Earlier this week, our fearless blogmaster, Drew McManus headlined the main blog site Inside the Arts with my comments about Diversity. Maybe the topic doesn’t have legs. Or maybe we all have more important things on our minds right now, but I see classical radio being passed by. I’d like you to add this topic to your mental archive and let it percolate.
I’ve gotten comments back about finding ways to bring diverse audience members into our western tradition, and a comment about education being the key to diversity. Yet I want to know what we could do now — today — to include more people. How can we make our product attractive to more than just 82% white people?
There’s a good article about the Sphinx program here. To quote Chicago author John von Rhein,
African-Americans and Latinos make up only 1.7 to 1.8 percent of professional American orchestras, according to the most recent survey by the League of American Orchestras.
Not doing very well, are we? And sure, education is one answer, but how long have we been working collectively to get music into the schools, yet little by little it’s slipping away. How are the orchestras and other arts groups doing at developing diverse audiences? There are lots of statistics and reports out there, but you know as well as I do that it’s not a roaring success.
I hear radio stations across the country playing the same pieces by the same artists from the same CDs and it makes me think of a chain hotel or a chain restaurant. It’s as though our stations are museums, and every museum has the same paintings and sculptures.
That’s ok if we want the tradition to stay as it is and not grow. But meanwhile, all around us the population is changing, diversifying, becoming more inclusive. In literature and movies and food we are blending cultures.
I think in classical radio we will either change or become irrelevant.
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I think it is an excellent topic and one that has very unique implications to each respective community. At the same time, I am interested in learning as much as possible about what is happening in different markets and which issues translate from one location to the next.
Although it has been quite a while I rememebr approaching this topic via the lens of orchestra management and board governance. I though the results were fantastic as a number of board members and donors from several different minority backgrounds weighed in on the topic.
And since I am mostly ignorant of how this issue impacts classical music broadcasting, I’m looking forward to the discussion.
Having worked as a classical host and producer in some of America’s most diverse markets (California) as well as one of its most homogeneous (Vermont) I’m always mindful of local sensibilities and communities in creating programming which is genuinely inclusive and representative.
To what degree does great art transcend such parochial concerns and become both universal and timeless? Maybe the very term “classical” is off-putting and elitist to some younger, multicultural artists and audiences—but Music is either imbued with the spirit to speak across generations and national borders…or it isn’t.
Thanks,
-Robert