He writes about the demands to stop blind auditioning because it has not produced enough orchestra members belonging to racial and ethnic minorities. That it has increased the share of women in orchestras quite dramatically should matter to progressives, because returning to auditions where the player can be observed will bring back sexism. So how are those clashing interests going to be negotiated?

I think what gets lost here is that classical music especially in the past 100 or so years has made up only a very small, rarified, tradition-bound, snobby sliver of the music world in entirety. It's a sliver in which male composers, male musicians and male maestros traditionally have predominated and ruled the roost. Because what we call "classical music" is an explicitly European art form that was established centuries ago.

In the wider music world over the past century or so, male players of various instruments who are black and of other non-white ethnicities have had far more opportunities - and a better shot at equality - in Europe, the USA and the rest of the West than women across the board. This has been the case at least since the jazz era.

Yes, there's been a great deal of discrimination and unconscionable exploitation of racial and ethnic minority artists of both sexes in Western and Global North popular music in the past 100 or years. But at the same time, there have been many more overall opportunities and chances for fairness for minority race/ethnic males in Western/Global North pop music than for females regardless of their race/ethnicity. Especially when vocalists are separated out from those who were/are solely instrumentalists.

In the USA, which long has played a central role in Western/Global North popular music, many groups and orchestras of the jazz, big band, rhythm and blues, and rock 'n' roll eras prominently featured male black and minority ethnic players - and a lot of orchestras, bands and acts were led by black and Hispanic men too. In addition, many successful bands in the history of recorded sound have been primarily or exclusively made up of racial/ethnic minority males.

By contrast, female instrumentalists regardless of race and ethnicity have not appeared nearly so prominently in pop music no matter what the particular genre.

My sense is that in the USA and many other countries, a lot of black and minority ethnic males who in the past might've aspired to be classical musicians have in the past 100 years instead focused on other genres of music - where men regardless of race and ethnicity have generally done much better than women overall.

What I'd like to see are the stats that show how many participants in "blind auditions" in classical music have been males of racial and ethnic minorities versus how many have been females - as well as how many of the females have been of racial and ethnic minority groups.

My guess is, in the US and Europe in recent decades proportionally and numerically more females regardless of race and ethnicity have aspired to be classical orchestra musicians than males whose heritage is African American, Latin, Asian and African.

Then again, when the issue is looked at from a wider lens and more multinational perspective, it becomes more complex. But my sense is, in this calculus it's the women who are gonna lose out.

https://www.startribune.com/orchestras-grapple-with-how-to-boost-diversity/384185541/

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2008/sep/14/music.classicalmusicandopera