And We're Not Going to Take It Anymore

There are a lot of people in the instrumental music world who are mad as hell right now. Making the calculated decision to use a pen name to deceive well meaning music educators seeking authenticity in multicultural music programming deserves anger.

But it also deserves action.

With the open secret no longer secret, more people are raising their voices in support of true diversity in music education works and I hope that the gate keeping publishers and organizations are finally starting to listen. With some of the events of this past weekend, it appears that may be so, but we can't let it stop here.

We don't have to wait for the major publishing companies to carry and promote diverse composers though. Make a commitment to finding and programming underrepresented composers. It can seem daunting, but there are some great resources that have already done a lot of the work including Jodie Blackshaw's list of band compositions by female composers and the Institute for Composer Diversity's databases.

Once again, we teach diverse students and they deserve to see and hear themselves in the music they make.