# Musicians, need your input.



## Ariosto (Mar 4, 2015)

Here's the thing...


Recently, I proposed a teacher to do a small presentation on the kind of stereotypes we can look at on academic music, especifically operatic music, focusing mainly on two categories: men/women, and the orient. My plan is to expose the audience to a determinate corpus of pieces (21 in total, mainly from the XIXth Centhury) and guide them through the differences we can appreciate between the way men and women, and the west and the east, are represented in the music. With this, I plan to show the audience that music, the most 'abstract' of arts, is not inmune to discussion on issues of power and fair representation.

For the record here's one of the pieces I plan showing to them (starts at 3:56)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_ebmTkOtpQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player

How would I proceed? By explaining the dramatic background, playing the piece, asking them to see what differences they notice and, finally, offering a bit of very general theory on why both types of music (western and orientalized) sound the way they do, and how this plays into the stereotypes we've constructed about both sets of entities.

Have I read articles on musical representation? Yes. Do I have material on gender, race and music? Yes. The problem is, though, that this fellow here knows almost 'nill about music theory; he can't even tell what note it is when he listens to it. He can only tell that the women sound different from the men (heavy coloratura, occassional wordless singing, more ethereal and 'wailing' melodies) and that the orient tends to sound in a certain way also (sensuous, tribal, chromatic, excessively bright or excessively dark), and that, in opera, this is deeply interwined with the way the drama develops. Whether this is signaled by the use of certain chords or harmonies? That he knows to be true, but he can't explain it with authority.

Doubt assails me on whether I should actually take on this, basically. Do you think a simple sample-showing with some comment would be too boring for an audience that does not know about music theory? Or, on the contrary, it would be evocative and would at least expose them to the issue and make them try to see for themselves? What strategies could I use to make it more interesting? Or perhaps I should not be doing it at all?


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