So there's a whole subgenre of Japanese Jazz. Japan is a wealthy nation, so did they steal from Black musicians who invented Jazz? On the other hand, the Black musicians who invented Jazz were Americans, and Americans conquered Japan so maybe it's okay that Japanese got Jazz after all. But Jazz is composed of European instruments who dominated over Blacks. On the other hand, Jazz takes advantage of music often composed by Jews, who had historically been oppressed. Who is stealing from whom? Or maybe it's all just music and sharing and being inspired by different cultures is a good thing no matter what direction it goes.
There's a history with the United States stealing music from the Black American community and exploiting it for profit. Most genres in popular music today were started by Black Americans. Ignoring this history and acting like race doesn't matter is disingenuous.
People like you don’t respect other cultures that’s the problem. When you see something you like you demand it be shared. Then you disrespect anything you don’t understand and call it inferior.
People like this just have a formula for how they perceive everything. Like film critics they just get bored of everything and force critiques on beautiful things other people have done that they will never be able to do in their dreams or in reality
Anyone who thinks that classical music is racist has a head that is made almost completely out of meat. By the way, I'm sure that Jay-Z And other pop stars and rap artists are gonna give back all the money earned using classical string riffs all throughout this music, among other classical tropes. I really miss Americans worrying about shit that makes sense to worry about & that actually matters.
I've had to deal with at least the residue of this type of thinking myself. When I was small (before I really started playing) we used to go to a pizza parlor that had a realtor theater pipe organ in it. This encounter piqued my interest in music (my dad played the piano usually from Fakebooks, mostly pop tunes of the 1920s through 1940s). When I was small I was giving an autoharp as a Christmas present and a little bit about how primary chords work through noodling with that instrument. When I was 12 almost 13 I got a Lowery organ as a Christmas present (later replaced by a Hammond B-2), as I learned how to play I became more of a jazz musician they celebrity on my skill set (with the schema awareness that I would have to function in the black community quite often, men having to deal with the issue of race and racism, my father was quite conservative). When I took organ/piano lessons, my main teacher fortunately also a gigging musician mostly playing popular music in bars. She was also a jazz fan probably most confident playing jazz as a vibraphoneist. She also played the organ could walk baselines on the pedals and did all the classical academics when she got herself a master's degree. I did the classical pieces she made me write in the chord symbols (the music was still basically played as written, but she wanted me to learn it in a musical language I was familiar with is supposed to figured bass). She even criticize her music professors who basically considered Jazz "Bums Music" though she also admitted they could never come close to playing it. Do I have often played in jail settings (and often blues and R&B settings is more "commercia"l music, often with black band leaders), I did keep my interest in theater pipe organ playing going on to they said that I could as a sideline. They would literally I am more of a jazz player than I straight up feeder player or classical player One time I went to an open house at a pipe organ builders shop (and I've made several of their open houses and performed, trying to keep my endeavors as tasteful as possible though admittedly these instruments are set up for a different style of music than I normally play). Some guy who lives in the enthusias of this style and these instruments (littlest person is more of a theater organ fan than a classical organ fan). Started grilling me about you know Eddie Van Halen played classical music this into some Ransom about how his knowledge of music and the organ is better than mine even though he himself has never gigged not even in a white church let alone even a pizza parlor, nonetheless he is an authority on the subject. I should have posted about how I had classical training, the admittedly I never kept the stuff up there were things related to it I wouldn't mind doing a bit better like counterpoint in a Quasi-Baroque style but having the result being similar to John Lewis and the MJQ rather than a classical player. I mean issue with being a classical performers outside I'm not very good at functioning in that tightly scripted a musical environment. I also feel if I have to try to make other people like me then I'm going to really be terrible. Ultimately I did manage to get a bachelor's degree in jazz and world music for me Jazz at an education places at the time newly devised degree program. They're working units on classical music using the grout book, but I think in some ways it's useful to learn this stuff but I think they should terms of non-classical musicians teach it very differently in a way to make it in terms of its component it's more useful.
What is kinda funny to me is when Americans debate whether classical music is racist or not despite the lack of properly understanding it like Europeans do. I know Americans have adopted the classical as a term to label their movie and theater scores. Many classical music pieces have inspired movie score titles. And I love lots of those. But I would never consider those scores as part of what is called classical music. And on top of that I can easily replace any movie score title with something from Mahler, Wagner, Shostakovich, Brahms etc. without blinking once. Most scores by Danny Elfman can be replaced with anything written by Mahler. John Williams music? Wagner. Wagner's Ring cycle still blows your typical score out of the waters. Gatekeeping is still a meaningful tool to keep the completely uninitiated out of it and prevent them from talking nonsense inside the circles. Otherwise appropriation is non existing in regards to classical musichence everyone can get an instrument and start playing. That's what happened in the past. People listened, took a sheet and started to play the piece at home. Today this is similar with music by Philip Glass. This man, a great modern composer and conductor who still lives, has his music copied and replayed by others many times already with other musicians pumping out their recordings while Mr. Glass still produces his next tunes.
07:53 I just found this video yesterday. This is a nitpicky ghost-discussion. There is no politisation of musical taste required. If i like and enjoy a musical composition or interpretation, the gender or race of the writer/performer doesnt matter. I can listen to Beethoven or Clara Schumann as well as to Scott Joplin, Aretha Franklin or Anne-Sophie Mutter. An idelogical recontextualiztion of listening preferences will not solve any percieved disadvantage. What should that even look like - I have to listen to 10 gender/race-diverse pianists before I am ideologically allowed to listen to Glenn Gould, if ever? Such a method will lead to exclusion of music or performers, based on purely political and arbitrary pseudo-criteria. This is very dangerous. This sounds very much like Chinese culture revolution or the Nazi-term "Enartete Kunst" - ideologically inappropriate works are censored or forbidden and their authors/performers will be subjected to harassment, persecution, imprisonment or worse. Do you know how brainwashed you sound?
Oof that comment section. Appreciated this video. I am not sure if you're aware of the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers, but one of their subcommittees "Classical Music Accountability" and I think you'd appreciate them.
But then isn't non Europeans playing classical music cultural appropriation? It's indigenous European music. Since the music is made by Europeans from Europe in relation to European culture.
You could make the "history of oppression" argument about any culture in the world. There has never been a "just" and "fair" world in terms of power at any time in human history so after a while it becomes a rubber stamp argument. It's a utopian argument. And Mozart being influenced by other composers is cultural appropriation? Has there ever been an artist who was not influenced by others? Mozart used "Turkish" style music on occasion. Was that an example? The Hapsburgs and Ottomans had been fighting for centuries by then so how could there *not* have been crossover? And Debussy's innovation was bringing those scales into the Western music tradition. If the Gamelan orchestras he heard brought western style practices into their music then they would also be innovators in that way. Bach brought Italianate style practices into German counterpoint.
Okay, I've fleshed out this conversation in the other comments on this video that you are free to read, so I'm sorry, but I'm not engaging with this comment beyond a quick clarification. It seems as though you're willfully misinterpreting my arguments. There's a difference between "being influenced by other composers" and "having the wealth and opportunity to travel to countries who are economically disadvantaged by your home country and taking their techniques for your own music without actively engaging with that culture." The former implies respect. The latter does not. That's the difference.
@@AdamODell Well that doesn't apply to Mozart certainly. I brought him up because you used him as an example. Debussy heard Gamelan music at the World's Fair in Paris. The entire point of such things is exactly that sort of cultural exchange. I'm not sure how you measure "engaging with that culture". I assume Debussy engaged as much as he needed for musical purposes. The field of ethno-musicology didn't really exist then. Liszt was interested in "gypsy" music but he just went by what he heard around him, he did not undertake scholarly exploration. And for the sake of historical record, Java was ruled by France for three years (1808-1811). It's fair to say that's not the cause of any economic problems there in the late 1880s (if indeed those problems existed).
@@AdamODell I witnessed a black man playing Beethoven... After watching your video I told him to immediately stop playing white music because it's cultural appropriation and theft from indigenous white composers... I mean you don't see me playing the drums singing African music do you..
hi, i'm still a student in high school but am planning on studying music soon, but as a woc i just want to thank you for making this video. there's still a lot that needs to change (judging from the like to dislike ratio, i can see people aren't willing to acknowledge that), but it starts with getting the conversation going and i'm thankful you are using your platform to do so. i've been performing from about the age of nine and as i've grown older i've become more aware of the subtle discrimination in classical music spaces (biases towards white students in competitions where i live, lack of diversity in orchestras and its audience) and i hope to be part of the generation that sees that this changes soon!
So glad you’re excited to pursue music, despite the challenges it poses. Unfortunately, those challenges will likely persist, at least for a while, but more and more, people with the ability to make things happen are rejecting those institutions. I wish you the best heading into music school, and I hope I can be of some help! Be well!
Lack of diversity? Why do you expect equal representation when you're a minority? You would have to have an overwhelmingly disproportionate amount of interest from the "woc" community to get equal representation. Be truthful, you like his nonsensical arguments because he puts down whites in favor of other groups.
You may not say this is funny, but your analysis is silly making leaps that typical wokists make as if their aren’t parallels in other non-European cultures. Many different societies had musicians seeking some kind of patronage to allow them to earn from their creative pursuits just as nearly cultures connect music to spiritual expression to the god or gods of said culture’s religion. This is narrow-minded and ironically verging on racist to act as if East Asian, Middle Eastern, Sub-Saharan African, and Native American music doesn’t get respect. The reason why people like Mozart and Beethoven are held so high is because they found inspirational around them, then took the conventions of that society’s music and transcended it to something greater. Please tone down the “I got white guilt, therefore all things white are inherently steeped colonial dominance and racism” crap. You honestly think Mozart sat at his piano a with his parchment paper and thought, “I hope this piece proves the superiority of the white race”?
The question of whether a specific work or body of work warrants something like a Pulitzer prize should be a separate question from whether any work identified with that genre could ever warrant something like a Pulitzer. The Pulitzer people can do what they want. But it's important that people who disagree with Kendrick Lamar getting a Pulitzer to have to explain, unambiguously, what is the real basis of their disagreement. Even if I agreed with people who think classical music is "timeless", "universal" or "transcendent" in ways that other music can't be (I don't), I at least hope I'd be open in principle to the possibility that, in any given year, a more worthy recoring could somehow come from what is called the Hip Hop genre. I hope I'd understand why, if I dismissed the recording without even trying to listen to it first, there would be a reason why people would be thinking I'm a douchebag.
Didn't like how you depict "classical" music as a monolithic block, while at the same time asking for thoughful consideration of the specific origins and context of music by current minorities. The notion that it's taught as some single-block narrative to its practicioners is also not quite so. A lot of conservatory training focuses exactly on these styles being distinct in time and place, though I will of course grant there's a degree of commonality and a sense of continuity in the "classical" canon.
