Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of electroacoustic composers of color

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete‎. While some people certainly did not agree with this, there is a general consensus that this subject does not have the requisite source coverage for NLIST. There were some alternative proposals made for better-focused lists, and of course that can also change in the future, so that is certainly not to say Wikipedia shouldn't cover this topic at all; just not quite in this way. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 08:08, 4 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

List of electroacoustic composers of color[edit]

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De-PROD'd. Original (endorsed) rationale: I see no indication that this specific yet subjective and undefined cross-categorization meets WP:NLIST. "Of color" is a very American-centric phrase that essentially categorizes people as "white" or "not", smushing everyone in the "not" category into one homogenous mass with no respect to actual cultural differences that may be relevant. Japan, for example, might have a particular style of electroacoustic composition where it would be relevant to discuss Japanese composers (and their non-Japanese adherents) together, but there's no indication that every "non-white" electroacoustic composer should be grouped together in this way. (And that's not getting into how we may or may not be defining "of color").

DePROD'd by creator with the following rationale: Removed deletion proposal because this is a useful resource for teaching. My students (who are not in the US) use this page, as do other lecturers.

As much as I respect that, whether or not something could be useful to a small subset of people is not a basis for keeping a list. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 18:37, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. List of acousmatic-music composers doesn't have all of the entries on this list so a merge may be of benefit. —siro χ o 19:12, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ah! I didn't realize that existed. I'm happy for a merge/redirect instead of deletion. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 19:41, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Lists of people and Music. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 20:05, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. This list exists for the same reason lists of women composers exist. It's to simplify research for people who are trying to find representation. The history of this genre has been heavily whitewashed to the point that it's usually credited to being invented in France by Schaeffer. In fact, the origin was in Cairo from El-Dabh. He was not an obscure composer. He moved to the US and moved in all the important musical circles of the post-war era, but his contribution has largely been neglected. I'm using him as an example, but this is a systemic problem, similar to the one that has also historically impacted women. I understand that this is a 'smushing', but systemic erasure is also a smushing.
Drcchutch (talk) 20:36, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Understanding "of color" as an exclusively North-American phrase is a very limiting way of framing the rationality of this list. It also conveys non-Western artistic practice, and art manifestations from the Global South, which, in the context of the history of electroacoustic music, includes a highly-relevant number of practitioners, past and present. Since this kind of list page is very useful for discoverability by the general public as well as by students in the field, deleting it would be a mistake, and the rationale presented for deletion would not speak very highly of the principles of the Wikipedia community. Kamen~enwiki (talk) 21:50, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The assumption that all "people of color" are non-Western and/or from the Global South is, itself, a limiting point of view. The color of one's skin does not determine their artistic practice. Do you have any reliable sources which treat all "people of color" as coming from a single or related electroacoustic tradition? Presenting sources would be the most useful argument towards keeping this list. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:12, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I never said "all 'people of color'" above. I clearly stated "It also conveys". Kamen~enwiki (talk) 22:27, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
But my point is that that's what this type of list conveys, unintentionally or otherwise - that somehow all "people of color" are the same. It's one thing to create a list of "List of composers from X" or "List of composers in X style", but "people of color" is a subjective term that homogenizes all these people. Again, if there were sources that discussed "people of color" as a specific group within electroacoustic music, that would be a much stronger argument for keeping this list - do you have any? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:47, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

So you want this broken down by country of origin or what are you looking for?

And what time frame are you looking for it in? It's my first week of term and I did not have refactoring this list in my schedule.

