“Civilization” as a “universe-maintaining conceptual machinery”

Today is the day the “March of Civilization” reaches The Hague. The Hague, for those of you who do not know, is the residency of the Dutch Parliament. Today the budget cuts on culture as proposed by our government will be discussed. And “the cultural world” has organized the “March of Civilization” to protest against the cuts. Democracy at work. Government proposes cuts. Parliament discusses. Members from various societal backgrounds protest. Government decides, or dissolves itself if it has lost support in parliament.  People in many places in the world would love to be able to participate in such processes.

I have double feelings concerning this “March”. I do feel that a budget cut of about 20 percent (200 m€ from a budget of 900) on culture is overdone; I would prefer it if cuts were more evenly spread over the various sectors of our society. Culture seems to be a too easy target for the current government; and feelings of revenge and even of outright hate against the world of culture seem to possess some of the key players in the debate.

On the other hand:

Taste

There is no such thing as good taste, only taste. That’s what I wrote last week. And actually I believe that is true. It is complicated, though. Let me see if I can make my point.

The idea of good taste to me seems to be based on the ability to discriminate between qualities of music: there is better, and there is worse. This discrimination of quality is everywhere in music: Beethoven is better than Delius, and Henryk Szeryng plays Beethoven’s violin sonatas better than I do. The Beatles are better than Herman’s Hermits; Linda Ronstadt is better than Tammy Wynette. Some evenings I play the mandolin better than other evenings. In tune is better than out of tune. Et cetera.

My World Top Ten

I have often been thinking about a Top Ten of artists world wide people should have listened to according to me. I even  started with one some months ago but simply couldn’t make it up. But now I talked with students in a lesson and actually my top ten kind of flipped out naturally. So something like this:

Fela Kuti

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Khaled

Bob Marley

The Beatles

I ask quite some people to tell me their musical biography, these days. It is my job to do so – I have the opportunity to work on a PhD thesis partly in my boss’s time (never will I be caught saying negative things about my boss), and part of the research project is to get people talking about their musical lives. Two names pop up often: Johnny Cash and the Beatles.

There is a striking difference between the two. Cash had a career lasting decades and decades. In his early times he performed together with the young Elvis, and he ended with recording on the label American Recordings a kind of multiple-cd Post Scriptum to his career that turns out to be – continuing in a Latin atmosphere - his Magnum Opus. It is this, “the late Cash” (there is always the possibility of a pun here), that people often mention in their stories as a recent discovery.

How different with the Beatles. When people mention them in their biography, it is often not as a recent discovery but as something that was played at home when they were young, either by themselves or, if they are younger, by a sister, a brother, or their parents. Not a recent discovery, but something that has stayed with many people throughout their life.

Thoughts After Hearing an Accordion Being Played On a Boat

I was cycling home from work with a small detour, because I had done an interview for my research project in the west of town. So I decided to take the route along the waterside of the lake that lies between the town and the village where I live. Although the weather was great for sailing, there were not many boats – it is always rather quiet on this particular lake.

One boat was anchored not far from land. Three people were sitting on deck. When I passed the boat, I heard the sound of an accordion. Looking at the boat I saw that it came from one of the people on deck. I could not hear whether the guy in question was playing a song, and which one; I just noticed the to my ears always slightly melancholic accordion sound.

On Writing - Again

Okay, I will have to admit it. I have given it up. I have given up reading Aaron Fox’ Real Country (see my blog entry from April 3d 2011). I guess I have read about one third of the book but then started reading a book on the Bosnian War (My War Gone By, I Miss it So, by Anthony Loyd – well written thus far, horrible, and for me impossible to personify with the author because I cannot imagine why someone wants to see war with his own eyes) and have not yet re-opened Fox’ book.

Basically there are two reasons why I stopped reading Real Country. I already wrote about one of them: the horrible jargon written in much of the book. I recognize much of the jargon as coming from the direction of Cultural Studies, a field I am not specialized in and feel not attracted to although I am slightly curious about what they actually have to say. But whenever I read something from this field, I stumble on jargon – when they write about identity it is always about “negotiating identity” but in at least ninety percent of the cases it stays unclear what exactly this “negotiating” is: who negotiates? With whom? And about what exactly? What is the difference with “constructing” an identity? And why is that difference so important?

I feel like I am encountering a problem the famous Dutch professor in Russian Literature Karel van het Reve describes when he talks about the people doing “Literature Studies” (“literatuurwetenschap”, in Dutch): it is not so much that he does not want to know what they write about, but it is kind of physically impossible for him to read their prose – he keeps losing track of, and interest in, their message. 

Toying around

I had a rehearsal with my bluegrass/Irish folk band this week. We did it in broad daylight, because we needed some pictures for our website (yet to come) so that people who have heard our performances (yet to come) can check us out. Yes, it is quite a futurologic thing, this band, but nevertheless, there we were, on a Saturday afternoon, rehearsing in the private pub which is part of the house of one of the band members. And because the rehearsal was in the afternoon I took my wife and kids, and so did some of the other band members.

So while five musicians tried their best, five kids aged 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 were running around and occasionally some of them sat down in the pub (fun to write such a sentence as a father) and listened for a while. And when the rehearsal was finished, the boys aged 3 and 6 were building their own party in the pub, strumming their little guitars, while the girls aged 2 and 4 jumped around (indestructible gender conventions).