This year, millions of children across the world will be taking music exams, under some of the most internationally appraised exam boards. However, the vast majority will be playing the music of white European and American males, many of whom have lived in an era of colonisation and slavery. With so many other aspects of education having been ‘decolonised’, why should music in schools continue to be stuck in the past?
While it is true that many great musicians in history are white males and much of their work should not be discredited, it can be argued that a female composer, or one of an ethnic minority, would have found it much more difficult to find work as a musician in the 18th century for example, and they largely would have had less opportunities to become a musician, especially before the 20th century.
One such example is Fanny Mendelssohn, the sister of the greatly successful Felix Mendelssohn, who lived from 1805-1847, and who has been credited with mentoring Felix and writing many of his pieces, having been limited by the social expectation of an upper-class woman like herself at the time. In a different vein, the Royal College of Music, which is one of the most prestigious music conservatoires worldwide, introduced jazz to their syllabus in 1987, and Leeds College of Music was one of the first to do this in Europe, introducing it in 1965.
Considering the expansive timeline of jazz music, and the reluctance of European education as a whole to accept jazz as a form of music, it can be seen that many musical institutions are grounded in old traditions.
Additionally, many exam boards continue to produce syllabuses largely similar to those 100 years ago, with the majority of pieces coming from white male composers from before the 20th century. Recently, at Hampton School, a concert was held, which was made up exclusively of female composers. Several students performed a variety of pieces, from composers such as the innovative Chiquinha Gonzaga, who was the first female conductor in Brazil, to the aforementioned Fanny Mendelssohn, and each composer featured was honoured with an introductory overview of their life and achievements. One audience member, Thomas Bainbridge, said: “it was a great event to champion the work of some fantastic female composers, the work of whom has been unfortunately kept from the limelight for too many years now”. The western world of music education has always been largely male-dominated, but there is progress being made towards the diversification of the curriculum.
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