I mean, I don't think of the classical tradition as being a monolithic block, but it is more substantially codified by history of patronage and written history. I'm sorry that it came off that way, but if it clarifies, I'm discussing classical spaces in this video in terms of their structures (conservatories, orchestras, production companies, etc.) not so much in terms of the genres within the tradition. And yeah, conservatory training breaks from the continuity narrative at a certain point, but most (or at least many) undergraduate music history tracks teach classical music history as existing on a clear narrative from Josquin to Boulez, unless you're lucky enough to have a fantastic musicologist on faculty. The amount of training one has to go through to "prove" their knowledge before learning about the nuances of historiography is substantial.
Academic study of classical music is being deliberately homogenized to reflect a grammar treating as superficial or irrelevant anything other than preparation of dominants, prolongation of dominants, and resolution of dominants. Because that's what 18th Century Vienna sounds like. It's ironic that people I met in music school who decried the characterization of classical music as a monolithic block were more or less the same people working hard to turn classical music into a monolithic block.
Don’t fool yourself, I’m Navajo and Mexican and rarely find anyone in my community who likes Classical music. You’re trying too hard to be inclusive, when the demand doesn’t exist..
It's absurd. People can (and should) enjoy what they like. The whole concept of being against "cultural appropriation" is just another way of being for cultural segregation.
@@kev3d You’re right. The idea that we haven’t been exposed to classical music is absurd too. I like some of it, but i’m not buying Mozart’s greatest hits anytime soon..
I'm pretty sure that almost any funk and prog-rock musician would disagree with you about your point about cultural appropriation. No one 'owns' a culture. Culture is the product of a group of people interacting, and when two groups with set cultures begin to interact, they exchange ideas and sometimes splinter into subcultures and/or unify into a new fused larger culture. The Jazz style is one of these fusions, its origins coming from the local black american musical tradition (mostly blues) combined with the concepts, instruments, and arranging of the european-american band/orchestra. I do agree that the classical music bubble is highly gate-keeped, but I also believe that it is purely because it is a dying medium. It costs too much money to put on large orchestras, and the efforts to combine musical traditions to reach out to other communities have fallen either on deaf ears or have not been interesting or good. It's also a deeply intellectual and sometimes very pretentious medium, where you can easily be looked down upon if you are ignorant of various musical technique. You can see how living genres like country music have adapted and changed from their roots in early american folk songs and the southern blues traditions to wholly adopt and change to adopt more 'popular' sounds. The way you use 'privilege' is non-specific and seems entirely used to demonize the classical music tradition as an educated elite who abuse their superior knowledge. I could easily argue that a non-classical musician is more privileged because they don't have the years of training in a set, sometimes very dogmatic style, and can accept and incorporate new music from different cultures much more easily. Privilege is relative and unquantifiable, so using it to push change is like pushing an article of faith on a non-believer.
I'm not sure why 'owns' is the word in quotes when ownership was not used as the metric for culture. The issue is one of belonging to a culture. Prog-rock and funk are certainly different from the classical tradition, because the former are examples of groups coming together to create together, where much of the classical tradition is rooted in educated white men learning about the traditions of other cultures, and using them without existing in the advancement and respect of the culture. I'm certainly not arguing against cultural dynamism (which is impossible to stop and stupid to argue against), but cultural diffusion as a result of uneven power structures between different cultures is problematic. Your second two paragraphs I can't really stand by in any way. I fail to see how a community that has historically been supported by the aristocracy and the bourgeoise, whose practitioners belong(ed) to the strongest world powers of their eras, and who has historically kept "outsiders" from entering the tradition are in any way underprivileged. I'm also confused as to how you took the world "privilege" to be demonizing in this video. It's something that I constantly identified in myself and expressed optimism in recognizing it and reducing its power with a cooperative effort.
Also, to the topic of ownership and cultural diffusion, there are some musical practices that are historically very fluid and others which are very meticulously preserved, so to claim that "no one owns a culture" is oversimplified, unless we're saying something like "Dan alone owns post-punk." And while I don't know anything about you, I can say personally that I have no right to say who should and shouldn't have access to Inuit throat singing, for example. So while I'm not assuming that's where your comment was going, arguing for a lack of cultural ownership often coincides with a belief that one can appropriate cultural traditions for their own benefit.
u8qu1tis you nailed it. Well said. Adam, you seriously need to re-evaluate your life and whatever sick ideology you subscribe to. You are a cancer to society.
To use elements of a distanced culture without credit or basic respect is appropriation. But at least half of the complaints I see about people appropriating culture are rooted in supposition about whether or not credit or respect has been offered, and are complaints coming not from the people whose culture has been supposed to have been appropriated. I think it's time we specifically called out those cultural appropriators whose genre of appriopriation consists of baselessly imposing outrage on 3rd parties for their own political interest.
The opening statement is correct: this video is not funny, or even mildly amusing for that matter. Instead, it is much the same as numerous other videos covering the subject on UA-cam. Same old, same old as the Thais say. One yearns for a little originality or someone with the individuality to espouse a different opinion on this subject.
Inspiration ≠ Cultural Appropriation Mozart was stealing from other cultures. Are you really serious, I mean really? Is there any form of high art, which can exist without inspiration? For the first few minutes you got me, because I agree that Rap (and so others) can be full of intellect, skill and inspiration. But then you got in this death spiral of un-reflected arguments and made up concepts.
I don’t think you’re alone in accepting the argument up until a point where it affects something you hold dear. This is only one of several comments on this thread that is dismissing my entire video over a criticism of Mozart (or some Debussy), but I appreciate that you seem more willing to engage with this conversation than others. I agree that inspiration does not equal cultural appropriation, but to say that Mozart’s musical upbringing was purely one of “inspiration” is historically inaccurate. Most people know the story of Mozart transcribing music from the Vatican and thinking that was cool, but much of his early career with his father and many of his years as an adult were spent traveling to different places to perform or work as a composer, and much of the innovation we credit him with in classical music stems from using working class musical traditions from populations who were oppressed by the very patronage system that supported his career. I’m not implying that Mozart was individually some demon going around and pillaging for musical ideas, but the development of classical music is largely based in the oppression of the aristocratic system, and Mozart’s work is a prime example.
No one used the term "cultural appropriation" as a reason not to perform my works in the 90's that contrapuntally elaborated various nonwestern melodies. I was very clear about what I was doing, and all the resistance seemed to come from people who were white-identified. People eager to scream "cultural appropriation" may occasionally have a very compelling point, but that is incidental the the larger pattern in which they are serving as unwitting pawns of the cultural establishment. If you really think about it, for white American composers to write music that sounds like contemporary African-American music is not more culturally appropriative than to write music that sounds like 18th Century Germanic music. But African American culture is less hegemonic than Germanic American culture, so Germanic Americans are eager to see anybody else try hard not to sound African American, and eager to see African Americans help to suppress American culture that identifies less as Germanic than as African American. Where's the cultrural appropriation outrage either from black Americans or white Americans about non-Germanic Americans learning to meticulously mimic the compositional mannerisms of 18th Century Vienna?
This is one cringeworthy video. No other culture on the planet has made such marvelous and complex classical music as Europe. It is incomparable, and a reflection on the civilization itself. How did Mozart steal from other cultures? Do you think he was listening to some African tribal drum music and then all of a sudden got inspired to compose his fifth Symphony? lmao. White self-loathing at its finest. It’s truly sad that so many young people are being indoctrinated like this now. Be proud of your ancestors and their accomplishments.
I happen to prefer the canon. I generally don't like classical music after about 1920 with some notable exceptions (including some pretty experimental and minimalist types). Face it: the canon has swag and y'all be broke.
So it doesn't seem like the arguments in this thread are going to end anytime soon, so here's the deal: There are plenty of conversations to be had on the difference between appropriation and appreciation... or as we've been talking about it, cultural appropriation vs. cultural osmosis. These are important conversations to have, especially when we don't really talk about the differences in our field. However, if you start evoking white supremacist language, insult entire cultures/genres, or (for some reason this came up) get transphobic... you're getting banned. You have a right to your opinions. You have a right to disagree with opinions. But opinions are about "should pineapple go on pizza" or "are bowed crotales the biggest cliche in new music?" not about the humanity of a given race or whether or not oppression is good. If you think you have a right to post discriminatory crap in here, you're a piece of trash who's getting banned.
People have opinions about political/cultural/important things too. And not everyone defines "oppression" the same way - it's pretty much become anything the Left dislikes. I've heard the claim that dieting is oppression against "weighted people".
When you realise you have created a bunch of black supremacists just like BLM by talking about how bad your own race is you will one day see a rise in hate crimes towards white people which won't be reported as the government and law doesn't believe it's a thing but I'm sure will experience one day and regret your fuel of it. You make me laugh.
what do u think about the term white, and color... it seems its that its them and the rest of the people.... english its not my mother tongue.... love your video. the question its more about whats correct... or not...
I dont know if you are serious or woke-trolling youtube, but do you seriously claim that anything invented by a people/countries who held slaves or colonized at some point in time are 'bad' and bias and attention should therefore go to less intelligent achievements made by people higher up on the victimhood-pyramid?
I don't about America but here in the UK we are combatting this problem by doing many things: - We formed the Cheneke orchestra , an orchestra formed from black and other minority ethnic people and they perform every year at the BBC Proms festival now. - We've been encouraging black role models to participate in musical events. Cellist Sheku Kanneh Mason is an example of this.
And yet there are people who will complain that that's also superficial and exploitative. I always favor "damned if you do". Having not done it has already been tried, and how did that work out? What's the next option on the list?
First: Cultural apropiation is not a bad phenomenon, its a natural phenomenon in culture. Second: you don't need to understand the culture to enjoy and understand music, for example I love Henry Purcell's music from 17 century Britain, I think is universally beautiful. Nobody can understand that particular culture 4 centuries later. Ps: I am a Latino and I really enjoy and respect classical music.
JAIME MEJIA You’re thinking of cultural osmosis. Being influenced by any culture you’re exposed to is natural, but actively taking something from someone’s culture while not respecting the people who practice that culture is not. You’re not appropriating just because you like Purcell’s music, because I’m guessing your daily actions aren’t suppressing English people. Also, you can think Purcell is beautiful (I do too), but it’s not accurate to claim Purcell is “universally” beautiful. Not everyone thinks Purcell is beautiful.
@@AdamODell Why do you say music composers disrespected or opressed other cultures ? Germany was not even a unified state, let alone owned any colonies by the time of mozart. Also can we say the same about other genres of music that have incorporated western elements into their music ? Are other cultures apropiating european music ?
@@hugolozano2162 You could fairly characterize Hungary as a colony of the Holy Roman Empire in Mozart's time. It is true that Haydn worked for Hungarian nobility. But just try to show me a list of ways that Haydn's music sounds at all Hungarian. Don't get me wrong; I love Haydn's string quartets. But in a larger perspective, if the options are appropriation and assimilation, appropriation might be the lesser evil. Schenkerians have no problem with an African American appropriating/assmiliating Mozart. Why would they if it means one less African American performing African American music? Think about it.
