#70

seriously, that actually states that they think it’s funny and don’t care seriously enough about coming off as white-power or not.

by flagging my post instead of theirs the community proves to be in support of this type of discourse. (this is another reason why if trump wins it might be a good thing: trump wants the complete removal of section230 which will cause places like Lines forums to be much more open to litigation if moderation leans constantly in favor of only one culture’s forms of expression over any other - just because i don’t get along in the same way people who don’t take white-supremacy seriously do, doesn’t mean my expression in giving reasonable feedback over it should be restricted)

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#71

No, that’s not fair. I watched ten minutes and saw straw man after straw man and weak use of evidence. I gave it more time than it deserved.

Here’s the quick rebuttal of the first ten minutes of the video: For at least least a half century, college students in the US have been able to major in ethnomusicology, jazz, electronic music, and even pop music. If you matriculate in “18th century classical music”, that because you–the student–made that choice to attend that school and study that music.

All of those musics that Adam says are left out are in truth well-theorized in scholarly books and journals. His main argument seems to be that some people aren’t thinking of that theory when they say “theory”. The examples he uses to make that case don’t support it, because he’s mind-reading.

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#72

Yes, I do think it’s funny that people actually think music theory is a tool of white supremacy. Well, sad and funny at the same time.

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#73

Straw man, eh… If you’d have watched the video then you could comment on the actual video, rather than about your assumptions about it, and about how well educated you are.

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#74

If you’d have watched the video, you’d have learned that Schenker himself believed that music theory was a tool of white supremacy.

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#75

I’m commenting on the first ten minutes. I make no assumptions about the rest. I haven’t said a word about my education. Please don’t go ad hominem.

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#76

I know there’s a controversy over that, but I don’t know enough about Schenker to assess the validity of that assertion. There’s no doubt that some musicians have been racists though. Here in the US, John Powell would be the most prominent example. His racism had a profound effect on how the folk music business evolved.

#77

:point_up: :point_down:

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#78

Aw you got me! But still, please avoid ad hominem. It really makes it hard to have a good discussion.

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#79

Moderator Note – I want to remind everyone to please treat each other respectfully and generously and to engage in good faith arguments. We absolutely welcome and encourage diverse perspectives.

In order to facilitate a constructive discussion please try to elaborate on your perspectives and views when responding and avoid one-liners, snarky replies, and accusations/assumptions about other people.

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#80

I don’t believe that we need different music theories based on skin color, no. What I do believe (and this could be a contentious point) is that there cannot be one single overarching music theory, because I believe that music theories must involve cultural context as well. So, the appropriate solution is many different theories, all of them with their own context – & to be clear, by “context” I do not mean skin color. Most musical cultures are racially diverse!

The theory that I call “Music Theory” (which is the focus of the video) happens, however, to be rooted in an entirely white male cultural context, and that context is especially rigid & inappropriate for discussions of music from other cultural contexts. I have no problem with that, provided that we give equal weight to other theories and cultural contexts.

I feel like I’m not expressing myself very well, though, so I will leave it at that.

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#81

just want to offer this one final comment from me in response since this is addressed to me, “ad hominem” means to attack one’s character or position, nowhere in my reply was there an attack on character or position, just feedback on the music you posted(here on Lines, you should expect people will provide feedback on music).

having said that, i don’t wish to get on anyone’s nerves, so i appreciate learning from this thread how to proceed and will be more careful in general from now on.

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#82

I’ve just read Ewell’s article. It is well-argued and provocative, and well worth reading:

https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.20.26.2/mto.20.26.2.ewell.html

It has a few serious flaws though. First, Ewell borrows Feagin’s concept of a “white racial frame” and Bonilla-Silva’s concept of “color-blind racism” to validate his arguments. These are tautological concepts that are defined into existence and are immune to falsification. Although they present as “anti-racist”, they essentialize and valorize racial categories instead of destabilizing them, while concealing the role of class conflict as a major source of race categories and race conflict. Ewell replicates those errors. He fails to address class at all; race is his only causal variable.

Ewell convinced me that Schenker was a racist, and that Schenker saw parallels between his racism and his theorizing. But how does conducting Schenkerian analysis in a theory class perpetuate white supremacy? The argument seems to be that valorizing one body of music while excluding others is somehow part of a racial project. I see the logic of this, but I think it ignores the role of social class, and it ignores important realities on the demand side–which can be traced as easily to class as to race.

