How people’s conception of difference erases my lived experiences

(updated draft, Oct 31, 2021)

This post is part of my rethinking of difference. I talk about the opportunities and costs of difference—the armor and the crucible—at social and disciplinary margins. The "cost" is about how people’s conception of difference erase my lived experiences.

Armor: The Opportunities of Disciplinary and Social Difference

In a previous post, I wrote about my interdisciplinary outlook, which crisscrosses the music disciplines, as well as other humanities. I do so in order to supplement each individual music discipline's blindspots, allowing historical, theoretical, and ethnographic insights to converge in a way that presents a model of renewal as all of the music disciplines struggle with their exclusionary paradigms. Over the past few years, I've navigated AMS, SMT, and SEM by working with allies who have given me incredible support, and who I continue to rely on in my musical journey.

In my work, I position the music disciplines in a critical way to one another, which can be uncomfortable. For my work on alienation in the Sinophone soundscape, I integrate the historiography of Sinophone modernity with extended music analysis and ethnography; to some readers, this may appear to be a mix of oil and water (but remember that emulsions exist!). My work on queer music theory combines queer theory and music theory in an investigation of queer listening—how listeners have appropriated all kinds of Western and global sounds in queer world-making, regardless of one's ethnic identity.

Part of the reason why I pursue interdisciplinary work is because as a BIPOC and queer person, I see things in a different way than most of my European and US American colleagues—including even my BIPOC and queer colleagues who grew up in the West. Even though we may share the same commitment to countering oppressions, we approach things very differently, because our live experiences have been very different. I've lived in 4 different countries, and race and LGBTQ+ issues look very different from outside the West. For example, it continues to be possible for gay men to be prosecuted under Singapore's penal code, and people in China look at me as an outsider from Singapore who is "not Chinese enough." I think living at social and disciplinary margins necessitates that I, and others like me, learn the alchemist art of spinning an unwelcoming world into a habitable space, making it our own through reinvention. I believe the necessary remaking of the world by the marginalized is what is behind the incessant anti-normative power of queer theory—when you are marginal, you have to somehow repurpose oppressions into opportunities, however challenging that may be. I believe this is the root of my interdisciplinary outlook in which I reconfigure the music disciplines in relation one another, such that musicology, music theory, and ethnomusicology end up looking different than they did before.

But working at the margins has come with difficulties that I would like to focus on in this post. I've come across the narrative that marginality is a source of strength and creativity, and my purpose in writing this post is to show that if the marginalized have come out of the crucible of oppression with an armor, this is not a matter of choice, but one of necessity. Marginality is painful, and I want to make an unequivocal statement on that, so that allies can take that extra step to help out your colleagues who may not occupy mainstream positions. Sometimes all it takes is a kind word. This may be a simple conversation to you that you may not register as significant, but I can tell you that I have a vivid memory of all those times when people have made the effort to express support for me and my work. I can recall the occasion, what we talked about, and the simple relief I felt in making that connection in what often seems like an inhospitable space. No words can express how much I value the support from allies and from fellow BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people in this difficult journey, which I will recount below. For others out there who have been working on social and disciplinary margins, I hope that this post shows that we are part of a community that shares similar experiences.

Crucible: The Costs of Difference

I’ve always felt uncomfortable at AMS, SMT, and SEM conferences because the simple demographic fact of being a BIPOC person in a majority white space is enough to be daunting. When I first started going to AMS and SMT around 2010, there weren’t any spaces where East Asian musics were prominently featured. It was only a few years later that I discovered the SMT Analysis of World Music group, but East Asia was just one among many global musical regions, and researchers seemed to prefer the rhythmic and textual complexities more commonly found in other musics. The first time I felt like I had a community was when I co-founded the SMT Global Interculturalism and Musical Peripheries group and the AMS Global East Asian Music Research Group. There were more BIPOC and global peoples at SEM but I work on Singapore avant-gardism through musicological and music-theoretical methods, and there have been multiple instances when I was regarded with skepticism, made to feel like an outsider, and unintentionally or purposely sidelined. I’ve also served in the leadership of the LGBTQ+ groups of all three societies, working with a majority white demographic. The truth is I have never felt at home in any of the LGBTQ+ groups I have served, in part because of my odd disciplinary position. To musicologists and ethnomusicologists, I’m the suspicious “theorist.” Sometimes, I feel that I’m resented for being in a leadership position, by other people who think it should be them leading the group. When I’ve criticized the way that these groups have operated, I’ve been made to feel like I’m rocking the boat. 

I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of what I’ve experienced stems from assumptions that I’m ignorant about a particular issue because I’m differently construed as “outsider” and "different" in various contexts. I’d like to talk about how in almost all the areas that I conduct research in, there is a significant body of people who directly or indirectly question my competence. These research areas are: Western music, musicology, and music theory; Sinophone soundscapes; critical race theory and queer theory; and, ethnomusicology.

1. Western music, musicology, and music theory. I’ve played the piano since age 7. When I was at King’s College London and Oxford, there were no ethnomusicologists on the faculty, and all my courses were in Western music. When I was at Duke University, only one ethnomusicologist offered graduate seminars; I took one seminar on anthropology of sound, and almost 10 in Western music. In my publications, I’ve written about tonal music and Schubert. The body of global avant-garde music I examine is in the style of 20C European/US concert music, even if this music was written in Southeast and East Asia. I know Western music.

