The King: 'Will there be more music, or was this all?'

The new King and Queen visited Groningen. We know how much they like music ('Koningslied'). And as the Groningen conservatoire is named after the King's father, the big band of the conservatoire was supposed to play for the royal couple while they were doing a walking tour of the inner city.

The King and Queen took their time. The meticulously planned scheme of the visit, which indicated from minute to minute where the royalty was supposed to hear what and talk with whom, was not prepared for a King and Queen being humans, rather than robots. And so it probably came to pass that the big band finished playing their piece just at the moment K&Q, slightly late, arrived.

Slightly puzzled, the King asked the mayor of the town: 'Will there be more music, or was this it? ... Well, thanks.' And off they went to see other things and meet other people. Whereafter the big band started playing their next piece, I suppose, for an audience of Royal backs.

Or was it planned like this? Had the organisation sold the break between pieces of the big band as an abbreviated performance of John Cage's 4'33''? Has someone pointed out to the royal couple, in answer to the King's question, that music really is in the silence between the notes? And has this led to instant Buddhist enlightenment with the King? Which later on in the day made him apologize to a cow ('Sorry, Bertha.')? Will he soon seize power and turn our country into a Buddhist state?

How useful a big band is!

Gil Scott-Heron

I am writing this blog entry sitting in the living room, while my wife and two oldest kids are watching the Eurovision Song Festival finals. (I was in an expert meeting on music yesterday (by chance and/or by mistake), and people assured me that to develop culturally everything starts with getting acquainted with culture at a young age within the family. So we don't have to worry about the musical future of the kids, I am sure.) As you know, for the first time in many years The Netherlands reached the finals. Well done, Anouk! The Netherlands should have reached the finals some years ago, as you'll remember, but we sent the right guys with the wrong song. Of course, there again is some media discussion about whether or not Anouk's song is nice and/or good - Koningslied revisited, as it were. I understood that one of our national singing heroes has said that the song made him slightly depressed (and it indeed is a ballad about a suicide), and then other people told him to shut up because the song is GOOD so he should LIKE it.

Never a dull moment in The Netherlands, musically speaking.

Playing without the fear of losing

In my regional newspaper Coen Simon, a Dutch philosopher, was interviewed. He wrote a book about guilt; a book I need to read because part of it is an interesting argument about sports. Sports, he says, has become economized (economicized? whatever) - it has become a domain where gaining has become the main goal. You play to win.

Simon thinks - at least according to my usually not too philosophical newspaper - that is wrong. Our society   has become a society where gaining, growth, winning, being the best and the biggest has become the norm. The way we sport reflects that. Simon thinks we should go back to a world where sport is essentially the playing of games: something you do together, something where you realize that if someone has to win someone else has to loose - a world where losers and winners are on an equal footing, and where you realize that when you have lost you made the game possible in the first place.

Great, great, great. I love people who invent their own mission impossible. Convince the world that soccer, baseball and chess is not about winning - not even about winning the battle against obesity. We have trouble even to think that thought - let alone to make it reality.

I especially love this because it reflects some of my ideas about making music. I understand that playing an instrument requires 'mastering' it. And that that is a process with no end - my experience is that people who start playing an instrument in some way buy themselves into a paradigm which requires them to become ever better. And I include myself in that. I want to learn to play the 5-string banjo better, faster, louder, with more swing. It is one of our 'codes of culture': the professional musician - the music specialist - as the role model for an entire music culture.

But at the same time I know that precisely this 'athletic view of music' (Bruno Nettl) is the cause for so many people abandoning playing an instrument, or worse: not even starting it. And that is why Simon's idea about a world of sports where we play games without the fear of losing is so sympathetic to me.

Wouldn't it be great to be playing instruments without the fear of losing?

King's Day - 'Koningslied' Revisited; or: on quality and taste.

It is the evening of the first King's Day - or is it the last Queen's day? Or both? In the morning the kids watched the television to see Kings, Queens, Princes and Princesses; and in the afternoon we went to buy other people's junk. I hoped for a 4th-hand working Hoffner bass guitar, violin model, but the only thing I managed to buy was a Beatles record  which I hadn't collected yet.

