelevance?? The patrons of classical music who are 70+ being the only ones who still believe in the cause? Is the cause wrong? No. The cause is holy. But how it’s been executed was way way too wrong for way too long.
After the Coronavirus pandemic is completely over, many classical music organizations will likely cease to exist. It’s our mission to create new ones. We must rethink music education in terms of race and class, and engage young people to carry the lantern of beauty to the next generations. If we want to survive, the rat race concept must go.
What are the values which we will be rebuilding? What are the foundation stones we need to keep, and which are to get rid of, using a perfect cleansing opportunity? Who exactly is the patron of the future? Classical music industry so much needed the stop signal its been given by the pandemic. We now see clearly where we stand in the society. And we have a chance to bring an apology to a lot of good people who were not welcome before.
Stasie Gonikberg Blog 