This week, as we are made painfully aware yet again of the urgency to address systemic racism, some reflections.
CMW has been working to define social justice in our musical practice since our founding, but more intensively over the last four years. As with any deep investigation, it seems that every question we raise reveals five more questions to ask.
We have come to the realization that to be an organization dedicated to the practices of anti-racism and anti-oppression, we need to operate at multiple levels simultaneously: at the level of investigating policies and practices, repertoire and pedagogy, board and staff hiring, diversity and equity plans. And on the other hand, we need to devote ourselves to the ongoing work of education and healing for individuals in our community.
While we swim in polluted waters, while we live in a society that takes for granted the idea that white is “normal,” saying nothing of male, cis, and straight, there is so much to unlearn. And there is so much history to relearn about the very real history, as CMW alum Liam Hopkins so poignantly put it, that racism is a tremendously resilient force that has not been successfully legislated away, despite efforts 150 years ago, 50 years ago and at many other points in our history.
Only through the difficult yet liberating work of reading, talking, reframing and reflecting; only through the work for those of us who are white, of coming to terms with our resistance, our privilege, our oblivion can we begin to shift in ourselves the way we see the world, and the way we act in it.
The oppressive forces of structural racism are too vast for any of us to tackle alone or even in our organizations or political groups, and that fact can itself be devastating to consider. However, as Grace Lee Boggs reminded us in her final years, revolutionaries are people who change the world by changing themselves.
As we reel from the tragedies of George Floyd’s death, the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and the countless numbers of Black people before them, many in our community of students, musicians, and families are traumatized yet again.
As an organization whose purpose is to put music into the role of bringing people into community so that their voices – musical and otherwise – are heard and amplified, we mourn, and recommit to the urgency of action.
Sebastian Ruth
Founder & Artistic Director
