The economics of the entertainment industry is driven by the imbalance of the supply of artists versus the demand. Because of this, there can never be “fairness” in employment. For every “winner” there are hundreds of “losers”. Elevating one class over others by putting your finger on the scale doesn’t result in fairness, it simply redistributes unfairness. Unfortunately, excellence is often the biggest casualty.
Hiring based on ability is the closest to “fair” that we can get. It’s unfortunate that there are 5,400 musicians vying for 5,000 spots. That 5,000 of them will inevitably be disappointed does not equal unfairness. But if you find yourself among the 5,000 because employers refuse to even give you a listen because of your race, sex, identity or other characteristic - now THAT’S unfair.
Immediately brought to my mind the short story by Kurt Vonnegut 'Harrison Bergeron', which (as AI recounts) takes place "in a dystopian future, where the government mandates absolute equality by handicapping those with superior abilities, ballerinas are forced to wear weights to limit their graceful movements."
Behold: The ‘Woke’-Industrial Complex — lamentably, laughably ironic because a wide-awake vigilance to the potential for even the best & most noble intentions to be corrupted for power & profits was the very watchword of true wokeness.
Of course if this continues it will ruin the orchestras. But the Leftists are seeking that result. Just destroying another creation of Western civilization, hopefully before breakfast. They’ll rebuild from the ashes and you will agree that it is glorious. Or else.
Who has ever questioned the diversity of a pit orchestra, that you cannot see from the audience, before purchasing a ticket to a show? Ticket holders only want the best experience by the best players, singers and actors for their money. If blind auditions were the industry standard, then I'd respect the process; otherwise, it's just clicking boxes and allowing skin and quotas to take precedent when the goal is musicianship and paying one's dues to EARN a spot. No one likes an unearned queue jumper, but the bigger point is where does this stop? What will cover the next set of boxes to check? Religion? Age? And anything that has nothing to do with talent?
Blind auditions are of course the only fair way to go, but the reason DEI works here is because, frankly, there are far more qualified musicians than there are positions available. Re-arranging the pecking order so that whites are at the back of the list just means that the qualified POC always get the gig. The music will go on.
The real danger here, of course, is the erosion of social cohesion these initiatives cause. It’s a big reason why we have Trump now, and anyone who thinks building a society off such inherently unfair systems can possibly succeed long term is profoundly fooling themselves.
But appealing to a decline in “quality” is not a winning argument in the arts.
The problem has been endemic throughout the institutional art world for years and is worse than just about anybody's willing to admit. Further reading for those interested:
My piece that gets into how some of this is playing out in the independent film world:
Jasper Ceylon apparently demonstrating that you can get a foothold in the world of poetry by deliberately writing bad poems and submitting them to journals with an "attractive" (bipoc/feminine) pen name:
I kind speak ta this as an act-truss with one'a my kids a professh. performer too... Both of us lost paid work fer bein' "not diverse enuf" but we knew moosical kids (i.e. players of instruments) that also were not chosen b/c they were white, jooish (that's white adjacent) 'er Asian (any-asian got put back'a the line)... Also, startin' 'bout 2020, some'a the best mooisck schools stopped teachin' classics (Bach, Beethoven, etc) ta make way fer lesser known composers of various cul'chas & ethnicities, which ain't BAD per say but dumpin' the classics in their stead wuz DUMB. As a result, we know two kids left their moosick skools & scholarships. So that ain't Broadway per se but it's the same "dis-ease." Cuz we all know dead white dudes made great moosick! (We kin add in Fanny Mendelssohn, notta dude tho!) I'm the gran'daughter of a big band mooisician so I know a bit from the old days where it was all fair! Based on merit! An' that competition wuz stiff when it came ta the band leaders too! (Harry James wuz one my grampy played fer)
Speakin' of UN-FAIR fer ALL, we left NYShitty broker than church mice in part b/c the thee-ate-er--and SAG--wouldn't let us uninjected folks work either... --No Empire Pass no auditions! No extree work!