2. Sinophone soundscapes. I don’t study traditional Chinese music, but I’ve lived in the Sinophone soundscape of Singapore for 27 years, and China for 6 years—this is compared with the cumulative 2 or more years of fieldwork experience of Europeans and US Americans. Yet, when I’ve presented on my work on Sinophone soundscapes, the response has often been dismissive. Sometimes, the response is to cite a published piece of research, without an awareness that what is published in English and European languages represents only a small fraction of what is happening in a particular soundscape. Based on these publications, which are usually limited to specific time periods, say, the interwar years, my responder might make extrapolations to form a composite, sometimes heavily misconstrued mindmap about the soundscape. Another time, my whole framework was called into question, but when I make an argument about the affective dimension of the Sinophone soundscape, this is not just an academic argument—it is based on 33 years of embodied experience as a real live social being. In dinner conversation, some responders assume that I’m just expressing my own prejudices instead of presenting my research. 

3. Critical race theory and queer theory. For my book project in progress, I’m working on self-alienation felt by Sinophone composers who are confronted with a global ecumene saturated with racist Chinese stereotypes like the pentatonic cliché, chopsticks in women’s hair, the Kungfu master, and slitty eyes. This results in composers pulling back from using Chinese musical elements, or having an ambivalent relationship to them. Against this backdrop, the positionality of East Asian scholars who research Western music, such as Schumann scholar Roe Min Kok, becomes complicated. There is the universal expectation that BIPOC people should study BIPOC music and generally behave like BIPOC people—Ellie Hisama revealed in her 2019 plenary paper that she was asked if she knew how to make sushi—at a job interview. 

But it doesn’t stop there, I’ve been directly questioned about whether “I know anything about postcolonialism,” though I was born in a former British colony. I’ve been questioned by someone who presumed to be an expert on race because that responder wrote 1 article on BIPOC music. My concerned about “Chinese privilege” (Chinese oppression of minorities in Singapore and China) have been dismissed because in European/US context, white privilege is a universal, daily affair. 

Being Chinese and being queer is more complicated than people think. When I first started going to queer spaces in the UK at age 18, I quickly discovered that I was wrong to think that this was my community, because as a Chinese person, I fit into the category of rejection that some Grindr users describe as “No Asians.” Being Chinese and queer has always been complex. As has been noted (by E. Patrick Johnson), queer BIPOC people’s oppressive experiences stem from our being BIPOC, rather than being queer. This is the true meaning of intersectionality, i.e. the unpredictable interaction between race and sexuality, rather than hybridity, which is frequently presumed. There are different times when I experience the effect of: 1) being Chinese, 2) being queer, 3) being both Chinese and queer, and 4) when I don’t experience the effect of being either Chinese or queer. I think these phenomenological experiences have to do with different ways of being ostracized and minoritized. I feel Chinese in white spaces like SMT, queer when I’m in straight spaces like high school group chats where everyone is straight and married, both Chinese and queer when I’m in white heteronormative spaces like the Oxford undergraduate common room, and neither Chinese nor queer when I’m hanging out with queer bipoc friends. In other words, the hybridity of Chinese and queer identities happens at points when I feel most oppressed.

As queer bipoc people, we have no choice but to remake oppressions as opportunities for survival. And in music theory scholarship, we have an opportunity to envoice the lives of the marginalized. I believe that as a queer Chinese person, I have a special responsibility to write about Western and global composers, and queer and non-queer issues and composers, in the same breadth. I’ll keep thinking about the line connecting Schubert and Singaporean avant-gardism, and queerness, and if these things don’t seem to go together, this is conceptual baggage from a colonial and cisheteronormative framework we need to discard. These days I’m thinking hard about how to bring a queer perspective to bear on the Chinese pentatonic scale, and to the study of composers like Tan Dun. 

4. Ethnomusicology. As a global BIPOC person written about in ethnomusicology, I have thoughts about ethnomusicological constructs and institutions. But some responders assume that I don’t have even the most basic knowledge about the methodological tenets of the discipline, though I’ve convened and chaired panels at SEM for 7 out of the past 8 years. When I point out certain trends, such as researchers’s alterity to the researched <1>, I’m referred to another subsection of ethnomusicological research (ethnomusicology at home) and told that I’m out of touch, when it’s clearly the case that European/US research on foreign musics constitutes at least half of all ethnomusicological research. I’m told that I’m mischaracterizing ethnomusicology in this straw man accusation and it is implied that the trend which I’m referring to doesn’t exist. Am I crazy to point out that European/US researchers continue to work on foreign musics? What I’ve concluded is this—straw man accusations are ostrich defenses where you have to blinker your view to only the model of ethnomusicology considered to be justifiable within a specific discursive context, and ignore the rest. 

 

<1> I have not analyzed the 2021 SEM membership survey report, which was released after I had completed the following analysis in 2020. SEM's 2014 membership survey report suggests that around half of SEM research involves cultural alterity of scholars who are not people of color. According to the membership survey, ethnomusicologists self-report as having (on average) 2-3 areas of speciality, and the percentages for those researching Europe and North America come close to half or more than half. What does this mean overall? The membership survey shows that 3/4 are US citizens; of the US citizens, 3/4 are "Euro-American" (using the terminology in the survey). Of the 1/4 international members, 7 of the 9 countries with most members are European/Australasian (the other two are Japan and South Korea), which suggests that about 3/4 of the international members are European/Australasian. This suggests that overall, SEM membership is about 25% people of color. In contrast, the percentage of members conducting research in areas where people of color live are: Africa (35%), Latin America (41%), Asia (73%). (Recall that members may choose several research areas.) If you add up the total percentages for all research areas, this comes to 268.6% (because you can choose more than one area). The numbers for Africa, Latin America, and Asia alone add up to 150.1%, more than half of 268.6%--without including 63.8% for US, of which a huge chunk of research is focused on minority musics. This percentage rises to 182% (out of 268.6%) of research on the music of people of color, if one assumes that at least half of the research in North America is on minorities. Converted to 100%, the percentage of research in the music of people of color stands at c. 67% (or 182/268.6). Assuming that half of the 25% people of color study non-European, non-North American, or minority musics (i.e. 12.5%), a significant chunk--around 50% (67%-12.5%)--of SEM research involves cultural alterity of the European or Euro-American scholar. (Cultural alterity of the scholar is not reflected in the membership survey data, so I had to put several figures together, and make "50%" assumptions about how much of the North American research is on people of color, and what proportion of people of color are "native" researchers. In the absence of actual data, I don't feel comfortable gauging percentages based on my own observations.) This is not to say that most ethnomusicologists do not engage in counter-alterity research, defined in terms of the relationality between people of color versus Europeans/Euro-Americans, but that around half of ethnomusicological research involves alterity of the European/Euro-American scholar to the music being researched.

