It’s not often Harpblog goes political, but
the global economic crisis has sparked widespread arts’ funding cuts, and a
corresponding outcry from musicians and other arts professionals. Radical arts cuts can and do have a genuinely devastating effect, which should be stopped. But equally, petitions that say things like “Save Cologne’s
fifth most important orchestra” need to present convincing arguments for that orchestra to stay. There is also a knee-jerk reaction
in the arts community – and the more pampered that community, the higher jerks
the knee – that all arts cuts must be stopped because, well, it’s art. It’s
somehow privileged and justified, all by itself, and does not need to trouble
itself to create or extend its market.
As my jazz musician husband points out,
it’s this attitude that is also responsible for classical music receiving more
state funding anyway than other types of music. In the words of the
distinguished music critic Alex Ross: “some
discerning souls believe that the music should be marketed as a luxury good,
one that supplants an inferior popular product. They say, in effect, “The music
you love is trash. Listen instead to our great, arty music.” They gesture
toward the heavens, but they speak the language of high-end real estate. They
are making little headway with the unconverted because they have forgotten to
define the music as something worth loving.“
I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently
because of the fantastic outreach projects I’ve been learning about. As well as Liz
Hiedber’s amazing Namibia centres, there has also been something going on much
closer to home - in Paris. If there is a catchphrase you could set echoing
around it, it would be “something worth loving”.
DEMOS (Dispositif d'Education Musicale et
Orchestrale à vocation Sociale) is co-run by the Cité de la Musique and the
Conseil de la Creation Artistique, with the support of the French government
and co-ordinated by the l’Association
de prévention du site de la Villette (APSV). It is an extensive music education project running in three-year cycles, for over 450 young people aged between seven and twelve, in
the sorts of circumstances that usually hinder access to classical music.
Unlike one-off workshops, DEMOS aimed to give the children a longer-term
experience, with three hours of classes a week over more than two years, as
well as the crowning glory of participating in orchestral performances.
Harp was not initially involved, until
Isabelle Moretti came to hear of the project. She recommended Delphine Benhamou
to teach the harp section, and we supplied lever harps for a year for the
children to play.
Delphine worked in the Barbès district of
Paris. “Apart from the financial challenges that face children here, it’s a
relatively isolated area”, Delphine explains. “The feeling there is that you
remain in the quartier. The demographic is heavily African, and all in
all these children have a totally different experience to the children sent to
learn the harp in Paris’s music schools.
Many children are taken to music school
because their parents see a musical instrument as a necessary accomplishment to
boost their school applications. They’re very focused on the children building
up a CV, for want of a better word, which will lead to a prestigious school
place and a good job. They want the best for their children, like all parents
do. But music is just an accessory to them, one of many activities between
which their over-busy children are ferried in the gilded isolation of their
cars.
If you see music as an elegant accessory to
a non-musical “proper job”, it is difficult to argue against any cuts to it. On
the other hand, the year I worked Barbès was very important to me, very moving,
because of how clearly it demonstrated different and real powers of music.
