João Rocha

Western Illinois University 

Gigging around rural Illinois, I am constantly reminded of my non-whiteness. Semi-professional and community orchestras in the area frequently hire advanced students from different universities. We show up to rehearsal and face a crowd of middle-aged and elderly white musicians who are eager to know more about us, and if we are worthy of performing in their ensemble. The most common question we get is “Where are you from?” which means: “Where do you go to school?” as it is assumed that your hometown is within a 100-mile range. The student replies, and the court is generally satisfied with the answer. Maybe they will have friendly remarks about the school, and professors they know, but that is it, you are welcome now. Unless you are not white. Then, there are follow-up questions: 

“But where are you from originally?” one musician asked.

“Brazil,” I said.  

“You are a bit too tall for a Brazilian, aren’t you?” 

“I don’t think so?” I replied hesitantly, as I wasn’t sure what she meant, but she interrupted me before I could collect my thoughts:

“Is your family native or Spanish?” 

A lady who was going to be my stand partner for a lengthy program said these words verbatim to me. I told her Brazil was actually colonized by Portugal, but that didn’t stop her from showing up at the next rehearsal with a choral score she wanted me to translate. The text was in Spanish.

Someone may think: Well, at least we are a little more enlightened in academia. Is that so? People within academia might make fewer remarks about my physical appearance and ancestry, but they have other assumptions when they learn that I am researching Brazilian music. More often than not, they assume that my research involves capoeira, carnaval, drums, and dancing. Imagine their disappointment when they realize how dully white the music I am researching happens to sound: my main interest has been Carlos Gomes (1836–1896), a Brazilian operatic composer whose work could easily be mistakenly recognized as belonging to Bellini, Rossini, or Verdi, depending on the period of his career. When I introduce myself as a Brazilian musician at a university in North America, I am often associated with a rhythmical genre (not necessarily from Brazil), and again, I let them down by declaring that I play the viola in a string quartet. All in all, the attitude of fellow students, musicians, and professors within universities does not seem to differ all that much from people from the outside.

Frustrated with my experiences being stereotyped, I began to search for the root of these assumptions. I stumbled upon Dr. Jan-Mitchell Ko’s dissertation titled, “Revolutionizing Music Education for BIPOC Students.” Ko conducted several interviews with BIPOC music students, faculty, and curriculum directors from K-12 to higher education music programs. She declares, “The first theme that emerged was the dominance of Western classical music, a finding that not only underscores but also demands the urgent need to redefine music education” (Ko 2024, 49).

It appeared to me that overarching educational systems in the U.S., including universities, were indeed part of the problem. A quick Google search for music programs showed that the requirements for music majors at higher education institutions in the U.S. likely include several courses on European Art Music, ranging from antiquity through the 20th century.[1] Students invest a substantial amount of time and effort in these courses, and it takes them various semesters to satisfy the music history requirements. On the other hand, non-Western musics are often covered in one or two blanket elective courses with generalistic titles such as Music in World Cultures. The Eurocentric configuration of curricula contributes to exoticizing and homogenizing all non-Western music traditions by jamming them all into one box. Additionally, the fact that these courses are not always mandatory allows students to graduate without being introduced to non-Western music. My stand partner from the beginning of this essay has a music degree and still was flabbergasted when I told her that there are several renowned Brazilian orchestral composers.

Ultimately, this Eurocentric structuring of music programs completely bypasses gray areas. The aforementioned elective courses are designed to cover genres that are clearly outside of the Western canon; South American orchestral or operatic composers are not foreign enough to be included in those, and are not “Western” enough to be included in the core courses. I am privileged to have access to brilliant and open-minded musicology faculty who are willing to work with me in spite of the curriculum limitations at my institution, but I feel for those who are not as lucky.

As I get ready to submit applications to graduate schools, I feel stuck in a scholarly limbo that is uncomfortable for ethnomusicologists and historical musicologists for different reasons. Gomes’ music is much closer to European Art Music than to any recognizable “Brazilian” genres that would generally be othered by historical musicology. It is plain vanilla Western Classical Music, which you can readily analyze using Roman numerals and other conventional music theory methods. However, the libretti of his operas deal with the highly complicated politics of race in 19th century Brazil, tackling themes such as the power relationships between native Brazilians and Portuguese colonizers, slavery, and self-representation to a foreign audience, as Gomes lived and had most of his career in Italy. That and the fact that this is music by a non-white artist from South America (Gomes was ¼ native Brazilian, described by his daughter as being dark-skinned) makes historical musicologists hesitant to approach his music, as they fear overstepping into the uncharted territories of ethnographic work. On the other hand, ethnomusicologists hesitate due to the musical content itself—Art Music—a topic for historical musicologists!

As a student and future scholar, I call for the recognition and appreciation of gray areas such as Latin American Art Music, as well as the inclusion of these musics in the core curriculum of music colleges. Such topics provide us with unique opportunities for interdisciplinary inquiry and therefore should be cherished, not feared. Some universities are already updating their catalogs to include diverse music traditions and topics, demolishing the self-imposed walls that seemed to exist between ethnomusicology and historical musicology. These initiatives ought to be encouraged internationally as a means of deconstructing hierarchized notions of music scholarship, allowing students such as myself to feel just tall enough to be a musicologist.

Notes:

References

Illinois College. n.d. “Music Courses & Ensembles.” https://www.ic.edu/music/courses.

Ko, Jan-Mitchell. 2024. “Revolutionizing Music Education for BIPOC Students––New Possibilities of Practice.” PhD dissertation, Loyola Marymount University. 

Northern Illinois University. 2024. “Music (B.M.).” https://catalog.niu.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=60&poid=16280.

The University of Chicago. 2024. “2024-2025 Catalog.” http://collegecatalog.uchicago.edu/thecollege/music/. 

University of Illinois Chicago. n.d. “Academic Catalog.” https://catalog.uic.edu/all-course-descriptions/mus/.

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 2024. “2024-2025 Course Catalog.”  http://catalog.illinois.edu/undergraduate/faa/instrumental-music-bmus/#degreerequirementstext.

Western Illinois University. 2024. “Degree Program Bachelor of Music.” Accessed October 25, 2024. https://www.wiu.edu/catalog/programs/music.php.