The thee-ate'-er & film biznesses bent over fer the soft soap of ConVid (we know more injected performers that got sick) an' fer DEI too. It sucks that Broadway lacks backbone! An' yer right, them ticket prices are insane! (I ushered, pulled favors from friends workin' backstage, an' with the kiddos organized stew-dent group trips b/c "real" new yawkers includin' those of us that trod the boards couldn't even afford ta attend shows we're in!--make B'way affordable--find an' angel fer that!)
Last thought--my biggest thanx go ta all the amazin' B'way orchestra players over the decades! Folks remember the stars, the composers--but without massive talent from the pit, there would never be a zingle hit!
1. I don't understand why FAIR publishes pieces like this. The article is based on no valid empirical evidence but only on a personal gripe. I never got to play in the NBA but I don't pretend it was because some faction excluded me.
2. I believe, as the author seems to believe, that that there are probably endeavors that some races (sorry for using that word) excel at more than others based either on the genome or cultural background or some combination of the two. However, I think that it would be extremely difficult to argue that black people are somehow inherently deficient in their instrumental virtuosity, as the author seems to believe. I spent the 1970's and 1980's haunting NYC jazz clubs. There have been many great white jazz saxophonists - Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz, Chris Potter - but I would place none of them in the top 20 of all time. It is true that there are vanishingly few famous black classical musicians, but remember that arguably the single greatest classical trumpet album was Wynton Marsalis' trumpet concertos from 1983. And I would not put him in the top ten jazz trumpeters. Maybe the top twenty.
I think you missed the point. The places that do open, blind auditions for musicians judge SOLELY on skill in the extremely narrow area of a particular style of music: classical. Those hired are the best of the best in that specific area. It tends to be disproportionately people whose parents got them private lessons at age 3, discovered a love for the art, and continued through adulthood. Getting a head start of 1-2 DECADES doesn't guarantee skill or aptitude, but it sure gives a boost to those who have it!
Realistically speaking, the subset of people who have this background are not evenly spread through the population. It concentrates in certain cultural and socioeconomic groups. Obviously black people raised in those cultural and socioeconomic groups have the same chances of becoming a virtuoso classical performer as anyone else with that background.
For a variety of cultural reasons, black people with high musical aptitude are more likely to focus on other genres of music. Such as jazz, as you already mentioned.
I apologize for what I wrote. I don't necessarily retract my points, but I can see how I may have misinterpreted and or exaggerated the points that were made in the essay.
You wouldn’t believe how difficult the ideology that’s captured these institutions makes it to prove what they’re doing. It’s frankly infuriating.
The people directing these operations (or at least the lawyers they employ or consult with) of course know on some level that they’re breaking the law with a lot of this (employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin has, after all, been illegal since the 64 civil rights act), so it’s all hidden behind a veil of plausible deniability. Also they’ve rolled back some of the more over-the-top rhetoric about “de-centering white voices” and the like over the past two or three years, but even that sort of language doesn’t explicitly demonstrate what they’ve been up to: pervasive discrimination along identitarian lines and rigid ideological policing that involves ruthlessly ejecting anything and anyone that strays from the ideological line of the moment from the fold.
So I’m sure you wouldn’t like my piece about how this has been going on in the world of independent film either (no smoking gun there, but it does feature some screenshots and personal testimony that support the theory) but maybe you’d appreciate this piece by somebody who’s apparently demonstrated that you can deliberately write and submit bad poems to journals and get a foothold in the world of poetry just by choosing an “attractive” (bipoc/feminine) pen name.
Unless the author is simply making all of this up (which seems exceedingly unlikely based on all of my observations of the ideological shifts in the arts world in recent years), this is a pretty damning exposé, and can’t be dismissed by reasonable people as the rantings of a paranoid sore loser.
