Diversifying Your Repertoire: Music by BIPOC Composers

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

At the Whittaker Library, we use the Portal (a bit like Moodle, it’s a kind of intranet for material shared within the institution) for useful information to help our students and colleagues.

A while ago, I compiled lists of music by women composers, subdivided into categories, such as music for children, music for tuba, music for mixed chamber ensemble – but until now, I hadn’t done much in the way of subdividing the lists of music by BIPOC composers. So, I have been working on it.  Despite having acquired quite a lot of music, I have discovered that the commonest instruments have by far and away the most music. Poor tuba player, if you want to diversify your programme with music by people of other ethnicities.

Some university libraries have put in a lot of effort helping students find this kind of thing – especially in Canada and the USA – and there are some useful databases to help – but I have still been struggling to find materials for some of the more minority instruments. Not a great deal for piccolo, tuba, accordion – or bagpipes! (Well,  there might not be as much pipe music over there – we started the piping tradition here in Scotland. However,  there are plenty of non-Scottish pipe bands. Some international pipers must also compose!)

If you play tuba, trombone, piccolo, oboe, saxophone – you get the picture – and your repertoire includes a fabulous piece of music by a BIPOC composer, PLEASE do recommend your library to get that piece in stock so that other musicians can also find it! It won’t be up to me to continue ordering music at RCS after the end of June – and that’s a strange feeling – but I can, right now, highlight the fact that libraries need to pay attention to the repertoire they buy.

If you’re a librarian – by all means, keep the standard repertoire up to date. Buy what your patrons need and ask for. But if you have a chance to do stock development, please keep the BIPOC composers in mind. They are, after all, the global majority! And I’m ashamed to say, we don’t know enough about them, though I can, hand on heart, say that I’ve been making a determined effort to find out.

I had hoped to do one last workshop about all the exciting new repertoire in the library, before I retired. Sadly, this isn’t going to happen. Never mind – maybe one day, someone will find this blog post and feel inspired to explore it all for themselves.

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

Slow Productivity: my Latest Read

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Cover of Cal Newport book, Slow Productivity

Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
by Cal Newport and Penguin Audio (March 2024)

picture of headphones on a patchwork background.

I’ve been listening to Cal Newport’s book, Slow Productivity: the Lost Art of Accomplishment without Burnout, on Audible. I’ve taken my time over it – appropriately – and I’m approaching the end of it. Because I haven’t finished completely, what I’m writing here today can’t really be described as a review, so much as a first impression.

But why, you might ask, would anyone less than two months away from retirement age, decide to read a book about productivity at all? It’s a good question! I think I was both intrigued by the title, and fascinated by the different paces at which different people work. There are times when I achieve a lot – but not usually at a frenetic pace.   I don’t throw myself into tasks at fever-pitch, unless a deadline is creeping up on me. On the other hand, I do tend to have so many things on the go, that going slow feels impossible. (And I’m worryingly obsessed about accomplishment and achievements! That’s how I was raised.)

The main thrust of the book is that we ‘knowledge-workers’ should be more deliberate, allow ourselves time to do things well, factor in holidays, breaks and slower-moving spells, and not take on too much. That we’re not like factory workers on an assembly line, and aren’t generally required to produce so many units of whatever-it-might-be, per hour, day or week. Newport’s historical examples are inspiring, underlining his message, but some suggestions have no application to any role I’ve ever occupied. Pay someone to do some part of my work? If I was self-employed, possibly. However, the only time I’ve ever done that, was getting my first book indexed professionally. Librarians don’t outsource their work. (Neither do 0.3 of the week researchers!) Similarly, if you own a business or are freelance, you can deliberately decide to make a little less profit in exchange for a longer, more intentional route towards a high-quality product/performance act/whatever. People employed in any kind of academia can choose to seek a promoted position or not (depending on circumstances, of course), but it’s not about profitability directly affecting one’s own pocket.

Obsess over Quality

However, the suggestion to look at your role and focus on the ‘core activities’ that will have the most impact, is certainly sensible. As I’ve mentioned before, cataloguing barely-used jazz CDs is a soul-destroying task, mainly because it has such little impact. I hardly needed an Audible book to endorse that sentiment, but there it was.