Queering "The Chair": An Improbable 100% Straight, 100% Tenured/Tenure Track Faculty.

As a queer person of color, I don’t always enjoy watching casts of 100% straight characters. Being queer, like being a person of color, is 100% of my life. It is therefore natural for me to want to see queers and people of color on screen. Despite the success of some queer shows, the vast majority of Netflix is a cisheteronormative ocean, and that has got to change. In my preferred version of the The Chair, McKay (a black woman going up for tenure) would have an affair with Kim (the Asian American chairwoman); this is dramatically plausible, in my view, given the prominence of scholars who engage in queer of color critique, such as Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldua, Jasbir Puar, Sara Ahmed etc. 

I did enjoy binge-watching all six half-hour episodes of The Chair on Saturday morning though. Throughout the intrigues familiar to faculty members (wrestling over invited guest lecturers, tenure review, asymmetrical faculty power, pressure to grow class enrollment etc.), it is two narrative threads which provide the necessary dramatic tension to tie the entire story together: 1) the romance between the chair, Kim, and Dobson, and relatedly, 2) Dobson’s mock Hitler salute during a lecture, which devolves into a social media fiasco, student protests, Kim’s attempts to navigate the controversy both as chair and as Dobson’s partner, and Dobson’s eventual firing. The multiple plot elements are satisfactorily complex and sympathetic—Kim’s struggles as a single parent of an adopted child Ju-Hee who experiences anxiety over cultural identity; Dobson’s depression and struggle over the recent death of his wife; and most of all, Kim’s seemingly futile attempts to make any headway as chair, constrained by the Dean, senior faculty members, and the force of social media. I heard once that chairing a department means that everyone wants something, nobody gets anything, and everyone hates you. Sounds about right. 

I was happy to see women of color centered in The Chair. Kim’s and McKay’s struggles ring true to me as a scholar of color who works within the ambit of US academic discourse, though I am geographically located elsewhere. On the one hand, there is an emerging awareness that the work of people of color is critical to the next chapter in the development of many disciplines. On the other hand, people of color are assessed within the confines of institutions that have historically been dominated by white, male, cisheteronormative voices, necessitating a complex dance of pushing the envelope in a way that is ultimately addressed to those who wield institutional power. Thus a tenure track faculty member is likely, like McKay, to be forced at some point to propagate the discourse of a senior faculty member—McKay does this literally when she distributes Rentz’s lecture notes, though she confronts both Rentz and Kim on other occasions. The usually unseen labor of women, especially women of color, is brought to the forefront. McKay’s high enrollment section is combined with Rentz’s poorly attended one to “save” the latter; a large part of Kim’s struggle lies in the responsibility of caring for her daughter as a single mother. 

There is some distance between women of color in The Chair and in reality, which should be noted: most single mothers are not tenured faculty, and black women faculty are disproportionately represented among adjunct instructors (as opposed to ladder faculty). Against this backdrop, McKay’s positionality as tenure track faculty requires some consideration. McKay’s success on the tenure track not only represents many black women's forefront research. Her success in the show also quietly suggests that The Chair is shaped by the romance and fantasy of tenure at an elite institution. There are of course some prominent women of color at elite institutions such as Yale, which prizes McKay in the show, but this is unrepresentative of the disproportionate number of adjunct women of color in academia. If McKay does join Yale, she is likely to join the ranks of multiple brilliant women of color in Ivy League universities who have been unfairly denied tenure. The show presents a positive image of McKay as the "cream of the crop," but this could be read in terms of the neoliberal narrative of competition and scarcity; this narrative is particularly insidious given that the show hides the reality of accumulation under racial/racist capitalism in US universities, built on the backs of adjunct women of color. On that note, where are any of the adjunct instructors in the show? 100% tenured professors is a Harvard fantasy (from where one of the show's writers Annie Wyman graduated with a PhD) that doesn't pan out even at Harvard. With a 100% tenured faculty, the neoliberal decimation of tenure is itself completely blotted out. 

In centering women of color, The Chair makes an encouraging step towards inclusion. However, in the wake of hit shows such as Orange Is The New Black, Glee, and Tales of the City, I believe audience’s expectations have been raised. These hit shows, which also feature women of color, are notable for the significant presence of queer-LGBTQ themes, and other recent shows have also included important queer narrative threads (The Politician, Hollywood, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt). I find it highly improbable that the English department faculty in The Chair is presented as 100% straight. In my preferred version of the show, Rentz would be a closeted gay man who finds liberation through McKay’s course “Sex and the Novel.” And McKay would have an affair with Kim; this is dramatically plausible, in my view, given the prominence of scholars who engage in queer of color critique, such as Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldua, Jasbir Puar, Sara Ahmed etc. Dobson would be a single gay parent with a crush on David Duchovny. 

As a queer person of color, I don’t always enjoy watching casts of 100% straight characters. Being queer, like being a person of color, is 100% of my life. It is therefore natural for me to want to see queers and people of color on screen. Despite the success of some queer shows, the vast majority of Netflix is a cisheteronormative ocean, and that has got to change. 

