Producing (Musical) Difference: Power, Practices and Inequalities in Diversity Initiatives in Germany’s Classical Music Sector

Abstract

This article examines whether diversity debates in the Western cultural industries can contribute to the undoing of racialised representations of otherness or reproduce ‘race’-making logics. Based on a year-long ethnography of diversity efforts made at an opera house in Germany, I explore how difference is negotiated in the production of two opera pieces meant to bring together Western and Turkish musical practices. I specifically examine how power relations around ‘race’ and ethnicity play out in processes of commissioning, composing and rehearsal. Situating these creative practices within classical music’s institutional histories and wider discourses of citizenship and belonging in Germany, I examine to what extent racialised representations of difference are challenged or remade. I document how diversity initiatives in the cultural industries, even when aimed at institutional change, proceed within hierarchical parameters that can perpetuate the marginalisation of racialised others, their continued construction as otherness, and the persistence of institutional whiteness.