Simon Bolivar Orchestra live at Stirling - BBC4

[amateur51]

Hey ... please leave poor Alex Salmond out of this ...

poor Alex Salmond, on a salary of £140,847.00 - I don't think so, scotty

[MrGongGong]

What comes over, MrGG (and if I'm wrong, please say so ), is that you quite resent the emphasis being put on so-called 'classical music' as if someone has pulled a fast one and really young people of today should be Banging On A Can (metaphorically speaking) and being immersed in the music of Now.

All the signs are that Raploch, at least, is - in what it's trying to achieve - superb. And it's a charity, not taking limited funds from state provision for music education.

I spent today in a school in a rather "deprived" part of London devising music with students for one of the major London orchestra so I find the misunderstanding of what I though were some clear views rather puzzling ?

So here again........... a few thoughts

1: The Sistema modelled projects first in Scotland and now the In Harmony ones in England are being used as a model for how young people can participate in music (read the report !)
2: There is nothing "wrong" with doing projects that are connected to "classical music" , I've been doing one today BUT there is a problem when one places one genre of musicking (again read the book !) as somehow on a pedestal.
3: There is a problem (again Music, Society, Education is the essential text) with using the Western Orchestra as a model of musical interaction ABOVE (that means I don't object to Orchestras, I'd be very poor if I did !!!!) other forms of musicking.
4: Systems of music education (and for all the protests this IS about music education in the wider sense ............ again reading the theoretical background is most useful the McKay / Higham article has a useful bibliography) that are genre specific are in many ways flawed as they will end up being about reproduction rather than creation (and I would equally criticise the Musical Futures project for this ) , creation (composition, improvisation and devising) are becoming marginalised in the NPME in England and also in the new Scottish "Curriculum for Excellence".
5: Some of the more vocal and famous supporters of these projects are highly ignorant of what has been happening in the UK in terms of music with young people and tend to spout off on subjects they know little about (JLW being one of the most idiotic with his insistence that HIS favourite music is the basis of all others ..............)
6: none of this is NEW , there's a lot of "puff" about it , Kodaly, Britten, Dalcroze et al ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/toms...ig-noise-music)

It's a book about History Am
here you go

http://mediation-danse.ch/fileadmin/dokumente/Vermittlung_ressources/Matarasso_Use_or_Ornament.pdf

[scottycelt]

poor Alex Salmond, on a salary of £140,847.00 - I don't think so, scotty

It was meant as just a wee joke, amsey ...

[amateur51]

It was meant as just a wee joke, amsey ...

A Scotsman joking about money? You little cliché-buster, you

[scottycelt]

Well, you can hardly get much Bigger and Noisier than this ...

http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/features/alex-salmond-to-join-ted-s-illustrious-list-of-talkers-1-2371079

[Flosshilde]

I really suggest you learn a few more things before making big statements like these

1: There have been many large scale community arts and music projects in the past ....... this is NOT a new idea for the UK (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ornament-Soc.../dp/1873667574 is one of the key texts , this is also worth reading http://salford.academia.edu/georgemc...ture_Soundings)

I don't think that I said that there hadn't been - just not one with this scope or purpose. If I'm wrong perhaps you could cite the projects?

2: It is been touted as a model of musicking as part of Music Education (both in England and Scotland) even though the Raploch project states that it's not "music education"

I've had a look at Education Scotland's website, & can't find any reference to el sistema or the Big Noise in relatiuon to music education - perhaps you could provide the links?

3: It has everything to do with government policy in the UK as a whole

In this context there is no 'UK as a whole'. The four countries have sperate policies.

4: having worked in both England and Scotland on music projects with young people i'm perfectly aware of the differences between the two , though to assume that somehow music with young people is superior EVERYWHERE in Scotland would be a big mistake........

Did I say that it was? Where?


You do seem to have decided that this project is about music education, & have difficulty in moving on from that.


Much as I might agree with you on other things, on this I think you are just plain wrong.

[MrGongGong]

I don't think that I said that there hadn't been - just not one with this scope or purpose. If I'm wrong perhaps you could cite the projects?

Try Community Music ...

http://www.cmsounds.com/

http://www.cme.org.uk/

http://www.communitymusicwales.co.uk/

http://www.sounditout.co.uk/

for a start

I've had a look at Education Scotland's website, & can't find any reference to el sistema or the Big Noise in relatiuon to music education - perhaps you could provide the links?

http://www.rsamd.ac.uk/aboutus/research/ssket/ for a 2 minute search

You do seem to have decided that this project is about music education, & have difficulty in moving on from that.


Much as I might agree with you on other things, on this I think you are just plain wrong.

You better tell them that it's not about Music Education (and maybe read Musicking ? as music is not just about making a noise !)



