TED Talks Daily - The missing half of music history | Gabriella Di Laccio

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

Who decides which voices survive? It's a question classical singer Gabriella Di Laccio never thought to ask until she found an encyclopedia listing thousands of women composers from across history ... and knew almost none of them. Her journey to rediscover these brilliant musicians revealed how many songs have gone unheard — and sparked a mission to record what's missing before the silence becomes permanent. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're listening to TED Talks Daily where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. Who decides which voices survive? It's a question classical singer Gabriella DiLaccio, 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, 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?

In this talk, Gabriella 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. Along 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. And now our TED Talk of the day. This 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 share out. Well, I haven't shut up, I'm hearing. And I just were 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. Then 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. If 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, one day he said to me, look, it's very nice that you're playing this music by these women at breakfast

for, like, 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 I are going to do something or what? And 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.

Now, 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. The 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. There 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. But 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. Can 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 Theresenstadt 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 tooth shed. And because of that, a few of her songs survived. This one is a lullaby. It's called Vigala. Vigala, Vigala, Vigala. artificial intelligence is learning. Let's teach it to remember the sounds of all of us. Thank you.

That was Gabriela DiLaccio at TED-2020. If you're curious about TED's curation, visit TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. Ted Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED research team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman,

Lucy Little, Emma Tobner, and Tonzica, Sunglarnivom. Additional support from Daniela Ballereseo, Christopher Faisi Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Ban Ban-Ban-Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey-Lott. Learn more atpodcasts.com.

I am Elise Hupe. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet. Thanks for listening.