Why Quincy Jones must be prominently featured in US music schooling − his absence displays how racial segregation nonetheless shapes American lecture rooms

Quincy Jones, who died on Nov. 3, 2024, on the age of 91, was one of the influential musicians in U.S. historical past.

You would possibly suppose such a notable determine would issue prominently in American music lecture rooms. But my analysis reveals that Jones, who was Black, is never talked about in mainstream U.S. music curricula.

As a Black music professor, I consider 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 have 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 gained 28 Grammy Awards, wrote a number of movie scores and was intimately concerned in among the most essential 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 into far more than a sideman.

Early on, he carried out with legends corresponding to Depend Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra, and he produced and organized music for vocal titans corresponding 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 vital 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 vital essential linchpins of American white supremacy was racial segregation – that’s, conserving white folks and Black folks aside. This racial segregation has been evident in music schooling, too, all through American historical past.

Take, for instance, the truth that the 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 usually are 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 cause why college students pursuing a bachelor’s diploma in jazz research typically take courses solely exterior of the generic class of “music main.” Programs on jazz, a style deeply rooted in African American musical traditions, often don’t depend 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 academics to not sing or play genres related to Blackness corresponding to jazz, gospel, blues or hip-hop for concern that these types will negatively affect their classical method.

From the second the U.S. Supreme Courtroom made racial segregation unconstitutional in its landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Training of Topeka ruling, white America has long-established new methods to maintain races aside.

In music, this has manifested itself in conserving curricula segregated.

For those who’re pondering that every 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 have been white.

Integrating music curricula

“American music academies,” as I’ve beforehand written in The Dialog, “typically replicate 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 vogue to finance.

So what would possibly a related American music curriculum appear 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 hardly ever 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 important Nineteenth-century figures corresponding to New Orleans pianist Basile Barès, whose music crammed 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 Cook dinner, who studied violin at Oberlin School 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 have been African American – and I didn’t even point out any blues, hip-hop, Motown, rock or R&B artists.

In my view, Black music and musical genres have had a higher impression on the course of American music than every other type or style. For that reason, I consider 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.