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| Logo of the "Yes" campaign for the "Voice Referendum" |
Reading that the Oakland Symphony’s Playlist will host and celebrate Angela Davies gave me some hope this morning, in the midst of the terrible news we´ve been following in the last week. “Activist. Educator. Conscience of a generation. She will share the music that inspired her courage and her commitment”, one reads on the orchestra’s website. “Courage” and “commitment” have become essential attributes for US cultural organisations, considering the challenges democracy has been facing in that country. Just a few days ago, I had felt truly depressed when reading about the refusal of a North Carolina radio station to broadcast Met operas it considered “inappropriate”. The refusal, I read in an article, “comes at a time when the Metropolitan Opera is eager to showcase its commitment to recently written operas and works from outside the traditional canon of music written by white men. Three of the operas that WCPE plans to reject in the 2023-24 season were written by Black or Mexican composers. This past April, WCPE also refused to broadcast another Met-produced opera written by a Black composer that included LGBTQ themes.” Considering the Met’s efforts to move beyond the “canon” and become more relevant for more US citizens, the general manager of the radio station expressed deep moral concerns, such as “What if one child hears this? When I stand before Jesus Christ on Judgement Day, what am I going to say?”. On 5 October, news came that the radio station had reversed its decision due to widespread criticism.
This is not just about
the US. Every country, every society, faces its own challenges, and cultural
organisations often fail to see their role in dealing with them or choose to
stay on the margin.
I recently read about
the intriguing way an Australian orchestra chose to deal with the “Voice
Referendum”, which took place on 14 October. The referendum itself was rather
puzzling for me: voters were asked
if they approved of a change to the Australian Constitution that would recognise
Indigenous Australians by creating a body (called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Voice) to represent this
population to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth. How
could, despite
acknowledging the invisibility and continuous discrimination of the indigenous population,
the right of its voice to be heard be a matter of a referendum and a change in the
constitution? Anyway, the majority of Australians voted “No”.
The
article I read was related to cultural leadership and started with the
following story: When the date of the referendum was announced, the Tasmanian
Symphony Orchestra (TSO) quietly cancelled its Last Night of the
Proms concert, scheduled for the night before. At the time, the orchestra informed
only ticket buyers, individually. Weeks later, in a statement for the press,
TSO said that the reason for cancelling was that “to press ahead with a musical
celebration of British pageantry on this night felt insensitive given its
proximity to the Voice referendum the following day.”
“Why did the orchestra not make any
meaningful statement with the cancellation?”, wondered Samuel Cairnduff, author
of the article and a PhD candidate in cultural leadership. In my view, there is
a clear sign of sensitivity towards social issues that affect part of the
country’s population and are of concern to many more citizens. And there also
seems to exist awareness regarding the ways that population is affected. At the
same time, TSO followed the steps often followed by the majority, perhaps, of
cultural organisations around the world: it chose not to take a clear stand on
a matter that divides Australian citizens; it chose not to create a much-needed
space for this matter to be discussed; it chose to tsay on the margin. They
wouldn’t have felt comfortable in performing the programme initially planned (and
that means something), but they wished to remain as discreet - or is it “neutral”?
– as possible about it. Is this what one can expect of an organisation that
aims to serve the sector as cultural leader (p.7 of its strategy
document)?
The
world of classical music is as political as any other. Reading about this cancellation,
reminded me of Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra dropping a Tchaikovsky concert,
due to be performed on 18 March 2022. Although many saw it as a “cancellation”
of the Russian composer, the
orchestra clarified that “There were also two military-themed pieces as
part of the programme - Marche Slave and 1812 Overture - that we felt were
particularly inappropriate at this time.” (apart from also mentioning that an
orchestra member had family in Ukraine and that they
were also made aware at the time that the title “Little Russian” of Symphony nº
2 was deemed offensive to Ukrainians). Is it a surprise that music pieces are
not just “a bunch of notes put together”, but they carry meaning and a message?
Shouldn’t orchestras and musicians share this with their audiences and beyond?
Is music “just” music – just like Gustavo Dudamel once stated he was “just” a
musician, when expected to take a stand in relation to the Venezuelan regime’s treatment
of peaceful protesters back in 2014? (see more
on this blog)
We
are not “just”… And what we create or produce is not “just” either. We are
taking a position, either with what we say or with what we don’t say; both with
what we do and we don’t do.
Back in 2014, I wrote on this blog about the educational dimension of the work of cultural professionals. In that text I mentioned a protest which took place during the intermission of a performance of Brahms' “Requiem” by the Saint Louis Symphony. Protesters stood up and sang “Requiem for Mike Brown” (the black unarmed youth that was shot by a policeman in Ferguson, a suburb of St.Louis). “Noone interrupted the protesters, noone called the police”, I wrote at the time, “Maybe because what happened made sense, at that place, at that time, in that specific context”. In that same text, I also referred to the controversial decision of Tricycle Theatre not to host the UK Jewish Film Festival, for the first time in eight years. The reason was that the festival received support from the Israeli Embassy in London and, given the ongoing assault on Gaza at the time, it seemed inappropriate to accept financial support from a government agency – a stark reminder for all of us currently commenting on the Israel-Hamas conflict that the attack on Gaza and the killing of Palestinian civilians is not something new, a response to the slaughter carried out by Hamas on 7 October. Perhaps as cultural professionals we should consider our responsibility for this ongoing inhumanity – not only in Palestine or in Australia, but in our neighbourhoods too. Or are we still wondering what we have got to do with it?
Living in society is not (has never been) an easy matter. Learning how to do it, striving to do it, takes effort and time. But, as I recently wrote in a post on politics and culture, “political life, the life organised in a polis (city), is a condition for our survival.” A society that cares is a society that stands a chance to prosper and be happy. My feeling in the last months is that cultural professionals seem to be tired, even impatient, in relation to what many call “difficult” or “fracturing" or even “controversial” social issues. I believe we would like things to be easier, less demanding, we prefer to carry on with “business as usual” rather than investing time to listen, to learn, to understand nuance, well… to care, really. The cultural organisations we all work for will be as irrelevant to people as our lack of interest in getting involved.
More on this blog
What
is politics about and what is culture for?
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