Overall, I was pretty underwhelmed if not disappointed in the response. Their business model is built on appropriation - literally having an expert come in to teach them techniques that they can apply indefinitely to future works. I haven't heard anything since their statement about reworking Partita, but I really hope that, if they continue to produce, they limit their scope of non-classical techniques to ones that either have some cultural universality or that don't belong to endangered traditions, or they bring in vocalists who belong to non-Western cultures/traditions. The big issue is (coming to this as someone who is continually working to understand) 1) profiting off of non-Western tradition while 2) keeping those profits out of the hands of the stewards of said tradition. They still haven't undone that relationship, and until they do, I'm gonna be against their performance model.
@@AdamODell Adam O'Dell I see that position. I guess I don't see RoT's process as appropriation because RoT is directly engaging with practitioners of the styles they use and hire these practitioners as teachers. I see this as respect and understanding for non-classical traditions. I would be interested to hear the perspective of RoT's teachers on the use of these techniques in the Partita and whether they support it. If RoT had used these techniques without consulting practitioners the situation would be cut and dry appropriation. I don't see how they're taking away money from the practitioners of these techniques in any sense though. RoT is not claiming to be an Inuit group and is paying their teachers.
@@benhavey4107 Yeah, there's a complicated dynamic there that I don't have enough perspective on to have an in-depth opinion about. The big thing about Inuit throat singing is that it is legally designated as belonging to the Inuit people, and the criticism I've heard about the RoT model from people who have the perspective that I can't offer is that one teacher cannot speak for the culture at large, and that the traditions are being greatly separated from their original contexts. My apologies if I back off on this conversation in the near future. I like to be in dialogue with people watching my videos (thank you for being one of them!) but I also don't want to speak out of turn. It will be a few interviews from now, but I will have someone on to talk about this who will have more appropriate things to say.
I have no problem with whites gatekeeping their cultural music (classical music) I just don't like when whites turn around and start trolling and calling us racist and getting emotional when we blacks try to do the same with our music (Hip Hop and R&B) Just look at the situation with Lord Jamar for example.
Surely the "Pullitzer Prize" is also a creation (and not a discovery) of Western hegemony? And who are you to decide, a "privileged" product of the elite Western academic system? Philosophers, from Plato to Kant, from Lydia Goehr to Roger Scruton, have attempted to work from first principles when evaluating the qualities inherent in music. You wouldn't say ethical values are always subjective; why art? Neither have you considered Hume's "is-ought" problem. Too many questions for this to stand as a valid thesis, I'm afraid!
Y’know, I usually don’t respond to these burner UA-cam accounts using cliched philosophical rhetoric to name a bunch of books they probably haven’t read, and calling my argument invalid without even stating a coherent argument, but this one was exceptional, so I guess I’ll just say: Yes, ethical values are subjective. Like, different cultures have entirely different ideas about what animals are okay to eat, when/if capital punishment or killing in general is justified, which forms of government are just. Like... seriously, you think ethics... a term defined by values *specific to an individual or group* are objective? Good lord racism deniers on UA-cam are a special breed.
Traditional Japanese music has a race problem: there’s too many Japanese and not enough blacks. This isn’t diverse and it’s systemically racist. We need to talk about it
@@666j1 How so? Not every country can be as diverse as America. If we were to evenly distribute a minoritiy to every country there would be none of those people left in their would be none left in their home country.
I guess I'm a Hispanic, white supremist, then. 🙂 Come at me, bro. My Tiger Kungfu...is better than yours...I don't think you're good enough...to avenge your master...
Thank you Adam. Everything in this video needed to be said, and honestly your comments on what you listen to are making me consider all of the different types of classical music that I listen to these days. My listening typically consists of film and video game music (occasionally some contemporary orchestral music too), but how many of the people do I listen to represent those who face constant repression in this genre of music? I mean, have you ever talked to someone who can name a black film composer off the top of their heads? Terence Blanchard, a trumpeter and composer who's worked with director Spike Lee on several of his films (25th Hour, BlacKkKlansman, etc.), if anyone, is usually the first black film composer that comes to peoples' minds these days. His scores are often a mixture of classical sounds and light rock ballads. Others I listen to are Isaac Hayes and several jazz composers who lent their skills to film (Quincy Jones for In Cold Blood, Duke Ellington for Anatomy of a Murder, Herbie Handcock for Round Midnight). Indian composers like Ravi Shankar and A.R. Rahman, female composers like Rachel Portman, Wendy Carlos, and Hildur Guðnadóttir, East Asian composers like Tan Dun, Akira Ifukube, Jung Jae-il, Joe Hisaishi? Their greatest works cannot be ignored. Even with all of those people, I don't think that's enough, because when you do a search of online videos and other resources on film scoring, you see how small the field of recognized composers from marginalized groups is. You can't pick-and-choose composers here, people - there are people out there who are working hard to do their best and hopefully make their name known. Although to some it may sound foolish, my greatest hope in all of this is that, in however much time I have left on this planet, those repressed composers who we know and those who we don't know will be able to step forward and proudly receive all of the recognition that they fought a lot harder than anyone else to deserve.
Isn't it inappropriate to self promote in your video description? Like, it's good to not do the whole "Like, comment, subscribe!" thing at the end, but you do basically promote your patreon in the video, and you promote your merch, music, and patreon in the description right after the links for donating to BLM and the ACLU (which are good inclusions). Also, are you monetizing this video? I got an ad when it popped up, and I don't really think it's appropriate for you to make ad revenue off of content addressing this particular topic. It might be worth being clear and upfront about this stuff in the future.
Definitely avoiding self-promotion as much as possible in this series. Things I can't change: the ads in the video are currently going to a third party who has made a copyright claim on the elevator music at 8:07 (which came from a public domain audio library), so hopefully that gets resolved and the ads stop. I'm currently unable to monetize on UA-cam at all, and even if I make partner status, I am keeping these videos demonetized. A thank you to patrons is part of the Patreon tier system, and they are the ones who are funding the upcoming videos, so to exclude them from credit in this endeavor would be dishonest. External links for my own self-promotion have been deleted. They're automatically attached at the end of my video descriptions and I forgot to remove them before publishing. I appreciate you pointing that out.
@@AdamODell So, I still have some beef with this for a few reasons. The first is that you still have a patreon link up. I know you put in a caveat about “if you’ve already donated to other causes and still feel like donating,” but this still smacks to me of profiting directly off of topical videos dealing with a struggle that is not your own. If even a single person donates to your Patreon because of this video, you are directly profiting off of the struggle that black musicians face every day and the systemic problems of the very system that has propped you up in the first place. It’s also wrong, in my view to peddle your Patreon in video. I don’t care that those people donated to your Patreon, which made these interviews and videos happen. It’s still promoting something that profits you directly. Does this money go into a separate account that you only use to support black musicians and content creators? Or does it go into directly into your personal bank account? Like, if you’re going to postulate yourself at the center of this, you’ve at least got to cut the self-promotion. Other points, but I’ll be brief. Where are your citations, reading lists, etc.? I know these ideas weren’t magically birthed from your mind, and you make a lot of statements without crediting any sources at all. DAMN is Kendrick Lamar’s fourth album not his third (not counting untitled/unmastered). I know this is nitpicky, but you’ve got to get at least basic details right (Section.80 is good, if not as developed or powerful as GKMC, TPAB, UU, or DAMN.) I know this is the first video and that you’re planning on actually highlighting people of color in future videos, but this is, right now, still very centered on you. Other than Kendrick Lamar, you don’t mention a single black person in your video. You talk about your experience, your viewpoints, and your project. You don’t even mention specific people you’re planning on interviewing in the future, and you aren't giving other people a platform at all in this video. Other white content creators who I’ve seen tackle some of our systemic issues almost completely remove themselves from the equation, promoting black voices and refusing to profit even a little from this. Not coincidentally, they are the same people who have been consistently vocal about these issues before and the systemic conditions that lead to them. You are covering a ton of really complicated concepts in a short amount of time, but you need to go a lot more in depth with some of these issues. I think you know this, so I won’t say any more about it. It feels like, to me in this video, you’re whitewashing this whole issue. I already mentioned that you made this very you centered, and you don’t mention the real issues with the Pulitzer in the first place. How about, before DAMN won it in 2018, only four black composers had ever won the Pulitzer at all in its nearly 80 year history? And that 3 of those were for "jazz pieces?" This brings me to my next point; you almost get there, but there’s no mention of the academy’s role in all of this. How the academy makes “classical training” prohibitively expensive for many people, and how that disproportionally affects people of color? How about that the reason many people in the classical music community don’t see hip hop as legitimate music because you don’t need academic training to make that music at all? How about that the same was true of jazz until it was codified and enveloped into the academy? I’m assuming that you’re a part of the academy, so it’s important to understand and criticize the structures that lead to people like you being successful in the first place. The last thing I’ll say is that this feels like blatant opportunism. This video feels like your half-baked attempt to be “woke” and acknowledge racism for the social and monetary value it generates for you. You have no specific timeline, schedule, or subjects for your “interviews.” You have literally no details other than “I’ll be interviewing black musicians and other musicians of color at some point, so make sure to subscribe to see that when (if) it happens.” (Yes, I know that you didn’t literally ask people to subscribe, but that feels implied, because how else will a viewer see your future videos?) I hope you follow through with this and that your interviews center black voices in the midst of this moment in history. I hope you use your platform for their benefit, and not yours. I hope that real good comes of this. In the meantime, I’m not buying it.
@@stevejohnson9701 All points taken. I'll remove the Patreon link from the description entirely, and let patrons know that they won't be listed in any of the remaining videos in this series. The reason why there are fewer specifics about the upcoming topics and interviews is because I want to leave as much space as possible for my interviewees to control the dialogue. I invited the interviewees based on previous contact/experience I've had with them, and I have/had initial ideas in mind for what we could talk about in their segments, but I also don't want to limit the scope or subject of their discussion based on my interactions with them. For example, one person I contacted was someone I had in mind for a conversation about the exclusionary practices in orchestral auditions, but we wound up talking more about institutional (educational) access, and career expectations thrust upon people from marginalized communities. I've also avoided specific timelines because these videos are being shot and edited in dialogue with the interviewees, and they'll be published when the interviewees are satisfied with the content. What I can tell you based on interviews that have already been conducted: there will be a video that is mostly focused on institutional access for black musicians, a video about racism and representation in music therapy spaces, and a video about at least one -- probably more contingent upon further discussion -- organization working at the K-12 level to address systemic exclusion in classical music education. The only criticisms of yours I take issue with are the one about the scope of this video and the timeline of the series. UA-cam is primarily a platform which supports short video essays addressing focused topics. With this being an introduction video to the rest of the series, it does zoom out a bit more than what works best on the platform, and does leave a lot of topics introduced, but not closed -- but again, this is because people with a more appropriate perspective will be speaking on them in upcoming interviews. This video was intended to address the different treatments of two different pieces/artists after winning the Pulitzer: Caroline Shaw, a white woman who was celebrated for venturing outside the classical tradition, and Kendrick Lamar, a black man who was ridiculed for winning an award (that many white classical musicians believe should be reserved for classical composers) for a non-classical work. And with this comparison, I wanted to highlight the gatekeeping which white classical musicians perform on a daily basis (including myself) that we should seek to analyze within ourselves and dismantle. This video was one primarily centered around the actions of white musicians, viewing gatekeeping as a white problem that white people need to fix, not a BIPOC problem that white people need to empathize with. The major takeaway I want for this video specifically is to analyze my own whiteness, invite other white classical musicians to do the same, and develop some mindfulness strategies. The commentaries about white-dominated systems, the BIPOC musicians creating exceptional art despite these obstacles, and how we can dismantle these obstacles are in the works, but publishing them without inviting viewers to start with self-analysis leads to a lot of "I can't possibly be racist, I listened to Julius Eastman"-esque deflections. I organized this video with the tendency of privileged people to distance themselves from the systems that benefit them in mind. I'm always happy to hear from people about how I can do better to address these topics, and I appreciate you taking the time to do so.
