PT92: “Fighting for Gender and Racial Balance in Classical Music,” with Elizabeth de Brito, Host of the Daffodil Perspective

Podium Time

Today we talk with Elizabeth de Brito, host of The Daffodil Perspective, the first gender-balanced, racially equitable, and inclusive classical radio show in the world, celebrating female composers every week. In its two years so far, Elizabeth has discovered and shared mountains of music that, unfortunately, you’ve never heard by women and composers of color that, unfortunately, you’ve probably never heard of. Today we talk about the issues that we must overcome to create a more inclusive art-form out of classical music, how to approach advertising and programming to move from tokenism to true inclusion, and why you should base your career on something that you’re angry about.
Today we discuss:

• The history of the Daffodil Perspective, and how discovering Florence Price’s music helped Elizabeth live into her identity and launch a radio show to promote classical music by female composers (02:41)
• How the diversity of composers and performers featured on The Daffodil Perspective has evolved after the Black Lives Matter movement and reevaluations of inclusion in classical music (12:42)
• The biggest issues that lead the classical music establishment to be predominantly white, and how we can move towards a more inclusive future for classical music (17:00)
• Approaching advertising and programming to graduate from tokenism to true inclusion, and the dangers of focusing all of our efforts on championing only a few select composers (33:19)
• The research and hours of work that goes into each episode of the Daffodil Perspective, and how Elizabeth structures the show like programming a concert (44:03)
• Why you should base your career on something that you’re angry about, not something that you love (51:52)
• The best concertos by women that you probably haven’t heard yet (56:09)
• Closing thoughts on normalizing inclusion in every area of our field (1:03:10)

You can find The Daffodil Perspective at https://thedaffodilperspective.com, and listen to the show on Mixcloud at https://www.mixcloud.com/TheDaffodilPerspective/stream.

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