UK royal schools of music exam board urged to address colonial legacy

The exam board of Britain’s royal schools of music is being urged to address the legacy of its colonial origins after research found 99% of pieces on its syllabuses were by white composers.

Almost 4,000 people have signed an online petition calling for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM), which was founded in 1890 and exported its ideals of musical standards across the British empire, to include “black composers who have shaped the course of western classical music”.

None of the 255 pieces in the new piano syllabus, published this week, were by black composers.

The petition says the exclusion of renowned figures such as the mixed-race English conductor and composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, most famous for his choral work Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, and Joseph de Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, who was born a slave in the French colony of Guadeloupe and became a composer in Marie Antoinette’s court, amounted to the “erasure of people of colour” from history.

Music students, teachers and musicians said the overwhelmingly white curriculum was deterring black talent from applying to conservatoires, particularly the four royal schools: the Royal Academy of Music (RAM), the Royal College of Music (RCM), the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the Royal Northern College of Music.

Delivering more than 650,000 exams and assessment each year in 93 countries, the ABRSM shapes the musical lives and tastes of millions of people worldwide. Yet white composers wrote 98.8% of the 3,166 pieces on the latest exam syllabuses for 15 instruments, according to a forthcoming study by Austin Griffiths, a senior teaching fellow at University College London (UCL).

Only 14 (0.4%) of pieces for the piano, violin, viola, cello, double bass, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, French horn, trumpet, trombone, bass trombone, tuba, or harp were by composers of African heritage, with another 23 by Asian and other minority ethnic composers. Only eight black composers, includingMiles Davis and Duke Ellington, were represented overall.

Chi-chi Nwanoku, the founder of the Chineke! Foundation, which runs the first professional and junior orchestras in Europe made up of mostly of black and minority ethnic musicians, described the “woeful lack” of ethnic diversity in the ABRSM syllabus as appalling.

Nwanoku, a professor of double bass at the RAM, said she had raised concerns with the board’s executive director, Lincoln Abbotts, nearly four years ago. She added: “Did he do anything? No, nothing.”

She said Abbott had signed a letter she sent to Boris Johnson this month that demanded the government implement “real institutional change” in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, including decolonising the curriculum to celebrate the contribution of black, Asian and ethnically diverse musicians, and address Britain’s involvement in the slave trade and the impact of colonialism.

Nwanoku added that she expected Abbotts to commit to the letter’s demands.

Scott Caizley, a researcher and PhD student at King’s College London, said the exclusion of black composers amounted to systemic racism, and the ABRSM should make its syllabuses less white if it was “committed to seeing a more racially diverse intake of students entering conservatoires”.

Caizley said the four ABRSM royal music schools have enrolled few black British students in recent years, according to his analysis of data from the Higher Education Statistics Authority. The RCM, which states that credible undergraduate applicants usually have “one or more distinctions” at ABRSM grade eight, has admitted only five UK-domiciled black students in the past five years, with none admitted between 2014-15 and 2017-18.

An RCM spokeswoman said: “As an institution we are making strides to improve diversity and we now offer BAME scholarships to attract applications from those from underrepresented communities.”

Anna Bull, a sociology lecturer and author of Class, Control, and Classical Music, said the “overwhelming whiteness” of the ABRSM syllabuses reflected its colonial origins.

She added: “As a result, it is hardly surprising that there are very few black British students at UK conservatoires.”

An ABRSM spokesman said the death of George Floyd in the US had made it think deeply about its efforts to get more black composers in its syllabuses. He added the board had committed to launch a mentorship scheme in September for BAME composers, specifically to increase the pool of pieces to include in syllabuses.