Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I'm the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs

Magazine. I am joined today by Professor Philip Ewell of Hunter College of the City,

University of New York. He is a professor of music theory. He is also the author of the new book on music theory and

making music more welcoming for everyone available from the University of Michigan Press as part

of their music and social justice series of books. Professor Ewell, thank you so much for joining us

on Current Affairs today. Oh, thanks for having me. I look forward to this conversation.

Well, I thought I'd start by asking you for your reaction to a recent incident involving

music and race. The longtime publisher of Rolling Stone was interviewed in the New York

Times recently and made appalling comments because he's got a new book coming out and is called

something like The Masters where he interviews rock and rollers and he picked eight white guys, you know,

Jagger, Richards, Dylan, whatever. The New York Times interview asked him the quite basic question

you might think he'd be ready for, why did you pick entirely white men? And he said outright

that he did not think women or people of color were articulate,

that he didn't think they were philosophers of rock.

Everyone was shocked by this.

He was immediately kicked out of the Rocker Roll Hall of Fame where he's had a prestigious

position for a while.

But I thought that one person who would not have been shocked

was you because he articulated something that is rarely put that explicitly, but is

implicit everywhere in music all the time. Oh my goodness. Yeah, that's exactly right.

This is Wenner, Jan, or Jan,

I don't know how he pronounces it. And I think he's about mid-70s, and yes, he's a white

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