The Chair’s central plotline of faculty and student response to Dobson’s mock Hitler salute requires some concluding notes. It's clear that the show's portrayal of so-called "cancel culture" is written from the perspective of the professoriate rather than students. Firstly, for a show centered on the Holocaust, where are the Jewish characters? The Jewish students? Especially without their presence, without individual stories, the students may come across as a mob. Yet the show does strike a point about the discursive truncation of social media, including the selective editing of video (to show just Dobson’s mock Hitler salute, extracting it from the context of a lecture on facism/absurdism), which is precisely the same method used in fake news. Clearly, the student protests and fake news are not the Same, but they are both structured by the materialities of social media platforms. 1) Truncation: extended thoughts that require more than 140 characters to express are atomized and fall into the collective unconscious. 2) Research shows that posts that go viral tend to evoke strong affect, which means that social media-driven ethics is shaped by affect rather than actual ethical analysis; this is shown in the university's truncated disciplinary process, regardless of whether you agree with the outcome (Dobson was fired not because the ethics committee found his actions to be wrong, but because they wanted the student protests to end; as an outcome-directed, teleological rationale in an ethics-framework, this circular logic is itself fundamentally wrong). Ultimately, what I personally like most about the show is two things: 1) it’s centering of people of color (albeit in a somewhat unrepresentative, romanticized way), and 2) the mirror it positions in front of the structure of social media, asking pointed questions about the critical processes by which we come to decide issues of ethics and morality.

We Are All in Music Studies Now (But I'm Not Really Talking About That)

This less than polemical title is what Amico is actually (kind of) suggesting (via Nooshin) in his recent article (30), despite the language about “The End of Ethnomusicology.” As one of the people cited as being “discipline-defying,” I have to say Amico articulated most of the frustrations I have about disciplinary definitions. The top three issues which have caused concern for me (not the issues themselves, but the way in which they are positioned in discourses) are: 1) ethnic identity, 2) ethnography, and 3) Western music. These are issues that I have had conversations with ethnomusicologists about, or on which ethnomusicologists have spoken about in public fora such as email lists or conferences (as opposed to scholarly publications). My focus on ethnomusicological common sense as embodied in public discourse is in line with Amico’s critique about the reliance of ethnomusicologists on the “one percent” (10) vanguard of scholarship, as evidence that problems related to the three issues above have been more or less resolved.

I have benefited from the friendship and feedback of several ethnomusicologists over many years, including the 22 in the 6 panels I convened at SEM conferences from 2014-2020. Thus, the following account of some expressions of ethnomusicological conventional wisdom is not intended to disrespect anyone, but to gently point out that my advice has generally not been sought with regards to the specific musical cultures that I have been enculturated in for many years (27 years in Singapore, 5 years in Suzhou, China).

1) Ethnicity. My research reveals what should be common knowledge, that traditional musical forms face declining audience numbers over subsequent generations of listeners, such that some young people have no relationships with traditional musics. This information has been received with skepticism, perhaps unconsciously reflecting the belief that ethnicity is a unified entity with ethnic identity and musical preference in alignment. It has been suggested to me that my preliminary "assumptions" will be proven false through interactions with music-makers (this was after my research had been completed). The problematics of the ethnicity concept reflected in these interactions is outlined by Amico as implicit or “ascribed” (12) authenticity/reality putatively unearthed through ethnography taking place in particular localities, thus reinforcing/naturalizing differences and stable ethnic identities.

 

2) Ethnography. Many well-intentioned ethnomusicologists have explained to me ethnomusicology’s methodology-based definition as ethnographic research on both global and Western musical traditions. (Such explanations are not necessary if one’s interlocutor has been present at SEM conferences for a few years, or if they have read Slobin’s Micromusics.) Those who have been in the field for longer can speak to this better than I can, but isn’t the “universal” outlook a reaction to postcolonial theory that forced academia to reckon with the power asymmetry inherent in disciplines based in Western universities but with a global purview? As Amico points out, the coloniality of the disciplinary “ethno” prefix continues to be a source of contention, suggesting a need for decolonization efforts that must incorporate historical perspectives on the discipline. The near exclusive reliance on ethnography (also pointed out by Amico) is interconnected with other issues. First is the assumption that cultural others are so different that ethnography is the only means by which musical reality can be assessed. Putting aside whether reality can be assessed as such (or whether it is always a construction, a view which is mainstream in anthropology), the difference of cultural others can be exaggerated without a close examination of the precise musical practices in which they engage; consider that e.g. the high school music curriculum in Singapore was 100% Western music until around 2000. Second, the idea that reality is accessible has contributed to resistance against research collaborations (e.g. with “native” co-authors, research team members), perhaps because the "authenticity" of data retrieved is assumed to be guaranteed by first person ethnographic experience.

 

3) Western music. It is conventional wisdom among some ethnomusicologists, many of whom work in departments dominated by Western music, that the latter music is oppressive. This is not necessarily the case for postcolonial milieus in which political, economic, and military power has been returned to the former colonies, and where Western and traditional musics are inextricably intertwined. The assumption of certain musics as having an “inability to engender resistance” (Amico, 16) (and thus not worthy of study) is countered by the central anthropological tenet that all cultural (re)production involves the exercise of agency. This is why Beethoven was deemed to be sounding out both Marxist revolution and bourgeois-capitalist capitulation from the 1950s-70s in China. The oppressor in post-independence China is not Western music per se, but the communist party’s state apparatus, which included musical appropriation and censorship. That is to say, it is not music per se which is oppressive, but the uses to which music are put (cultural imperialism does not exhaust the full range of musical functions, including what may seem like the paradoxical appropriation of Western sounds for anti-racism). The exclusive study of musical cultures in a counter-hegemonic frame that is distinctive to ethnomusicology has sometimes meant the elision of critique of oppression in global musical cultures (including heteronormative readings of female impersonators in China opera, or purely aesthetic assessments of cultural production during the Cultural Revolution in China). I wonder if it is the disciplinary counter-hegemonic stance which is preventing some of our most well-respected ethnomusicologists from taking further steps towards decolonization. When one is focused on putative externalities (like Western music), internal problems of one’s home discipline may not be as obvious?