Drcchutch (talk) 22:34, 26 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm reinstate my vote to keep, on the grounds I stated above. Further arguments for this have been made by others below. Kamen~enwiki (talk) 01:55, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I've been thinking about it and there's no obvious way to refactor this list and retain it's current utility. This list exists because of historical and ongoing racism in music education and textbooks.
Racism lumps diverse populations together and sees them as interchangeable. Dozens of different countries and cultures become "Asian." Educators and researchers trying to mitigate the effects of this use the same terminology, because anti-racism is a reaction to racism.
Breaking this list up into "Asian", "Black", etc, however, becomes more specific to a particular western country, rather than less. The categories used in the UK differ very significantly from the ones used in the US and neither is exhaustive.
This list is of most use to academics, musicologists and students, who are a small subset of people, it's true, but they're also the experts in the topic.
Again, wikipedia does have artificial, homogenous groupings like "women" in other places for very similar motivations, utility and audience.
Drcchutch (talk) 08:19, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Following the discussion here, I'm going to recommend a keep based on WP:NLIST clause, Lists that fulfill recognized informational, navigation, or development purposes often are kept regardless of any demonstrated notability, as a list that is both informational and developmental. I would entertain other options that serve the purposes this one does including renaming the list. I currently view merge as a subpar but viable alternative.
I will also note that an editor removed several redlinks from the list recently, and I'm not equipped to know if they should be restored per the intended informational and developmental purposes of this list. —siro χ o 08:55, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Those names were there for developmental purposes. Drcchutch (talk) 09:36, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
From a UK perspective the 'of colour' term does seem extremely broad in a way that centres whiteness, while excluding many people who experience racism such as Roma and Jewish people.
More specific information is already there in existing finer-grained categories, e.g. someone might be in both a 'Indonesian composer' category and an 'Electroacoustic composer' category. Does wikipedia have functionality for selecting/grouping by category and presenting that as a meta-list? That would allow suppressed histories to be brought to light without the USA-centric 'smushing'. Nonetheless I'm going to vote keep because fundamentally I think this should not be framed as a deletion discussion and would be better as a more expansive discussion on the category's talk page.
Yaxu (talk) 09:05, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There is no ability to create a list on the fly based on categories. You could run a query using an offwiki tool to pull entries in Category X that are also in Category Y, but that's offwiki. I'm not sure what a discussion on the category talk page would have to do with keeping this list article or not, as regardless of the outcome of any categorization discussion, this list would still exist. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 14:01, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, first and foremost as a WP:CROSSCAT, but especially due to the generally racist overtones of lumping anyone not "white" into the group of "of color", whatever that even means. Racial identity is extremely thorny, and what constitutes "of color" is almost always going to be WP:OR.
Even though WP:PANDORA is about redirects, I'm going to invoke it in spirit here as a good reason why this list shouldn't exist. Every single list of people could be split off into an "of color" version.
I also find the pleas to NLIST's clause of valid "informational" or "developmental" list completely ludicrous grasping at straws. Any list could be "informational", and any list with red links could be "developmental". You forgot the qualifier of recognized, which this isn't. In any case, this is just a glorified WP:ITSUSEFUL and doesn't justify keeping this. 35.139.154.158 (talk) 13:39, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. For what it's worth, "lumping anyone not 'white' into the group of 'of color' is racist" is itself a well-known racist concern troll that attempts to support white supremacy by forcing every other ethnicity to act independently against it instead of working together to dismantle it. It's roughly the equivalent of union-busting tactics that convince workers they're better off negotiating on their own. Assuming you're operating in good faith, you should probably rethink why you think that argument is valid - and regardless, I don't think it's a valid argument for deletion here. The entire point of the article is to attempt to de-whitewash the genre. Etherjammer (talk) 12:09, 29 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I am operating in good faith, and I don't appreciate the insinuation that I or anyone else in this discussion is "supporting white supremacy" or engaging in "union-busting tactics". I would appreciate if you would strike this bad-faith assumption. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 12:39, 29 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ditto what PMC said, but also, your statement that "The entire point of the article is to attempt to de-whitewash the genre" (along with other similar ones made by others above) is wholly inadequate, per WP:RGW. If you have sources on which to base a list, then by all means, let's see them, and we can reconsider. But until then, WP:RGW and WP:NOR forbid this list. 35.139.154.158 (talk) 13:50, 29 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep following Siroxo's reasoning. It seems that people's knees started jerking when they read "of color". Any entries in this list should also be included in List of acousmatic-music composers. Apocheir (talk) 03:46, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Apocheir "It seems that people's knees started jerking when they read "of color"" I would love it if you could explain what you mean by this insinuation. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 03:59, 30 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Fails WP:NLIST as the sourcing does not satisfy the guidelines at WP:CSC which states that a list topic is considered notable if it has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources. I would ask that those arguing for or against this list for any reasons other than policy language should take a step back and calm down. Topics involving racial identity or social justice often draw controversy, and in the end the best thing to do is not argue for or against a topic for ideological reasons because that is WP:POVPUSHING. Our goal as an encyclopedia is to include the sum total of all human knowledge; even the knowledge that we may personally find distasteful for whatever reason. There is absolutely nothing wrong with including lists of this type if reliable sources exist which use similar language. For example Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of black Academy Award winners and nominees ended in a keep result because of the sources available on that topic. However, this list is entirely unreferenced and I am unable to locate any sources discussing "electroacoustic composers of color" as a group or set. As such the list is entirely WP:Original synthesis and is not suitable for Wikipedia because of our policy of no original research. While I appreciate and agree with the decolonial ethics of Drcchutch and Etherjammer this is a case where academics need to first do the work of discussing this topic as a group/set in published literature before we can create such a list on Wikipedia. @Drcchutch and Etherjammer, wikipedia is not the place to pioneer new decolonial scholarship, but we can include existing sources and topics of this kind and update the encyclopedia as new sources are published which decenter whiteness from the academic canon. Best.4meter4 (talk) 16:22, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Do lists normally have citations?

