Y3 | Diversity Working Group
Diversity Working Group
Y3 | Workgroup Summary
13 July 2021
09:00-10:30 EDT
Via Zoom
Workgroup Leader:
R. Hasegawa (McGill University)
Aims:
The Diversity Workgroup is a new ACTOR initiative, first proposed at our July 2020 Y2 Virtual Workshop. We met for the first time on November 4, 2020 and decided to form three subgroups (Chinese/East Asian Music, Popular Music, Women and Gender Diverse Composers)—most of our activity since then has been within those groups. In general, the Diversity Workgroup seeks to both expand the diversity of ACTOR’s objects of study (to include more music by underrepresented women, gender-diverse, and minority composers) and to encourage equity, diversity and inclusion within ACTOR itself through mentoring, recruitment, and outreach.
Discussion Points:
Subgroups
We are encouraging each of the subgroups to meet approximately once a month, with occasional full meetings of the Diversity Workgroup to check in on progress and talk about more general issues and questions.
1. Chinese/East Asian Music subgroup
Activities so far
· November 20: planning meeting
· December 15: Chinese theory and notation
· January 14: Chinese instruments and the modern Chinese orchestra
· February 18: Donghai yuge and Lei Liang, Tremors of a Memory Chord
· March 18: Jia Guoping – A returned boat in the snow river and Guo Wenjing – Late spring
· April 8: guest composer Lei Liang on his Tremors of a Memory Chord
· April 26: planning meeting
· May 26: Xu Yi, Le Plein du vide
· June 21: defining an “East Asian sound”—readings by Takemitsu and Mittler
Future plans
Work with the McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble to plan some talks and/or study days around works by East Asian composers—for example, Toru Takemitsu, Ame zo furu - Rain coming (for October 2 concert), Xu Yi, Le plein du vide (for November 13 concert), Noriko Baba, Au clair d’un croissant (for February 5 concert). The piece by Xu Yi seems like a good place to start as we’ve already begun to discuss it.
Some possible guests for future meetings
· Jarosław Kapuściński and François Rose (Gagaku): http://gagaku.stanford.edu/en/orchestration/introduction/
· IRCAM Sheng project
· Du Yun (composer)
· Liao Lin-Ni (composer)
· Kunio Hara: timbral aspects of Studio Ghibli soundtracks
· Prof. Chen Hongduo, Shanghai Conservatory of Music: Evolution of Chinese Chamber Music Composition since the 1980s, etc.
How do different cultures view timbre/orchestration?
… plus ongoing discussions of books, articles, works, etc…
Discussion points (selected)
· building Middle Eastern/Central Asia group with a few members and the Centre des Musiciens du Monde
· exploration of UdeM musical instruments collection
· new subgroup for Sub-Saharan African musics
2. Popular Music and Diversity subgroup
Short Summary
The popular music subgroup of the diversity workgroup is working on a popular music corpus that incorporates diversity and inclusion issues for use in timbre-based research.
Project
TIPS: Timbre In Popular Song
Description
This project aims to create a genre-based popular music corpus with two goals overarching in mind: including timbre markers in the encoding process and creating an equitable and diverse selection of artists and songs included in the corpus. This project is being rolled out in modular phases. Each phase will include a number of genre- and decade-based modules comprised of 100 songs each. Phase 1 includes four genres (each 1990–99): country, hip-hop, metal, and pop. As further project phases are developed, new genres will be added by decade and existing genres will be expanded by decade.
Expected Research Outcomes
· Popular music corpus for use in various research
· Co-authored paper detailing corpus and initial results identifying timbral norms in the selected genres/decades
Activities to Date:
· Regular meetings, currently averaging once every 2–3 weeks (meeting dates available upon request)
· Actively developing inclusion strategy, corpus contents, and encoding procedures
· Applied for and received ACTOR strategic funding
Project Funding:
· ACTOR Strategic Funding
· SSHRC?
· FRQSC?
Student Employment:
Ten student employees will be hired to perform music encoding, each student will earn CA$20/hour currently budgeted from ACTOR Strategic Funding
Discussion points (selected)
1. timbre texture and form will be encoded (not harmony), close analytical listening, computational audio analysis once form is analyzed.
a. A lot of student interest!
2. This summary highlights the corpus itself, but also a method of generalizing texture will be refined—how to look closer at textural differences beyond mel&accomp.
a. Separate project--analyzing cover songs, instrumentation, cross-gender covers present an interesting timbre problem!
3. Women and Gender Diverse Composers subgroup
Over the past year, members of the Gender Equity and Diversity subgroup have worked on:
· incorporating gender parity in syllabi and greater representation in music studied generating
· more analyses of music by women composers
· commissioning trans composers and poets to create new art songs
· discussing gender inclusive language and offering a Trans 101 workshop in the fall
· researching issues of gender and meaning encoded in timbre
· establishing a path to publication for women and marginalized scholars
· considering accessibility issues (ex. offering childcare at in-person ACTOR conferences)
Publications/Presentations, etc.
The project "Interactions of timbre, genre, and form in popular music” has been funded through the Strategic Project Funding. A new corpus is being built and that will prioritize representation by gender, but it is not necessarily directly related.
The article “Them and the Timbre of Gender” (Public, 31/62, Dec. 2020, https://doi.org/10.1386/public_00054_1) opens a discussion on casting conventions in opera, multimodal perception of voice and gender, and 2SLGBTQIA+ representation in opera.
Performance with the newly formed opera company, Opéra Queens (mandate is to decolonize mainstream opera and cast at least 51% queer, BIPOC musicians, as well as premiere new works by queer and BIPOC composers).
Presentation of paper “Decolonizing Carmen” as the preshow lecture for the performance which will also feature the Canadian premiere of a chamber opera commemorating the shooting in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando (Sérpa, these wings are meant to fly).
The project "A timbral-motivic analysis of Obermüller’s different forms of phosphorus for solo English horn" has been accepted for presentation at Music Theory Midwest and Society for Music Theory conferences. The piece is by a female composer and the recording is by a female performer.
The project “Opening the Door: A Multifaceted Approach to the Analysis of Text Setting in Kate Soper’s Door (2007)” was presented at Music Theory Midwest and accepted for presentation at the Society for Music Theory annual conference.
The paper on “Molly’s Song 3 - Shades of Crimson” by Rebecca Saunders under review at MTO.
Discussion points (selected)
J—TRANS101 workshop
Action Items:
1. Further work on the Middle Eastern ensemble/group.
2. Schedule first African music meeting.
3. Now that the subgroups are off to a good start, schedule more full-group meetings to talk about broader issues of diversity, including EDI issues in ACTOR research and related fields? These full group meetings could also explore topics and repertoire that fall outside the specific research focus of any subgroup. Schedule another meeting of this full group by October 31, 2021. Include discussion of possible guest speakers, incl. possible recordings for YouTube/TOR (Moe): two suggestions are Vijay Iyer, Ellie Hisama.
4. Organology. Several students interested. Plan further discussion and a visit to the collection at UdeM by November 30, 2021.
5. Visit/liaison between ACTOR Diversity workgroup and Centre des Musiciens du monde by November 30, 2021.
6. Initiatives from the Women and Gender Diverse Composers subgroup.
a. TRANS101 workshop that handles changing language (by December 15, 2021)
b. Open access place for analytical materials, links to recordings (TOR?)
Follow-Up:
1. CONTACTS. Look into expanding our group to include more scholars from non-Western traditions and ethnomusicologists.
2. Knowledge Mobilization Group—draft some messages that go to appropriate list-servs (directed at ethnomusicologists). Call for Participation