The US Musicological Frame: “Western Music” Redacted, But Is History Now Anti-Racist?

In the wake of the recent controversy over music theory’s white racial frame, there is heightened awareness among musicologists of the need for anti-racist research and pedagogy. One type of anti-racism has taken the form of removing “Western music” from the academic lexicon (a project begun in global music history; see Irving 2019), much as “Westernization” and the “West” were previously discursively redacted, because the former is oppressive, and the latter is over-generalized. Against this background, consider three historical developments: the dissemination of European music to East and Southeast Asia since the 1800s; the diversification of the Singaporean high school curriculum around 2000 from 100% Western music to 60%, with 40% newly-introduced Asian musics; the establishment of the Tianjin Julliard School in China in 2019. What all this points to is the historical fact of Western music’s expansion and contraction in the global arena. The ease with which the term “Western music” is dropped points in part to the gap between musicological research and musicologist-designed course syllabi, versus the material world of global musical practices, far removed from the pages of US musicology journals and from US music classrooms. Though it is possible to replace “Western” with words like “modern” and “cosmopolitan” to describe global musical practices, these terms refer to the positionality rather than sounds of musicians performing the same four notes of Beethoven Fifth. Discursive redaction of Western music in US academia has little effect on sounds from across the Pacific Ocean; consider that of the nine oldest conservatories in China, only China Conservatory is dedicated to Chinese music, with the rest competing to produce the next Lang Lang. (For the purposes of this short post, I am considering only US musicology and not other musicologies.)

I make the foregoing argument not to detract from US musicology’s anti-racist efforts, but to point out the ways in which such efforts ultimately reflect US priorities, namely, the urgent need for a concrete response to the violence of racism, horrifically evidenced in the murder of George Floyd. Racism is one of the reasons why conceptual revision in disciplinary and curricular reform—including in the form of discursive redaction—are sometimes emphasized over the actual history of global music that would require a reliably specific musical nonmenclature for naming the (Western, modern, cosmopolitan?) sounds that are impacted by waves of westernization, dewesternization, and rewesternization (corresponding respectively to the three historical developments listed in the opening paragraph). Discursive redaction has been given new life in the age of social media, but it is rooted in post-structuralist approaches in which there has long been a tension between naming and redacting a marginalized identity, where the former alternately allows for the object to be named (for the purposes of resistance) and reified (as an unchanging essence), while the latter points to a future in which oppression of that identity has ceased and thus the identity itself becomes obsolete.

 

After redacting “Western,” “music history” itself could become the object of musicological study and teaching. In theory, this could take the form of emphasizing and expanding the lessons of new musicology: non-teleological historiography refuting “heights” of musical development by geniuses such as Beethoven; refusal of historiography itself as overly generalized, focusing instead on “centuries”-framed cultural studies (18^th-, 19^th-, 20^th-centuries). In theory, that is, the new music history could end up like much of the New Musicology of the 90s—examining primarily Europe and North America. Against this possibility, there is some utility in arguing explicitly for the inclusion of global, non-European, and non-North American locations in the new music history.

 

Despite the redaction in “Western music history,” a contradiction persists in that such history typically redacts "Western music" that has been sounded globally e.g. in East and Southeast Asia since the 1800s, but projects a US redactional construction of anti-racist music history over the global history of Western music. I would argue that the ability to articulate such contradictions are necessary to a responsible anti-racist musicological agenda. Consider another contradiction: the complexities of racism are such that even global sounds, when included as tokenism in a conservatory environment, can—in that specific setting—become part of the apparatus of institutional racism. That is to say, it is not Western or global musics that are essentially racist or anti-racist, but discourses that construct musics as racist or anti-racist. It is often easier to redact terms than to address pervasive, often clandestine ideologies that are intertwined with various histories and historiographies.

 

Indeed, the vagaries of history begin with the very concept of history, which is tied up with the racist bifurcation between Western music, literacy (notation), and history, on the one hand, versus global music, orality, and ethnography (which emerged in the age of European imperialism), on the other. Even assuming that the problematics of history have been resolved and we can proceed with music history, problems can easily occur without a comprehensive global historiographical framework. An anti-racist music history that is entirely methodological in its revisionary efforts might end up focusing on postcolonial issues such as Western musical orientalism, without stepping out of Europe and North America, or it may do so only  minimally. Even a diversified history can still be Eurocentric if it commences with chants (folding outward from Gregorian to e.g. Buddhist chants) that constitute the conventional originary point for European but not global music histories. Such a chronological history can reproduce Eurocentrism in the periodization of everything before 1500s as the Middle Ages, whereas it is only Europe that was in the “middle” of the fall of the Roman empire and Europe’s recovery. 