I also disagree with Ewell’s recommendation to remove Stephen Foster’s songs from the curriculum. It reminds me of the current movement to tear down Confederate statues instead of contextualizing them. Ewell spends most of his article contextualizing Schenker’s work, and arguing that the white racial frame needs to be reckoned with. But instead of contextualizing and reckoning with Foster’s work, he wants to cancel it. Why? How does this flow from the logic of everything that precedes it?

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#83

Thanks @Smapti, that’s a lot clearer! I agree that there are multiple music theories, some more applicable to particular pieces than others. I’d argue that making (or even listening to) a new piece of music is also about making a new theory and exploring it.

For a counterpoint though I enjoyed the “The Invention of African Rhythm” by Kofi Agawu, which goes into some detail about the applicability of western music theory to African musics. It’s 25 years old now, I imagine his thinking has moved on, but I found it super interesting. I’m currently getting a lot out of his more recent book “The African Imagination in Music”…

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#84

As someone with no formal music training this video threw me for a loop. To be quite honest, I don’t think it’s a good video because it argues a very true point poorly.

One issue is that it lacks the context that it is specifically about Music Theory programs at colleges in the United States. This is the context Philip Ewell is operating within in his paper, which is the first source cited in the video and I think it does him a disservice by the video going into tangents about bad thinkpiece articles and Stack Overflow questions.

To realize this it took me going to the Society for Music Theory, which has a page listing music theory graduate programs in the US and every single one I could navigate to had either analysis of tonal music or Schenkerian analysis explicitly in their core curriculum, with other types of theory being optional.

Actual numbers would be far more convincing than assertions, especially since Ewell’s paper (seriously, just read it) has plenty:

[1.1] Music theory is white. According to the Society for Music Theory’s “Annual Report on Membership Demographics” for 2018, 84.2% of the society’s membership is white (Brown 2018, 5), 90.4% of all full-time employees in music theory are white (8), and 93.9% of associate and full professors in music theory are white (9). Aside from this literal version, there exists a figurative and even more deep-seated whiteness in music theory. This is the whiteness—which manifests itself in the composers we choose to represent our field inside and outside of the classroom, and in the music theorists that we elevate to the top of our discipline—that one must practice, regardless of one’s own personal racial identity, in order to call oneself a music theorist. Thus, for example, I am a black person—the only associate professor who self-identified as such in the 2018 SMT demographic report (9)—but I am also a practitioner of what I call “white music theory.”

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[3.2] 98.3% of the music that we teach from these seven textbooks [most widely used in the US] is written by whites. This stark racial imbalance represents an unambiguous example of the white racial frame belief that the music of white persons represents the best framework for music theory. And if one were to count examples from Austro-German composers, one would surely see a clear example of the belief that music from German-speaking lands of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early-twentieth centuries provides the best framework for music theory. On the one hand, music theory, as a field, states that it supports diversity and inclusivity,(7) and with it one presumes racial diversity and inclusivity. But on the other hand, 98.3% of the music that we choose to represent the entire field to our undergraduate students in our textbooks is written by composers who are white. I am certain that if one were to examine the race of the composers who populate the anthologies that accompany these textbooks, as well as the sight-singing and ear-training manuals used in various musicianship classes, one would find similar numbers. I imagine the racial demographic is similar in our post-tonal undergraduate textbooks as well.

[3.3] Also significant from a critical-race point of view, all textbooks that I examined, with the exception of the Aldwell and Schachter (2011), featured at least one example by Stephen Foster, one of the most important names in nineteenth-century American blackface minstrelsy and who himself wore blackface from time to time. Foster’s “Oh! Susanna” may provide a good example of parallel phrase structure, but what of the lyrics in the second verse, written by Foster himself: “I jumped aboard de telegraph and trabbled down de riber / De lectric fluid magnified, and killed five hundred [N-word].” Theory textbooks routinely include lyrics to songs, but Foster’s are obviously excluded. Also note the absurd stereotyped “negro” dialect of the blackface minstrel, who did so much to dehumanize blacks in the buffoonish subhuman practice of blackface minstrelsy (Morrison 2014).(8) I would question why we in music theory would want to honor a figure who did so much to dehumanize blacks in the first place. The inclusion of a white supremacist composer like Foster in our music theory textbooks—a clear instance of colorblind racism—represents a remarkable insensitivity on the part of the white racial frame.

Emphasis mine, I also moved some phrases around for clarity of context.