This piece from early 2023 that features some commentary from the former chariman of The National Endowment for the Arts is also excellent:
2. Where exactly in the essay does it say anything about “black people,” much suggest or imply that they are “inherently deficient in their instrumental virtuosity”? Talk about “implicit bias.” 🙄
1. The only “personal gripe” I detect in the piece is in relation to the “gripe” about objectively illiberal, ideologically homogenous, and blatantly inequitable/exclusionary *process* of establishing & deploying hiring processes that are ostensibly intended to promote & uphold “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion” — NOT in any way, shape, or form a gripe about the *outcomes* of such processes, much less the manner in which they have redounded to the detriment of the author or their career personally/individually.
Your response serves only to prove the point underlying the essay as to the unmistakable intellectual emptiness of the entire performatively driven, virtue-signalling “DEIA” endeavour.
"Instead, it's built on relationships, reputation, and proven skill." The first two qualifiers sound like an opening to hire on subjective grounds such as: friendships, nepotism, favors, etc. The only example you gave that has any merit for pit orchestra (or any unseen performer) are the Met's blind auditions, where you can be judged on nothing but your musical skill. You undermine your position when you point out an institution that's clearly more fair than yours without any inclination to follow their lead. Until Broadway orchestra hiring does the same, you can never attest it was ever a beacon of pure musical merit.
when you've been in the business for a long time, you "know" who to hire and who will cause trouble. you might come across a highly skilled musician but know that he has a reputation for being undependable and demanding, for upsetting the balance within the orchestra. hiring IS subjective. people are not robots.
in my own broadway support business- a costume shop- the greatest seamstress on earth might totally disrupt the chemistry in the shop and i would fire them in a nanosecond. i might reject an applicant based only on my subjective hunch. as the boss, that's my prerogative.
You bring up good points. Like the collaborative chemistry of your shop, I too hire crews in Local 600 by reputation and recommendation. But unlike the Met's blind audition we've no such objective standards such as ability to read notation, pitch, key, execution, etc. of complex sheet music. It's similar to auditioning for a chorus line - how fast and good can you pick up the choreography. On the very other end of the spectrum you've got your cohort of Local 1 stagehands, who like many a Teamster, clearly got the gig from connections and family, diversity be damned.
my boyfriend is a long time member of local one and a grand old man of backstage broadway. he worked his way in, not having any family connections. i stay away from unions. i was ok with my shop remaining small and not ever doing broadway costumes because of my stance on unions. turns out our work was so good that no one cared and we did broadway clothes all the time. i used to announce when i walked into a broadway theater "i am not now nor have i ever been a member of a labor union and if you aren't ok with that, say the word and i'll leave." the wardrobe people all knew that i was actually going to do the real work while they coasted along and never had a problem with me being there.
i couldn't deal with the rules and regulations of a union. i didn't want a parasitic class telling me who to hire and when i could fire them and how much to pay them, etc. if anyone was unhappy under my "leadership" they were free to leave.
i do understand the purpose of unions if you work for a massive company that views you as a disposable cog in a wheel and seeks to take advantage but i would never work under those conditions.
the unions really discredited themselves during the pandemic. their purpose is to protect the labor of their members- ALL their members, not just the vaccinated members or the Biden/Harris voting members. they are not there to enforce public health policy and government mandates.
i can tell you with 100% certainty that the sexual sensitivity training and the DEI classes these guys are forced to endure have had the opposite effect than what was desired
The economics of the entertainment industry is driven by the imbalance of the supply of artists versus the demand. Because of this, there can never be “fairness” in employment. For every “winner” there are hundreds of “losers”. Elevating one class over others by putting your finger on the scale doesn’t result in fairness, it simply redistributes unfairness. Unfortunately, excellence is often the biggest casualty.
Hiring based on ability is the closest to “fair” that we can get. It’s unfortunate that there are 5,400 musicians vying for 5,000 spots. That 5,000 of them will inevitably be disappointed does not equal unfairness. But if you find yourself among the 5,000 because employers refuse to even give you a listen because of your race, sex, identity or other characteristic - now THAT’S unfair.
