Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us working in universities or colleges were politely encouraged to consider online delivery alongside face-to-face teaching, while emails, video calls, and social networking offered supplementary links to collaborators in the field. Since early 2020, however, we have experienced unprecedented pressures to convert our lessons into online and hybrid formats, we have rapidly familiarised ourselves with the pyrotechnics of hosting large-scale Zoom or Microsoft Teams video calls with colleagues and students, and the Internet has become our primary site for collecting ethnographic data. While we juggled the task of inspiring or at least retaining the attention of our students with maintaining our own personal health and wellbeing, these sink-or-swim conditions have distracted from essential moves to decolonise our curricula. As the first waves of the pandemic subside in places—especially in richer countries that are hoarding vaccines and accruing wealth through medical patents—longer term opportunities for blended approaches to research and teaching are beginning to appear on the horizon.

The multimedia reviews section of the Yearbook for Traditional Music includes critical reviews of digital resources. Some resources are already familiar to readers (e.g., YouTube [Gidal Reference Gidal2008]—published when this was the website reviews section); others are more specific to geographical regions, musical cultures, or time periods (e.g., a podcast series on the musical history of northern India in the late Mughal empire [Widdess Reference Widdess2020]). Under the exceptional time pressures of the past eighteen months, I (Lonán Ó Briain) have tended to go to the most prominent publications and online resources in ethnomusicology when preparing a lecture on a musical culture beyond my areas of expertise. This habit deserves attention if we are to make meaningful steps towards greater diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the discipline. Danielle Brown (Founder and CEO of My People Tell Stories) is one person encouraging us to pause and reconsider.Footnote ¹ Rather than commission a review of her company’s website and multimedia resources—which I recommend to readers investigating autoethnography, storytelling in ethnomusicology, and employment for music scholars outside of academia—we had a conversation about these issues over Zoom and email. The resulting dialogue considers her work with My People Tell Stories, DEI initiatives in music education, and making more informed choices with multimedia resources.

Lonán Ó Briain (LÓB): You started My People Tell Stories in 2014 with the premise that “people of color need to tell and interpret their own stories,” the website explains the company is seeking “to create an education system that is more diverse, equitable, and inclusive,” and you have written, “[i]f you’re not telling your own stories, someone else is telling them for you” (https://www.mypeopletellstories.com/, accessed 4 June 2021). How have you brought these compelling ideas into practice?

Danielle Brown (DB): My experience has shown me that we have to be very careful when doing decolonising work or creating DEI initiatives because there are many pitfalls. I developed a framework called “Canon, People, Pedagogies” (CPP) to help music educators and institutions create music programs that are diverse, equitable, and inclusive. Part of that means recognising that DEI does not just mean diversity, but diversity, equity, and inclusion—all three. DEI is a package deal, and to treat it as anything else is to miss the mark. In many ways, I was already working with the CPP framework before I decided to give it a name. In essence, the framework teaches that to achieve our DEI goals (again diversity, equity, and inclusion), we need to look at three factors: (1) the canon; (2) people (those represented and underrepresented as teachers and administrators in our music schools and programs); and (3) pedagogies (how we teach music).

LÓB: Changing the infrastructure will move things forward but that takes time. I also want to challenge my current students. This relates to two strands of your framework: canon and pedagogies. At the University of Nottingham, I deliver an introductory undergraduate course on “Global Music Studies” which exposes students to musical cultures (and people!) they might never have encountered before. These students are predominantly from white British middle-class backgrounds. They have either spent years progressing through the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music graded exams (mostly, European art music) or enrolled for our music technology provision and come with limited knowledge of music beyond Anglophone popular culture. If I was to include a section on Caribbean music in this course, for instance, I would instinctively go to one of the standard digital textbooks in our library. Miller and Shahriari (Reference Miller and Shahriari2018) includes a chapter on the Caribbean. For a more extensive account, I would probably direct students to a title from the Oxford University Press series, Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (Moore Reference Moore2009). Do you use any of these resources in your teaching?

DB: I used the Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture series many years ago when it first was released. I know I’ve used the Trinidad edition and maybe one or two others. I have never used the Miller and Shahriari text. For many years, I’ve steered away from using textbooks, and at this point in time, I actually avoid recommending resources. Particularly with PreK-12 educatorsFootnote ², there is almost a frenzied search for resources—music to include (or exclude) in the curriculum, lesson plans, and other instructional materials. Yes, better resources are needed, especially at the PreK-12 level. However, a lack of resources is not the only problem, and I’ve found that “resources” have become a sort of scapegoat for our DEI issues, and a way to ignore issues pertaining to pedagogies and people—that is how we teach music, and the issues regarding who is teaching in our schools and/or otherwise controlling who has access to equity within music education and research.

LÓB: In an essay published here a couple of years ago, Tom Western argued that major European sound archives contributed to silencing difference. The motivation behind developing these archives was political, with funders effectively seeking to portray “Europe as a discrete entity, wiping out other cultural contributions, and silencing the long history of European reliance on the rest of the world” (Western Reference Western2019:325). Have you worked with any archives in your own research, or do you see opportunities for developing new, independent forms of archive online?

DB: Archives may be useful when one is conducting specific types of focused research, but right now my work focuses on challenging how we think about music and how we teach music. I have enough source material for what I am trying to do. Also, a lot of sound material, even ones that may have been found only in an archive ten years ago, can be found on YouTube. This is not to say that we should not consider the role of archives as we try to create music programs that are socially just and diverse, equitable, and inclusive. In many ways, I am very weary of institutions, including archives, that have lots of money to throw at a particular issue (e.g., DEI), and maintain a façade that they are doing the work, but are nonetheless hindering progress in other ways. It all goes back to who is at the top and what their ultimate goal is—money, recognition, or justice.

