Book completed

[eve_prime]

Inclusive Music Histories: Leading Change through Research and Pedagogy: CMS Emerging Fields in Music, by Ayana O. Smith. I saw Prof. Smith give a talk on this topic a few months ago, and although I'm not a member of her target audience, I wanted to read it anyway, because it was quite interesting. The book has advice and detailed suggestions on how music professors can teach classes, especially survey classes, that treat composers who are not white Christian males more ethically. The standard assumption has long been that the Western traditions of serious music had their roots in Western church music, which in turn originated in the Greek and Roman traditions - but actually, other traditions have contributed all along. The results of that standard assumption have been to treat composers who are non-white, non-male, and non-Christian as exceptions, which has the opposite effect to inclusivity because then people who are non-white, non-male, and non-Christian don't get to understand how people like them have been there all along, although not often recognized and certainly seldom appreciated. The book also addresses the way that people outside the Western tradition have been exoticized in music (like Cleopatra and the character Aida), which falls along a spectrum from nearly invisible to stereotyping, all of which is somewhat dehumanizing. She includes detailed suggestions on class assignments and related scholarly readings.

Comments

[claidheamhmor]

Mmm, sounds like an interesting approach.