LSE - Small Logo
LSE - Small Logo

Kristina Kolbe

October 22nd, 2024

Do diversity initiatives in classical music address – or reinforce – existing inequalities?

0 comments | 21 shares

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Kristina Kolbe

October 22nd, 2024

Do diversity initiatives in classical music address – or reinforce – existing inequalities?

0 comments | 21 shares

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

In the field of classical music, various diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) strategies have been embraced to address inequalities tied to race, class and gender, writes Kristina Kolbe. Such initiatives undoubtedly improve demographic representation. But do they succeed in tackling the underlying power dynamics that sustain these inequalities in the first place?


As the gap between rich and poor continues to widen, and white supremacy and ethno-nationalism gain further traction, cultural institutions become ever more vital spaces for achieving both creative and social justice.

Yet these very spaces are themselves often riddled with inequalities tied to race, class, gender, or disability. While a host of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategies have been embraced to address these issues, their actual effectiveness in dismantling inequalities is heavily debated, most notably by feminist, decolonial and critical race scholars: see eg, Ahmed (2012), Gray (2016) and Saha (2018), amongst many others.

Opera houses, orchestras and conservatoires still tend to be places of “highbrow” culture, where access to both consumption and production is often mediated through race and class

In my book The Sound of Difference: Race, Class, and the Politics of ‘Diversity’ in Classical Music, I turn to the field of classical music to explore how and under which institutional conditions diversity initiatives may challenge exclusionary structures – and when they might unwittingly reinforce them. Classical music has long been tied to Eurocentrism, elitism and institutional whiteness – and institutions like opera houses, orchestras and conservatoires still tend to serve as places of “highbrow” culture, where access to both consumption and production is often mediated through race and class: see eg, Bull (2019), Ewell (2020) and Scharff (2018). This makes the sector particularly apt when it comes to studying the role of diversity in the cultural industries.

How does diversity become translated into institutional life?

To draw out how diversity initiatives may succeed at delivering change but also when and why they fail, my research looks at how diversity discourses become translated into the concrete lives of music organisations.

First, between 2016-17, I conducted an ethnographic study of a diversity project at an opera house in Germany to explore how the abstract notion of diversity is implemented in practice in the creative and organisational aspects of music production. I was particularly interested to know: how do such initiatives impact inequalities tied to race and class, at a time of lived multiculture, on one hand, but enduring white elitism on the other?

Second, over the period 2020-22, I carried out interviews with diversity managers and musicians – mainly in Germany but also in the UK – to map the evolution of diversity debates in the field. Through these interviews, I documented how practitioners themselves reflect on diversity work in classical music: the kinds of hopes, ideas and ideals they might associate with the term, but also the kinds of tensions, challenges and drawbacks they have experienced. These questions held a particular urgency at the time, as the COVID-19 pandemic and the global surge of the Black Lives Matter movement coincided, putting ever more pressure on cultural organisations to rethink their role.

The limits of diversity as a concept

One central argument developed through these data is that diversity can function as a “non-performative” concept, to use the term coined by feminist theorist Sara Ahmed. This means that diversity policies often only signal change without actually enacting it.

This seems to hold true in particular for a hierarchised field, such as classical music. To be sure, my research highlights how diversity projects can sometimes help tackle institutional inequalities, for instance by opening up spaces for creative collaborations, for critical political dialogue, and for reviewing unequal labour conditions in the sector. Too often, however, diversity discourses contribute to the endurance of white middle-class social dominance. In these cases, discourses of diversity, openness and inclusion help conceal continuing structural regimes of inequality – and even actively contribute to the remaking raced and classed hierarchies. In classical music institutions, this happens especially when potentially transformative creative practices are absorbed back into the dominant production logics of white, “western”, highbrow institutions, reducing diversity work to merely a formal gesture.

For example, I found that diversity efforts are frequently reduced to demographic representation – inviting more marginalised artists or audiences in – without tackling the deeper processes of exclusion which shape the production process and working conditions of musicians behind the scenes.

