New season

[Barbirollians]

Generally positive changes but pretty minor tinkering . No consideration of whether Breakfast and Essential Classics need an overhaul or in the case of the latter scrapping . No consideration of more educational programmes such as the return of Discovering Music or a programme like Interpretations on Record . I have always thought that there was more scope for retrospectives of artists of the past in danger of being forgotten along the lines of Artist of the week - the short snippet like approach is not sufficient .

The other thing that baffles me is in the light of it seems the decline of BBC Legends and ICA Classics in reissuing recordings from the BBC archives why there is not a from the archives programme so some long unheard concert could be played over the airwaves - with an interval talk about the artists involved .

[french frank]

As someone who flits between 3 and 6 I would say there is very little cross-over between LJ and anything that 6 Music puts on.

That rather supports what I was saying, rather than negates it: I wasn't suggesting that any station but Radio 3 regularly broadcasts music like that played on Late Junction; but that the audience for 6 Music and for Late Junction has a distinct overlap - which you confirm by flitting between the two. And perhaps even are more likely to listen to 6 Music's styles of music than Radio 3's core classical?


On the Saturday early music lunchtime concert: this has been running for 18 months and according to the OP on the thread which originally mentioned it, these were recordings from the EBU (and not always complete concerts). The shunting around is the payback for moving Opera on 3 back to Saturdays because the slot needed for opera is longer than for an ordinary concert. The opera will be able to start at any time from 6.30 onwards (and Tristan and Isolde is in prospect) without any change in the regular schedule (JL-U should finish at 6.30). The Music Matters repeat fills up the Monday gap left by the opera.

BUT, don't hold back: how many would rather have seen Sound of Cinema given the night owls' slot? As it is, Simon Heighes and Elin Manahan Thomas may be 'curating' similar EBU recordings ('showcasing some of the best early music performances from around Europe'), described as concert 'highlights'. Drama on 3 has tended to be sometimes 90 mins, sometimes 2 hours, so there may be some variation in time for the early music.

Radio 3 in Concert, the Sunday evening version of Live in Concert, may also be EBU recordings ('highlights from concerts across Europe'), so much what Through the Night does at present with recordings of concerts. Not to be taken as being inferior performances or performers, just because they come from the EBU

[Lat-Literal]

As someone who flits between 3 and 6 I would say there is very little cross-over between LJ and anything that 6 Music puts on. There is a bit more between Wo3 and 6 but even there the material is spread through the schedules on 6 rather than being contained in one programme (though certainly a bit more on Cerys Matthews' Sunday programme).

My biggest disappointment is the move to 4pm of JRR. JRR has long provided solace on a Saturday afternoon from the poor football results that my team suffer on an all to regular basis.

Well, if the late lamented, by me anyway, World Routes is anything to go by it'll be the late early music concert pretty soon.

That rather supports what I was saying, rather than negates it: I wasn't suggesting that any station but Radio 3 regularly broadcasts music like that played on Late Junction; but that the audience for 6 Music and for Late Junction has a distinct overlap - which you confirm by flitting between the two. And perhaps even are more likely to listen to 6 Music's styles of music than Radio 3's core classical?


On the Saturday early music lunchtime concert: this has been running for 18 months and according to the OP on the thread which originally mentioned it, these were recordings from the EBU (and not always complete concerts). The shunting around is the payback for moving Opera on 3 back to Saturdays because the slot needed for opera is longer than for an ordinary concert. The opera will be able to start at any time from 6.30 onwards (and Tristan and Isolde is in prospect) without any change in the regular schedule (JL-U should finish at 6.30). The Music Matters repeat fills up the Monday gap left by the opera.

BUT, don't hold back: how many would rather have seen Sound of Cinema given the night owls' slot? As it is, Simon Heighes and Elin Manahan Thomas may be 'curating' similar EBU recordings ('showcasing some of the best early music performances from around Europe'), described as concert 'highlights'. Drama on 3 has tended to be sometimes 90 mins, sometimes 2 hours, so there may be some variation in time for the early music.