Immediately brought to my mind the short story by Kurt Vonnegut 'Harrison Bergeron', which (as AI recounts) takes place "in a dystopian future, where the government mandates absolute equality by handicapping those with superior abilities, ballerinas are forced to wear weights to limit their graceful movements."
You’re so right, but there’s more power accrued by those who created this mess. They would flip in an instance if the money and power went away.
🛎️🛎️🛎️🛎️
Behold: The ‘Woke’-Industrial Complex — lamentably, laughably ironic because a wide-awake vigilance to the potential for even the best & most noble intentions to be corrupted for power & profits was the very watchword of true wokeness.
If blind auditions work for the Met. make them universal
I wholeheartedly agree!
Of course if this continues it will ruin the orchestras. But the Leftists are seeking that result. Just destroying another creation of Western civilization, hopefully before breakfast. They’ll rebuild from the ashes and you will agree that it is glorious. Or else.
Amen
Who has ever questioned the diversity of a pit orchestra, that you cannot see from the audience, before purchasing a ticket to a show? Ticket holders only want the best experience by the best players, singers and actors for their money. If blind auditions were the industry standard, then I'd respect the process; otherwise, it's just clicking boxes and allowing skin and quotas to take precedent when the goal is musicianship and paying one's dues to EARN a spot. No one likes an unearned queue jumper, but the bigger point is where does this stop? What will cover the next set of boxes to check? Religion? Age? And anything that has nothing to do with talent?
Blind auditions are of course the only fair way to go, but the reason DEI works here is because, frankly, there are far more qualified musicians than there are positions available. Re-arranging the pecking order so that whites are at the back of the list just means that the qualified POC always get the gig. The music will go on.
The real danger here, of course, is the erosion of social cohesion these initiatives cause. It’s a big reason why we have Trump now, and anyone who thinks building a society off such inherently unfair systems can possibly succeed long term is profoundly fooling themselves.
But appealing to a decline in “quality” is not a winning argument in the arts.
The problem has been endemic throughout the institutional art world for years and is worse than just about anybody's willing to admit. Further reading for those interested:
My piece that gets into how some of this is playing out in the independent film world:
https://open.substack.com/pub/cinematimshel/p/ideologically-out-of-line-and-insufficiently?r=16t7t&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
An excellent piece from early 2023 that features commentary from the former chairman of The National Endowment for the Arts:
https://www.thefp.com/p/how-ideologues-infiltrated-the-arts
Jasper Ceylon apparently demonstrating that you can get a foothold in the world of poetry by deliberately writing bad poems and submitting them to journals with an "attractive" (bipoc/feminine) pen name:
https://jasperceylon.substack.com/p/call-me-the-21st-century-ern-malley?r=16t7t&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
I kind speak ta this as an act-truss with one'a my kids a professh. performer too... Both of us lost paid work fer bein' "not diverse enuf" but we knew moosical kids (i.e. players of instruments) that also were not chosen b/c they were white, jooish (that's white adjacent) 'er Asian (any-asian got put back'a the line)... Also, startin' 'bout 2020, some'a the best mooisck schools stopped teachin' classics (Bach, Beethoven, etc) ta make way fer lesser known composers of various cul'chas & ethnicities, which ain't BAD per say but dumpin' the classics in their stead wuz DUMB. As a result, we know two kids left their moosick skools & scholarships. So that ain't Broadway per se but it's the same "dis-ease." Cuz we all know dead white dudes made great moosick! (We kin add in Fanny Mendelssohn, notta dude tho!) I'm the gran'daughter of a big band mooisician so I know a bit from the old days where it was all fair! Based on merit! An' that competition wuz stiff when it came ta the band leaders too! (Harry James wuz one my grampy played fer)
Speakin' of UN-FAIR fer ALL, we left NYShitty broker than church mice in part b/c the thee-ate-er--and SAG--wouldn't let us uninjected folks work either... --No Empire Pass no auditions! No extree work!
