“Pride Isn’t A Reason To Exploit Queer Composers” by Megan DeJarnett
Megan DeJarnett (she/they, b.1995) is an interdisciplinary narrative artist and educator whose work centers around themes of communication, immersion, empathy, and performer creativity. Hailed as having “a keen affinity for vulnerability, in both herself and others,” her musical catalog contains both traditional works and pieces exploring sexual assault, rape culture, trauma, gender, and recovery, often for use in interdisciplinary contexts. Their education work includes blogging on queer identities and misogyny, lecturing on Twitch and Discord, and serving as adjunct faculty in Maricopa County, AZ.
From the writer:
I find it really important to pay attention to how we're asking (and sometimes requiring!) queer people to represent ourselves in our work; while some of us are happy to bake direct references to our identities and experiences into what we create, a lot of calls for scores directed at our community only want things that are either inspirational or trauma porn, often for exploitatively low rates. Almost every composer I know works for rates that are less than our worth, but there's often an uptick in unpaid and underpaid requests for marginalized composers around events like Pride, Black History Month, and Native American Heritage Month. In the event that a composer is required or heavily pressured to share their trauma through their art, they should be compensated appropriately for the additional emotional labor, but even within those marginalized communities, we don't always acknowledge that. If we're going to create a more just and equitable world, we need to make sure our individual efforts to program marginalized composers (like the one I reference in the essay) aren't making it harder for them beyond our specific projects.
Find Megan here:
Twitch: HeyItsEris
Twitter/Instagram/SoundCloud: @ordinarilymeg
Patreon: MeganDeJarnett
A full text version of this article is available here.
organized by Hope Salmon
TESJI Resource Committee Member