Examples of Music Classroom Minstrelsy.
Photo: @sbk202
As a Master’s student mistaking racism as double consciousness, Tomie Hahn gave me great advice, she said something to this effect: “be able to remember, to locate in your body, where and when you feel racism.” Here is a list of ways I’ve witnessed minstrelsy of all types in music learning and performance settings. I provide these examples to compliment my previous blog post “Modern Day Minstrelsy in the Classroom.” These are just a few things. I’m sure my BIPOC colleagues could come up with tons more.
Notice how your body feels as you read this list. Remember it. Does your chest tighten? Do you feel excitement in your stomach? Does your face flush hot? Do you recognize your actions, your complicity in the list? If you fail to register within your body how these examples are deeply connected to your acknowledgment of instances of modern minstrelsy, be clear that it is a somatic indication that you need to do more research.
Teaching songs like children’s playing song “Eenie Meenie, Miney Moe”, neglecting to add sociohistorical context to song’s original lyrics
Using Black artists and Black art as the only modern representations of Black face minstrelsy in popular music classes
White scholars interviewing prominent Black and POC musicians to show their proximity to the artist’s legacy of sonic cool, placing special emphasis on collaborations in which the white scholar was involved
Using illustrations of dark-skinned Black Brazilians as promotional materials for a Choro ensemble comprised entirely of white and white Latinx musicians
Using excerpts of Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, instead of artists within the genre, to introduce technical aspects of rap musical performance (e.g., flow, enunciation) in a popular music theory graduate course
*Here is LMM singing in a holocaust version of Jesus Christ Superstar
A white woman student’s world music final project on Australian music included a violent cellphone ad depicting an aboriginal woman being hit in the head with a boomerang. The instructor, her classmates, including other white graduate students laughed out loud. The grad students taking the world music pedagogy course vouched for her to receive a passing grade for this effort.
On two separate occasions a world music instructor asks her students, in the Old Time and Middle East ensembles, to introduce themselves using their “spirit animal,” ignoring the harm and oppressive institutional legacies toward indigenous peoples, specifically Seminole people, at our University.
In the same world music course, a student plays “Brother Mao” video as an example Black people’s lived experiences and musical contributions to China’s culture, the entire class laughs.
In introduction to historical musicology seminar, I use AAVE to break down a concept in our readings. A white woman student chimes in using the word “shooketh” to describe her reaction to an idea in the article. Our professor asks for a definition to which she replies, “It’s internet speak. ”My stomach flutters in rage, I correct her, explaining how white people appropriate Black language on the internet Decontextualizing AAVE words and phrases from the cultural matter from which they are birthed is violent. Her face burns bright red, her brown eyes glisten holding back blazing tears.
A white woman music theory student rushes to define the word “woke” in an introduction to ethnomusicology class for our white male professor, an Africanist.
A white Latina ethnomusicology student laughs with her cousin at olden times during our lunch in NOLA, reminiscing on when they would pretend to be rappers Lil Mama and who was it again?…you know how it goes….
