Black Voices Matter Pledge

jedscottAdvocacy, Choral Music, Education, Human Nature

I am committed to doing better as a leader, educator, composer/arranger, and choral musician to address systemic racism and white privilege in the choral world, and specifically in the work I do.

I was moved to sign the Black Voices Matter Pledge after seeing its tenets shared yesterday; it was first made public in celebration of Juneteenth 2020.

Like many, I move in the choral world in multiple ways: as a conductor, as an arranger and composer, as the director of the Michigan Choral Commission Consortium. I am so glad that there are multiple categories to the pledge, addressing these specific areas. I am committing to all that apply to my work.

I am calling on at least ten of my choral colleagues to

  1. Sign the Pledge
  2. Tag ten friends on social media to join also read and sign the pledge.
  3. Set a calendar reminder to check in on these pledges in 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year from their signing.

Here are the pledges for choral conductors:

  • Embrace idiomatic Black choral music and find ways to incorporate respectful and thoughtful arrangements in your choral program; contextualize this music with singers and audience. 
  • Program non-idiomatic Black choral music, including music of pre-20th century composers (see, for example, Marques L. A. Garrett’s resource here.)
  • Strive for representation across each program and concert season without tokenizing 
  • Remove arrangements of racist source songs (eg. minstrel songs) from choral libraries
  • Seek expertise from BBI artists and culture bearers, compensate and credit them for their labor
  • Hire BBI choral artists, guest conductors, composers, clinicians, adjudicators, and collaborators for a wide range of work beyond essentialized notions of race/ethnicity (eg. hire a Black singer to perform Bach, not just spirituals)
  • Question choral norms, acknowledging that whiteness is normalizing agent

Here are the pledges for Choral Composers, Arrangers and Publishers:

  • Include steps taken to understand cultures with which you may not identify 
  • Acknowledge positionality when considering creative opportunities that are connected to cultural identity
  • Replace categorical terms that erase the specificity of geography and race (such as “World Music” and “Multicultural”) and develop language that honors the intersectional [8]  identities of composers, song traditions, and musical styles
  • Remove arrangements of problematic source songs (eg. minstrel songs) from publishing catalogs

Here are the pledges for Music Educators:

  • Dedicate time to create and facilitate scaffolded anti-racism learning opportunities for students during choral rehearsals.
  • Implement non-European pedagogies across the choral discipline (voice, musicianship, choral literature, conducting)
  • Interrogate assessment tools, competitive contest rubrics, and colonial tour culture, which are often coded for whiteness and unfairly advantage affluent choirs
  • Intentionally recruit from racially diverse student populations through all pathways 

(There are additional pledges for Professional and Community Contexts, Faith-based Contexts, Choral Non Profit Organizations, Boards, and Administrators, and Professional Associations and Educational Advocacy Organizations.)

Read the entire page here, sign the pledge here, and then give a public shoutout the team who authored the pledges (and tag ten friends)!