Aural Diversity, EDI and Music Departments

I recently came across this review by Abigail Bruce of the EDI event for Music in Higher Education at which I spoke. It observes:

Significantly, it is possible that in attempting to remove certain barriers, we may be creating new ones, as one delegate highlighted. Indeed, activism might involve stepping out of our normative spaces, to recognise the overlooked, rather than just the under-represented. This will allow us to better consider who is actually being included under the label of ‘inclusive practice’. For instance, as a subject rooted in sound, decolonising music listening lists for socio-cultural inclusion, does little to address aural diversity. Andrew Hugill (University of Leicester) illustrated the use of sign language and vibrating floors as possible responses to this issue.

This really draws out the significance of my presentation very well. It is hard enough for disability issues to be heard in the loud debates around Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Music, let alone ideas like ‘aural diversity’. Consequently we are often overlooked. The recent inclusion of an aural diversity panel in the 2020 Royal Musical Association conference is an encouraging sign that this situation is beginning to change.

It still astonishes me that sound-based disciplines like music take so little account of the ways in which people may hear. The tacit assumption always seems to be that the listener is possessed of a serviceable pair of equally balanced ‘normal’ ears. It’s a tacit assumption because hardly anyone imagines that it might be otherwise and so it is never discussed. Music departments very rarely consider that the foundations of their shared understandings are based on something as volatile and fragile as human hearing. The “normative space” is exactly the music department itself, with its well-established practices and its standardised listening.

Vibrating floors and sign language are of course only a partial solution. To accommodate the full range of aural diversity, from hyperacusis through to profound deafness, requires a complete re-thinking of listeners and their role in music. This is undoubtedly an EDI issue. It overlaps with disability, but is not exclusively in that domain. All of us start to lose our hearing from our late teens onwards in different ways and at different rates. And our ears are physically unique to us.

Notice how far this is from heroic narratives about deaf and hard-of-hearing musicians (such as Beethoven) overcoming their disability. This is much more quotidian. If I, as a Professor of Music and established composer, feel excluded from the music world because of my hearing, then how can students who may have all kinds of hearing differences be expected to feel included? This is not about people like me being able to find ways to access music in spite of everything. It is about music adapting to our needs which, by the way, are not necessarily deficits. Sometimes we hear things that people with ‘normal’ ears miss!