I don't like DAMN, because I'm white. I suppose just don't get it the way black Americans do, but Classical music I understand and appreciate, because it's part of white culture.
@@AdamODell it doesn't chip away at us. It simply reveals that you are an angry incel who is bitter and envious over the achievements of superior peoples. "If I can't be great, no one is allowed to be great" - Adam O'Dell
Very thought-provoking, Adam. This is the first time I've heard you speak, and you raise some important questions about how art music is identified, recognised and composed. You've already addressed to another commenter the question of modern groups blending styles, so I'll take that as applying to multi-ethnic groups such as Weather Report. Might I ask how this applies to groups that were homogeneous, such as the Beatles, or individual composers, such as Gershwin, who blended styles in their compositions? The Beatles introduced instruments from Indian traditions owing to George Harrison's (in particular) involvement in Eastern spirituality through works like "Within You Without You" and "Norwegian Wood", and Gershwin was a Jewish composer combining classical and African-American musical elements in works like "Rhapsody in Blue" and "Porgy and Bess". From my understanding, the cultural underpinnings of these works were clearly understood and recognised by the listening public when these works were released. Do you feel that this made the usage of these elements justifiable? Are there ways that these composers could have handled the issue better?
Hey! I'm actually hoping to address this in an upcoming video, so excuse me for keeping this comment shorter than some of my others in this thread. Culture is inherently dynamic (the human brain is actually really bad at replicating something perfectly, so change and influence are inevitable), so it would be an oversimplification (and just incorrect) to say that combining musics from multiple cultures is always bad. With Gershwin especially, he was considered progressive in his time, but the spaces in which he worked (and therefore the cultures which created the narratives around him) were very white dominated. It's important (especially for white musicians) to critically analyze that Gershwin may have been better than some of his contemporaries on this front, but there are still problems to address.
The Classical period was an era of classical music between roughly 1730 and 1820. I'm sure that what's being referred to in this video is orchestral music in general, but the idea that composers like Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Wagner, Debussy and Tchaikovsky appropriated music from non-white cultures is absurd. Even looking outside the Classical period it's hard to see Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Respighi or Holst appropriating their style of writing from non-white peoples outside of Europe. Trying to make the claim that Classical Music is racist based on nothing more than the fact that these composers were white is reaching to the extreme. I've read several pieces about racism in classical music where the author's claim was based on nothing more than the lack of Black faces in the nations top symphonies. They trip all over themselves trying to ignore the fact that Asians and Jews make up a larger percentage of classical musicians than what they make up in the general populations because those groups might mess up the narrative they were trying to create. Dismissing the years of time spent alone in a room working on fundamental techniques because of the need to make a point about racism if offensive. One of the suggestions was to get rid of the blind audition process so that race could be considered when selecting musicians. This makes it look like the talent of a particular performer is not as important as making sure the the racial makeup in an orchestra is the same as the population at large. We don't see the accusation of racism popping up in regard to the popular music styles of today. African-Americans dominate the pop music charts and are credited with creating several categories of music including Blues, Jazz, Hip-Hop and Rap. Anyone who would dispute that fact would be called out really quickly. Making the claim that Classical music is racist while ignoring how other groups are drawn to and dominate certain other styles of music might get a person credit with some social justice warriors, but it doesn't make it any more true.
Villalobos is one of Brazil's greatest nationalist composers. He ,like Bartok, went around ethnographically collecting this indigenous peoples of Brazil's music.....HE ALSO went to Paris and super influenced by many of the Great modernists that make up modern classical music.... This is one of a million examples which foils this boob's attempt at crying cultural appropriation ! Thank you so much for your detailed counter to this nonsense.
Debussy borrowed theoretical concepts AND literal instruments from Asian cultures. What's absurd about it? Also, as confusing as it might be, "Classical" is in fact the catch-all term for the genre. Chamber music is not orchestral music. Solo repertoire is not orchestral music. Artsong is not orchestral music.
@@rohiogerv22 so are you saying the classical music is an omelet. religion is a omelet. history is an omelet and your psychology is an omelet and a omelet is a omelet
Classical music is inherently racist. As a cishet straight while male composer, our kind has said enough through the ages. It is time to pass the torch to those unheard. It is inherently racist to perpetuate this culture of oppression. Let's not only amplify the voices of trans/bipoc composers, but minimise the voice of those who have been historically over-represented. This is the work that must be done.
It is inherently racist because it is inherently a white thing. Show me a black person who can feel Bruckner the same as I. Opera and ballet attendees are usually on the whiter side of humanity as well.
By your postulation Erik Satie would also suffer from exoticism but in fact he was a Rosicrucian and wrote music for their ceremonies. Rosicrucianism is a mixture of eastern and western religious traditions. During the 19th century a great deal of Western thinkers ( Madame Blavatsky, Gurdjeff and Roerich) were traveling East to uncover the mystery schools. ... This eventually turned into what we know as new age movement....I could go on and on about the fusion of language , or architecture, of foods and of dance styles. Fusion is a necessary part of life-OR what you call "cultural appropriation"! Ever hear of "pasta" or maybe Yoga class? THIS Cultural appropriation thingy is a insurgency within the academy to create decay and collapse. Nice try!--------- Don't feel guilt! Bach is a GOD and should be prayed to. Padre Antonio Soler's composition, Fandango is based on flamenco and fragments of Moorish origin!!!! OH NO!! Sound the alarms AND mash the "cultural appropriation button immediately! Phew, that was a close one.
I think we need to think of this less on an 'influence' continuum rather than a 'power' continuum.' Fusion and synergy are great and necessary, but let's just be honest about who's on top, hand has been for hundreds of years.
Persons eager to participate in a complex emergent global culture are not appropriators. Persons making use of disposable caricature are appropriators. But there's a pretty big gray area. We won't be able to sort out the gray area, though, as long as people keep pretending there is no gray area, or that either end of the spectrum doesn't exist. There's the appearance that policing cultural appropriation is essentially the provenance of liberal culture. But I can't help finding this suspicious. Why would a conservative establishment NOT want to prevent people from hybridizing culture if they've historically wanted to prevent people from mixing genetic groups?
If you have a fragile ego and haven't been exposed to any other culture than white culture, you won't understand what he is saying. I am black and understand him 100%.
White culture is the most advanced and refined on earth. Have you ever been to Europe? It is absolutely magnificent. Classical music is a reflection of this.. Why is immigration only going one direction? Everyone wants to come to white countries, not the other way around. The most happy, functional, and prosperous countries on earth are all virtually 100% white. Iceland, Norway, Denmark, etc. nearly all of the most significant scientific and technological breakthroughs of the modern era have come from Europe. Just being real.
This is so ridiculous... Classical IS superior to all other forms of music... Period... Race has nothing to do with music... You may want to apologize to the non white classical musicians as there are countless... Excellence is excellence and classical is as good as it gets... Just because monarchs hired virtuosos doesn't make the music white supremacy no more than the monarchs that have hired James Brown or Ray Charles... Ray Charles performed for the Queen, so are you going to say he was privileged? Of course not... Are you looking for validity in some strange way? Because you're only going to get it from other betas and miscreants... Classical was the peak... You can follow the music from the African drum to the peak of musical excellence and then all the way back down to African drums... Jazz sounds like classical caught the flu and it progressively breaks down from there to the current forms of music... We've come full circle and now, even the primitive beats of sexual and violent energy are being ruined... Worksboots in a dryer have better rhythm that most new "musicians"... Kendrick Lamar??? Fuck off... 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
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I can't hear this manlet over my mad piano skills
The fact that videos like this exist proves that common sense is dead.
Most white people have no self awareness.
No, it just proves that some people are social climbers, and social elevators are getting short.
So there's a whole subgenre of Japanese Jazz. Japan is a wealthy nation, so did they steal from Black musicians who invented Jazz? On the other hand, the Black musicians who invented Jazz were Americans, and Americans conquered Japan so maybe it's okay that Japanese got Jazz after all. But Jazz is composed of European instruments who dominated over Blacks. On the other hand, Jazz takes advantage of music often composed by Jews, who had historically been oppressed.
Who is stealing from whom? Or maybe it's all just music and sharing and being inspired by different cultures is a good thing no matter what direction it goes.
There's a history with the United States stealing music from the Black American community and exploiting it for profit. Most genres in popular music today were started by Black Americans. Ignoring this history and acting like race doesn't matter is disingenuous.
People like you don’t respect other cultures that’s the problem. When you see something you like you demand it be shared. Then you disrespect anything you don’t understand and call it inferior.
That is the kind of conundrum that is created by putting ideological criteria into music and making them the basis of judgement.
People like this just have a formula for how they perceive everything. Like film critics they just get bored of everything and force critiques on beautiful things other people have done that they will never be able to do in their dreams or in reality
Anyone who thinks that classical music is racist has a head that is made almost completely out of meat. By the way, I'm sure that Jay-Z And other pop stars and rap artists are gonna give back all the money earned using classical string riffs all throughout this music, among other classical tropes. I really miss Americans worrying about shit that makes sense to worry about & that actually matters.
I've had to deal with at least the residue of this type of thinking myself.
When I was small (before I really started playing) we used to go to a pizza parlor that had a realtor theater pipe organ in it.
This encounter piqued my interest in music (my dad played the piano usually from Fakebooks, mostly pop tunes of the 1920s through 1940s).
When I was small I was giving an autoharp as a Christmas present and a little bit about how primary chords work through noodling with that instrument.
When I was 12 almost 13 I got a Lowery organ as a Christmas present (later replaced by a Hammond B-2), as I learned how to play I became more of a jazz musician they celebrity on my skill set (with the schema awareness that I would have to function in the black community quite often, men having to deal with the issue of race and racism, my father was quite conservative).
When I took organ/piano lessons, my main teacher fortunately also a gigging musician mostly playing popular music in bars. She was also a jazz fan probably most confident playing jazz as a vibraphoneist. She also played the organ could walk baselines on the pedals and did all the classical academics when she got herself a master's degree.
I did the classical pieces she made me write in the chord symbols (the music was still basically played as written, but she wanted me to learn it in a musical language I was familiar with is supposed to figured bass).
She even criticize her music professors who basically considered Jazz "Bums Music" though she also admitted they could never come close to playing it.
