Dear all

I thought I would ignite the list with a discussion email. 

A blog post on teaching opera to prisons in New York has courted controversy for purportedly being essentialist and racist. The original blog post and the comments may be found here, if you haven’t come across it yet: http://musicologynow.ams-net.org/?m=1

Twitter and Facebook has been awash with reaction. But one particular response thread piqued my interest. Apparently, the article, one respondent claimed, is symptomatic of a  white patriarchal musicology in which queer readings were limned as ancillary to ‘real’ music (whatever real music is). Moreover, it was claimed that ‘queer topics were [viewed as] irrelevant to teaching music’. 

I would be interested to know what members of the list think about the original post, and whether or not you have been met with similar responses to research which focussed on queer issues. 

I look forward to hearing your views. 

With all good wishes, 

Phil