LÓB: My students might believe they are making independent choices when browsing YouTube, but the algorithms can be quite restrictive. As Thomas Hodgson has cautioned in relation to music on Spotify and YouTube, the algorithms and Artificial Intelligence, “are increasingly mediating our social and political lives, shaping our moral and ethical choices in the process” (Reference Hodgson2021:15). This is why I often ask students to critically engage with the collections of major museums such as the British Library or the Smithsonian Institution, which have consciously (and, of course, problematically) curated educational resources for these users. Have you used any materials relating to the Caribbean at those institutions?

DB: I am sure I have used recordings or compilations created by the Smithsonian, but I have not engaged directly with their archive or archives at other institutions. My engagement with Caribbean material has come primarily from my community—a living archive. And I have trusted the ability of my community to curate materials for me. Also, trust me when I say that I am the first person to get annoyed with algorithms and AI! However, with respect to music research, I don’t view using YouTube as better or worse than using an archive such as the British Library or the Smithsonian. As you mentioned, they are both “curated,” in a sense. In his book, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Reference Trouillot1995), Michel-Rolph Trouillot talks about how silences enter into history. One such place is in the moment of fact assembly, that is, the creation of archives. I’m not really a “tech person,” but from my perspective, YouTube is simply another type of archive, one where algorithms allow it to “curate” faster, and I would imagine, access a greater array of materials. At the end of the day, none of our choices are independent in the sense that we can only make choices based on the options presented to us. But in the final analysis, some choices are better informed than others.

LÓB: When we spoke over Zoom, you mentioned your work with school teachers. Do you see any obvious connections between PreK-12 teaching and university teaching? Are there any links that you believe we should be exploring further?

DB: One of the biggest problems I see with DEI initiatives at the college level is a lack of recognition of how woefully underprepared students are to engage in subjects pertaining to Black, Indigenous, People of Color.Footnote ³ And because college students have a greater capacity for higher level abstract thinking than younger students, we assume we can introduce them to a world that is thoroughly unfamiliar to them and then engage with them on deep topics pertaining to that world. We think a few courses crammed in at college level will make up for what students should have been learning on a regular basis. It won’t. I always say, we don’t teach students who can’t do basic arithmetic calculus just because they have the capacity to learn it. There are steps in the learning process. Students should enter college with a foundation that allows them to engage with topics beyond the Western world and beyond a Eurocentric framework. They need to receive this foundation at the PreK-12 level. Unfortunately, many PreK-12 teachers are not prepared to do this sort of work. Many college professors aren’t prepared either.

My work has evolved over time. As I started conducting more workshops and webinars, it became apparent what educators were really struggling with, and I figured out more constructive ways that I could help. PreK-12 teachers are very methodical and intentional in ways that college professors are not. And this is not to knock college professors, but PreK-12 teachers go through a training program where they learn how to teach in a step-by-step process based on where their students are in the learning process.

LÓB: With My People Tell Stories, you have led by example in self-publishing an ethnographic memoir (Brown Reference Brown2015), which illuminates issues pertaining to the Caribbean and its diaspora, and setting up a company that encourages others to tell their own stories. Of course, writing a book is not for everyone. Have you come across any examples of equitable co-creation or co-authorship in ethnomusicology, either of written texts or multimedia content, that impressed you? If not, how does My People Tell Stories do it differently?

DB: Off the top of my head I can think of some “co-authored” works in anthropology. I can’t think of any in ethnomusicology, though that’s not to say they don’t exist. Would these works qualify as equitable? I don’t know. I would need to dig beneath the façade to learn what arrangements were made between the collaborators. For me, co-creation/co-authorship is still really code for mostly white ethnomusicologists collaborating with their Black, Indigenous, People of Color subjects. It sounds nice… and equitable. But is it really? What I want to impress upon people is that real change comes when Black, Indigenous, People of Color have autonomy in their studies of themselves, and those studies are recognised as valid. Does this mean that we shut out the rest of the world? Absolutely not, but it does mean that until we can tell our stories without the spectre of whiteness and Eurocentrism hanging over our heads (and our stories), we have to be autonomous in shaping the narrative. And this is how we do it differently at My People Tell Stories. We give people of color permission to tell our stories without a white, Eurocentric filter. At this point in time, I would caution against a flurry of co-creations/co-authorships at a moment when Black, Indigenous, People of Color may finally have an opportunity to have their voices heard. Especially in a field where solo-authored works have been the standard, a push for co-authorship would seem to me to be a way for white ethnomusicologists to continue to have their voices control the narrative in some capacity. And please keep in mind that I am not saying, “there shall be no partnerships between white ethnomusicologists and Black, Indigenous, People of Color!” I am saying that who is telling the story matters. Allies can support us in this work without having a central, or even equal, role in the narrative. Equality is not equity. This is an important and hefty topic, which I talk more about in my next book, The Universal Lie: How the Erasure of Difference Perpetuates Inequities in Music (Brown Reference Brownforthcoming). We’ll also look at some of these issues in My People Tell Stories’ online course “Canon, People Pedagogies: From Framework to Action,” which was held in July this year in lieu of the Caribbean Music Pedagogy Workshop which has been postponed until Summer 2022 due to the pandemic. Information about this workshop and other offerings by My People Tell Stories is available on our website (https://www.mypeopletellstories.com/).