I’m only skeptical of the claims about the colloquial understanding of music theory being synonymous with Schenker or other theories specific to the common practice period of classical music. Dictionary definitions say something like “it’s a [any] framework to understands how music can create a particular effect” (better worded, obviously), which I think is what it should be, although obviously lay-persons’ understanding of what a word means isn’t always reflected in the dictionary.
I just find this incredibly hard to prove without succumbing to one’s own biases. In my own adecdotal experiences (which I contest are as valid, no more or less, than Neely’s) people who “don’t know” music theory think it is “knowing how to pick the notes that sound good” or “knowing musician jargon”. Again, this doesn’t prove anything without some kind of survey (although I’m very open to people discussing their own experiences w/r/t this, I’m certain there’s a multitude).

The articles he uses as examples also don’t illustrate this point in a meaningful way. There’s only a couple and this kind of bad thinkpieces generally use whatever source they can sensationalize, but it can just as often be jazz theory or cognitive psychology.

This is a broader critique but the way Neely often structures his videos rubs me the wrong way.
They usually start with an antagonist (who is stupid) written about in a sort of pseudo-second person who holds an incorrect view (which is asserted to be commonly held) to whom Neely then condescengly, through often genuinely well-researched and interesting examples, explains why they are wrong and he is right (and implied more intelligent). The explanations often gloss over too many crucial details to be genuinely educational but the lack of introduction to often niche concepts sit at a sour spot for me.

I hope people get at least something more from this post than me dumping on their favorite Berklee bro, in the very least I’ll link these two finds that, while not relevant to the video, are relevant to the general topic of music theories beyond those made to explain music by a few rich white men hundreds of years ago:

I found this essay incredibly interesting in how functional harmony fails to explain (and thus often misinterprets) many American musics:
Blues Tonality by @Ethan_Hein

I’m very sure I found this talk by Kofi Agawu in this thread but it seems to have been deleted so I’ll repost it:


Some of the examples of pre-colonial African music he talks about are absolutely beautiful, both to listen to and from a theory perspective.
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#85

That’s a really excellent article. It points up two of the major flaws in Ewell’s argument:

First, Agawu addresses the illogic of “continentalizing”–ascribing characteristics to an entire continent. Ewell makes precisely that error by reifying “white theory” or “European theory”. But the categories “white” and “European” subsume a host of different musical cultures. Ewell is speaking only of theoretical analyses of music patronized by the ruling class in a small number of Western European nations. I object to Ewell racializing something that is more class-driven.

Second, Agawu raises the emic/etic issue. Even if American universities were to expand their curriculum to include, say, more courses on “African music”, who would qualify to teach and write about that?

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#86

That may be where he lost me, right at the start when he juxtaposes critical race theory with Trump’s recent ridiculousness about patriotic history. The implication is that either you’re down with CRT or you’re an Orangista. His smirk seemed to dismiss people like me: anti-racist and anti-Trump, but also well aware of the significant flaws in CRT and the 1619 Project.

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#87

I helped with Adam Neely’s video, so I’m not neutral here. But using Kofi Agawu as a critique of Ewell is misleading. Ewell mostly wants Western music to be represented better in Western music education settings. If you are upset that the “music theory of white male Western European aristocrats” is being conflated with “music theory” generally, you should be! That’s exactly what Ewell is upset about too. The problem is that the overwhelming majority of music theory curricula in the US don’t make that distinction at all. In my grad school, the required theory core classes use a book called The Complete Musician by a Schenkerian named Steven Laitz, which only talks about the music theory of white male Western European aristocrats. Imagine the chutzpah it takes to use that title for that book. Before we try to figure out how to represent Ewe or Ashanti music in an American music classroom, Ewell would like us to start by representing music by women, or black Americans, or really anyone outside of the canonical “geniuses.”

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#88

Now that I’m actually watching the video, it’s very striking to me that Neely uses math as a foil to music—and that he doesn’t actually explicitly challenge the contention that math is universal! For context, my little corner of twitter went into paroxysms over the contention “2+2=4 is culturally informed” just a month ago. My little corner of math has the legacy of a Nazi who agitated against his Jewish colleagues and died on the Eastern front to contend with…

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#89

Ha, very true… although to be fair to Neely, lay people outside of math are completely unaware of the intense cultural wars that happen inside math (“holy shit you assumed the axiom of choice without explicitly mentioning it? and in what field are you computing 2+2 – a finite field or the real numbers?? you are EXCOMMUNICATED”). I’m willing to give him a pass on that one.

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