One diversity manager I interviewed at a prominent opera house explained this tension: “we’re bringing in new faces, yes. But the rules of the game haven’t changed. The institution still operates in the same way – it’s still classical music by and for the elite.” Relatedly, a German musician of Turkish heritage summed up her experiences of exclusion in the sector: “I’ve been in this field for years, and I still feel like an outsider. It’s like I’m allowed in, but only as long as I conform to their rules, their repertoire, their way of doing things.”

“I’ve been in this field for years, and I still feel like an outsider. It’s like I’m allowed in, but only as long as I conform to their rules,” one German musician of Turkish heritage told me

These reflections capture one of the core challenges of diversity work: many such initiatives make cosmetic changes but fail to address the underlying power dynamics that sustain both privilege, on the one hand, and marginalization, on the other.

The commodification of diversity labour

Another central critique coming out of my research relates to how diversity work becomes organised in practice: how the labour around diversity is distributed, and who stands to gain from it.

I was able to trace these dynamics “on the ground” through my ethnographic study of the opera diversity project, Music Together. The project aimed to broaden participation in both the opera house’s outreach and education work as well as in their programming and commissioning choices, engaging particularly with communities of Turkish and Middle Eastern heritage.

While Music Together certainly succeeded in creating more inclusive performances, it also revealed key contradictions. For instance, a Turkish German composer involved in the project reflected positively on how the initiative gave him a platform to bring his cultural heritage into an operatic context: “This was one of the few times I felt that my music, my background, was truly seen and appreciated on this stage.” However, the labour around the diversity initiative was often outsourced to external artists and composers for short-term collaborations only. This allowed the opera house to present itself as inclusive without making fundamental changes to its internal structures.

The opera house could present itself as inclusive without making fundamental changes to its internal structures

In the book, I argue that outsourcing diversity in this way risks turning marginalised artists into tokens of inclusion, rather than integrating their perspectives into the institution’s core practices. As such, diversity risks being commodified and turned into a form of capital to be harnessed by established institutions, while it is mainly producers of colour who are asked to do the lion’s share of this work without receiving adequate recognition or better working conditions.

This dynamic became particularly clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed (and exacerbated) existing inequalities within the classical music sector. Several of my interviewees stated that, as institutions faced financial and logistical pressures, many diversity initiatives were sidelined, revealing their fragile and often superficial nature. Diversity here was shown to be a second-order issue for organisations and many “diverse” freelance musicians lost important job opportunities.

Moving beyond diversity

Overall, then, my research offers a critical look at diversity initiatives in classical music by tracing how well-meaning, often genuine initiatives can fall short. I therefore hold that the frame of diversity alone is not enough to address the deep-seated inequalities in the cultural industries. Instead, cultural institutions need to adopt more radical approaches – such as those based on creative and reparative justice, as explored by Banks (2017) and Saha (2023) – that challenge the structural conditions of exclusion and reshape the organisation of creative work more widely.

For scholars and practitioners, I hope that my work may serve as a critical (as well as encouraging) reflection but also, most of all, as a call to action. True inclusivity demands more than ticking boxes or diversifying faces – it requires a fundamental rethinking of how culture, power and value are produced and distributed in the arts.

 


 

The Sound of Difference: Race, Class, and the Politics of ‘Diversity’, published by Manchester Univertsity Press, is out now.

Sign up here to receive a monthly summary of blog posts from LSE Inequalities delivered direct to your inbox.

All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s). They do not represent the position of LSE Inequalities, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

Image credits: image of the Rotunda, Ranelagh by night and banner image of orchestra both © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

About the author

Kristina Kolbe

Kristina Kolbe

Kristina Kolbe is an Assistant Professor in Sociology of Arts and Culture at Erasmus University Rotterdam and a Visiting Fellow at LSE’s International Inequalities Institute. Her research focuses on how social inequalities are reworked in and through culture, ranging from wider discourses of migration, citizenship, and belonging to concrete processes of material culture, media representations, cultural production, and creative labour.

Posted In: Culture | European Inequalities | Jobs and Work | Race

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *