Hm, just realized my History of Western Music book is completely mired in the white male lens.

Like yes, Palestrina is great. Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Wagner, Beethoven, Berlioz, Debussy, Satie, etc. But white men couldn't have been the only people in the world to have given great contributions to the western musical tradition.

Scott Joplin is the only black composer that's talked about in normal classical studies. And even then, he's usually only relegated to the creation of ragtime. Which is an IMMENSE feat, of course. But there's no further dive into just how significant he was.

But like, what strikes me more is that we have to wait until the inception of America to even get into composers who aren't white or male.
I can name the number of extremely skilled and influential women composers we talked about on 1 hand.

When it comes to black people it's jAzZ. bLuEs. bEBop. "yeah Louis Armstrong jazz champion. Billie Holiday, blues icon. Ella Fitzgerald, amazing singer. SCATTING." For a day. Then, we pack it up and move on to 2 weeks of discussing 20th century music made by more white men.

World music is even like...worse. I'm thankful for the exposure I got, for sure. But it was so limited in scope. So narrow in application. All I remember are drones and a 10 minute video about Gamelan music.

It all paled in comparison to the importance and reverence placed on music made by white men. These teachings are so pervasive that as a budding music student you don't even question why it is that you're mostly talking about white men and how great they are.

History isn't linear, and the same goes for music history. As great as these men were in terms of musical innovation and invention, there were people who didn't look like them contributing so much at the same time. And we are hardly even taught about them.

It's just jarring. Racism, misogyny,
and biases are such powerful tools man.

Comunque. I'm off to pack. Have a good afternoon to anyone who was bored enough to read this thread.