A couple of friends asked me for some tips as to how to address diversity in music without being accidentally tokenizing or erasing. We don’t have a great social vocabulary for such things; this is my effort to provide some genuinely helpful guidelines without being censorious or pointing fingers at people for doing the Wrong Thing.
1. AVOID REDUCTIONISM.
The whole idea behind celebrating musicians from lots of diverse backgrounds is that you get a lot of different perspectives, right? Plus, music is something that shouldn’t have barriers to entry based on social position. Diversity in any form is about leveling the playing field and about giving a spotlight to people who are routinely and systemically crowded out of it. Gender, race, sexuality, class, and ability are ASPECTS of an artist, something that may have shaped their relationship to the world and in turn the art they make. They shouldn’t be ignored, but they also shouldn’t be the only thing you notice about an artist.
The thing about marginalization is that it means that you don’t ever get to be the default when it comes to how you’re perceived. Your experiences aren’t universalized. You don’t get the kind of freedom and leeway with your work that people who aren’t marginalized get. Push back on that as a critic; find the human and universal in the art you’re writing about without ignoring the specific circumstances of the people who created it (which could be other things other than socially inhabitable identities).
2. START WITH THE MUSIC ITSELF AND WORK BACKWARDS TO THE PEOPLE. Sure, the people making the music give great context to the music you’re hearing, but they are not the sum total of it. If you’re doing a profile piece, by all means, start with the people involved, but if you’re doing a review, start with musical and lyrical analysis. Try not to compare artists to other artists who share particular identities and marginalizations who might not sound anything like them.
Music is an interesting form of art to write about because it is so intensely personal and the delineation of artist vs. art can be so incredibly blurry. Musicians can inhabit characters in one breath and say something deeply and personally true in another. With most film, the fictive element is very clear - film that blurs those lines must do so consciously. With most visual art and writing, the artist themself is not constantly physically present in the form of their work. But with music, even electronic music, it’s hard not to be consistently reminded of the person in the work, the person whose voice you are hearing, whose hands are pushing on buttons or holding down strings or hitting things with sticks. Be aware of that as you write.
3. “ALL-GIRL BAND” IS AN ANNOYING PHRASE.
Unless you are talking about a band of actual girls (female musicians under 18), this phrase comes off as incredibly patronizing and tokenizing. (You might want to ask rather than assume gender, too; this is a thorny thing but hey, gender is a mess.) Also, when every other band on the bill gets a sonic descriptor and you get “all girl,” as if “girl” was something that had a specific sound attached to it, that is deeply irritating. This happens with other identities, too, but this is the one I see the most often, and it has multiple levels to it, so I pulled it out as a particular example.
4. IF YOU FIND YOU’RE WRITING ABOUT ALL WHITE MEN, LOOK ELSEWHERE. It’s not that we don’t exist, it’s that we just might not be in the places you normally look.
5. FESTS AND COMPS BASED ON IDENTITY ARE GREAT, BUT THEY SHOULD BE A STARTING POINT. A wide range of representation in music is great, and fests and comps meant to highlight the work of marginalized people in music are terrific for that reason; they’re also great for smaller communities coming together and getting a chance to bond over a shared artistic experience.
But they shouldn’t be the place where efforts toward diversity in music end, and, as a journalist covering such offerings, it’s important to recognize that and to push for greater inclusion. It’s not enough for a label to do a Hardcore Comp (of all white guys) and then a Female-Fronted Hardcore Comp and then a Black and Latino Hardcore Comp. Why are they all separate? Ask those questions.
Hopefully this is helpful; I may continue to update this with tips and situations you may encounter often as they arise.