[brucedickinson]

These people obviously never watched I Love Lucy

[Lee Enfield]

Had an LP back when of the “Master drummer of Ghana”. Good stuff. I believe it was recorded in the 1930s.

[Objective Scrutator]

The largest racist musical organization in the USA is BET. No doubt this “journalist” believes that BET should be kept racially pure...

[wideminded]

Classical (Music) so white and male

I've heard that it has been the practice for some time for major orchestras to have potential new members audition behind a curtain so that they are judged only on their musical ability. Apparently this has led to a major increase in female players in orchestras.

[onedoug]

Consider the source.

[Perchant]

These great eras of musical creation happen in clusters of same kinds of people. I don’t remember Americans inviting the Brits to play our Rock and Roll but they just decided to make a bunch of bands between 1963 and for 8 or so years afterwards who are better than any American band and who have created the best music since Brahms.

You have the first two musical geniuses who ever lived being born within a few miles of each other and within a month of each other, and their paths never crossed. Bach and Handel.

[tophat9000]

This is a stupit as saying Jazz, Blues or Gospel is too black

[PGR88]

Classical music is actually mostly Asian, and female now

But they shouldn’t let that get in the way of a perfectly good anti-white slogan

[Intolerant in NJ]

There are a few woman composers around - Jennifer Higdon, now at the University of Pennsylvania, has been getting a lot of play from the Philadelphia Orchestra among others of late - but the Philadelphia also plays a lot of Rachmaninoff and there's no comparison between works like Higdon's blue cathedral and anything Sergei ever wrote IMO.....

[BestPresidentEver]

Even my Asian friends make jokes about how many Asians play classical music. Calling classical white is nonsense.

[Chgogal]

Very interesting thread.

[FlingWingFlyer]

Hey Joshie, how about you retards keep your hip hop rap crap and we civilized people will keep our “non-diverse” classical “white male” MUSIC. Deal?

[RegulatorCountry]

While I’ve always prided myself in having very broad musical tastes I’ve seldom been all that compelled by classical music. Yes, it’s awe-inspiring performed live and yes it’s highly apropos for certain events but for just listening, well, other than background music it’s just not meant all that much to me.

But, of late I’ve been very intrigued by visual representations and it’s changing my perception. For instance, take a look at the following, George Gershwin, Rhapsody In Blue:

https://youtu.be/XFF2miSQ4Zg

I’m one of those visual people, most math annoys me but I excel with geometry. Fine arts degree, been in graphics in one capacity or the other for all my professional life.

I think it’s stunning, to actually see it coming on in waves like that. Makes me want to take up Blender and try my hand at it myself. Sounds have colors, colors have sounds. Let a synaesthete get hold of it and it’ll really sing.

[ReaganGeneration2]

Classical music is used constantly in background of movies.

However, whenever a character is seen playing or enjoying classical music, it’s time for them to commit an atrocity (usually Nazi).

[Jack Hammer]

Yes, by all means, diversity - it’s so much more modern to listen to noise and watch sh*t.

[trebb]

My initial thought too - not to mention Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James, Charley Pride, Lena Horne, Whitney Houston, Michael (the weirdo) Jackson, Tina Turner, Fats Domino, Count Basie, Bo Diddley, Curtis Mayfield, Al Green, Thelonious Monk, Supremes, Charley Parker, Nat King Cole, how about Sammy Davis Jr., Muddy Waters, B. B. King, Little Richard, Aretha (no last name needed), Marvin Gaye, Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, Bob Marley, Chuck Berry, Miles Davis, James Brown, Duke Ellington and Satchmo (Hello Dolly!)........to name a few non-whites.

[blueplum]

Classical music could not have come from anywhere else other than an inspired creativity born from a highly precise and structured society. It is unfortunate that other societies couldn’t achieve the same level of accomplishment in the same time span. But it is sheer idiocy to penalize or criticize westerners for having achieved a higher social model, or to think it can be co-opted effortlessly by more fractured societies. One Tin Soldier, haters.

[Wuli]

Oh yea right, let’s condemn something in spite if its immense creativity, ingenuity, and dazzling demonstrations of the range, diversity, and intricacies possible in music, just because of the “race” of the musical geniuses who wrote so much of it.

[bar sin·is·ter]

"In fact, it’s past time. The lack of ethnic and gender diversity among performers and even more critically among the composers whose work is represented on the programs of America’s symphony orchestras and opera companies has long been a stigma for classical music — one that neither the San Francisco Symphony nor the San Francisco Opera has remotely dodged."

First of all, I find it rather comical that that they claim there is a lack of minority diversity, apparently they feel that Asians are somehow not a minority. The level of hypocrisy is stunning.

To use their mental model with regards to the definition of "minority", no matter how illogical and disingenuous, minorities would perceive participating in the art of classical musica performance or composition as being "white" and unacceptable from their cultural point of view. The foul stench of bullshit permeates everything this article attempts to bloviate.

Furthermore, much of today's "modern" classical music compositionally has sucked balls since Frank Zappa's death.

[Roccus]

Many years ago I saw an interview with an Oriental* conductor who opined that the composers of "classical music" were primarily Europeans because of the keyboard and its ready translation to written music.

* I used the word "Oriental" rather than "Asian" to distinguish him from those of the sub-continent, SE Asia, etc. If it offends anyone...too damned bad.

[meadsjn]

Yes, enough of them white dudes:

Sarah Chang - Massenet - Meditation from Thais

CRAZY ENCORE BY YUJA WANG! Turkish March (Mozart/Volodos/Say) Carnegie Hall