Impactful Librarianship

As I did the ironing one night last week, listening to my book, I think that’s what prompted me to make sure my final weeks of librarianship would have a bit more impact than that! I’ve thrown myself back into tracking down music by BIPOC composers, and it certainly passes the time more quickly than other tasks I could mention!

My aim is simply to make it possible for students to find more diverse repertoire, should they feel so inclined.  My efforts won’t result in a massive listing – there are less than a thousand such items tagged in our catalogue, and our budget isn’t huge. It’s not just about getting the materials in – but I won’t be the one devising ways to get it known about and borrowed, after 28 June 2024.

Yesterday, a highlight was discovering one particular new acquisition was already on loan to a second borrower. Result!  That  in library terms, is impact.

And Impactful Research

As for slow productivity? I need to finish reading Newport’s book and then consider how to apply the best suggestions to a semi-retired existence. At the time I’m posting this, it’s a Wednesday, and I have my research hat on. I have a book review to do, and then I’ll look at my list of projects … because I’m not retiring from research! Far from it.

Glass Half-Empty or Half-Full?

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

I’ve just given myself a strict talking-to.  On the face of it, I’ve published nothing of significance since January 2023.  The shame of it!  And me a 0.3 FTE researcher and all!  But when I remind myself that by the end of December 2024, I shall hopefully have published another monograph, two book chapters and an article, it doesn’t look quite so bad.  I really must stop comparing myself with full-time academics.

Women Composers

My last substantial article was actually written with my librarian hat on – maybe that’s not surprising, given that 0.7 of my role is as a librarian.  I wrote about my work getting more music by women composers into RCS Library:-

‘Representation of Women Composers in the Whittaker Library’, Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice. Vol. 11 No. 1 (2023): Special Issue on Breaking the Gender Bias in Academia and Academic Practice, pp.21-26. (Paper given at the International Women’s Day Conference hosted by the University of the Highlands and Islands, 2022.) DOI: https://doi.org/10.56433/jpaap.v11i1.533

Watch out for my forthcoming article in History Scotland in December 2023. It’s about two Scottish women singers, one still famous (albeit not for her singing) and the other now forgotten. I’ve seen the proofs – it looks nice!

Historically Under-Represented Composers

Since writing the ‘Representation of Women Composers in the Whittaker Library’ article, I’ve continued adding music by historically under-represented composers to the library at RCS – it’ll be some kind of legacy to leave when I retire from the library in 38 weeks’ time!  I want to know that if students are looking for this kind of repertoire, there will be plenty to choose from.

Climate Change – Vocal Repertoire

I’d also like to see more songs about the climate crisis, a topic that colleagues have already been working on in the wider library collection.  If you’re reading this and know of published music suitable for young professional singers, do please get in touch.  I’m also looking out for decent publications of songs about environmental issues for classroom use, to benefit our trainee teachers in the Conservatoire.  If I can capitalise on the connections I’ve made through social media, to gather more information about this repertoire, then the collection can only benefit.  I’m just looking for songs – 38 weeks isn’t long enough to glean more than that, and it’s not as though the library won’t get on capitally without me next year in any case!! No-one’s indispensible.

Like this …

The music has to be commercially published – we’re not trying to build an archive of unpublished material with all the copyright complexities concomitant with such output.

But not this …

My own Extinction Calypso was performed in Edinburgh this March at Chris Hutchings’ Choirs for Climate concert, but it’s precisely NOT the kind of thing to end up in a Conservatoire library – fun, but lightweight, unpublished, and certainly not to be preserved for posterity!  It doesn’t make me any the less pleased with it, but I make no pretence of being anything other than a rather third-rate composer.  So – please tell me about proper works by serious composers, but not the likes of this:-

When I retire from the library, I shall still go on being a researcher professionally at RCS.  (No doubt I’ll also compose and sew pieces of nonsense in my retired-time!)  But it’ll be summertime before that happy day.  So for now, it’s on with the day-job, and the enjoyment of my Fellowship in St Andrews on Wednesdays and Thursdays!  More about that research in due course.

Image from Pixabay