 

From a pedagogical perspective, in many cases, the primary purpose of the undergraduate Western music history survey was never to teach about music history per se (archival research, historiography), but to provide a diachronic array of chronologically-ordered background contexts in which musical works are foregrounded (this is not necessarily a problem from a pedagogical point of view, as long as there is an understanding that music and "context" are co-constituting, e.g. Chinese composers's symphonies co-constructed Chinese modernity). If the pedagogical necessity of history proper is asserted, this needs to be clarified in the light of the racist conceptual bifurcation of Western music notation's historical trace and global musics's orality. I would point to the common undergraduate pedagogical ground of context for both Western and global musics, since the latter are presented in a “synchronic” array of contexts in which social function is emphasized (c.f. diachronic contexts of Western music). This raises the issue (and the promises and dangers) of merging musical disciplines and courses, which may be inevitable for anti-racist music research and teaching.

From Selective Disavowal to Comprehensive Anti-Racism in Music Theory

The symposium on Philip Ewell’s SMT 2019 plenary presentation, “Music Theory’s White Racial Frame,” in the most recent issue of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies (JSS) has been widely criticized for its systemic racism. (Note the difference between (i) individual racist beliefs, versus (ii) social structures that systematically exclude and disadvantage people of color—i.e. "systemic racism," or just "racism." The “social structure” definition applies in most contemporary discussions of institutionalized racism.) As I observe the unfolding reactions to the JSS issue, with anti-racist statements by formal and informal collectives as well as individuals, I thought it is important to direct attention also to the need to not just disavow systemic racism in Schenkerian theory and JSS, but to take further concrete action now by looking within our individual and collective teaching and scholarship, rethinking every element of music theory—i.e. to immediately and systematically materialize the promise made in several anti-racist statements (and in yet other words, action commences rather than concludes with drafting and signing a letter). Disavowal needs to be accompanied by a commitment to rooting out systemic racism in all areas of music theory, and in ethno/musicology if that is one's discipline. This is in part because selective disavowal can lead to distortions and unintended forms of coerciveness against minorities. Selective disavowal without a wider systemic anti-racism has the structural effect of at least temporarily implying that other areas of music research and teaching are not racist, excusing them from critique—clearly, music theory as a whole (beyond Schenker) is embedded in systemic exclusions that we know as systemic racism. Selective disavowals have the effect of ascribing a "racist" identity to the discarded object (as opposed to racist approaches to a given music-theoretical object), potentially re-inscribing violent epistemologies of essentialist racial identities onto people of color—through the implication that people of color "ought to" be anti-racist and thus cannot authentically teach or conduct research in Schenkerian theory or Western music in general. A similar problem is found with blanket decolonial projects aimed at dismantling Western music, which ignore the presence of composers, performers, and music scholars of Western music who are people of color. Any kind of dichotomous bifurcation, such as that effected by a selective disavowal, inevitably implies dualist-essentialist identities that always turn into the epistemic violence of coercive minority identity, commonly known as minority stereotyping. Put more simply, racism does not inhere in particular musics or theories; rather, racism is a social structure within which musics and theories are embedded, and thus all musics, theories, and disciplines have racist elements which need to be confronted.

 

As the contribution by Suzannah Clark in the JSS issue shows, it is possible to trace the racist elements in Schenkerian theory, as a first step in revising the entire theoretical apparatus. While Schenker was clearly racist, and his theory necessarily has racist elements, there are a wide range of ambiguities, complexities, and multiplicities which unfortunately were raised in the JSS issue for the purposes of deflection and defense, thus posing the real danger of shutting down all discussion of various issues: (i) race and racism, (ii) context and history, (iii) Schenker’s Jewish identity (not as a "defense" of Schenker, nor as an attack taking the form of accusing critics of Schenker of anti-Semitism; but as a real facet of his identity), (iv) the complex co-constitution and separability—or not—of music theory and race, (v) the applicability—or not—of facets of Schenkerian theory to repertoires beyond Western music, and more. Future scholarship will need to consider the contingency of racist elements of the Schenkerian apparatus, making difficult judgements on what elements can reasonably be regarded as having musical explanatory power and may be separable from racist ideology, on the one hand, and what elements are inextricably intertwined with racism (Clark suggests that Schenker's privileging of the dominant and exclusion of the subdominant speaks to his racial ideology). Various components of Schenkerian theory such as centricity-hierarchy or diminution were infused with his racism but have not been shown, by themselves and across musical genres, to be universally co-constituted with racism. I believe the work I outlined here is what Ewell is referring to when he wrote in his recent article in Music Theory Online: "If Schenkerian theory is to survive in the twenty-first century, as I hope it does, we must confront the uncomfortable realities not just of Schenker himself but, more important, of the legacy of how we have engaged with his ideas and what that means with respect to race in American music theory."

 

The British Left Singapore in 1959; But Western Cultural Imperialism Remained

Singapore's high school music education program can lead to what is known as AP music in the US, or A-Level music in the UK. In the 1980s and 90s, this was 100% Western music, reflecting the history of the country, which was colonized in 1819 by the British. While decolonization was achieved in 1959 (when the British left), this did not mean decoloniality, as evidenced in the persistence of Western cultural imperialism in the history of music education in Singapore.

The process of decolonizing music education began around 2000, when the musics of the Chinese majority and Malay and Indian minorities in Singapore were introduced (as part of a campaign for national identity), successfully diversifying the curriculum. At that point, the vast majority of teachers were trained in 100% Western music university programs, and so this was a systemic shock. Everyone had to become a student of global musics, cobbling books, CDs, and workshops by musicians to become fluent in these musics. The initial slate of musics included non-Singaporean musics—Japanese music, "African" music (problematically lumped as a continent, instead of regions or countries), and "Latin American" music (again, lumped as a continent). A few years later, the Ministry of Education reduced the slate of musics to just Western and Singaporean Asian musics (Chinese, Malay, Indian), which I consider to be a parochial-nationalist move.

