Diversity in Student Programming

MYSO is having seating auditions this weekend. We started Thursday morning, and it's Sunday afternoon and we're still chugging along. Close to 800 kids are trooping through the corridors; instruments, crumpled pages of music, and nervous parents in tow.

I don't remember much about seating auditions last year; I was new to my job and the overwhelming numbers made that weekend a noisy blur. And at placement auditions in the spring (auditions to get into the ensembles), I was busy walking kids from the warm-up room to their audition room, so I saw students in small chunks, more as individuals than as a group.

But this August, I volunteered to be the staff photographer. I've been photographing each student after they check in for their audition, and now, even though auditions aren't over quite yet (only 3 more hours to go!), I've started the tedious process of labeling each picture with a name, an instrument and an ensemble.

What delights me, and what will ultimately be the topic of this entry, is the growing diversity in a program that I've been involved with for many years now.

In 7th grade, I auditioned for and was accepted into the Junior Wind Ensemble of MYSO; a middle school band, essentially, but the first step for all wind players into the program. After one forgetful year, I moved up to Philharmonia, and then to Senior Symphony. I spent 2 years in Phil and 2 in Senior, and throughout, participated in chamber ensembles, and other extra programming. I was a member of MYSO for five years total, and always played a little game at concert-time.

For many years, MYSO has had enough ensembles to need two, and now three, concerts per semester. A concert will generally include two or three ensembles playing their repertoire, so concerts were and are the best time to see the largest group of MYSO students gathered in one place at one time. The game that I played was a little diversity counting game. I would wade through the crowd and try to find all the minorities participating in MYSO; young classical musicians from the general southeastern Wisconsin area.

One thing I didn't realize until I got into college, and was really rather disturbed that I thought this way, was that I usually measured diversity in black and white. Sometimes I would forget to count Asian students, because, growing up, I suppose I wasn't raised to see Asian people as an oppressed minority like I viewed African Americans and Latino/a people. This is a topic I'd like to explore, but will have to come back to it later.

I based my counts on phenotypic assumptions, and used this as a check mark against the youth orchestra program; in all it's recruiting efforts across the southeastern part of the state, we still drew more than 95% white students.

Now, ten years later, I work for MYSO, because, even though I disliked the racial discrepancies, and the social, class, and experience superiority that so many of the kids flaunted (including myself, at times), I still admired MYSO for what it did. MYSO was, for me, something to give my teenage years grounding. Nothing really made sense at 14, 15, 16, but every week, I walked into a high-ceilinged room, sat before a black metal stand and thousands of rests and notes, and felt something. Music made sense when very little did.

So here I am, working for them, newly promoted Program Coordinator, dealing in donations, scheduling, and mailings, and loving and hating it simultaneously. And really really eager to get involved in the new diversity efforts. There are programs designed to target city of Milwaukee students just as so many Milwaukee Public Schools are losing their arts and music funding; there are programs for encouraging low-income children to join at lower tuition rates; and recruiting has finally spread it's fingers throughout the city of Milwaukee. It always bothered me that the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra consisted mainly of suburban and small-town Wisconsin students with few ties to the city of Milwaukee.

So I'm seeing more and more brown faces entering the halls these days. And, camera in hand, I'm starting to feel a little giddy and righteous. Excited that all those suburban and small-town kids will now have to face a reality they heretofore were never exposed to. This is a first step in the fight against the institution of racism. Starting young, teach students that they can bond with kids that come different backgrounds over common interests. I want those parents to disapprove, I want there to be blow-ups and name-calling and other such awful things because somehow the topic has to be addressed. Ignorance has to be exposed if it's going to be eradicated. And racism has to be acknowledged- the legacy and structure of inequality - in order to be dismantled. To begin dismantling.

More later. Back to work.