The Toxic Culture Of The Music World

I think, um, as I'm sure [clears throat] you have seen all this stuff with the Cornell Seven going on, this...

And it just, like, seeing this story and reading about it, hearing about it, and thinking about it, and thinking about, like, how horrible and disgusting it is that not only that this thing could happen, that seven men could do this, that 57 men could hear about this, but that it was just, like, so entrenched in the culture of a fraternity-

Mm

... of a university that it completely was swept under the rug for two years.

And that was just, like, such a disgusting idea to me that I was like, I, I, I feel like I feel the need to really sit and think about, like, what are the cultural things that I accept that I shouldn't accept? Like, what are the toxic routines and cultures that I or the people around me are like, "Well, that's just how it is."

Mm-hmm.

Because I feel like that was the fucking phrase that kept coming up in this, uh...

in the discourse of the Cornell Seven was, you know, "Boys will be boys."

Mm-hmm.

And which, like, just is like a point of like, "Oh my God, what a horrible excuse that is." Um, and just, yeah, and just this thought of like, "Oh, that's the way it is.

That's the way it always has been." And that exact saying has always been one of the most infuriating sentences I have ever been hur- met with by anyone in response to something terrible happening.

And so I wanted to do an episode where we talked about and thought about, like, well, what are the, you know, toxic or terrible or unhealthy things that we, in what we do in our field, that is classical music, that we take for granted and that we shouldn't, uh, take for granted, and that we shouldn't just ex- roll over and accept? So, I think starting on the milder end, and maybe we'll, we'll start on the mild end [chuckles] and then work up to the, the worse stuff.