Diversity in the music curriculum is positive, but it does not address the situation that I was often in, which is that 100% Chinese teachers are teaching 100% Chinese students. In my 5 years as a public school teacher in Singapore, I taught 1 Indian student, and had 0 minority colleagues. The diversification of the music curriculum came about because of awareness of Singapore's "Asian" identity. Multicultural musics were included based on the government-administrative framework of "different races" inherited from British colonization. But no one is seriously addressing the issues of inequality between the various Asian peoples in Singapore, nor the fact that these Asian musics are widely considered to be "antiquated" in a global milieu in which "Western" signifies "modern," which is where decolonial theory comes in. Singapore may not be the same as other countries which are caught within the imperialist ambitions of modern-day hegemons, which may effect political regime changes for the purposes of economic profit. But decoloniality has been and continues to be relevant.

Decoloniality is not as simple as diversifying the music curriculum because the very multicultural framework used for that project is inherited from British colonial-administrative division of the "races." This is translated today to strict racial quotas per housing block of government-built apartments that 85% of the population live in. My neighbors in Singapore are a Malay family, and if the quota for the Chinese have been reached in my block, the apartment can only ever be sold to a non-Chinese buyer, which means depressed apartment prices (because of lack of demand). In fact, the COVID-19 crisis in Singapore is sparked by the housing of massive numbers of Indian and mainland Chinese migrant workers in purpose-built dormitories, administered using the colonial logic of divide and govern.

Beyond the issue of race, decoloniality emphasizes the interconnectedness of vectors of oppression according to race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. In music education, the initial lack of Asian musics is coupled with another form of invisibility: the queerness of canonic composers such as Schubert and Tchaikovsky is until now still straightened in a heteronormative milieu. Contemporary homophobia in Singapore can be traced to an arcane British colonial-era law (Section 377A of the penal code) that makes gays illegal. While the government stated that they will never make prosecutions based on that law, which they claim needs to be kept to reflect the moral majority, this kind of legal, symbolic, and cultural oppression must be addressed in curriculum reform to develop a music education that reflects the diversity of composers, performers, and music-makers.

Decolonizing Ethnomusicology

In previous weeks, there has been vigorous discussion of Danielle Brown’s open letter on racism in music studies in the SEM email list, but not in the discussion fora of AMS and SMT. As a member of all three societies, I offer the following thoughts on US ethnomusicology. My intention in posting this here is not to insist on one version of decolonizing; ultimately, I speak from my positionality as a queer person of color working outside the US, and partly outside ethnomusicology. If you find any part of this useful in your work--whether as teacher, researcher, peer reviewer, journal editor, academic society board member, or research grant body executive--feel free to use, adapt, modify, or elaborate on all or part of it, and amplify the decolonizing message with proposals for change. 


Introduction

1)    Demographics provide the easiest demonstration of the need for decolonizing US ethnomusicology. SEM's 2014 membership survey shows that 3/4 are US citizens; of the US citizens, 3/4 are "Euro-American" (using the terminology in the survey). Of the 1/4 international members, 7 of the 9 countries with most members are European/Australasian (the other two are Japan and South Korea), which suggests that about 3/4 of the international members are European/Australasian. This suggests that overall, SEM membership is about 25% people of color. In contrast, the percentage of members conducting research in areas where people of color live are: Africa (35%), Latin America (41%), Asia (73%). (Members may choose several research areas.) If you add up the total percentages for all research areas, this comes to 268.6% (because you can choose more than one area). The numbers for Africa, Latin America, and Asia alone add up to 150.1%, more than half of 268.6% (without including 63.8% for US, of which a huge chunk of research is focused on minority musics). Comparing the proportion of people of color (c. 25%) relative to proportion of research in the various regions of the world (>50%), SEM has a diversity problem. The diversity problem is likely worse among SEM members who are tenure faculty, since the proportion of people of color is higher among students. Ethnomusicology faculty and students should be comprised mostly of minority and global peoples, since ethnomusicology seeks to understand minority and global musics. There should be a minority-majority composition in ethnomusicology faculty, students, and societies.

2)    Following Mignolo, decoloniality counters coloniality, imperialism, modernity, capitalism, ecology, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism. This proposal includes changes to decolonize ethnomusicology in relation to demographics, epistemic issues, multiplicity of decolonial contexts, otherings, methodology, academic norms and societies, conferences, publications, and individual agency. Not all aspects of decoloniality are addressed; emphasis is put on issues of coloniality, identity/othering, racism, access, agency, and ethnomusicologists's positionality.

Epistemic Issues

3)    Decoloniality varies according to context, which means there is a need to recognize that structures of sonic/musical empire and systemic racism differ. For US minorities, this ranges from embodied sonic/vocal stereotyping and violence (see William Cheng 2018), to “blacksound” in popular music (see Matthew Morrison 2019), and—within US university music programs—Western art music. Outside the US, there is e.g. the position of Uyghur music within the Chinese conservatory system (Chuen-Fung Wong 2009). Much needs to be written about minority and global musics in this regard; the long-term ethnomusicological agenda (for the coming years and decades) should include the project of examining empire and systemic racism in their full complexity. The complexity of these systems can be seen in e.g. black and brown performers, conductors, and composers of Western music in US, and other global peoples who appropriate and recontextualize Western music for their own ends. US ethnomusicology needs to recognize its existing form of decoloniality, focused on resisting Western music, as being specific to the professional contexts of US ethnomusicologists, most of whom work in music departments focused on Western music. Latin America, where there is continuing US imperialism and political interventions on behalf of US capitalism, is a different context from East Asia, where there is a history of intra-regional coloniality intertwined with Western cultural imperialism.