Radio 3 in Concert, the Sunday evening version of Live in Concert, may also be EBU recordings ('highlights from concerts across Europe'), so much what Through the Night does at present with recordings of concerts. Not to be taken as being inferior performances or performers, just because they come from the EBU

One thing I have noted is that EBU has a section entirely devoted to world music. That includes a world music record chart. Such charts on the internet tend to be a bit iffy because a lot of what they contain is not world music as we know it but EBU's looks pretty good. EBU is also involved with WOMEX but what it doesn't appear to do currently is circulate a world music programme. What I am wondering is whether R3 could provide World on 3 for wider circulation via EBU, thereby obtaining additional funding from subscribers. The extra money wouldn't be huge as it isn't for TTN, a programme that the BBC essentially puts together under the EBU banner and which now reaches a million listeners. Perhaps it might, though, be enough to pay for a new programme or at least a small amount of World Routes style field recordings for incorporating in World on 3. The only reason not to do it as far as I can see is that the subscriptions for TTN are low because of the limited payments needing to be made for broadcasting records. Instead, I guess, there is an element of "live" on TTN, some recorded performers are not here now and because most recorded pieces are long they are small in number. All of those elements may be less likely to apply to a world music programme. But I am unclear on that point, ie I don't know the specifics of the current syndicated arrangements and it would be interesting to know more.

[french frank]

[I'll move this to the new season thread when it's been seen here]

The Early Music Show has survived the schedule change but Saturday Lunchtime Concert has as good as been scrapped. It will be one of those late night programmes for which few people remember to turn the radio back on. Not only that, it is on Sunday. Are we supposed to think this as a treat: two early music programmes on one day? Moreover, the new programme will be presented by two presenters, unless they are to present alternatively (it doesn’t look that way).

I did not seriously expect to see Saturday Early Music Show restored but not this either. The worst thing about all this is that they (whoever they may be) are not aware that this is by no means a new addition: we already have the very programme of this description.

As I've said, when there are attempts to please one audience, another is likely to suffer. Opera is returned to Saturday evenings and in spite of the variable start times, the start of JRR is guaranteed, if an hour earlier (for which there has already been one vote for, one against).

It could be that a concert which was getting a rather smaller audience, has been relegated to the iPlayer for daytime listening. We don't know if it's going to be a Catherine Bott/Andrew Manze-type alternation in presenters yet.

But, in general terms, it would have made many people happier if the 2-hour Saturday Classics had been scrapped, the Sound of Cinema sent to the graveyard slot and the current early music concert had been expanded to 2 hours.

When another seasonal change reduced the number of Late Junctions and put them back to a later hour, we carried out a listener survey of the complete 'new season' and very few FoR3 people were bothered about Late Junction - but I'm sure the late Junction listeners were disappointed.

[french frank]

What I am wondering is whether R3 could provide World on 3 for wider circulation via EBU, thereby obtaining additional funding from subscribers. The extra money wouldn't be huge as it isn't for TTN, a programme that the BBC essentially puts together under the EBU banner and which now reaches a million listeners. Perhaps it might, though, be enough to pay for a new programme or at least a small amount of World Routes style field recordings for incorporating in World on 3.

The thing about Through the Night is that it's welcomed because it occupies a low audience slot which all broadcasters have a need to fill. So TTN goes to those who broadcast classical music. A 'tailored made' programme of world music might attract less EBU interest - though there would surely be a place for it on Radio 3, especially if it concentrated on archived field recordings (are there any?) rather than contemporary, more familiar 'world music'.

[Lat-Literal]

The thing about Through the Night is that it's welcomed because it occupies a low audience slot which all broadcasters have a need to fill. So TTN goes to those who broadcast classical music. A 'tailored made' programme of world music might attract less EBU interest - though there would surely be a place for it on Radio 3, especially if it concentrated on archived field recordings (are there any?) rather than contemporary, more familiar 'world music'.