Do I have often played in jail settings (and often blues and R&B settings is more "commercia"l music, often with black band leaders), I did keep my interest in theater pipe organ playing going on to they said that I could as a sideline. They would literally I am more of a jazz player than I straight up feeder player or classical player
One time I went to an open house at a pipe organ builders shop (and I've made several of their open houses and performed, trying to keep my endeavors as tasteful as possible though admittedly these instruments are set up for a different style of music than I normally play).
Some guy who lives in the enthusias of this style and these instruments (littlest person is more of a theater organ fan than a classical organ fan). Started grilling me about you know Eddie Van Halen played classical music this into some Ransom about how his knowledge of music and the organ is better than mine even though he himself has never gigged not even in a white church let alone even a pizza parlor, nonetheless he is an authority on the subject.
I should have posted about how I had classical training, the admittedly I never kept the stuff up there were things related to it I wouldn't mind doing a bit better like counterpoint in a Quasi-Baroque style but having the result being similar to John Lewis and the MJQ rather than a classical player. I mean issue with being a classical performers outside I'm not very good at functioning in that tightly scripted a musical environment. I also feel if I have to try to make other people like me then I'm going to really be terrible.
Ultimately I did manage to get a bachelor's degree in jazz and world music for me Jazz at an education places at the time newly devised degree program.
They're working units on classical music using the grout book, but I think in some ways it's useful to learn this stuff but I think they should terms of non-classical musicians teach it very differently in a way to make it in terms of its component it's more useful.
Talk about citing chapter and verse from the Book of Wokeness. It's like watching a hostage video. Total indoctrination.
What is kinda funny to me is when Americans debate whether classical music is racist or not despite the lack of properly understanding it like Europeans do. I know Americans have adopted the classical as a term to label their movie and theater scores. Many classical music pieces have inspired movie score titles. And I love lots of those. But I would never consider those scores as part of what is called classical music. And on top of that I can easily replace any movie score title with something from Mahler, Wagner, Shostakovich, Brahms etc. without blinking once. Most scores by Danny Elfman can be replaced with anything written by Mahler. John Williams music? Wagner. Wagner's Ring cycle still blows your typical score out of the waters.
Gatekeeping is still a meaningful tool to keep the completely uninitiated out of it and prevent them from talking nonsense inside the circles. Otherwise appropriation is non existing in regards to classical musichence everyone can get an instrument and start playing. That's what happened in the past. People listened, took a sheet and started to play the piece at home. Today this is similar with music by Philip Glass. This man, a great modern composer and conductor who still lives, has his music copied and replayed by others many times already with other musicians pumping out their recordings while Mr. Glass still produces his next tunes.
07:53 I just found this video yesterday. This is a nitpicky ghost-discussion. There is no politisation of musical taste required. If i like and enjoy a musical composition or interpretation, the gender or race of the writer/performer doesnt matter. I can listen to Beethoven or Clara Schumann as well as to Scott Joplin, Aretha Franklin or Anne-Sophie Mutter. An idelogical recontextualiztion of listening preferences will not solve any percieved disadvantage. What should that even look like - I have to listen to 10 gender/race-diverse pianists before I am ideologically allowed to listen to Glenn Gould, if ever?
Such a method will lead to exclusion of music or performers, based on purely political and arbitrary pseudo-criteria. This is very dangerous. This sounds very much like Chinese culture revolution or the Nazi-term "Enartete Kunst" - ideologically inappropriate works are censored or forbidden and their authors/performers will be subjected to harassment, persecution, imprisonment or worse. Do you know how brainwashed you sound?
Wait a minute, is this woke parody?
When you realise it’s a genre of music and stop making a problem out of nothing
:🫥
Western classical music is superior period. How can one compare music of Bach to primitive melodies sung in peruvian villages.
Oof that comment section. Appreciated this video. I am not sure if you're aware of the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers, but one of their subcommittees "Classical Music Accountability" and I think you'd appreciate them.
But then isn't non Europeans playing classical music cultural appropriation?
It's indigenous European music. Since the music is made by Europeans from Europe in relation to European culture.
You could make the "history of oppression" argument about any culture in the world. There has never been a "just" and "fair" world in terms of power at any time in human history so after a while it becomes a rubber stamp argument. It's a utopian argument. And Mozart being influenced by other composers is cultural appropriation? Has there ever been an artist who was not influenced by others? Mozart used "Turkish" style music on occasion. Was that an example? The Hapsburgs and Ottomans had been fighting for centuries by then so how could there *not* have been crossover? And Debussy's innovation was bringing those scales into the Western music tradition. If the Gamelan orchestras he heard brought western style practices into their music then they would also be innovators in that way. Bach brought Italianate style practices into German counterpoint.
Okay, I've fleshed out this conversation in the other comments on this video that you are free to read, so I'm sorry, but I'm not engaging with this comment beyond a quick clarification. It seems as though you're willfully misinterpreting my arguments. There's a difference between "being influenced by other composers" and "having the wealth and opportunity to travel to countries who are economically disadvantaged by your home country and taking their techniques for your own music without actively engaging with that culture."
The former implies respect. The latter does not. That's the difference.
@@AdamODell Well that doesn't apply to Mozart certainly. I brought him up because you used him as an example. Debussy heard Gamelan music at the World's Fair in Paris. The entire point of such things is exactly that sort of cultural exchange. I'm not sure how you measure "engaging with that culture". I assume Debussy engaged as much as he needed for musical purposes. The field of ethno-musicology didn't really exist then. Liszt was interested in "gypsy" music but he just went by what he heard around him, he did not undertake scholarly exploration. And for the sake of historical record, Java was ruled by France for three years (1808-1811). It's fair to say that's not the cause of any economic problems there in the late 1880s (if indeed those problems existed).
Adam O'Dell I agree with the differences you have stated here but I am very skeptical of your ability to tell the difference.
SoulfuzZ K.
@@AdamODell dude just shut the comment section down, it's not good for both sides
Why does Google insist on pushing anti-Classical (and "anti-White") narrative in its algorithm music now? So tiring!
*turns up my classical music*
*points at scarecrow*
@@AdamODell womp womp
@@AdamODell I witnessed a black man playing Beethoven...
After watching your video I told him to immediately stop playing white music because it's cultural appropriation and theft from indigenous white composers...
I mean you don't see me playing the drums singing African music do you..
hi, i'm still a student in high school but am planning on studying music soon, but as a woc i just want to thank you for making this video. there's still a lot that needs to change (judging from the like to dislike ratio, i can see people aren't willing to acknowledge that), but it starts with getting the conversation going and i'm thankful you are using your platform to do so. i've been performing from about the age of nine and as i've grown older i've become more aware of the subtle discrimination in classical music spaces (biases towards white students in competitions where i live, lack of diversity in orchestras and its audience) and i hope to be part of the generation that sees that this changes soon!
So glad you’re excited to pursue music, despite the challenges it poses. Unfortunately, those challenges will likely persist, at least for a while, but more and more, people with the ability to make things happen are rejecting those institutions. I wish you the best heading into music school, and I hope I can be of some help! Be well!
Lack of diversity? Why do you expect equal representation when you're a minority? You would have to have an overwhelmingly disproportionate amount of interest from the "woc" community to get equal representation. Be truthful, you like his nonsensical arguments because he puts down whites in favor of other groups.
Dirty Leftist, disgusting what is happening to the West right now! As a youth myself, I can tell most of my peers are all brainwashed.
You may not say this is funny, but your analysis is silly making leaps that typical wokists make as if their aren’t parallels in other non-European cultures. Many different societies had musicians seeking some kind of patronage to allow them to earn from their creative pursuits just as nearly cultures connect music to spiritual expression to the god or gods of said culture’s religion. This is narrow-minded and ironically verging on racist to act as if East Asian, Middle Eastern, Sub-Saharan African, and Native American music doesn’t get respect. The reason why people like Mozart and Beethoven are held so high is because they found inspirational around them, then took the conventions of that society’s music and transcended it to something greater. Please tone down the “I got white guilt, therefore all things white are inherently steeped colonial dominance and racism” crap. You honestly think Mozart sat at his piano a with his parchment paper and thought, “I hope this piece proves the superiority of the white race”?
How about black privlege in blues and soul music?
The question of whether a specific work or body of work warrants something like a Pulitzer prize should be a separate question from whether any work identified with that genre could ever warrant something like a Pulitzer. The Pulitzer people can do what they want. But it's important that people who disagree with Kendrick Lamar getting a Pulitzer to have to explain, unambiguously, what is the real basis of their disagreement. Even if I agreed with people who think classical music is "timeless", "universal" or "transcendent" in ways that other music can't be (I don't), I at least hope I'd be open in principle to the possibility that, in any given year, a more worthy recoring could somehow come from what is called the Hip Hop genre. I hope I'd understand why, if I dismissed the recording without even trying to listen to it first, there would be a reason why people would be thinking I'm a douchebag.
I have just discovered this series, THANK YOU so much for addressing this. About to binge it all, see you on the other side of these analyses
Didn't like how you depict "classical" music as a monolithic block, while at the same time asking for thoughful consideration of the specific origins and context of music by current minorities. The notion that it's taught as some single-block narrative to its practicioners is also not quite so. A lot of conservatory training focuses exactly on these styles being distinct in time and place, though I will of course grant there's a degree of commonality and a sense of continuity in the "classical" canon.
I mean, I don't think of the classical tradition as being a monolithic block, but it is more substantially codified by history of patronage and written history. I'm sorry that it came off that way, but if it clarifies, I'm discussing classical spaces in this video in terms of their structures (conservatories, orchestras, production companies, etc.) not so much in terms of the genres within the tradition.
And yeah, conservatory training breaks from the continuity narrative at a certain point, but most (or at least many) undergraduate music history tracks teach classical music history as existing on a clear narrative from Josquin to Boulez, unless you're lucky enough to have a fantastic musicologist on faculty. The amount of training one has to go through to "prove" their knowledge before learning about the nuances of historiography is substantial.
Academic study of classical music is being deliberately homogenized to reflect a grammar treating as superficial or irrelevant anything other than preparation of dominants, prolongation of dominants, and resolution of dominants. Because that's what 18th Century Vienna sounds like. It's ironic that people I met in music school who decried the characterization of classical music as a monolithic block were more or less the same people working hard to turn classical music into a monolithic block.
From Jazz to Rap...so much progression...no cars for you, Mr. cultural appropriation.
I enjoy listening to woke speak. It's like like listening to a cult member.
LMAO!!!!! This is hilarious!!!!
Don’t fool yourself, I’m Navajo and Mexican and rarely find anyone in my community who likes Classical music. You’re trying too hard to be inclusive, when the demand doesn’t exist..
It's absurd. People can (and should) enjoy what they like. The whole concept of being against "cultural appropriation" is just another way of being for cultural segregation.
@@kev3d You’re right. The idea that we haven’t been exposed to classical music is absurd too. I like some of it, but i’m not buying Mozart’s greatest hits anytime soon..
