Quincy Jones, who died on Nov. 3, 2024, on the age of 91, was one of the crucial influential musicians in U.S. historical past.
You would possibly assume such a notable determine would issue prominently in American music lecture rooms. But my analysis exhibits that Jones, who was Black, is never talked about in mainstream U.S. music curricula.
As a Black music professor, I imagine his absence displays the truth that music schooling within the U.S. continues to be segregated alongside racial strains, identical to the nation was for a lot of its historical past.
In 2020, music theorist Megan Lyons and I analyzed the seven most typical undergraduate music principle textbooks used within the U.S. We discovered that solely 49 of the almost 3,000 musical examples they cited had been written by composers who weren’t white.
Quincy Jones, the person and the music
A composer, arranger, performer and producer, Jones was a musician whose affect on American music is difficult to overstate. He received 28 Grammy Awards, wrote a number of movie scores and was intimately concerned in a few of the most vital musical developments in America within the mid-to-late twentieth century, such because the rise of the jazz artist as pop music arranger. He produced the world’s best-selling album of all time, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”
Jones was a trumpeter who started his profession taking part in with bandleader Lionel Hampton in 1953, however he quickly branched off to turn out to be far more than a sideman.
Quincy ‘Delight’ Jones and his Massive Band carry out in Vienna, Austria, in 1960.
Franz Hubmann/Imagno by way of Getty Photographs
Early on, he carried out with legends akin to Depend Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra, and he produced and organized music for vocal titans akin to Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Diana Ross. His pivot to pop music within the late Seventies helped usher in a revolution of funk, disco and early hip-hop.
I see Jones as a necessary piece within the historical past of American music. But he’s absent from the music classroom, as are so many Black artists all through historical past.
This absence is main extra music educators to acknowledge what my analysis additionally finds: American music schooling stays deeply rooted in an ideology that has dominated U.S. historical past – white supremacy.
Segregation in music
One of the crucial vital linchpins of American white supremacy was racial segregation – that’s, protecting white individuals and Black individuals aside. This racial segregation has been evident in music schooling, too, all through American historical past.
Take, for instance, the truth that the vast majority of composers who’re studied in American music establishments such because the Eastman College of Music and the Juilliard College, together with most main college music departments, come from a Western musical custom and are usually not American. I’m referring to Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Frédéric Chopin and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, amongst a handful of different revered figures. These are all white, European males who died way back.
That is one motive why college students pursuing a bachelor’s diploma in jazz research usually take courses totally exterior of the generic class of “music major.” Programs on jazz, a style deeply rooted in African American musical traditions, ceaselessly don’t rely as core courses for the music main at many U.S. faculties, conservatories and universities; classical music courses do.
And in a recent twist on musical racial segregation, classical voice and instrumental college students in at the least one faculty are warned by their studio lecturers to not sing or play genres related to Blackness akin to jazz, gospel, blues or hip-hop for concern that these types will negatively affect their classical strategy.
The Academy of Movement Image Arts and Sciences gave Jones an honorary award in Los Angeles on Nov. 17, 2024, days after his dying.
Etienne Laurent/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
From the second the U.S. Supreme Courtroom made racial segregation unconstitutional in its landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Schooling of Topeka ruling, white America has customary new methods to maintain races aside.
In music, this has manifested itself in protecting curricula segregated.
In case you’re considering that each one pop musicians like Jones are banned within the music classroom, simply Google “the Beatles in music curricula.” There are numerous faculty programs. The Beatles have been generally studied for over 20 years.
The Beatles weren’t even American, however they’re a part of the American music curricula. They usually had been white.
Integrating music curricula
“American music academies,” as I’ve beforehand written in The Dialog, “generally reflect the social norms of the day.”
And social norms round race and racism are altering quick within the U.S., affecting an array of industries, from style to finance.
So what would possibly a related American music curriculum seem like?
I’d start by introducing college students to the primary nice American musician, Francis “Frank” Johnson. Born in 1792, Johnson was a prolific composer, violinist and band chief whose life and work are not often studied within the U.S. He’s to not be confused with Frank Johnson, born in 1789, one other notable early American violinist and brass ensemble chief.
I’d proceed with different vital Nineteenth-century figures akin to New Orleans pianist Basile Barès, whose music stuffed American dance halls after the Civil Conflict. Or Edmond Dédé, who studied and lived in Paris, France, for years earlier than returning to his native New Orleans.
I’d focus their consideration on the Broadway composer Will Marion Prepare dinner, who studied violin at Oberlin Faculty as a teen and later with acclaimed virtuoso Joseph Joachim in Berlin, Germany. Or on the conductor, composer and librettist Harry Lawrence Freeman, whose 21 operas stay remarkably underexplored.
And I’d by no means let my syllabus skip the vocal music of Margaret Bonds, the symphonic works of Julia Perry, the atonal music of Undine Smith Moore or the music theories of Roland Wiggins.
Although I’ve solely scratched the floor, all of those musicians had been African American – and I didn’t even point out any blues, hip-hop, Motown, rock or R&B artists.
For my part, Black music and musical genres have had a larger impression on the course of American music than some other model or style. For that reason, I imagine universities and music faculties ought to combine this music into their music curricula – and have it prominently and proudly.
From Francis Johnson to Quincy Jones, Black music exemplifies the musical greatness the U.S. is able to producing, for Individuals and for the world.
