Prom 37 - 10.08.13: Urban Classic Prom

[teamsaint]

Well at least the Urban Prom has led to some interesting discussion.

In my humble opinion, this whole issue (or series of issues) cannot be discussed sensibly without a broader perspective of our ever increasing ability to access directly that music that we currently want to listen to, without incidentally accessing anything else.

In earlier days, stations such as R3 and R1 did expose people to new and different music, in a partial and imperfect way, because they were pretty much the only places to hear music without purchasing it.
Today, that function seem to have been replaced to a certain degree by thing such as Spotify recommendations, and Youtube Playlists. However such things, useful though they are,don't often confront us with the unusual or unexpected.They can surely never replace the power of Proms outing for a something outside of the standard classical rep, or a big plug from John Peel, which could be the making of an important band. How many thousands of white middle class Britons were introduced to Reggae, Hip Hop, German electronic music by JP, whilst really tuning in to hear something by the Clash or similar?
Helping us all to enjoy the diverse riches of our culture is SUCH an important role, and for the BBC trivialise it , as some have suggested they did with this Prom, would be unforgiveable. We need to be offered the best of what is available. We pay for it.
Incidentally, the Folk prom a couple of years ago did exactly that , IMO. 3 class acts , presented doing what they do well. Not a gimmick or a wasted opportunity, but a success, IMO.

[french frank]

A broadly enthusiastic review which summed things up quite well (and pointed out that this was no 'first'):

"But backing is all the orchestra really did this evening, and the promised meeting of classical and urban music was weighted almost exclusively towards the latter. The aim of introducing new audiences to classical music is hardly going to be furthered by presenting a symphony orchestra as a little-used backing band. One or two of the orchestral effects really worked, that lush string sound for the soul music, the trombone chorales for Laura Mvula, and some occasional mariachi outbursts from the trumpets towards the end. But in general, the 80-odd players of the BBC SO collectively made a far smaller contribution that the four-piece rhythm section."

[cheesehoven]

I knew this Prom would bring some of the Bufton Tuftons on this forum out of the woodwork!



I think you are confusing two different issues. Does the music played in Prom #37 properly belong on R3? And does the music have an equal validity to the classical repertoire? For me the answer to the first question is still open. The answer to the second question is – I wouldn’t be presumptuous enough to make a judgement. I think it is a highly dubious thing to try and do and has a (sometimes) disturbing and often inglorious history, from Wagner’s ‘On Judaism in Music’ to Stanley Hoffman's expression of ethno-centrism that, "There are universal values, and they happen to be mine." Frankly, too many of you have fallen into this trap on this thread, with some comments verging on the racially and class prejudiced. Caliban - do you really want to find yourself in the same leaky row-boat as Stephen Pollard who has, to put it mildly, rather right-wing, elitist views on most issues?



You don’t do yourself or this forum any favour with ignorance and prejudice like this. As Pilamenon puts it:





You obviously don’t believe in doing any ‘outreach’ work then? How short-sighted of you. The classical repertoire needs to gain a greater presence in the wider society than it does at present if it is to survive into the future. How else do you think this is to be achieved?

It is quite right that arts institutions (including R3 and the Proms) which receive taxpayer or Arts Council funding should be required to undertake such activity as a condition for receiving any money from the public purse. You may find it ‘trashy’ but such activities are necessary if classical music and the arts generally are to be more than the preserve of a tiny, largely white, largely middle-class and elderly audience.

Im not sure if this post is genuine or just a skillful parody but I'm afraid to say that the BBC is staffed (one dare not say 'manned') with people who SERIOUSLY think in this cliche-ridden way which is why you will be seeing more, MUCH more of Proms like this urban one in the future. The poster's obsession with race, demographics and 'outreach' make me suspect he's really a BBC commissioning editor.
The BBC (or at least its most influential members) hates the proms in its current form and are determined to change it. If the proms had never existed and the BBC had to invent it now from scratch, it obviously would take a VERY different form, a multicultural event where Western music played only a small role. They are moving towards that goal by stealth.

[french frank]

It isn't very much more subtle than that. The idea was to put on a Proms season where other services (BBC Three, Radio 1, Radio 1Xtra and 6 Music) could 'join in'. Notionally, more people are introduced to classical music: in fact they get more of their familiar favourites. Some people, though, are fooled by this concept of 'outreach'.

[PhilipT]

The classical repertoire needs to gain a greater presence in the wider society than it does at present if it is to survive into the future. How else do you think this is to be achieved?

It is quite right that arts institutions (including R3 and the Proms) which receive taxpayer or Arts Council funding should be required to undertake such activity as a condition for receiving any money from the public purse. You may find it ‘trashy’ but such activities are necessary if classical music and the arts generally are to be more than the preserve of a tiny, largely white, largely middle-class and elderly audience.