4)    US ethnomusicology needs to disassociate from the Eurocentric musical map structured as: Western-self, minority/global-other. This is an apparently “diversified” musical map (with token global musics and ethnomusicology courses within largely Western-focused music programs) that is really the hoary Eurocentric conception of the musical world. The negative effects of this map are several. It can:

a.     reproduce structures of inequities if diversity in the music curriculum is not matched with diversity in the faculty.

b.     lead to dissociation from “minority/global other,” which can result in deadly othering and stereotyping of minority (see references above) and global peoples

c.     lead to dissociation from “Western self,” indexed as oppressive, thereby directing attention away from one's own insider status to empire and systemic racism. Focusing on resisting Western music should not distract from addressing coloniality within the discipline of ethnomusicology that one participates in.

d.     disguise the universal presence of some combination of racism, classicism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism, which are not unique to the “Western self.”

5)    Ethnographic methodologies and conceptual frameworks such as insider/outsider (while indisputably valuable) stem partly from the origins of ethnomusicology in the asymmetrical global access that continues to be provided in the present day by colonialist-imperialist enterprises of the past (and present). “Native” researchers, who enter the discipline of ethnomusicology with a relatively high level of cultural fluency in the musics written about (there is no such thing as absolute insider status), rightly have their own approaches (which may incorporate—using examples from music research in China—study of ancient classical Chinese texts on music, theory and analysis of traditional music, history of Chinese music theory, archaeology etc.). Rather than arguing that ethnomusicology is defined by ethnography, consider how this marginalizes researchers on minority/global musics (which constitutes >50% of ethnomusicological research) who pursue hybrid methodologies and do not exclusively practice ethnography.

6)    Considering the positionality of knowledge production from a decolonial perspective, there is a need to prioritize the voices of ethnomusicologists whose cultures are being studied and the voices of ethnomusicologists who are disadvantaged by race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability.

7)    The norms of academia stand in the way of equity. US ethnomusicology should:

a.     reject the notion that "ethnomusicology" is solely the pursuit of ethnomusicological theory or some definition of intellectual distinction beyond the usual academic conventions.

b.      embrace the notion that the primary purpose of ethnomusicology is to work towards the goals of diversity and equity through music, as reflected in the composition of faculty, students, and the membership and leadership of SEM. Ethnomusicology is fundamentally a discipline which seeks to understand all musical cultures, which should be explained by the peoples of every musical culture.

c.     The status of ethnomusicology as an academic pursuit is itself a problem. This pursuit is only available to those with access, and there are many differentials in terms of access to education, time, and economic resources. Generally, the people of the musical cultures studied in ethnomusicology tend to have less access to everything. Give minority and global peoples the doctoral funding and jobs necessary to decolonize ethnomusicology.

Institutions and Individuals

8)    Broadly conceived, ethnomusicological institutions include academic societies, conferences, journals, universities, university presses, and the languages used for publications and conferences.

9)    Against the current demographics of US ethnomusicology outlined in point 1 (c. 25% people of color, versus over 50% research in minority/global musics), there should be an initial target of 35% people of color among ethnomusicology faculty, students, and societies (including both membership and leadership), an increase of about 10% from the 2014 level—with a long-term target of >50% people of color. To achieve that, the following are necessary:

a.     Elect minority and global members to boards of ethnomusicology societies, and actively recruit minority and global members.

b.     advocate for university job search committees to adopt racial/ethnic/global diversity as one of the key criteria, alongside research, teaching, and service; and, admit a majority of minority and global peoples to doctoral programs in ethnomusicology. The university is an institution of empire and systemic racism. It has cultivated research in eugenics, area studies directed towards imperialist state interventions, and Eurocentrism, especially in disciplines which are focused on global culture, but fail to provide access to people of color.

10)    Improve access to conferences.

a.     SEM 2020 is going to be held online, potentially changing the future conference format, by raising the prospect of having integrated online and in-person presentations. This will be a positive move for especially minority/global members who may not have the resources to attend conferences in person. There is an opportunity to think about expanding minority/global access to SEM. This will improve access for people with disabilities.

b.     The exclusive use of English in US ethnomusicological conferences and publications is a barrier to access. Accept contributions in other languages.

11)    Asymmetries of access to doctoral education, faculty jobs, and English language skills have resulted in the dominance of some voices over others in ethnomusicological publications. Authorship can be diversified in the following ways:

a.     establish new norms and new criteria in peer review, elevating younger and diverse scholars.

b.     work with publishers to establish new norms which can be enforced through peer review, elevating younger and diverse scholars. Part of the problem lies with the commercial nature of publishers, which may prefer well-known authors for monographs and edited volumes.

c.     co-authorship across various structures of power asymmetry. Ethnomusicology books and journals may require co-authorship. Anyone with some measure of privilege should pursue co-authorship. This may include (using examples I am more familiar with):

                                               i.     all authors from US, Europe, and Australasia,

                                             ii.     authors from high-income countries like Singapore,

                                           iii.     authors who are the majority ethnicity in countries like South Korea or Japan,

                                            iv.     authors who are professors in any country, regardless of majority/minority status, e.g. Tibetan professors in China, who work on Tibetan music.

d.      consider “non-academic” publications such as blog posts or program notes, co-authored with the peoples written about, in job searches and promotions.

e.     consider other forms of collaboration with the peoples written about—performance, educational, and curatorial work, and general public ethnomusicology—as “publications.”

12) Individuals are not powerless. As teachers, researchers, search committee members, and peer reviewers—as editors, department heads, school of music presidents—there are norms which ethnomusicologists, as individuals and in our leadership capacities, can implement officially and unofficially to amplify both the number and voice of people of color. Most ethnomusicologists are both insiders trying to survive as individuals within existing systems of empire and systemic racism and outsiders trying to dismantle these systems. As such, ethnomusicologists should recognize and articulate our participation in institutions of privilege while committing to changes within our individual or leadership capacity.