This is the situation which Trump would like to perpetuate: US orchestras are 80% White, 11% Asian, 5% Hispanic and 2% Black. In past years, efforts to change that and to make orchestras more diverse have been made. For instance, Chicago non-profit Equity Arc connects talented student musicians of color with mentors and opportunities to learn.
An exciting opportunity for many of those students was an invitation from the United States Marine Band to come to Washington, DC to perform with them this spring. But after Trump’s day-one executive orders “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing” the show was cancelled.
The White House dictator had issued his executive order against diversity programs, and the young musicians were Black, Hispanic, Indian and Asian. They were brutally silenced by a white macho who, in the end did not succeed. Veterans of military bands gathered in an improvised orchestra of equity including the musicians barred from the Marine Band.
18-year-old Rishab Jain was among those students. He was born in America to Indian parents, a high school senior accepted at Harvard. In a CBS feature he said: « If we’re a society that’s suppressing art, we’re a society that is afraid of what it might reveal about itself. If we’re suppressing music, we’re suppressing emotions, we’re suppressing expression, we’re suppressing vulnerability, we’re suppressing the very essence of what makes us human. We are devaluing our own humanity. We are degrading our own humanity. »
Trump is rolling back 60 years of discrimination protections for women, older Americans, the disabled and people of color. He is sabotaging music education by eliminating diversity, by eliminating any effort to promote black composers, women composers, to facilitate access to music education to kids from poor families etc. etc.
In the CBS report, young musician Ricardo Lazaro from San Antonio, Texas said: « I just want the world to be a better place. But it seems like we’re slowly straying away from that. And we gotta make a change. And I believe everyone here is capable of doing that. But are we gonna do it? » That’s the crucial question.