The most pertinent article is Patel's 'Exploring Cultural Diversity in Experimental Sound' https://doi.org/10.25370/array.v20213269 (See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf1WNUQQ-DA&list=PLnr5LpGO6hU0siuZfAwYKe13PMzGhQdZN&index=8 )

George Lewis, one of the artists on the list, writes that there is a specific style of white music production, which implies that being unbound by those constraints would have stylistic implications: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1513376

Lewis also writes about "race-aware genre scholarship" in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, in an essay that posits this applies to every genre. https://www-jstor-org.chain.kent.ac.uk/stable/26908092

I'm sure there are other examples, but again, I wasn't expecting a list to have this sort of citation Drcchutch (talk) 17:25, 3 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Drcchutch Yes lists are expected to have citations per policy at WP:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lists. For examples of high quality lists you can browse Wikipedia:Featured lists. However, lack of citations alone is not a valid reason for deletion if we can locate sources in a WP:BEFORE type search per WP:NEXIST. The issue here is that our notability language for list topics requires the identification of multiple independent sources which address the group topic of the list directly and in detail per WP:CSC and more generally WP:GNG. If you were to locate a couple of sources which discuss "electroacoustic composers of color" as a group directly and in detail (such as journal articles or books from a reliable academic publisher or even a article in a The New York Times or other similar publication) than we should be able to keep the list. It looks like the first source you provided above is one potential source, although it doesn't use the exact language of the list title which could be a problem for some editors in this discussion. (not for me though) The other sources look to be related but too tangential to the topic to be used to prove notability. Ideally we would have an academic publication that already has a list of "electroacoustic composers of color" which it discusses as a group. Usually "multiple sources" is interpreted as three sources with in-depth coverage of the topic at AFD. Please ask me if you need further clarification or have any more questions. Best.4meter4 (talk) 21:05, 3 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Lists are normally expected to meet NLIST, yes, and content does require citations if challenged. In this case we are looking for sources that discuss the concept of "electroacoustic composers of color" as a set. An article which says "there is a specific style of white music production" doesn't discuss "electroacoustic composers of color" as a set, it discusses the idea of a culturally "white" style of music production (which could probably be a really interesting article in itself if there are other sources about it). An article about "race-aware genre scholarship" is the same. What you'd want is an article whose topic is something like "The most groundbreaking electroacoustic composers of color" or "Production style of electroacoustic composers of color". Not every source needs to mention every entry on the list (or even most of them), but there needs to be enough sourcing that the grouping is not arbitrary or original research. The issue with it now is that it is completely subjective - there is no standard definition of "people of color", and without outside sources grouping these people together, the list as it stands is entirely populated by making subjective judgements about peoples' skin color - which is original research. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:28, 3 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Good points PMC. @Drcchutch If this discussion closes as delete, you might consider trying again by attempting to better delineate a topic that more accurately reflects the exact language of the references being used. It's important that the language of the title of the article comes directly from the sources supporting the article. For example, if you located multiple articles on "Black composers of electro-acoustic music" you could create a List of black composers of electro-acoustic music. I'm sure there are many potential related articles that could be created from the available academic literature. Best.4meter4 (talk) 22:00, 3 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. If views (before the discussion) are anything to go by, this isn’t a particularly useful navigation tool, and it otherwise doesn’t hold up to NLISTS. Mach61 (talk) 02:00, 3 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.