In an audience of white faces, the only People of Color are the help

image credit: lemp-arts.org

I've attended several recitals, concerts, and shows recently, and total lack of diversity was astounding and repulsive.
You all know my feelings on the subject of elitism in music - I've written about it on this blog, and I've also written about Classicism in Music over at the Polonious Sheet Music blog, which is where you can catch me writing twice a month. My biggest ambition as a musician is to help create a creative society where there are no boundaries to participation and collaboration - not financial, not due to gender or sex, and certainly not due to race; though as many of you readers know, all of these issues are woven together in intersectionality.

I went to a show on the West End here in London a few weeks back, and although ONE member of the 20+ cast members was a Person of Color, I didn't see one member of the audience who had more melanin than me. Where's the disconnect there? Certainly People of Color enjoy musicals, and yet we white folks are dominating the field, snapping up all of the opportunities, directing the shows, voting for the Tony's, proving again and again that not enough people are interested in diversity. (The show was decent, by the way - more on that later.)

I attend concerts in the big venues here on a semi-regular basis, and it's no surprise to many of you that the lack of diversity is obvious. When big orchestras like the Berlin Philharmonic are 97% white (and 86% male, but you can read more about that here), it's not hard to see that there's a big problem in classical music that goes far beyond the auditioning process. Blind auditions can help negate personal prejudices, but it does nothing to tackle the problem of accessibility for People of Color - if they are unable to become involved in music at a young age (due to racist and outdated policies about educational funding in low-income and under-privileged areas), then how can we expect that we will have a diverse crowd auditioning for a role? Furthermore, how can we expect that an audience will be a mixed salad of people when huge swathes are disenfranchised at a very young age?

I went to a recital recently (no, I won't name names), and I was horrified that in a city so amazingly diverse as London, where at least 30% of people classify themselves as a racial minority, every single audience member, performer, journalist, and member of the artistic board, was as white as the driven snow. With that swirling around in my brain, when I had a wander around the venue, I realized that the only People of Color in attendance were working the coat check and the bar. My partner and I looked around, heard a great deal of enthusiastic academic conversation, and yet no one seemed even aware of the racial divide at the event. We left, and on the walk to the train station we talked about what that meant for classical music and the arts as a whole. What can patrons and music boards do? What can composers, performers, and directors do? What can WE do?

Let's start a revolution - what can we do to kick this off?