Thank you for replying. It depends what is meant by "in the field" but my immediate response is an unequivocal "yes". I am going to call up Wikipedia on "Ethnomusicology" -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnomusicology.

I wouldn't claim to begin to understand the scope there but I think the first thing I would want to mention is the clear links with classical - and folk - music. Bartok is cited as being among the reference points in attempts at providing a model. I have mentioned elsewhere Gliere who while he was open to a bit of global investigating mainly had an interest in ethnic differences closer to home. Consequently I wouldn't necessarily draw huge distinctions between the Canadian McPhee's interest in Bali and the gamelan and Ralph Vaughan Williams's significant work on English music heritage. Next in my admittedly somewhat simplistic mind it goes to people like Lomax who certainly ventured and to the comparative domesticity of Cecil Sharp and Ewan MacColl in his great radio ballads. I think one could also mention Mary Ann's mother as her work in Scotland is also significant historically.

After that, I do think of Kershaw in Zimbabwe and Mali in the late 1980s/early 1990s and the extensive and impressive recordings made more recently by Dr Duran. While I am happy enough for some of the latter to be accessible via the net, I don't think that it should only sit there. One, there is a risk that having been produced in the modern media era with modern media technology it is simply seen as a media package and is not given in the long term the merit it deserves. It should be viewed academically as a contribution on a par with those I have previously mentioned. Two, it therefore deserves - on a more functional level - airplay. Incidentally, the enduring appeal of Peel is that he often did a sort of ethnomusicology of the teenage bedroom and grass roots communities at a specific time in popular music, ie its infancy. It isn't in the same category but it's not very far removed.

I accept your comments about the timing of TTN. There is a distinction. I can see that and the arrangement seems to work well. However, it is principally about cost cutting and so, among other things, is what I am suggesting. It is cost cutting with a TTN style positive outcome. There are several points I am trying to convey here and they are somewhat entangled. A syndicated World on 3 could recoup money which could in theory be used for anything I suppose. But, yes, the BBC to make more of what it has produced in WM financially via syndication - it isn't as if the EBU doesn't have a world music structure in place - and to make more of it on the radio either in Wo3 or a second WM programme,

[french frank]

A few of the changes do seem to indicate 'housekeeping' decisions, cuts in live concert broadcasts, possibly more EBU material.

Radio 3 confirms that there will be about 17 Met opera broadcasts (first Rigoletto on Dec 12). Being syndicated, they are presumably cheaper than live broadcasts?

[MrGongGong]

A 'tailored made' programme of world music might attract less EBU interest - though there would surely be a place for it on Radio 3, especially if it concentrated on archived field recordings (are there any?) rather than contemporary, more familiar 'world music'.

"Field recording" is a vast world these days

http://www.gruenrekorder.de

for a start....

I think (and i'm a bit rusty on this without consulting those who aren't) there was a big change in Ethnomusicology in the 1980's away from the observational in favour of the immersive. So instead of viewing other musics as "strange sounds" to listen to in the context of Western Musics people became more involved in actually studying and playing other musics. A couple of examples are friend of mine went to do a Phd at SOAS in "his own" music from Mali and the explosion in folks learning Shakuhachi in the UK (largely through the teaching of Yoshikazu Iwamoto) and gamelan (from Alec Roth, Neil Sorrel etc).
The distinctions of "art" music that we are so fond of in the west don't always translate well to other contexts (though many cultures DO have "art" musics).

[Lat-Literal]

"Field recording" is a vast world these days

http://www.gruenrekorder.de

for a start....

I think (and i'm a bit rusty on this without consulting those who aren't) there was a big change in Ethnomusicology in the 1980's away from the observational in favour of the immersive. So instead of viewing other musics as "strange sounds" to listen to in the context of Western Musics people became more involved in actually studying and playing other musics. A couple of examples are friend of mine went to do a Phd at SOAS in "his own" music from Mali and the explosion in folks learning Shakuhachi in the UK (largely through the teaching of Yoshikazu Iwamoto) and gamelan (from Alec Roth, Neil Sorrel etc).
The distinctions of "art" music that we are so fond of in the west don't always translate well to other contexts (though many cultures DO have "art" musics).

