Artist managements ignore classical music's Black Lives Matter movement, now they're going bankrupt. Here's why.
By: Brandon Keith Brown
Tags: Classical Music Online, Culture, Race, Artist Management, Racism

Now, agencies can’t squeak by on white bourgeois dollars, scrambling quarterly to appease white shareholders.

Hazard Chase was the first to fold in April 2020. Opus 3 was bought out recently by diversity savvy San Francisco Conservatory of Music. US behemoth Columbia Artist Management Inc.(CAMI) closed, while others fired or furloughed managers, leaving artists to go it alone. Some formed smaller fiefdoms of white supremacy, such as Marcus Felsner, ex-EU director of Opus 3 Berlin, which has no Black artists, not even a token Black singer.

The entertainment industry is ultra-competitive. Artist management companies can’t rely on presenters to connect their artists to Black communities. A mission of racial inclusion and equity will increase market share, secure trust with intangible Black communities, and create a cash reserve during the next COVID.

Diversity Initiatives: The ROI

Diversity initiatives benefit companies by enhancing creativity and idea generation. Hiring Black artists managers will help agencies gain privileged cultural insight on marketing to Black communities, but including them specifically on boards increases company profits even more.

Companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity on executive teams were “more likely to have financial returns 35% above their respective median national average” (Mckinsey 2018). They’re also more likely to “outperform others by 33% on their fourth-quarter earnings before income taxes (EBIT).”

In the US, “for every 10 percent increase in the racial and ethnic diversity of executive teams, the EBIT increases by .8 percent.” Most promising is that “the relationship between racial and ethnic diversity is linear with financial performance.” British companies fare better. Those with “a 10% higher gender and ethnic racial diversity on managements and in boardrooms have an EBIT 5.8% higher than others.”

In 2020, new potential Black customers are entirely online but few Black artists are featured in streamed concerts. Presenters and agencies are missing a critical opportunity to entice new loyal Black audiences. Whites believe Blacks aren’t interested in classical music so why bother. Therefore, they continue featuring white and Asian artists to mostly aged bourgeois whites.

Note that the potential impact of racial and ethnic diversity on profit is stronger than gender diversity, likely because white women affirmative has already yielded strong results. Clearly, racial equity is integral to profitability.

“Blacks just aren’t good enough”: The myth of meritocracy

Meritocracy is an excuse to exclude Black artists from rosters and the stage. The narrative is we’re not good enough. Presenting whites, Asians, and white immigrant artists exacerbates the implicit bias that Black classical musicians aren’t as competent.

Orchestras go decades never featuring Black conductors for masterworks programs. White women and Asians are offered as diversity stand-ins for Blacks, with the racist sigh of, “It’s just that Blacks aren’t good enough.”

Meritocracy is a fictional, morbid, and dangerous social disillusionment. Only whites decide who’s deserving of a career in classical music. Because the assessors of talent are always white, meritocracy maintains white supremacy in classical music. Meritocracy is racist. Whites are not the only ones capable of assessing talent and potential.

For meritocracy to be plausible, we must be fooled into believing that Blacks historically start from zero — like white Anglo-Saxon Protestant men — with equal unfettered access to equity and fulfilling our full potential. The truth is we start from at least negative 100, working twice as hard as whites (yes, including white women!) to achieve half as much.

Artist management agencies uphold the myth of meritocracy — distracting from their complete ignorance of US-American slavery’s legacy — , anti-Black racism, classism, their hoarding of cultural capital, and the virulent racism that plagues classical music.

“Let in one and no more”: Tokenism isn’t racial equity

Excluding Black conductors from artist managements teach whites we’re inferior. Opus 3 has no Black conductors, and London’s HarrisonParrot hasn’t had a Black baton since Henry Lewis. Not only has Germany’s KD Schmid never had a Black conductor, but they’ve excluded Black artists altogether. Others, like IMG, tokenize Blacks, which is in some ways worse — due to racial stigmatization — than having none at all. None have racial equity mission statements on their websites.

When Black conductors are tokenized, managements choose non-threatening, demure, universally acceptable artists, not necessarily the best.

The most easily tolerated black person in the white space is often one who is “in his place” — one who has been vouched for by white people in good standing. [They are] less likely to disturb the implicit racial order — white people as dominant and black people as subordinate.”— This is what it feels like to be Black in white spaces by Elijah Anderson in The Guardian

Mediocrity is detrimental to the Black cause. It reinforces the implicit bias that Blacks don’t belong on the podium, making it harder for others.

We tried a Black already. It didn’t work out. Never again.

Although whites enjoy the white privilege of individuality, Blacks are an anonymous collective. If one of us fails, the entire race is penalized.

Getting into “good trouble”

Black artists are expected to be mute race-less eunuchs. Whites like Black moderates, who don’t challenge them to grow, looking at their own racism. Advocates for re-envisioning classical music, through the lens of racial equity, are radical heretics and silenced. Whites expect Blacks to be satisfied with being allowed in the room. Insisting on more brings strong rebukes — from Blacks and whites — for being the difficult naughty Negro.

There comes a time when silence is betrayal. — Martin Luther King Jr.

If you really think all-white artist managements and orchestras have no implicit racial bias, and can financially afford to remain oblivious to the Black Lives Matter movement, you deny the legacy of 400 years of slavery, the Black lived experience of racism, the power of the Black dollar, and concede that the deaths of George Floyd, Breona Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery — or the Black lynching of the day — have nothing to do with race.