I'm pretty sure that almost any funk and prog-rock musician would disagree with you about your point about cultural appropriation. No one 'owns' a culture. Culture is the product of a group of people interacting, and when two groups with set cultures begin to interact, they exchange ideas and sometimes splinter into subcultures and/or unify into a new fused larger culture. The Jazz style is one of these fusions, its origins coming from the local black american musical tradition (mostly blues) combined with the concepts, instruments, and arranging of the european-american band/orchestra.
I do agree that the classical music bubble is highly gate-keeped, but I also believe that it is purely because it is a dying medium. It costs too much money to put on large orchestras, and the efforts to combine musical traditions to reach out to other communities have fallen either on deaf ears or have not been interesting or good. It's also a deeply intellectual and sometimes very pretentious medium, where you can easily be looked down upon if you are ignorant of various musical technique. You can see how living genres like country music have adapted and changed from their roots in early american folk songs and the southern blues traditions to wholly adopt and change to adopt more 'popular' sounds.
The way you use 'privilege' is non-specific and seems entirely used to demonize the classical music tradition as an educated elite who abuse their superior knowledge. I could easily argue that a non-classical musician is more privileged because they don't have the years of training in a set, sometimes very dogmatic style, and can accept and incorporate new music from different cultures much more easily. Privilege is relative and unquantifiable, so using it to push change is like pushing an article of faith on a non-believer.
I'm not sure why 'owns' is the word in quotes when ownership was not used as the metric for culture. The issue is one of belonging to a culture. Prog-rock and funk are certainly different from the classical tradition, because the former are examples of groups coming together to create together, where much of the classical tradition is rooted in educated white men learning about the traditions of other cultures, and using them without existing in the advancement and respect of the culture. I'm certainly not arguing against cultural dynamism (which is impossible to stop and stupid to argue against), but cultural diffusion as a result of uneven power structures between different cultures is problematic.
Your second two paragraphs I can't really stand by in any way. I fail to see how a community that has historically been supported by the aristocracy and the bourgeoise, whose practitioners belong(ed) to the strongest world powers of their eras, and who has historically kept "outsiders" from entering the tradition are in any way underprivileged. I'm also confused as to how you took the world "privilege" to be demonizing in this video. It's something that I constantly identified in myself and expressed optimism in recognizing it and reducing its power with a cooperative effort.
Also, to the topic of ownership and cultural diffusion, there are some musical practices that are historically very fluid and others which are very meticulously preserved, so to claim that "no one owns a culture" is oversimplified, unless we're saying something like "Dan alone owns post-punk." And while I don't know anything about you, I can say personally that I have no right to say who should and shouldn't have access to Inuit throat singing, for example. So while I'm not assuming that's where your comment was going, arguing for a lack of cultural ownership often coincides with a belief that one can appropriate cultural traditions for their own benefit.
u8qu1tis you nailed it. Well said. Adam, you seriously need to re-evaluate your life and whatever sick ideology you subscribe to. You are a cancer to society.
To use elements of a distanced culture without credit or basic respect is appropriation. But at least half of the complaints I see about people appropriating culture are rooted in supposition about whether or not credit or respect has been offered, and are complaints coming not from the people whose culture has been supposed to have been appropriated. I think it's time we specifically called out those cultural appropriators whose genre of appriopriation consists of baselessly imposing outrage on 3rd parties for their own political interest.
So if i get influenced by japanese pop music i am culture appropriating wtf how would music evolved if not influenced 😂
The opening statement is correct: this video is not funny, or even mildly amusing for that matter. Instead, it is much the same as numerous other videos covering the subject on UA-cam. Same old, same old as the Thais say. One yearns for a little originality or someone with the individuality to espouse a different opinion on this subject.
Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Chopin, geniuses who did not need help, Mozart was writing great pieces at 8 so no this video is misleading
It's significantly easier to write pieces at 8 when your family is musical and when you have access to instruments
@mm-dn6oe
Frankly alot of composers had kids who didn't follow the music career so your idea is flawed.
Inspiration ≠ Cultural Appropriation
Mozart was stealing from other cultures. Are you really serious, I mean really?
Is there any form of high art, which can exist without inspiration?
For the first few minutes you got me, because I agree that Rap (and so others) can be full of intellect, skill and inspiration.
But then you got in this death spiral of un-reflected arguments and made up concepts.
I don’t think you’re alone in accepting the argument up until a point where it affects something you hold dear. This is only one of several comments on this thread that is dismissing my entire video over a criticism of Mozart (or some Debussy), but I appreciate that you seem more willing to engage with this conversation than others. I agree that inspiration does not equal cultural appropriation, but to say that Mozart’s musical upbringing was purely one of “inspiration” is historically inaccurate. Most people know the story of Mozart transcribing music from the Vatican and thinking that was cool, but much of his early career with his father and many of his years as an adult were spent traveling to different places to perform or work as a composer, and much of the innovation we credit him with in classical music stems from using working class musical traditions from populations who were oppressed by the very patronage system that supported his career. I’m not implying that Mozart was individually some demon going around and pillaging for musical ideas, but the development of classical music is largely based in the oppression of the aristocratic system, and Mozart’s work is a prime example.
No one used the term "cultural appropriation" as a reason not to perform my works in the 90's that contrapuntally elaborated various nonwestern melodies. I was very clear about what I was doing, and all the resistance seemed to come from people who were white-identified. People eager to scream "cultural appropriation" may occasionally have a very compelling point, but that is incidental the the larger pattern in which they are serving as unwitting pawns of the cultural establishment. If you really think about it, for white American composers to write music that sounds like contemporary African-American music is not more culturally appropriative than to write music that sounds like 18th Century Germanic music. But African American culture is less hegemonic than Germanic American culture, so Germanic Americans are eager to see anybody else try hard not to sound African American, and eager to see African Americans help to suppress American culture that identifies less as Germanic than as African American. Where's the cultrural appropriation outrage either from black Americans or white Americans about non-Germanic Americans learning to meticulously mimic the compositional mannerisms of 18th Century Vienna?
Notice how 'cultural appropriation' only goes one way...Adam is a bigot.
Sounds about right to me.
This is one cringeworthy video. No other culture on the planet has made such marvelous and complex classical music as Europe. It is incomparable, and a reflection on the civilization itself. How did Mozart steal from other cultures? Do you think he was listening to some African tribal drum music and then all of a sudden got inspired to compose his fifth Symphony? lmao. White self-loathing at its finest. It’s truly sad that so many young people are being indoctrinated like this now. Be proud of your ancestors and their accomplishments.
I happen to prefer the canon. I generally don't like classical music after about 1920 with some notable exceptions (including some pretty experimental and minimalist types). Face it: the canon has swag and y'all be broke.
So it doesn't seem like the arguments in this thread are going to end anytime soon, so here's the deal:
There are plenty of conversations to be had on the difference between appropriation and appreciation... or as we've been talking about it, cultural appropriation vs. cultural osmosis. These are important conversations to have, especially when we don't really talk about the differences in our field.
However, if you start evoking white supremacist language, insult entire cultures/genres, or (for some reason this came up) get transphobic... you're getting banned.
You have a right to your opinions. You have a right to disagree with opinions. But opinions are about "should pineapple go on pizza" or "are bowed crotales the biggest cliche in new music?" not about the humanity of a given race or whether or not oppression is good. If you think you have a right to post discriminatory crap in here, you're a piece of trash who's getting banned.
Mozart was writing great pieces at 8, so no he would not need anyone or anything else to help him. Something being Eurocentric is not inherently bad
Unlike Mozart or Bizet, I don't think you are a significant enough human to determine what 'the deal' is.
People have opinions about political/cultural/important things too. And not everyone defines "oppression" the same way - it's pretty much become anything the Left dislikes. I've heard the claim that dieting is oppression against "weighted people".
When you realise you have created a bunch of black supremacists just like BLM by talking about how bad your own race is you will one day see a rise in hate crimes towards white people which won't be reported as the government and law doesn't believe it's a thing but I'm sure will experience one day and regret your fuel of it. You make me laugh.
You look exactly like the type of person who’d make this kind of video, hilarious.
Please donate to black lives matter so they can squander it on mansions!
No levels of testosterone detected
NPC face. It was mid-2020, so he had to support the #currentthing
what do u think about the term white, and color... it seems its that its them and the rest of the people.... english its not my mother tongue.... love your video. the question its more about whats correct... or not...
I dont know if you are serious or woke-trolling youtube, but do you seriously claim that anything invented by a people/countries who held slaves or colonized at some point in time are 'bad' and bias and attention should therefore go to less intelligent achievements made by people higher up on the victimhood-pyramid?
I don't about America but here in the UK we are combatting this problem by doing many things:
- We formed the Cheneke orchestra , an orchestra formed from black and other minority ethnic people and they perform every year at the BBC Proms festival now.
- We've been encouraging black role models to participate in musical events. Cellist Sheku Kanneh Mason is an example of this.
And yet there are people who will complain that that's also superficial and exploitative. I always favor "damned if you do". Having not done it has already been tried, and how did that work out? What's the next option on the list?
🤔
First: Cultural apropiation is not a bad phenomenon, its a natural phenomenon in culture. Second: you don't need to understand the culture to enjoy and understand music, for example I love Henry Purcell's music from 17 century Britain, I think is universally beautiful. Nobody can understand that particular culture 4 centuries later. Ps: I am a Latino and I really enjoy and respect classical music.
JAIME MEJIA You’re thinking of cultural osmosis. Being influenced by any culture you’re exposed to is natural, but actively taking something from someone’s culture while not respecting the people who practice that culture is not. You’re not appropriating just because you like Purcell’s music, because I’m guessing your daily actions aren’t suppressing English people.
Also, you can think Purcell is beautiful (I do too), but it’s not accurate to claim Purcell is “universally” beautiful. Not everyone thinks Purcell is beautiful.
@@AdamODell Why do you say music composers disrespected or opressed other cultures ? Germany was not even a unified state, let alone owned any colonies by the time of mozart.
Also can we say the same about other genres of music that have incorporated western elements into their music ? Are other cultures apropiating european music ?
@@hugolozano2162 You could fairly characterize Hungary as a colony of the Holy Roman Empire in Mozart's time. It is true that Haydn worked for Hungarian nobility. But just try to show me a list of ways that Haydn's music sounds at all Hungarian. Don't get me wrong; I love Haydn's string quartets. But in a larger perspective, if the options are appropriation and assimilation, appropriation might be the lesser evil. Schenkerians have no problem with an African American appropriating/assmiliating Mozart. Why would they if it means one less African American performing African American music? Think about it.
How do you feel about Roomful of Teeth's response to the criticisms about appropriation?
Overall, I was pretty underwhelmed if not disappointed in the response. Their business model is built on appropriation - literally having an expert come in to teach them techniques that they can apply indefinitely to future works. I haven't heard anything since their statement about reworking Partita, but I really hope that, if they continue to produce, they limit their scope of non-classical techniques to ones that either have some cultural universality or that don't belong to endangered traditions, or they bring in vocalists who belong to non-Western cultures/traditions.