And this evening, we watched the live emission of the newly composed (?) song for the King, 'Koningslied' - it was sung in Rotterdam, the King and Queen listened in Amsterdam. And that will be the end of the Koningslied-craze. The craze already had waned a bit, thanks to Joop van den Ende, our musical-tycoon and the only real Statesman we have left nowadays.

"Koningslied" - Song for our new king

As you may know, our current Queen steps down in two weeks time, and we will have a new king, Willem-Alexander.

When the Chinese emperor died and a new emperor gained power, long ago, the reference pitch of the fundamental tone of Chinese music was changed because basically a new emperor meant a new cosmological order. Willem-Alexander's rise to the throne is generally not seen as a cosmological change in the Netherlands; instead of a new musical system we therefore satisfy ourselves with a new song.

We are a modest people.

This new song, called "Koningslied" ("The King's  Song"), has put the country in turmoil. It is writtten by one of the most prolific popular songwriters in the Netherlands; it is sung by a whole horde of national (semi-)celebrities; all revenues will be donated to a charity. No news there, one would say. The musical style is popular and bombastic; there is a sing-along chorus and there is rap in it as well; the lyrics are full of pathos. No news there, again. It is rumoured that the song was not written for the occasion but was lying on the desk of the composer waiting for a good occasion to be used. No news there, either (Bach recycled his music extensively).

So, everything that could be expected has happened. But the curious thing is that, in certain circles (I don't know which circles, I must admit), an enormous movement against the song has started, including a Facebook page which allows people to apologize to our future king for the song - over 32,000 likes as I write, whereas the official Koningslied-Facebookpage has 767 likes. And over 19,000 people signed a petition against the Koningslied.

Those of you who know me a little by now will not be surprised that I am not going to sign the petition or like the anti-Koningslied Facebook page. Or the pro-page, for that matter; the question whether or not I like this song is a personal question of little consequence. There is, actually, only one question to be asked, as usual: What the hell is going on here?

I invite you to send me your interpretations of all this. I will start with two options. It may have to do with the feeling of many people that the King is given a  present in their name but that they would never have chosen this particular present themselves. Or, in other words: there is a lot of talk about 'us' and 'our country' surrounding the song, and many people seem to think that that means by definition 'me' and 'my country'. Option nr. 2: it may have to do with the feeling that the song is just another commercial product written by a serial song writer, whereas the new King deserves more 'quality' - whatever that may be (read composer Merlijn Twaalfhoven's well-meant reaction suggesting that the song should have been 'new' and 'fresh' rather than commercial and without quality - his words, not mine).

So, what the hell is going on? Is the argument that it's not my taste? Or rather that it's not my quality? Or something else? Help me out.

Meanwhile, to remind you of the fact that all this will pass, listen to Danny Schmidt's 'This too shall pass' ('better carve it on your forehead or tattoo it on your ass'), a song where a King plays a role in the final verse.

Mathieu Weggeman and The Indecent Musician

It's old news, sorry, but I remember I wanted to react on it when I read it last year but forgot to do so. And now one of my Facebook friends re-posted it: a column by professor Mathieu Weggeman, well-known in management circles and a member of the National Arts Council.

Weggeman announces that the Dutch  grow more and more stupid and more and more impolite. To make us smarter again he proposes to do away with managers who are managers; instead we need managers who know about the subject they are managing because that prevents 'stupid mistakes'. I leave that argument for what it is, although I must say I don't see a one to one relationship between stupid mistakes at work and being stupid in general.

Now about impoliteness, or maybe indecency ('onfatsoen', in Dutch). The remedy is education in 'arts & culture'. I quote Weggeman: "The declamation by heart of William Blake's 'The Tyger' (within the English lesson) is just as relevant as having a Socratic conversation together about the value of Marina Abramovic's performance 'The artist is present' (for example in the biology lesson)." And all that can be paid for by lowering the budget for physical education in schools, argues Weggeman - kids spend lots of money on sports gear anyway so let the market do its job.

Yes, he really wrote it. No kidding. Professor Weggeman, yes. Speaking of dumbing down.

But the best part are the final two sentences: "Especially from reflection within a frame of reference formed by arts & culture we may expect that the need for indecent behavior will decline. Isn't it so that there are few violinists, poets and sculptors in jail (other than for political reasons)?".

