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Current Affairs
Categories: News & Politics
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Philip Ewell is a professor of music theory and the author of the new book On Music Theory, and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone (University of Michigan Press). Ewell is one of the most "controversial" music theorists in the country, having sparked a major controversy in his field by criticizing the "white racial frame" that dominates in music theory. Ewell argued that much of mainstream music theory has been build around unstated assumptions about which kinds of music are sophisticated/interesting/worthy of academic study. Today he joins to explain how the idea of white supremacy translated into normative conceptions about music, why it's a mistake to think he's trying to "cancel Bach," and how music theory can be made, in the words of his title, more welcoming for everyone, meaning that it will break free of its narrow focus on a tiny group of European composers.
A great YouTube video by Adam Neely featuring Ewell, discussing the themes of this conversation, is here. A comprehensive Current Affairs article on the controversy around race and music theory is here. Nathan's article on Charles Murray, including Murray's theories about music, is here.
The main problem I have noticed as music theory faces its racial past is in how we confront what we see in the mirror as we look at ourselves. Understanding the exclusionist nature of the field is not difficult, and it is also easy to add to the music theory mix a few composers of color and think that this represents a solution to our racial dilemma. However, as Baldwin says in the epigraph to this chapter, all we ever see in that mirror is lies, whether we acknowledge that or not. The lie we are told by music theory, the lie that awaits in the mirror to be seen by the field if it is strong enough to glance, is that the dark secrets of our past are exceptional to our field, and that, by and large, our history has been one of social justice and decency. Of course, this is largely untrue of American music theory, since this is largely untrue of the United States as a country. — Philip Ewell, On Music Theory
Previous episodes
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460 - How White Supremacist Ideology Made Its Way Into Music Theory (w/ Philip Ewell) Wed, 27 Mar 2024
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459 - Gary Younge's 30-Year Panorama of the African Diaspora Mon, 25 Mar 2024
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458 - Why The Cop City Indictment Threatens Everyone's Freedom (w/ Christopher Bruce) Fri, 22 Mar 2024
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457 - Why We Need Utopias (w/ Kristen Ghodsee) Wed, 20 Mar 2024
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456 - ZINNOPHOBIA - Why So Many Still Fear "A People's History of the United States" (w/ David Detmer) Tue, 19 Mar 2024
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455 - Why Do We Have Any Poverty In America When It's Such a Solvable Problem? (w/ Matt Desmond) Fri, 15 Mar 2024
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454 - Mini-Cast: Ending Period Poverty Through the "Menstrual Equity for All" Act (w/ Grace Meng) Wed, 13 Mar 2024
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453 - There Is No Alternative to Ending Fossil Fuel Use (w/ Lorne Stockman) Mon, 11 Mar 2024
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452 - Why "Climate Optimism" Is Irrational and What Global Climate Justice Requires (w/ Jag Bhalla) Fri, 8 Mar 2024
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451 - Is Being "Moderate" Actually How Democrats Win? (w/ Alex Bronzini-Vender) Wed, 6 Mar 2024
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450 - The Many Layers of Injustice in American Criminal Punishment (w/ Stephen Bright & James Kwak) Mon, 4 Mar 2024
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449 - Can The Concept of "Philanthropy" Be Saved? (w/ Amy Schiller) Wed, 28 Feb 2024
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448 - What Would It Take To Have a Democracy? (w/ Thom Hartmann) Mon, 26 Feb 2024
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447 - How Did the Idea of Being "Self-Made" Come About? (w/ Tara Isabella Burton) Fri, 23 Feb 2024
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446 - Our Plan to Make It Actually Enjoyable to Read The News Wed, 21 Feb 2024
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445 - The Role of Drugs in American Life (w/ Benjamin Fong) Mon, 19 Feb 2024
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444 - The History of Arab-Jews Can Change Our Understanding of The World (w/ Avi Shlaim) Fri, 16 Feb 2024