"Stirling's faithful model of the Venezuelan music education project prepares for The Big Concert"

http://www.theartsdesk.com/classical-music/theartsdesk-raploch-sistema-scotland-makes-big-noise

[french frank]

So here again........... a few thoughts

1: The Sistema modelled projects first in Scotland and now the In Harmony ones in England are being used as a model for how young people can participate in music (read the report !)

Right ...

2: There is nothing "wrong" with doing projects that are connected to "classical music" , I've been doing one today BUT there is a problem when one places one genre of musicking (again read the book !) as somehow on a pedestal.
3: There is a problem (again Music, Society, Education is the essential text) with using the Western Orchestra as a model of musical interaction ABOVE (that means I don't object to Orchestras, I'd be very poor if I did !!!!) other forms of musicking.

But, pragmatically, if someone decides to DO something, then there has to be a decision as to what they will DO. They make a choice and get stuck in. I don't think it's helpful to say, Why aren't you doing something else? The one doesn't preclude the other. You do what you do, why should everyone else do it too?

4: Systems of music education (and for all the protests this IS about music education in the wider sense ............ again reading the theoretical background is most useful the McKay / Higham article has a useful bibliography) that are genre specific are in many ways flawed as they will end up being about reproduction rather than creation

That aspect doesn't bother me at all. Think of drama: should there only be playwrights, and no actors? Should all actors be playwrights?

(and I would equally criticise the Musical Futures project for this ) , creation (composition, improvisation and devising) are becoming marginalised in the NPME in England and also in the new Scottish "Curriculum for Excellence".

Well, to me there are three specialised, and valuable, processes: creation, performance and critical appreciation, in order of potential size of participation.

It never has been the case that creativity has been a mass participation occupation and in any case it doesn't seem to teach the same valuable lessons which performance does, as far as these particular children are concerned: namely, cooperative teamwork and the necessary sustained discipline.

[handsomefortune]

i suspect those who admire the initiative's success in scotland may well hope that similar might be organised here one day .... ? which may well appear to be madness, especially to those with firsthand knowledge of the long term history of community arts participation... ie reinventing the wheel

what might the music of the exon mobil orchestra sound like? or the warburton ensemble? or the macdonald's marching band? orchestras are autocratically led, despite the socialism and co-operation implied in everyone participating. i understand the potential restrictions of sponsorship, coupled with autocracy. so i don't see mr gong gong's reluctance as 'a distaste for classical music', or 'orchestras' necessarily.

Sometimes you need to take your blinkers off & get a wider view.

or perhaps for those working within community arts, it's a case of put your blinkers on...in order to keep sanity in tact?

as far as 'a socialist perspective' is concerned, encouraging community participation is very much at the core of just about every government strategy since ww2... totally regardless of the success or failure of the politicians at number 10. though admittedly arts participation is perceived a key method of controlling, as well as distracting from the plight of troubled youths and families., in an era threatened by economic, and social unrest how *the arts are presented in the media is usually relevant....

various methods of nurturing cohesive communities are a particular aspect of degree, and post grad qualifications for those aiming to work in communities and/or community education. though knowledge and theories have developed enormously over the years, they've recently been under severe threat, as well as financial cuts. as have ideas at the core of community development degree qualifications, no longer practical under the current strategy of the coalition. having copied US ideas that have already failed in the US evidently a new strategy is required.

which perhaps puts a slightly different slant on:

Any 'community music' projects that have been going on have not been on the scale, or with the purpose, of el sistema & the Big Noise.

since you raise the issue of scale .....post war, the uk has built up a model of community participation nationally, based precisely on wide scale adoption of socialist, collective principles. but recently what's left of this movement has finally been cut to the bone, in conjunction with new levels of poverty, deprivation, unemployment and homelessness. therefore 'a return to socialism' via scotland, and sth america, and orchestral performance may well be felt, (especially by those employed within relevant sectors) to be a dizzyingly banal strategy. ie a quite peculiar route, effectively doubling backwards, in order to go forward, and concentrating on the icing, rather the cake?

as far as 'good advice' goes 'put your blinkers on mr gong gong' it might be a lot more useful and to the point. supposedly, we are about to enter economic and cultural free fall in england, which now seems to require collectively pretending that rolling out socialist ideas within (what's long since been referred to as) 'priority communities' is a 'new idea'....which it patently isn't. anymore than this is a 'new strategy' for prison educationalists, or the rehabilitation of young offenders..... we're just changing the labels, geographical, and financial source point, that's all. which i assume is why mr gong gong is getting a wee bit vexed at this point in the thread, since some may wrongly assume he's objecting to 'the bolivar orchestra' per se.

to return to 'how the arts are presented in the media, unsurprisingly, a personality driven arts project, that the rest might emulate long distance, has less chance of long term staying power, than a proven strategy throughout the uk, with permanent funding, and experienced, permanent employees. i assume this is why mr gong gong may well be gurning at the prospect of having to feign 'surprise and delight' at 'socialist' ideas within collective arts participation....since imo what media coverage of the orchestra may partly be about, is the media promotion of private sponsorship as a concept. it's also an illustration of what massive promotion can achieve for a given orchestra, or arts organisation. whilst simultaneously exploiting (the already proven credibility) of 'socialist educational theories' as 'new' .... regardless of opinion of the orchestra's actual worth, it's a feel good story of one orchestra, possibly in the hope of distracting from the carnage left by recent changes in england.

