The Mikado and R4 'Add to Playlist'

[Master Jacques]

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised by misinformation, prejudice and bigotry these days, least of all from BBC Radio, but there was a shocking example of it on this week's Add to Playlist, during which Jeffrey Boakye airily ripped into the 'Miya Sama' chorus from The Mikado, as a "typical piece of silly, fake Western orientalism".

This is what I've had to say about it to the producers:

Sorry, but you were completely wrong to claim that the music you played from "The Mikado" was "fake Japanese". In fact, Sullivan went to great lengths to use authentic music, and the chorus concerned accurately reproduces both *words and music* of the then *Japanese Imperial Anthem*. It simply could not be *more* authentic.

And by the way, Puccini quotes exactly the same melody as Prince Yamadori's Leitmotif in Act 2 of "Madama Butterfly", again appropriately, as Yamadori is a member of the Japanese Imperial Household.

There is quite enough misinformation circulating about "orientalism" in music, without you adding to the pile.

The silliness here was not Sullivan's. Unlike Mr Boakye, Sullivan (and Puccini) did their homework.

[Roslynmuse]

Thanks for this post. There is a lot of talk these days about cultural appropriation in music; a term that seems to have superseded 'musical exoticism' in the last few years; it is typically now used in a critical (negative) sense and I have seen it applied to a wide range of music. Ralph Locke wrote intelligently about why, from the Baroque period onwards, one nation might use musical elements from another - one does, of course, find a political or nationalist agenda in some cases (the Turkish music by Mozart and Beethoven, or the many examples of Spanish scales and rhythms in French music), but just as often there is homage being paid. I wonder whether the Add to Playlist presenter would also dismiss Debussy's Pagodes or parts of Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges, or Saint-Saens' many African inspired works, or, for that matter, the pieces that Steve Reich wrote after studying African drumming. I have had some interesting conversations with East Asian students about cultural exchange - the number of Western composers setting Chinese poetry, for example - and without exception their attitude to this is far more generous and less suspicious of motive than we seem to have become in recent years.

[Master Jacques]

Thanks for this post. There is a lot of talk these days about cultural appropriation in music; a term that seems to have superseded 'musical exoticism' in the last few years; it is typically now used in a critical (negative) sense and I have seen it applied to a wide range of music. Ralph Locke wrote intelligently about why, from the Baroque period onwards, one nation might use musical elements from another - one does, of course, find a political or nationalist agenda in some cases (the Turkish music by Mozart and Beethoven, or the many examples of Spanish scales and rhythms in French music), but just as often there is homage being paid. I wonder whether the Add to Playlist presenter would also dismiss Debussy's Pagodes or parts of Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges, or Saint-Saens' many African inspired works, or, for that matter, the pieces that Steve Reich wrote after studying African drumming. I have had some interesting conversations with East Asian students about cultural exchange - the number of Western composers setting Chinese poetry, for example - and without exception their attitude to this is far more generous and less suspicious of motive than we seem to have become in recent years.

Thanks also for your post, Roslynmuse. Your point about the alleged 'victims' being more generous and less suspicious about musical exoticism is well made, and well taken.

In my own neck of the woods, it's worth pointing out that French composers to a large extent imagined our aural image of Spain, which was then developed 'back home' into various national musical styles. 19th-century French composers up to and including Debussy and Ravel may give Spanish labels (bolero, seguidillas et al.) to rhythms, which don't formally follow echt Iberian examples and create something which is not only new, but also immensely valuable. My point is, that the process of enrichment can go both ways. The French musical image of Spain helped create the "real thing". And nobody felt "colonised".