The big issue is (coming to this as someone who is continually working to understand) 1) profiting off of non-Western tradition while 2) keeping those profits out of the hands of the stewards of said tradition. They still haven't undone that relationship, and until they do, I'm gonna be against their performance model.
@@AdamODell Adam O'Dell I see that position. I guess I don't see RoT's process as appropriation because RoT is directly engaging with practitioners of the styles they use and hire these practitioners as teachers. I see this as respect and understanding for non-classical traditions. I would be interested to hear the perspective of RoT's teachers on the use of these techniques in the Partita and whether they support it.
If RoT had used these techniques without consulting practitioners the situation would be cut and dry appropriation. I don't see how they're taking away money from the practitioners of these techniques in any sense though. RoT is not claiming to be an Inuit group and is paying their teachers.
@@benhavey4107 Yeah, there's a complicated dynamic there that I don't have enough perspective on to have an in-depth opinion about. The big thing about Inuit throat singing is that it is legally designated as belonging to the Inuit people, and the criticism I've heard about the RoT model from people who have the perspective that I can't offer is that one teacher cannot speak for the culture at large, and that the traditions are being greatly separated from their original contexts.
My apologies if I back off on this conversation in the near future. I like to be in dialogue with people watching my videos (thank you for being one of them!) but I also don't want to speak out of turn. It will be a few interviews from now, but I will have someone on to talk about this who will have more appropriate things to say.
How USA got at this point? What did gone wrong?
Any rapper winning a prize in literature devalues the prize. Good bye, meritocracy. Tragic.
Is this a joke? You can't be serious. This is why I hate woke culture.
Adam, thanks for the thoughtful analysis and for using your platform for good.
I have no problem with whites gatekeeping their cultural music (classical music) I just don't like when whites turn around and start trolling and calling us racist and getting emotional when we blacks try to do the same with our music (Hip Hop and R&B) Just look at the situation with Lord Jamar for example.
What white people are gatekeeping classical music?
Omg stop with this politics ... it's so toxic ..
Surely the "Pullitzer Prize" is also a creation (and not a discovery) of Western hegemony? And who are you to decide, a "privileged" product of the elite Western academic system? Philosophers, from Plato to Kant, from Lydia Goehr to Roger Scruton, have attempted to work from first principles when evaluating the qualities inherent in music. You wouldn't say ethical values are always subjective; why art? Neither have you considered Hume's "is-ought" problem. Too many questions for this to stand as a valid thesis, I'm afraid!
Y’know, I usually don’t respond to these burner UA-cam accounts using cliched philosophical rhetoric to name a bunch of books they probably haven’t read, and calling my argument invalid without even stating a coherent argument, but this one was exceptional, so I guess I’ll just say:
Yes, ethical values are subjective. Like, different cultures have entirely different ideas about what animals are okay to eat, when/if capital punishment or killing in general is justified, which forms of government are just.
Like... seriously, you think ethics... a term defined by values *specific to an individual or group* are objective?
Good lord racism deniers on UA-cam are a special breed.
This was a great start. Can't wait to see you go further in detail in future videos!
rohiogerv22 Thank you! Part 2 is up now, and part 3 should be coming around the end of the month, just getting some resources ironed out.
This was a joke, right?
Thank you. I could not have said this better and can’t wait for part. 2. I would love to share my own experience.
Colour of skin is irrelevant being Black entitles you to nothing the only thing that counts is talent
Traditional Japanese music has a race problem: there’s too many Japanese and not enough blacks. This isn’t diverse and it’s systemically racist.
We need to talk about it
I'm worried also about Chinese opera.
That's interesting because there are virtually no black people in Japan. They are a very culturally homogenous peoples.
@@benitomussolini8544 thats problematic
@@666j1 How so? Not every country can be as diverse as America. If we were to evenly distribute a minoritiy to every country there would be none of those people left in their would be none left in their home country.
@@benitomussolini8544 it promotes division and racial superiority. thats problematic. we are one race. period.
seriously dude! just stop
I'm so bored with this discussion!
Okay well this video is 4 years old so…
@@AdamODell So, has this nonsense gone away since then?
Utter crap.
I guess I'm a Hispanic, white supremist, then. 🙂 Come at me, bro. My Tiger Kungfu...is better than yours...I don't think you're good enough...to avenge your master...
When can we drop this stupid shit and just get along, there's lots of great, different music! Case closed.
And you definitely do not speak for most classical musicians, you are creating the problem you are trying right by speaking about it!
Thank you Adam. Everything in this video needed to be said, and honestly your comments on what you listen to are making me consider all of the different types of classical music that I listen to these days. My listening typically consists of film and video game music (occasionally some contemporary orchestral music too), but how many of the people do I listen to represent those who face constant repression in this genre of music? I mean, have you ever talked to someone who can name a black film composer off the top of their heads?
Terence Blanchard, a trumpeter and composer who's worked with director Spike Lee on several of his films (25th Hour, BlacKkKlansman, etc.), if anyone, is usually the first black film composer that comes to peoples' minds these days. His scores are often a mixture of classical sounds and light rock ballads. Others I listen to are Isaac Hayes and several jazz composers who lent their skills to film (Quincy Jones for In Cold Blood, Duke Ellington for Anatomy of a Murder, Herbie Handcock for Round Midnight). Indian composers like Ravi Shankar and A.R. Rahman, female composers like Rachel Portman, Wendy Carlos, and Hildur Guðnadóttir, East Asian composers like Tan Dun, Akira Ifukube, Jung Jae-il, Joe Hisaishi? Their greatest works cannot be ignored.
Even with all of those people, I don't think that's enough, because when you do a search of online videos and other resources on film scoring, you see how small the field of recognized composers from marginalized groups is. You can't pick-and-choose composers here, people - there are people out there who are working hard to do their best and hopefully make their name known. Although to some it may sound foolish, my greatest hope in all of this is that, in however much time I have left on this planet, those repressed composers who we know and those who we don't know will be able to step forward and proudly receive all of the recognition that they fought a lot harder than anyone else to deserve.
Why should “fighting” be a prerequisite for what you listen to? Seems like you would be missing out on a lot of good content this way.
Listen to tango and or flamenco
(this is Kurt) keep doing this.
Isn't it inappropriate to self promote in your video description? Like, it's good to not do the whole "Like, comment, subscribe!" thing at the end, but you do basically promote your patreon in the video, and you promote your merch, music, and patreon in the description right after the links for donating to BLM and the ACLU (which are good inclusions). Also, are you monetizing this video? I got an ad when it popped up, and I don't really think it's appropriate for you to make ad revenue off of content addressing this particular topic. It might be worth being clear and upfront about this stuff in the future.
Definitely avoiding self-promotion as much as possible in this series. Things I can't change: the ads in the video are currently going to a third party who has made a copyright claim on the elevator music at 8:07 (which came from a public domain audio library), so hopefully that gets resolved and the ads stop. I'm currently unable to monetize on UA-cam at all, and even if I make partner status, I am keeping these videos demonetized. A thank you to patrons is part of the Patreon tier system, and they are the ones who are funding the upcoming videos, so to exclude them from credit in this endeavor would be dishonest.
External links for my own self-promotion have been deleted. They're automatically attached at the end of my video descriptions and I forgot to remove them before publishing. I appreciate you pointing that out.
@@AdamODell So, I still have some beef with this for a few reasons.
The first is that you still have a patreon link up. I know you put in a caveat about “if you’ve already donated to other causes and still feel like donating,” but this still smacks to me of profiting directly off of topical videos dealing with a struggle that is not your own.
If even a single person donates to your Patreon because of this video, you are directly profiting off of the struggle that black musicians face every day and the systemic problems of the very system that has propped you up in the first place.
It’s also wrong, in my view to peddle your Patreon in video. I don’t care that those people donated to your Patreon, which made these interviews and videos happen. It’s still promoting something that profits you directly. Does this money go into a separate account that you only use to support black musicians and content creators? Or does it go into directly into your personal bank account? Like, if you’re going to postulate yourself at the center of this, you’ve at least got to cut the self-promotion.
Other points, but I’ll be brief.
Where are your citations, reading lists, etc.? I know these ideas weren’t magically birthed from your mind, and you make a lot of statements without crediting any sources at all.
DAMN is Kendrick Lamar’s fourth album not his third (not counting untitled/unmastered). I know this is nitpicky, but you’ve got to get at least basic details right (Section.80 is good, if not as developed or powerful as GKMC, TPAB, UU, or DAMN.)
I know this is the first video and that you’re planning on actually highlighting people of color in future videos, but this is, right now, still very centered on you. Other than Kendrick Lamar, you don’t mention a single black person in your video. You talk about your experience, your viewpoints, and your project. You don’t even mention specific people you’re planning on interviewing in the future, and you aren't giving other people a platform at all in this video. Other white content creators who I’ve seen tackle some of our systemic issues almost completely remove themselves from the equation, promoting black voices and refusing to profit even a little from this. Not coincidentally, they are the same people who have been consistently vocal about these issues before and the systemic conditions that lead to them.
You are covering a ton of really complicated concepts in a short amount of time, but you need to go a lot more in depth with some of these issues. I think you know this, so I won’t say any more about it.
It feels like, to me in this video, you’re whitewashing this whole issue. I already mentioned that you made this very you centered, and you don’t mention the real issues with the Pulitzer in the first place. How about, before DAMN won it in 2018, only four black composers had ever won the Pulitzer at all in its nearly 80 year history? And that 3 of those were for "jazz pieces?"
This brings me to my next point; you almost get there, but there’s no mention of the academy’s role in all of this. How the academy makes “classical training” prohibitively expensive for many people, and how that disproportionally affects people of color? How about that the reason many people in the classical music community don’t see hip hop as legitimate music because you don’t need academic training to make that music at all? How about that the same was true of jazz until it was codified and enveloped into the academy? I’m assuming that you’re a part of the academy, so it’s important to understand and criticize the structures that lead to people like you being successful in the first place.
The last thing I’ll say is that this feels like blatant opportunism. This video feels like your half-baked attempt to be “woke” and acknowledge racism for the social and monetary value it generates for you. You have no specific timeline, schedule, or subjects for your “interviews.” You have literally no details other than “I’ll be interviewing black musicians and other musicians of color at some point, so make sure to subscribe to see that when (if) it happens.”
(Yes, I know that you didn’t literally ask people to subscribe, but that feels implied, because how else will a viewer see your future videos?)
I hope you follow through with this and that your interviews center black voices in the midst of this moment in history. I hope you use your platform for their benefit, and not yours. I hope that real good comes of this. In the meantime, I’m not buying it.
@@stevejohnson9701 All points taken. I'll remove the Patreon link from the description entirely, and let patrons know that they won't be listed in any of the remaining videos in this series.