[Flosshilde]

Try Community Music ...

http://www.cmsounds.com/

http://www.cme.org.uk/

http://www.communitymusicwales.co.uk/

http://www.sounditout.co.uk/

for a start

I don't see anything on these which are similar to el sistema in scope or purpose

http://www.rsamd.ac.uk/aboutus/research/ssket/ for a 2 minute search

Not about government policy.

You better tell them that it's not about Music Education (and maybe read Musicking ? as music is not just about making a noise !)



"Stirling's faithful model of the Venezuelan music education project prepares for The Big Concert"

http://www.theartsdesk.com/classical...akes-big-noise

Richard Holloway & others involved in the project are clear that its primary aim is not music education (although children will, inevitably, be learning about music). I think I'd believe them rather than a journalist.

[handsomefortune]

It never has been the case that creativity has been a mass participation occupation and in any case it doesn't seem to teach the same valuable lessons which performance does, as far as these particular children are concerned: namely, cooperative teamwork and the necessary sustained discipline.

yes, but maybe that's what simon cowell says to participants in (performance driven) 'x factor' french frank!

[MrGongGong]

I don't see anything on these which are similar to el sistema in scope or purpose

.

ALL of those community music organisations are well established and have undertaken significant amounts of work across a wide range of genres and communities including work with many similar groups to the Sistema modelled projects............. I thought the purpose was to foster greater social harmony with music as a tool ? If anyone does that "Sound it out" in Birmingham have more experience than most ........ aaah but they don't have a famous "classical" musician as promoter

It would be nice to be in a world where there was a huge diversity of opportunities for participation in all kinds of creative activity but sadly that's not where we are.
I'm rapidly concluding that my questions about these projects (which ARE NOT suggesting that young people shouldn't participate) are a bit arcane for this discussion.

I'm a bit of a "Smallist" ,as in Music, Society, Education, a book which more should read as it really does question what music making really is about and what it means............

if it's NOT about "Music Education" then why is it all over so many "Music Education" documents and even gets more mentions in Englands National plan than does improvisation ? a practice which is common to many musical activities.........

to restate .......... there are some good things , and a lot of high profile "puff"...........

[french frank]

yes, but maybe that's what simon cowell says to participants in (performance driven) 'x factor' french frank!

Eh?



I meant that if it's musical means to a social end, the demands of cooperation and discipline are more immediately relevant than creativity or improvisation - which are more individualistic.

[MrGongGong]

I meant that if it's musical means to a social end, the demands of cooperation and discipline are more immediately relevant than creativity or improvisation - which are more individualistic.

That's an interesting way of looking at it
several years ago I was running a course for music teachers in Japan, at one of the sessions where we were doing a series of improvisations with live electronics with a group of learning disabled students we had an observer from the philosophy department of Tokyo University. At the end of the session he gave a seminar where he talked about how the music reflected the way in which one needs to be autonomous yet conscious of others both in society and in a musical process. He talked about how, for the Japanese, given their history , a rigid adherence to "discipline" had been a sad period of their history and what was needed was a more collaborative way of being which he saw mirrored in the music we made.

What we need (http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinso...paradigms.html) IS more creativity NOT a return to the 1950's , which seems to be the way we are going.

One of the drawbacks of the community music movement in the UK is that sometimes there's "too much community and not enough music"

[amateur51]

I'd like sympathise wirth MrGG who has obviously got strong views about the UK approach to El Sistema becvause he's been involved in community music for a long time.

For many years I was very involved in responding to youth homelessness in London and then across the country and then in the mid-1990s a few well-connected individuals who had never shown much interest in our work previously 'discovered' the French system of Foyers, housing projects for young people leaving rural France to live in the bigger towns and cities, with training and employment options built-in. My cavill and that of others was that this model a) wasn't new and b) was not targetted at the people we were dealing with and an almighty wrangle ensued. Foyers eventually won the day because they were easy to explain to politicians and they involved lots of work for architects, builders, etc. Existing youth homelessness projects had to merge with housing associations to survive and a huge amount of valuable local experience was lost in the process.

We missed out on the zeitgeist and the politics of it all got smothered for a generation. However, the Tories are back now and street homelessness, sofa surfing and the future of housing for young people is due to climb back on the agenda very soon.

If this is part of MrGG's concern (he would express it better I'm sure) then I sympathise with him