Arts & International Affairs Volume 5, Number 1, Summer 2020 | Page 9

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
classical Indian performance history and the aesthetics of improvisation at
conferences in the United Kingdom, Spain, Canada, and the United States.
Gargi is a classically trained sitarist and composer, whose collaborations
bridge Indian classical music and the traditions of jazz.
The focus of my work as Program Director for Jazz at Chamber Music America
(CMA) 1 involves tackling systems of absencing, which beleaguer US institutional
frameworks. With the exception of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which
launched the Doris Duke Ensembles Project, jazz –America’s heritage art form�is a
diminished priority in an approximately $20 billion national arts philanthropy portfolio.
Furthermore, Black and Latinx composers and performers, the originators and innovators
of this music, are conspicuously absent from commissioning programs and grant
support for presentation, touring, and audience development, especially the cultivation
of Black and Latinx jazz audiences across the US. CMA’s own flagship commissioning
program, New Jazz Works, which awards up to $37,000 to a single jazz composer-bandleader,
has never commissioned a Latina composer in its twenty-two year history. Of
the program’s 234 commissioned works, less than 3 percent are created by Black female
composers.
Faced with an untenable future, CMA’s Board of Directors began discussing issues of
diversity, inclusion, and equity and how they relate to the organization’s overall impact
in the small ensemble music field. Our Statement of Commitment, adopted in 2017 states,
“CMA believes that there is a fundamental difference between inviting ALAANA 2 communities
into a Western European-based structure and revising the structure itself to
include ALAANA musicians, presenters, composers, and others in the field to fully benefit
as active participants in the organization” (CMA 2017). Equipped with only anecdotal
or unverified data on the racial composition of its membership, grant applicants, 3
panelists, grant recipients, board of directors, leadership and staff, we needed to rapidly
activate a method of self-identification in order to examine the organization’s programs,
services, publications and communication channels to fully understand the people who
1 CMA is a national membership organization for the creators, practitioners, presenters, educators
and advocates of small ensemble music. It supports the national music community of over 6,000,
mainly from the fields of classical, contemporary, jazz and new music, providing access to resources
and benefits, such as professional development seminars, publications, grants and awards, and media
tool kits, and through its annual National Conference, the opportunity to connect with a network
of musicians, presenters, managers, other small ensemble music professionals, and institutional
stakeholders across the country.
2 Demographic data collection acronym adopted by CMA (African/Latinx/Asian/Arab/Native-
American).
3 CMA, since 1999, has implemented and administered the Doris Duke Ensembles Project. In addition
to New Jazz Works, CMA administers five grant programs for the creation and presentation of jazz and
classical music, and ensemble development.
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