There is too much ignorance in and behind these sentences to even try to argue against it. The usual confusion between a relationship and a causal chain. The uncontrollability of the assertion about the number of imprisoned violinists. The unproved assumption about the effects of reflection. The usual unreflective ‘arts & culture’-thing popping up. Et cetera.

But two things annoy me specifically. One: the equation of ‘arts & culture’ with ‘high arts & culture’. He doesn’t say it. But he implies it. Blake. Abramovic. The violin. Rather than IceT, PSY, or the scratcher’s turntable. No no; it’s not about arts & culture, it’s about 'our' arts & culture. (May I point out, as a side remark, that even in this specific realm of ‘our’ high arts & culture there’s a lot of indecency going on? And, especially in the visual arts, a lot of reflections on indecency which I think are sometimes very indecent themselves? Think of Jonas Staal’s ‘New World Summit’ and you’ll know what I mean.)

Two: the use, as always, of the ‘the arts are inherently good’- argument. I wrote about it before, and before – it is a claim loved by arts educators, and a claim which is refuted as soon as you simply open your eyes and look around. As I argued earlier: the arts do not consist of beautiful things; they consist of human behavior. And we know what that means.

Golden Oldies

A colleague of mine, whom I asked if he would be interested to take part in one of our projects in the field of music and the elderly, mentioned the television series 'Golden Oldies'. I had completely missed it (not much of a television man, me) but it was a series about how a rock choir consisting of elderly people was formed and how they prepared for a (yet to come) performance in Amsterdam's Carré, one of the most respected concert venues in the Netherlands.

I googled the programme (which is inspired, of course, by the American documentary 'Young at Heart'), and found  some news items on it. One mentioned that this programme would finally draw the elderly out of their old-fashioned repertoire they use to sing (old children's songs, folk songs, popular songs from the 50s, cabaret and musical repertoire, classical music) and into the exciting world of pop and rock. So I prepared to write a blog about that - about the idea, again, that some repertoires are inherently better than other repertoires. I would write that I am, of course, in favour of elderly rock choirs, but that the main point is not to dismiss elderly people singing 'old-fashioned' repertoire. The question is not about replacing a 'bad' repertoire by a 'good' repertoire, the question is inclusivity. The question is about acknowledging any repertoire that is sung by people as inherently useful. Maybe not for you, no - but most of the world is not about you anyway.

However, when preparing to write the blog I watched the first episode of the series, and that changed my mind. Yes, it is a slightly clumsy copy of 'Young at Heart'. Yes, there is a certain undertone in the series of dismissal of what 'the elderly' 'usually' do - but that undertone is far from dominant and is often replaced by a visible sympathy of the young presenter and the even younger choir director for the elderly people they meet. And yes, of course it is a televised series and therefore it sometimes is a bit over-dramatised. There is the 'personal interest'/'emotion tv'-thing coming into it,where the presenter tries to reconcile one of the older participants with her son, a completely unnecessary and distracting addition to the series (why do television presenters think they are allowed to perform therapy on - and by - tv?). And the working towards a great concert on the Carré stage to my mind is too much in line with what Bruno Nettl so rightly calls our 'ahletic view on music' - music is only worthwhile if it is fast, loud, high, long, great; there is no place for the mediocre in our minds. Which is a pity because it makes that many people refrain from the joy of making music because thy think they are 'not good enough' or 'too old' or whatever.

But what I like is that much of the documentary does convey, in between the little prejudices and the grand expectations we cherish so much, something else: that elderly people are just people; that when they sing, they are just singing; when they have joy, they simply have joy; and when they have high hopes, those hopes are the same as yours and mine. And that made the first episode eventually quite pleasurable to watch.

Now may I ask you: if you are a musician and have time and energy for something new, start a Golden Oldies choir or seopmthing similar. I know - although the television series stresses the novelty of it - that there are many of them around already; my own town has a very succesful one. But there is room for at least ten more in my town, and for hundreds of them in the country. A great way to earn your money, and a great way to discover new places to work as a musician - outside of the domain of the athletics of music, outside of most of your grand expectations, but (maybe: therefore?) enormously rewarding.