The reason why there are fewer specifics about the upcoming topics and interviews is because I want to leave as much space as possible for my interviewees to control the dialogue. I invited the interviewees based on previous contact/experience I've had with them, and I have/had initial ideas in mind for what we could talk about in their segments, but I also don't want to limit the scope or subject of their discussion based on my interactions with them. For example, one person I contacted was someone I had in mind for a conversation about the exclusionary practices in orchestral auditions, but we wound up talking more about institutional (educational) access, and career expectations thrust upon people from marginalized communities. I've also avoided specific timelines because these videos are being shot and edited in dialogue with the interviewees, and they'll be published when the interviewees are satisfied with the content. What I can tell you based on interviews that have already been conducted: there will be a video that is mostly focused on institutional access for black musicians, a video about racism and representation in music therapy spaces, and a video about at least one -- probably more contingent upon further discussion -- organization working at the K-12 level to address systemic exclusion in classical music education.
The only criticisms of yours I take issue with are the one about the scope of this video and the timeline of the series. UA-cam is primarily a platform which supports short video essays addressing focused topics. With this being an introduction video to the rest of the series, it does zoom out a bit more than what works best on the platform, and does leave a lot of topics introduced, but not closed -- but again, this is because people with a more appropriate perspective will be speaking on them in upcoming interviews. This video was intended to address the different treatments of two different pieces/artists after winning the Pulitzer: Caroline Shaw, a white woman who was celebrated for venturing outside the classical tradition, and Kendrick Lamar, a black man who was ridiculed for winning an award (that many white classical musicians believe should be reserved for classical composers) for a non-classical work. And with this comparison, I wanted to highlight the gatekeeping which white classical musicians perform on a daily basis (including myself) that we should seek to analyze within ourselves and dismantle. This video was one primarily centered around the actions of white musicians, viewing gatekeeping as a white problem that white people need to fix, not a BIPOC problem that white people need to empathize with.
The major takeaway I want for this video specifically is to analyze my own whiteness, invite other white classical musicians to do the same, and develop some mindfulness strategies. The commentaries about white-dominated systems, the BIPOC musicians creating exceptional art despite these obstacles, and how we can dismantle these obstacles are in the works, but publishing them without inviting viewers to start with self-analysis leads to a lot of "I can't possibly be racist, I listened to Julius Eastman"-esque deflections. I organized this video with the tendency of privileged people to distance themselves from the systems that benefit them in mind. I'm always happy to hear from people about how I can do better to address these topics, and I appreciate you taking the time to do so.
i don't get why my comment was deleted/banned. i didn't and would never support racist/supremacist ideas, and i didn't do that in my comment.
I don't like DAMN, because I'm white. I suppose just don't get it the way black Americans do, but Classical music I understand and appreciate, because it's part of white culture.
Why must everything be deconstructed?
What's the case for NOT doing it? “I find the insinuation that I can't ask questions AND have fun condescending.” - Ricardo Sanchez
Thank you, Adam!
I will be learning with you, and, I hope, learning to do better.
PS - Yes! @ 8:13!
Great video Adam, but surprised, though I shouldn't be, of the hostility and ignorance in some of the comments.
Eh, I knew what I was signing up for. Hopefully it chips away at people after enough callouts. And thanks for the kind words!
@@AdamODell it doesn't chip away at us. It simply reveals that you are an angry incel who is bitter and envious over the achievements of superior peoples.
"If I can't be great, no one is allowed to be great"
- Adam O'Dell
Very thought-provoking, Adam. This is the first time I've heard you speak, and you raise some important questions about how art music is identified, recognised and composed. You've already addressed to another commenter the question of modern groups blending styles, so I'll take that as applying to multi-ethnic groups such as Weather Report. Might I ask how this applies to groups that were homogeneous, such as the Beatles, or individual composers, such as Gershwin, who blended styles in their compositions? The Beatles introduced instruments from Indian traditions owing to George Harrison's (in particular) involvement in Eastern spirituality through works like "Within You Without You" and "Norwegian Wood", and Gershwin was a Jewish composer combining classical and African-American musical elements in works like "Rhapsody in Blue" and "Porgy and Bess". From my understanding, the cultural underpinnings of these works were clearly understood and recognised by the listening public when these works were released. Do you feel that this made the usage of these elements justifiable? Are there ways that these composers could have handled the issue better?
Hey! I'm actually hoping to address this in an upcoming video, so excuse me for keeping this comment shorter than some of my others in this thread. Culture is inherently dynamic (the human brain is actually really bad at replicating something perfectly, so change and influence are inevitable), so it would be an oversimplification (and just incorrect) to say that combining musics from multiple cultures is always bad. With Gershwin especially, he was considered progressive in his time, but the spaces in which he worked (and therefore the cultures which created the narratives around him) were very white dominated. It's important (especially for white musicians) to critically analyze that Gershwin may have been better than some of his contemporaries on this front, but there are still problems to address.
The Classical period was an era of classical music between roughly 1730 and 1820. I'm sure that what's being referred to in this video is orchestral music in general, but the idea that composers like Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Wagner, Debussy and Tchaikovsky appropriated music from non-white cultures is absurd. Even looking outside the Classical period it's hard to see Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Respighi or Holst appropriating their style of writing from non-white peoples outside of Europe. Trying to make the claim that Classical Music is racist based on nothing more than the fact that these composers were white is reaching to the extreme.
I've read several pieces about racism in classical music where the author's claim was based on nothing more than the lack of Black faces in the nations top symphonies. They trip all over themselves trying to ignore the fact that Asians and Jews make up a larger percentage of classical musicians than what they make up in the general populations because those groups might mess up the narrative they were trying to create. Dismissing the years of time spent alone in a room working on fundamental techniques because of the need to make a point about racism if offensive. One of the suggestions was to get rid of the blind audition process so that race could be considered when selecting musicians. This makes it look like the talent of a particular performer is not as important as making sure the the racial makeup in an orchestra is the same as the population at large.
We don't see the accusation of racism popping up in regard to the popular music styles of today. African-Americans dominate the pop music charts and are credited with creating several categories of music including Blues, Jazz, Hip-Hop and Rap. Anyone who would dispute that fact would be called out really quickly. Making the claim that Classical music is racist while ignoring how other groups are drawn to and dominate certain other styles of music might get a person credit with some social justice warriors, but it doesn't make it any more true.
Villalobos is one of Brazil's greatest nationalist composers. He ,like Bartok, went around ethnographically collecting this indigenous peoples of Brazil's music.....HE ALSO went to Paris and super influenced by many of the Great modernists that make up modern classical music.... This is one of a million examples which foils this boob's attempt at crying cultural appropriation ! Thank you so much for your detailed counter to this nonsense.
Debussy borrowed theoretical concepts AND literal instruments from Asian cultures. What's absurd about it?
Also, as confusing as it might be, "Classical" is in fact the catch-all term for the genre. Chamber music is not orchestral music. Solo repertoire is not orchestral music. Artsong is not orchestral music.
@@rohiogerv22 OK and?
Hortleberry Circus Bround Sorry I thought I ended my sentence with a period.
@@rohiogerv22 so are you saying the classical music is an omelet. religion is a omelet. history is an omelet and your psychology is an omelet and a omelet is a omelet
Could you do this for Country music. I think that genre is the real crime. Sorry, not sorry.
Go work your fast food job dummy
@@kingroyalgaming6122 uhhh, it's called my expedited consumables vocation. Please try to be more sensitive mam/sir/them.
Classical music is inherently racist. As a cishet straight while male composer, our kind has said enough through the ages. It is time to pass the torch to those unheard. It is inherently racist to perpetuate this culture of oppression. Let's not only amplify the voices of trans/bipoc composers, but minimise the voice of those who have been historically over-represented. This is the work that must be done.
It is inherently racist because it is inherently a white thing. Show me a black person who can feel Bruckner the same as I. Opera and ballet attendees are usually on the whiter side of humanity as well.
@@mishutoful maybe it's because white people oppressed black people? just a thought
@@sentientarugula2884 I like your name
@@mishutoful base- wait
@@mishutoful aight I can appreciate that joke
Wonderful video Adam! So informative and incredibly important, thank you!
Mouse face numale
So refreshing to hear this.
By your postulation Erik Satie would also suffer from exoticism but in fact he was a Rosicrucian and wrote music for their ceremonies. Rosicrucianism is a mixture of eastern and western religious traditions. During the 19th century a great deal of Western thinkers ( Madame Blavatsky, Gurdjeff and Roerich) were traveling East to uncover the mystery schools. ... This eventually turned into what we know as new age movement....I could go on and on about the fusion of language , or architecture, of foods and of dance styles. Fusion is a necessary part of life-OR what you call "cultural appropriation"! Ever hear of "pasta" or maybe Yoga class? THIS Cultural appropriation thingy is a insurgency within the academy to create decay and collapse. Nice try!--------- Don't feel guilt! Bach is a GOD and should be prayed to. Padre Antonio Soler's composition, Fandango is based on flamenco and fragments of Moorish origin!!!! OH NO!! Sound the alarms AND mash the "cultural appropriation button immediately! Phew, that was a close one.
I think we need to think of this less on an 'influence' continuum rather than a 'power' continuum.' Fusion and synergy are great and necessary, but let's just be honest about who's on top, hand has been for hundreds of years.
Persons eager to participate in a complex emergent global culture are not appropriators. Persons making use of disposable caricature are appropriators. But there's a pretty big gray area. We won't be able to sort out the gray area, though, as long as people keep pretending there is no gray area, or that either end of the spectrum doesn't exist. There's the appearance that policing cultural appropriation is essentially the provenance of liberal culture. But I can't help finding this suspicious. Why would a conservative establishment NOT want to prevent people from hybridizing culture if they've historically wanted to prevent people from mixing genetic groups?
If you have a fragile ego and haven't been exposed to any other culture than white culture, you won't understand what he is saying. I am black and understand him 100%.
There is no “white culture” the term white is not a monolith stop trying to group a up a rich varied set of cultures together into one group
White culture is the most advanced and refined on earth. Have you ever been to Europe? It is absolutely magnificent. Classical music is a reflection of this.. Why is immigration only going one direction? Everyone wants to come to white countries, not the other way around. The most happy, functional, and prosperous countries on earth are all virtually 100% white. Iceland, Norway, Denmark, etc. nearly all of the most significant scientific and technological breakthroughs of the modern era have come from Europe. Just being real.
Or maybe we just don't agree. Your racism is showing by assuming that this pertains to whites only.
This is great comedy.
This is so ridiculous... Classical IS superior to all other forms of music... Period... Race has nothing to do with music... You may want to apologize to the non white classical musicians as there are countless... Excellence is excellence and classical is as good as it gets... Just because monarchs hired virtuosos doesn't make the music white supremacy no more than the monarchs that have hired James Brown or Ray Charles... Ray Charles performed for the Queen, so are you going to say he was privileged? Of course not... Are you looking for validity in some strange way? Because you're only going to get it from other betas and miscreants... Classical was the peak... You can follow the music from the African drum to the peak of musical excellence and then all the way back down to African drums... Jazz sounds like classical caught the flu and it progressively breaks down from there to the current forms of music... We've come full circle and now, even the primitive beats of sexual and violent energy are being ruined... Worksboots in a dryer have better rhythm that most new "musicians"... Kendrick Lamar??? Fuck off... 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