The thee-ate'-er & film biznesses bent over fer the soft soap of ConVid (we know more injected performers that got sick) an' fer DEI too. It sucks that Broadway lacks backbone! An' yer right, them ticket prices are insane! (I ushered, pulled favors from friends workin' backstage, an' with the kiddos organized stew-dent group trips b/c "real" new yawkers includin' those of us that trod the boards couldn't even afford ta attend shows we're in!--make B'way affordable--find an' angel fer that!)
Last thought--my biggest thanx go ta all the amazin' B'way orchestra players over the decades! Folks remember the stars, the composers--but without massive talent from the pit, there would never be a zingle hit!
Two points:
1. I don't understand why FAIR publishes pieces like this. The article is based on no valid empirical evidence but only on a personal gripe. I never got to play in the NBA but I don't pretend it was because some faction excluded me.
2. I believe, as the author seems to believe, that that there are probably endeavors that some races (sorry for using that word) excel at more than others based either on the genome or cultural background or some combination of the two. However, I think that it would be extremely difficult to argue that black people are somehow inherently deficient in their instrumental virtuosity, as the author seems to believe. I spent the 1970's and 1980's haunting NYC jazz clubs. There have been many great white jazz saxophonists - Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz, Chris Potter - but I would place none of them in the top 20 of all time. It is true that there are vanishingly few famous black classical musicians, but remember that arguably the single greatest classical trumpet album was Wynton Marsalis' trumpet concertos from 1983. And I would not put him in the top ten jazz trumpeters. Maybe the top twenty.
I think you missed the point. The places that do open, blind auditions for musicians judge SOLELY on skill in the extremely narrow area of a particular style of music: classical. Those hired are the best of the best in that specific area. It tends to be disproportionately people whose parents got them private lessons at age 3, discovered a love for the art, and continued through adulthood. Getting a head start of 1-2 DECADES doesn't guarantee skill or aptitude, but it sure gives a boost to those who have it!
Realistically speaking, the subset of people who have this background are not evenly spread through the population. It concentrates in certain cultural and socioeconomic groups. Obviously black people raised in those cultural and socioeconomic groups have the same chances of becoming a virtuoso classical performer as anyone else with that background.
For a variety of cultural reasons, black people with high musical aptitude are more likely to focus on other genres of music. Such as jazz, as you already mentioned.
I apologize for what I wrote. I don't necessarily retract my points, but I can see how I may have misinterpreted and or exaggerated the points that were made in the essay.
Fair enough! I agree that it's important to recognize that aptitude of all kinds is found in all skin tone variations. Thank you for reiterating it.
You wouldn’t believe how difficult the ideology that’s captured these institutions makes it to prove what they’re doing. It’s frankly infuriating.
The people directing these operations (or at least the lawyers they employ or consult with) of course know on some level that they’re breaking the law with a lot of this (employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin has, after all, been illegal since the 64 civil rights act), so it’s all hidden behind a veil of plausible deniability. Also they’ve rolled back some of the more over-the-top rhetoric about “de-centering white voices” and the like over the past two or three years, but even that sort of language doesn’t explicitly demonstrate what they’ve been up to: pervasive discrimination along identitarian lines and rigid ideological policing that involves ruthlessly ejecting anything and anyone that strays from the ideological line of the moment from the fold.
So I’m sure you wouldn’t like my piece about how this has been going on in the world of independent film either (no smoking gun there, but it does feature some screenshots and personal testimony that support the theory) but maybe you’d appreciate this piece by somebody who’s apparently demonstrated that you can deliberately write and submit bad poems to journals and get a foothold in the world of poetry just by choosing an “attractive” (bipoc/feminine) pen name.
https://jasperceylon.substack.com/p/call-me-the-21st-century-ern-malley?r=16t7t&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Unless the author is simply making all of this up (which seems exceedingly unlikely based on all of my observations of the ideological shifts in the arts world in recent years), this is a pretty damning exposé, and can’t be dismissed by reasonable people as the rantings of a paranoid sore loser.
