Why Composer Diversity Matters

A composer works late into the night on her pitch for a feature film, knowing that last year 94% of top box office films were scored by male composers.

A young piano student whose grandparents emigrated to the UK from India opens his classical grade book; part of a syllabus in which 99% of the composers are white.

A composition student who’s black listens to a lecture in a Conservatoire in London. Of her alumni from four years ahead of her who go on to receive composing commissions, only 6% have Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic heritage, despite London having a BAME population of 30%.

Composition still has a diversity problem, and there’s still people who’ll question whether that problem is real or not. I’m not a diversity role model - far from it - I’m a white male from a very un-diverse town in rural England, and I was painfully unaware of the diversity problems that exist in music until I started teaching music workshops in schools across London. Getting to know the students, seeing how talented some of them were and discovering the obstacles in their way was eye-opening, disappointing, and humbling. And seeing the people trying to change that, and seeing the movements they’ve started and the way they are enabling people to create new works is encouraging, and brings real hope.

So, an obvious question, but still one that people ask - why is diversity important? 

A lot of the time we don’t know how good people are until we give them the opportunity, but it’s easier for some people to find that opportunity than it is for others.

There’s a Mark Twain story called Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven about a guy who accidentally finds heaven and so asks its inhabitants lots of questions about what it’s like to live there. One thing he asks is “what about the great generals, are they still famous here?” and he gets the answer- 

The greatest military genius our world ever produced was a brick-layer from somewhere back of Boston - died during the Revolution - by the name of Absalom Jones. Wherever he goes, crowds flock to see him. You see, everybody knows that if he had had a chance he would have shown the world some generalship that would have made all generalship before look like child's play and 'prentice work. But he never got a chance; he tried heaps of times to enlist as a private, but he had lost both thumbs and a couple of front teeth, and the recruiting sergeant wouldn't pass him. However, as I say, everybody knows, now, what he WOULD have been, - and so they flock by the million to get a glimpse of him whenever they hear he is going to be anywhere. Caesar, and Hannibal, and Alexander, and Napoleon are all on his staff, and ever so many more great generals; but the public hardly care to look at THEM when HE is around. 

It’s essentially that - how many unbelievably talented creators are we missing out on hearing because no one would give them a chance to be heard or seen or do what they’re passionate about and do best? 

My favourite story related to this is Michael Abels’ story - he was head of music at a high school who had been trying to get into the film music industry since 1984. It wasn’t until 2017 that Jordan Peele got in touch with him about composing for Get Out. He’d discovered one of Michael’s compositions on Youtube after failing to find an African-American composer for the project through more traditional film composer networks. After Get Out’s success, Michael set up the Composer Diversity Collective to make it easier for the industry to find culturally diverse music creators, music supervisors, sound engineers and musicians, to increase their awareness of each other, and to dispel any misconceptions people might have about the stylistic range of any minority composer.

There’s plenty more composers out there who only need the one opportunity they haven’t been given yet to be able to show the industry how much skill and creativity they can offer it.

Most of the problem comes from bias, whether that’s towards yourself or towards others.

I’ve heard musicians say that they don’t really see any need to think about diversity when it comes to creating an ensemble. The argument is ‘if I know the people I want to fit the sound that I want, why should I worry about what they look like?’. And yes, it’s completely up to you - you can book whoever you like. But - if you’re going to be in the press, if you’re wanting to do any education work, if you’re wanting to inspire people to do what you do in any way, bear this in mind:

The more similar someone seems to be to yourself, the easier you believe that someday you can do what they do. 

It’s more complicated than that. But generally, if a kid sees an astronaut or a rapper or an athlete who has the same gender or racial heritage and as them, it’s easier for them to believe that they can be like that person when they’re older. It can be the same for little things like if they grew up in the same hometown as someone, or have the same surname. For some people this may not matter so much and they might have a strong belief they can work in whatever field they want to, but for others it does make a big difference. As imaginative as kids are, if a girl wants to be in the army when she’s older but never sees any soldiers who are women, it’s going to be harder to believe she has a future there. If a kid with Asian heritage never sees any basketball players who also have Asian heritage, he might to find it harder to believe he can play for the Lakers one day. We need to be conscious of these things when we’re making decisions on how to inspire people who may have incredible work and ideas to offer the world.

The other thing is to consider what bias everyone brings to the drawing board and the cutting room.

If you’re in an executive meeting about a project and all of the people there are male, white, and wealthy, they’re likely to also bring a huge bias to the way they perceive whatever it is they’re making decisions on. And if this is a piece of art of any form - the timbre of an album, the design of a book cover, the storyboard of a film - that means it will be subjected to only one point of view. It seems crazy that most of the time these boards are worried that something won’t conform to the majority of listeners/viewers/customers ideals, and yet if the big decisions are only being made by only one demographic they’re handicapping themselves from allowing the project to resonate with thousands more people whose view they can’t see from. And I know there are focus groups to try and solve this, but we all know that a single executive at the meeting table can derail the whole soul of a project if an ill informed view is left unchallenged. This is why diversity needs to be a priority in the highest, company-running decision-making part of a business or project, not just in hiring and internships. There’s a lot of debate about equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome, but the fact is that we need both - we need change from the lowest and the highest positions in companies and projects. 

If you want another example of bias in action, look no further than the UK’s 2020 A level results. 

If you don’t already know, because of Covid-19 restrictions, students couldn’t sit exams and instead were assigned grades based on an algorithm. However, it turned out that a lot students’ results were based on the postcodes of the areas they lived and went to school in, resulting in high-achieving students from poorer areas being downgraded unfairly and missing their chance to get into the unis they applied for. The UK government didn’t see the problem until it was too late. In an earlier interview, when asked if they thought their cabinet was diverse enough, a spokesperson had replied that they had a “diversity of thought”, despite the cabinet being mostly white, from wealthy backgrounds and graduating from private schools. The problems with the way the exam results were handled was obscured by a bias that said ‘students from poorer areas don’t do as well as students from wealthy areas’. And it can feel like that throughout life; some people unconsciously judge others by their socioeconomic background, gender, or race, and they don’t see the problem. 

We’ve come a long way, but things still need to change. If you want to do something to help, read this blog post to get some ideas.

Have I missed anything that’s worth mentioning or doing? Almost definitely, yes. 

Comment it below and I’ll see if I can include it somewhere.

All the best,

Tim