The Politics of Music Talk

This is a grim little piece. Apologies,

I was sitting in the car with my daughter. She asked me to put classical music on. I was happily surprised - any curiosity of my children in unforeseen directions makes me happy - and wondered where that came from. Was it due to the flute lessons she just started? Anyway, I was happy; we searched a bit on the radio and found Radio 4, our national classical station.

I used to listen to Radio 4 quite a lot, but at some point stopped it because I couldn't stand the talking. It was not so much the amount (although Radio 4 could do with more music and less talking), but the character of the talking: belligerent and high-brow, I have no other words for it. And that hasn't changed; specialists still tell the innocent listener in an at times mysterious-exalted language about the excellence of it all, and in between talk and the music the listener hears announcements for concerts which will all be played either by charismatic stars of world class or by extraordinary talents on the verge of conquering the world, who are all promised to give concerts where the listener will be overwhelmed by emotions or flabbergasted by the impeccable techniques of the semi-gods on stage.

Maybe I exaggerate. But not much. Bruno Nettl's "athletic view on music" in optima forma.

And at some point the image came to me of a group of happy people dancing on a more and more active volcano. The earth shudders lightly, they are surrounded by a smokey haze, the first ashes are falling down; but they don't seem to notice and just carry on dancing the same old dance.

Without wanting to be too apocalyptic (I just listened to Bob Dylan's 'A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall' and maybe his metaphors are contagious): the volcano will explode (or maybe not - maybe it will be 'not with a bang but with a whimper' this world ends, to (dis)quote T.S. Eliot), and I guess the survivors will be the dancers who dance different dances in different places.