This piece from early 2023 that features some commentary from the former chariman of The National Endowment for the Arts is also excellent:
https://www.thefp.com/p/how-ideologues-infiltrated-the-arts
2. Where exactly in the essay does it say anything about “black people,” much suggest or imply that they are “inherently deficient in their instrumental virtuosity”? Talk about “implicit bias.” 🙄
1. The only “personal gripe” I detect in the piece is in relation to the “gripe” about objectively illiberal, ideologically homogenous, and blatantly inequitable/exclusionary *process* of establishing & deploying hiring processes that are ostensibly intended to promote & uphold “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion” — NOT in any way, shape, or form a gripe about the *outcomes* of such processes, much less the manner in which they have redounded to the detriment of the author or their career personally/individually.
Your response serves only to prove the point underlying the essay as to the unmistakable intellectual emptiness of the entire performatively driven, virtue-signalling “DEIA” endeavour.
i fail to see how you can make the claim that the author has "no valid empirical evidence" when he lists statistics and percentages out the wazoo
"Instead, it's built on relationships, reputation, and proven skill." The first two qualifiers sound like an opening to hire on subjective grounds such as: friendships, nepotism, favors, etc. The only example you gave that has any merit for pit orchestra (or any unseen performer) are the Met's blind auditions, where you can be judged on nothing but your musical skill. You undermine your position when you point out an institution that's clearly more fair than yours without any inclination to follow their lead. Until Broadway orchestra hiring does the same, you can never attest it was ever a beacon of pure musical merit.
when you've been in the business for a long time, you "know" who to hire and who will cause trouble. you might come across a highly skilled musician but know that he has a reputation for being undependable and demanding, for upsetting the balance within the orchestra. hiring IS subjective. people are not robots.
in my own broadway support business- a costume shop- the greatest seamstress on earth might totally disrupt the chemistry in the shop and i would fire them in a nanosecond. i might reject an applicant based only on my subjective hunch. as the boss, that's my prerogative.
You bring up good points. Like the collaborative chemistry of your shop, I too hire crews in Local 600 by reputation and recommendation. But unlike the Met's blind audition we've no such objective standards such as ability to read notation, pitch, key, execution, etc. of complex sheet music. It's similar to auditioning for a chorus line - how fast and good can you pick up the choreography. On the very other end of the spectrum you've got your cohort of Local 1 stagehands, who like many a Teamster, clearly got the gig from connections and family, diversity be damned.
my boyfriend is a long time member of local one and a grand old man of backstage broadway. he worked his way in, not having any family connections. i stay away from unions. i was ok with my shop remaining small and not ever doing broadway costumes because of my stance on unions. turns out our work was so good that no one cared and we did broadway clothes all the time. i used to announce when i walked into a broadway theater "i am not now nor have i ever been a member of a labor union and if you aren't ok with that, say the word and i'll leave." the wardrobe people all knew that i was actually going to do the real work while they coasted along and never had a problem with me being there.
i couldn't deal with the rules and regulations of a union. i didn't want a parasitic class telling me who to hire and when i could fire them and how much to pay them, etc. if anyone was unhappy under my "leadership" they were free to leave.
i do understand the purpose of unions if you work for a massive company that views you as a disposable cog in a wheel and seeks to take advantage but i would never work under those conditions.
the unions really discredited themselves during the pandemic. their purpose is to protect the labor of their members- ALL their members, not just the vaccinated members or the Biden/Harris voting members. they are not there to enforce public health policy and government mandates.
i can tell you with 100% certainty that the sexual sensitivity training and the DEI classes these guys are forced to endure have had the opposite effect than what was desired
What would you say to those who argue in a hostile manner that hiring based on identity, affecting white males most, isn’t happening?