Interesting - and you are no doubt right. It is also a multidisciplinary field of study. Your reference to strange sounds - which I fully accept as a point that need not be political - does remind me of the qualms some folks had in deciding to introduce the "World Music" label, ie Did it suggest old Empire? Was it essentially a purloining of aural spices?

One counter-argument was of it being an arms around the globe that was forward-looking given the direction of technology and commerce. Furthermore, what it wasn't was post-war cultural insularity any more than what was being done slightly earlier by Brian Eno and David Byrne. I'm not sure those two immersed themselves as such. The first gathered material for new sculptures. The second has always been at the sophisticated end of pop and rock music whatever he has done. Inevitably over time - that is, three decades - there has been considerable fusion. Much of it is lowest common denominator stuff because of emphasis on sales. It is precisely what many would not want to have on BBC Radio 3.

I couldn't assess quite how welcome the more overt immersion you describe is to most people for whom classical music is the priority. Some will no doubt see it as part of a trend for watering down. The range of attitudes is probably not dissimilar to those among the followers of world music when it comes to cross-culture collaboration. A number will be purists and others will be open to what can be achieved by the newer approaches. For example, I happen to like some of the productions produced in Paris for a number of African musicians - Keita's "Ko-yan" etc - while many feel that they are diabolical and far too commercial. I understand it. I wouldn't argue western inputs made them more enjoyable.

Enter at this point one Andy Kershaw who, if he hadn't become a mate of the late Biggie Tembo and been adopted as one of his family, could have been regarded as a latter day David Livingstone. When Dr Lucy took several wagons pulled by donkeys up various mountains, there was, I know, just a hint of those splendid Victorian women who would sleep for a few days in Southwark to learn how ordinary people not only enjoyed themselves but managed to survive. But what goes around comes around. We all kid ourselves if and when we think that Empire is in the past. Globalisation - if it a word at all the definition of it is surely "an excuse to make everywhere identical" - is a more significant threat to grass roots music in its purest form than anything that has happened before. In the long term, Duran and her team will be seen as having got to some of the places others were unwilling or unable to reach just in time. Whatever the sounds they recorded for posterity, few would have immersed themselves in that way with a view to their preservation.

As a footnote, they also did rather more. They informed us that the music is there. That it lives in this moment and, given half a chance, that some of it might still have a future. Only if more people have an opportunity to love it will it not to be swept away by international economics. And - there is an element of inverted prejudice about this comment - I have no problems at all with the people you mention doing what they do just as I have no issues with a rock god deciding to see if he can play the kora. But authenticity is a genre. When the 73rd Diabate devotes his life to what the previous 72 did, it means something. The latter would, ideally, not be replaced but rather adequately facilitated by the media.

[french frank]

(though many cultures DO have "art" musics).

Though you wouldn't know it from Radio 3's 'world music' content.

And a radio programme is not going to provide the 'immersive' context. I don't agree that bringing other musics to western attention has anything to do with considering them 'strange', 'quaint' or 'foreign' - no more than the Indian children in the Benedetti film thinking of western classical music as strange. Or learning a foreign language is 'strange'. Learning about, and understanding, all aspects of 'the other' is worthwhile.

But we appear to live in a (western) culture which doesn't seem to think any music is worth 'studying' - you just want to immerse yourself, innit.

[MrGongGong]

But authenticity is a genre.

Interesting comment.

When the 73rd Diabate devotes his life to what the previous 72 did, it means something. The latter would, ideally, not be replaced but rather adequately facilitated by the media.

It does mean something BUT I doubt he would see it as preserving a tradition in aspic as some would have

(I was going to relate a story of being on tour with Hunn Huur Tu but it's probably too OT)

I don't think it's a question of "immersion" VS "study" though.

