The missing half of music history | Gabriella Di Laccio

0:03You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Who decides which voices survive? It's a question classical singer Gabriela Di Laccio never thought to ask until a few years ago. She was browsing a secondhand book market in London and found an encyclopedia listing 6 ,000 women composers from across the history of music. She had trained her whole life as a musician, yet she could name only five. I'm a professional musician. How is it possible that I spent my life training and performing without hearing about thousands of women who wrote beautiful music?

0:46In this talk, Gabriela shares how that one encyclopedia led her to build a foundation that's now uncovered more than 18 ,000 women composers previously lost to history. When she looked at how much of the music we regularly listen to was written by men versus women, the imbalance was staggering. But there's more. The AI models now learning to generate music are being trained on that same skewed history. The systems can only learn from the data available to them. But right now, that data is missing half of humanity's creativity. Gabriela has an idea for how we might fix this before the silence becomes permanent.

1:27Along the way, she shares some of these long-lost voices, including one whose songs nearly didn't survive at all. That's coming up right after a short break.

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4:17And now, our TED Talk of the day.

4:45This song is almost 900 years old. It was written by Contessa de Dia, a poet and composer from medieval southern France. It is the only surviving melody written by a woman from that entire tradition. So let me start with the question. Who decides which voices survive? I never really thought about that until a few years ago when I was walking on a second-hand book market in London, and I found an encyclopedia that listed 6 ,000 women composers in the history of music. I could not believe it, because at that time, I think I could name five. But as soon as I started looking into their names and listening to this incredible music, I kid you not, I would not shut up.

5:33Well, I haven't shut up, I'm hearing. And I just was sharing this music with everybody all the time. In fact, please allow me. On the screen behind her is a slide with the image and name of 18th century Austrian composer Mariana Martinez, who wrote more than 70 compositions with works performed by Mozart.

6:05Then when the music shifts, we see the image and name of Florence Price, who composed more than 300 works of music. She was the first African-American woman to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra.

6:33I mean, can you believe that? Did you hear all the classical strings, the Afro-American dances mixed with the romantic music? Well, welcome to my husband's life in 2018. Now, my husband, he's a railway engineer, Which means he's now the railway engineer who knows the most about women composers in the whole world. I know, it's not a very competitive field, but still. So one day he said to me, look, it's very nice that you're playing this music by these women at breakfast for, I don't know, a year now. But you do understand that nothing is going to happen if you just tell me. I'm an engineer. So are you going to do something or what?

7:20and I was like, fair enough. So I did. I made a list of these incredible women. I put it online and within months, women from all over the world, they start writing to me. And they said, thank you so much for what you're doing. I'm a composer. Could you please add me to your list? And I tell you, this list continues to grow. It is now a foundation and we are now uncovering over 18 ,000 women composers in the history of music.

7:49Now, this story makes absolutely no sense. I'm a professional musician. How is it possible that I spent my life training and performing without hearing about thousands of women who wrote beautiful music? Well, when I started doing my own research and I came across the data, then it became clearer because it turns out that nearly 90 % of the music we hear across genres is written by men. That's a very big gap. Can you all imagine all the amazing music we've been all missing all this time? But also that AI is now learning from that same silence. On one platform only, more than 50 ,000 AI-generated tracks are added every single day.

8:46These systems can only learn from the data available to them. But right now, that data is missing half of humanity's creativity. Now, I believe musicians should be writing music, not machines.

9:05There are millions of talented people who can do that. Writing music fills our soul as well as humans. And to generate music from artists' work without their consent or proper remuneration is wrong.

9:23But the technology is here to stay. So let's make sure all voices are heard, right? So how do we do that? It's actually quite easy. We must record the missing voices. The historical ones, but also the current ones, were not represented. Because a recording makes this music searchable, teachable, and part of the systems shaping what the world will hear next. It brings this music to classrooms, to radio stations, to streaming platforms, so everybody in this room can play and share it. So here's my invitation. What if every tech company making AI music and anyone profiting from it would invest in making our musical catalog more complete?

10:08Can you imagine? What gets heard, it is chosen. And those choices will shape what the future will remember. So who decides which voices survive, now more than ever, we do. And I want to leave you all with one woman's story. Ilze Weber was a poet, a singer, who was imprisoned in the ghetto of Theresienstadt during the Second World War with her family. As she was there, she didn't write symphonies, but she wrote songs to entertain the elderly and the children. That's the power of music. And that was the gift of one woman. She and her son sadly died in Auschwitz, but her husband buried her manuscripts under a tool shed.

11:10And because of that, a few of her songs survived. This one is a lullaby. It's called Vigala.

11:52Artificial intelligence is learning. Let's teach it to remember the sounds of all of us. Thank you. Thank you.

12:48I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet. Thanks for listening.

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14:03How many hours a day are you staring at a screen? And what does that mean for your eye health? I mean, check out your screen time for the day, for the week. We're on them constantly and we're not taking the breaks that we should, both kids and adults alike. And that's really crucial at just maintaining eye health for young kids, limiting that amount of near work. That was ophthalmologist Dr. Rupa Wong, who joined me for an in-depth conversation about why taking care of your eye health is more important than ever in today's digital world. She shares the preventative value of regular eye exams, her hot takes on blue light glasses, and more as part of a special series on TED Health about your senses.

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