OBOE FANCINESS
subliminal messaging for your small brain
There’s a Facebook group called Oboists in the World. I think it’s the biggest oboe group online. You can read about concerts, concert reviews, ask fingering questions, and about your reeds. It’s probably a great resource for young people, well, except for a few things. Awhile back, I noticed that every time a big fancy man was playing music by another BFM, it was all “DON’T MISS THIS GREAT EVENT, IT SOUNDS AAAAHHHMAZING” from the moderators, and anytime anybody else was playing anything else, it was like “here’s this thing.” Maybe it’s better now. There are 17k people there. I don’t follow it very closely at all. But I do know that they recently updated their cover photo from something non-descript like somebody’s white-looking hands playing the oboe to a portrait of Heinz Holliger.
Now, don’t get your panties all in a wad! I really respect Heinz Holliger. In fact, I wrote an ode to him before I became the Queen of Filth, back in 2021. It was funny to me that it was such a popular post at that time. All these BFM came out of the woodwork to comment and interact with it and agree with me, when apparently, they were just following along silently otherwise. And they went right back to their silent skulking after the Holliger post. Sometimes, they get in touch with me when they need something from me, like when they want me to call out a Bad Dude, or they want me to play their music. No thanks, Bros.
But what’s the message to young oboists in this internet group? That we all pledge allegiance to Heinz Holliger? That he is a hero to worship? A deity?That the only person worthy of being on the cover photo of the group is a white man? I mean, when are they going to post a portrait of a woman, or a nonbinary person, or a Black person, or a brown person? I think we all know: pretty much never. If we’re lucky, they’ll go back to a picture of oboe reeds or something dumb.
This act reminds me a touch of this thing from August 2024. Soundbrenner.com made a blog post of the “Ten Best Oboists of All Time.” Heinz Holliger is number one. Okay. And then there are 2 women out of 10 people, you know, so they can avoid tokenism. One is dead. The other is Diana Doherty, at number 5, who I think is incredible. There are no dead men of the other eight people, but some men I think are also fantastic. One of the men is Liang Wang. Again, this was written August 2024. After Wang had been fired almost twice at that point (now it’s fully twice) for alleged sexual misconduct. Wang is the only person on the list who is not white. You all know how stupid I think lists and rankings are, but just one woman oboist who is alive out of ten? And the only other woman oboist is the only dead person on the list? And zero people of color who haven’t been sanctioned for sexual misconduct? Come the fuck on. Really.
It also reminds me of the International Double Reed Society’s list of honorary members. That list is 105 people long. I don’t know exactly how many women are there, but it’s a low percentage. I think it’s about 12%. And most of them have been added recently, like they finally realized how pathetically biased this list of honorees is. And the number of double reed players who are not white is also very, very low.
These places are all sending young people, medium people, and old people a message. I hope everyone is aware of what they are doing. It is not as if the rate of non-men, non-white oboe players is so low. These are biased choices designed to teach you who you are supposed to think is good. Interact accordingly.
January 10, 2024
I’m editing this post to share that it has been posted to the group Oboists in the World. The following are the post there and the comments which follow. It is of special note that the two administrators for the group are Delmar Williams and Francesco Porpora, and the comments they have chosen to “like” here:
Had Soundbrenner never heard of Elaine Douvas????
The number of people in that comment section who completely missed the point you were making and focused on the wrong thing is staggering. I generally find musicians to be relatively intelligent people, so seeing their lack of reading comprehension skills just makes me even more despondent about the general public…the general voting public.