When I studied the Sitar it was entirely by sitting on the floor with an extraordinary player of the instrument (who spoke little English at the start) rather than by looking at the music from "outside".

[Serial_Apologist]

Though you wouldn't know it from Radio 3's 'world music' content.

And a radio programme is not going to provide the 'immersive' context. I don't agree that bringing other musics to western attention has anything to do with considering them 'strange', 'quaint' or 'foreign' - no more than the Indian children in the Benedetti film thinking of western classical music as strange. Or learning a foreign language is 'strange'. Learning about, and understanding, all aspects of 'the other' is worthwhile.

But we appear to live in a (western) culture which doesn't seem to think any music is worth 'studying' - you just want to immerse yourself, innit.

I think when MrGG speaks of immersion, I'm quite sure he really means it regarding placing undertaking musical practices in a context other than that which has given rise to "western" forms of musical practice - forms which include the make-up of the music itself. Lat-Literal hits on something when mentioning commerce and technology as drivers in the determination of what comes to be viewed among the self-elected commentariat as forward-looking, since commerce and technology have brought about change to the cultural infrastructures that gave birth to these once-far off practices in distance and time, and by altering their circumstances have changed the meaning they once held within those communities, which themselves have been changed to such an extent by the effects of Westernised globalisation as to be completely divorced from whatever origins remain and are seen as worth preserving or not.

I think I'll leave it there for now, as this is such a huge and complex subject.

[MrGongGong]

I think when MrGG speaks of immersion, I'm quite sure he really means it regarding placing undertaking musical practices in a context other than that which has given rise to "western" forms of musical practice - forms which include the make-up of the music itself. .

Indeed I do (you put it much better)

I don't agree that bringing other musics to western attention has anything to do with considering them 'strange', 'quaint' or 'foreign'

Debussy and Gamelan?

(not that there's ANYTHING wrong with strangeness IMV)

[Lat-Literal]

Interesting comment.



It does mean something BUT I doubt he would see it as preserving a tradition in aspic as some would have

(I was going to relate a story of being on tour with Hunn Huur Tu but it's probably too OT)

I don't think it's a question of "immersion" VS "study" though.

When I studied the Sitar it was entirely by sitting on the floor with an extraordinary player of the instrument (who spoke little English at the start) rather than by looking at the music from "outside".

Thanks Mr GG.

Maybe we have just found the new label.

I would like to hear your HHT story.

It would be very welcome on the world music thread.

One thing I find rewarding about this forum is that there are so many serious musicians here. I am not wonderfully coordinated in any practical sense and all I ever managed was a bit of early choir and an occasional dabble with guitar. 90 per cent of me is ears, head and voice so I am bound to present a spirited defence of those who are not known for their musicianship but have contributed so much to my enjoyment. I think you are probably right. Musicianship is a study. It seems to me that ethnomusicology is a different kind of study. Obviously the other part of the equation is who and what is in receipt of it all. My instinct beyond enjoyment - I relate principally to music emotionally - is more towards exploration, classification, research and the wish to tell a story. To the extent I have acquired knowledge, I am essentially a self-taught amateur who has no issues with that status.

I suppose I should add that my highest formal qualification is in history although I know much more about music.

That in every conceivable respect underpins my perspective!

[french frank]

It does mean something BUT I doubt he would see it as preserving a tradition in aspic as some would have

This is where I think there are crossed wires. There's nothing to stop anyone fiddling about with old forms and sounds, or inventing totally new ones. Being interested in past practice, performing music of the past, the whole HIPP movement could be denigrated as trying to 'preserve the traditions in aspic'. But as long as it's only one part of music, still performed by living musicians, it's still a valid form of music. Had there been recording equipment at the time of Bach or Mozart, no doubt people would want to hear it now - as they like to hear performances by Emil Gilels or Sviatoslav Richter. It's all part of what humanity has produced.

If people aren't interested in field recordings from decades ago, they don't have to listen. But what right have they to say no one should hear them? It's all out of date and patronising. We don't DO that any more.