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443 - A HEATED Encounter with Chris Rufo: Critical Race Theory, The Left, and American History Wed, 14 Feb 2024
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442 - The Dark Side of Fashion (w/ Alyssa Hardy) Mon, 12 Feb 2024
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441 - How To Make Schools That Children Actually Enjoy Going To (w/ Lauren Fadiman) Fri, 9 Feb 2024
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440 - How Rupert Murdoch Killed The Only Good Social Media Platform (w/ Michael Tedder) Wed, 7 Feb 2024
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439 - How Labor Can Drive a Hard Bargain (w/ Jane McAlevey and Abby Lawlor) Mon, 5 Feb 2024
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438 - Learning From Neglected Novels By 1900s Radicals (w/ the Rickard Sisters) Fri, 2 Feb 2024
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437 - Why Minimalism? (w/ Kyle Chayka) Wed, 31 Jan 2024
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436 - Is U.S. Democracy Just Going To Be Dysfunctional Forever? (w/ Benjamin Studebaker) Mon, 29 Jan 2024
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435 - What Happens to the Disappointed When Social Movements Fail? (w/ Sara Marcus) Fri, 26 Jan 2024
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434 - The Disaster of Privatizing Everything (w/ Donald Cohen) Wed, 24 Jan 2024
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433 - The Process of Leaving Jordan Peterson Behind (w/ Benjamin Howard) Mon, 22 Jan 2024
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432 - How The Super-Rich Really Live (w/ Michael Mechanic) Fri, 19 Jan 2024
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431 - How to Explain Socialism To People Who Aren't Socialists (w/ Danny Katch) Wed, 17 Jan 2024
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430 - Exposing the Spurious Anti-Semitism Accusations That Helped Bring Down Corbyn (w/ Asa Winstanley) Mon, 15 Jan 2024
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429 - Dreaming of a World Without Wells Fargo (w/ Terri Friedline) Fri, 12 Jan 2024
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428 - How "Influencing" Became an Industry (w/ Emily Hund) Wed, 10 Jan 2024
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427 - Why Americans Don't See Or Talk About Their Wars (w/ Norman Solomon) Mon, 8 Jan 2024
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426 - What "Economic Freedom" Would Look Like (w/ Mark Paul) Fri, 5 Jan 2024
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425 - Can The Love of Menswear Be Justified? (w/ Sam Miller McDonald) Wed, 3 Jan 2024
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424 - On Musical Plagiarism: The Case of Ed Sheeran vs. Marvin Gaye Wed, 20 Dec 2023
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423 - How Socialists Took Over The Cities (w/ Shelton Stromquist) Mon, 18 Dec 2023
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422 - Why Does The Law Fail Women So Badly? (w/ Julie Suk) Fri, 15 Dec 2023
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421 - Are "Family Values" The Problem? (w/ Sophie Lewis) Wed, 13 Dec 2023
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420 - Why Our Healthcare System Needs to Do More than Just "Fairly" Distribute Scarce Resources (w/ Lily Sánchez) Mon, 11 Dec 2023
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419 - Understanding Reactionary Political Philosophy (w/ Matt McManus) Fri, 8 Dec 2023
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418 - Why the Labor Movement Needs to be Creative and Disruptive (w/ Jono Shaffer) Wed, 6 Dec 2023
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417 - Can Our Times Even Be Satirized? (w/ Matt Bors and Ben Clarkson) Mon, 4 Dec 2023
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416 - How The "Big Myth" That Markets Will Solve Everything Was Foisted on the World Fri, 1 Dec 2023
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415 - How to Win Every Argument (w/ Mehdi Hasan) Wed, 29 Nov 2023
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414 - Lessons for Today's Movements from the Radical "Young Lords" (w/ Johanna Fernández) Mon, 27 Nov 2023
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413 - How Right-Wing Propaganda Gives People "Brain Worms" (w/ Adam Glenn) Fri, 24 Nov 2023
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412 - Banishing the "Bootstraps" Mythology from American Life (w/ Alissa Quart) Wed, 22 Nov 2023
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411 - How Come "Everyone Is Beautiful But Nobody is Horny"? (w/ R.S. Benedict) Mon, 20 Nov 2023