I happened to miss the Prom because I had tickets for Billy Budd at Glyndebourne - well, alright, I wouldn't've gone anyway, not after my experience with the audience behaviour at the Staff Benda Bilili Prom. What Glyndebourne has done in the way of high-definition relays to cinemas all over the country far exceeds what Proms like this can ever achieve in making the classical repertoire available to wider society. The Proms programmers have lost sight of the fact that there are many, many people out there who would like to give classical music a try. For many of them, the Proms queues and their local cinemas are accessible, but Glyndebourne is out of reach. What they want is not a familiar style of music with a symphony orchestra as a backing group but unfamiliar music that comes with the guarantee that "this is the real thing". When the Proms stuck largely to the classical repertoire they had that guarantee. Increasingly, they don't, not any longer. 'Trashy' activities will not help. And I think it is still the case, is it not, that Glyndebourne Festival Opera (not the Touring Opera) has never received a penny of public money?

[DracoM]

It wasn't 'outreach'. It wasn't interaction, and it wasn't overlapping, and it wasn't fusion or anything remotely like that. It was the BBCSO providing a lusher than usual fill-in for some very talented black artists to do their thing.

There was precious little 'classical' AT ALL. Where was the interaction' if only one side is working? I can turn on the radio from a host of stations etc etc nationwide 24/7 and get very similar things to what I heard on that stage. Do the audiences for the music we got at this prom dip into 'classical' music, and if they do and wanted to suss out the 'classical' deal the BBC 'classical' Proms were offering in that particular prom, they would have been deceived and massively disappointed. By making the BBCSO into a backing band, the BBC planners achieved nothing except weary cynicism, ironically, from BOTH sets of fans.

How gormless is that?

[Bryn]

And 3rd (-4th) Sept 1983:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/archive/s...tember-03/9615

... there was also an evening of Indonesian Classical Musics from Java and Bali in the 1982 season.

I will try and search out the recordings I grabbed from FM of the 1981 and 1983 all-nighters. The 1981 (described in one of the national dailies as the BBCs greatest contribution to anti-racism, IIRC) was re-broadcast the following year (at which time I took the opportunity to upgrade my reel-to-reel capture from 1.875 ips (I attended the Prom) to 7.5 ips. I can't play the reel-to-reels these days but I should have most of the performances on cassette transfers or CD-Rs. There was an all-nighter broadcast from the EIF a decade or so ago. Radio 3 cut the performance of the final rag short to pump out the usual breakfast pap.

[pilamenon]

The link wasn't working to details of the 1983 concert - here it is.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/archive/search/1980s/1983/september-03/9615

Hope you find your tapes, Bryn - wish I'd recorded it myself.

[Richard Barrett]

‘We’re taking artists from different worlds and messing with their music'

Doesn't that say it all?

I don't see why the Proms should be a repository of "classical" music; for one thing I don't see the point in using the word (particularly when the music is recent) because it reduces a massively rich, centuries-old, many-threaded cultural phenomenon to a stultifying genre label. Nor would I have a problem with the idea of combining performers like Laura Mvula (who, for what it's worth, has a degree in composition from Birmingham Conservatoire, which makes her a lot more "classically-trained" than for example I am) with a symphony orchestra. The problem I have is that it was so unimaginatively done. Why? Who made the orchestral arrangements? and why did they not take the opportunity to do something fresh and exciting and innovative? Oh sorry, I forgot: the whole concept is supposed to be fresh and exciting and innovative, so the music doesn't really matter very much. As DracoM implies, not many people are taken in by that kind of thing.

[mercia]

(BBC Three, Radio 1, Radio 1Xtra and 6 Music)

and the first of yesterday's proms was simultaneous with BBC Asian, and the light music prom was simultaneous with Radio 2 - we're just one big happy family
I reckon it's a concerted effort to steal some of the other networks' listeners to improve R3's listening figures

I've decided that rap originated in Gilbert & Sullivan patter

[Sir Velo]

The Proms programmers have lost sight of the fact that there are many, many people out there who would like to give classical music a try. For many of them, the Proms queues and their local cinemas are accessible, but Glyndebourne is out of reach. What they want is not a familiar style of music with a symphony orchestra as a backing group but unfamiliar music that comes with the guarantee that "this is the real thing". When the Proms stuck largely to the classical repertoire they had that guarantee. Increasingly, they don't, not any longer. 'Trashy' activities will not help.

You've hit the nail on the head Philip. This and the Dr Who prom signal the fact that BBC has completely lost faith in its mandate to broadcast high quality classical music. The 16-35 audience smells fakery and naffness instantly, and these proms have those qualities by the bucket load.

[Frances_iom]

Don't worry - next year we will have the CFm prom which features the key bars from the golden oldies - introduced by the voices you love from the truss adverts (they may even be better than this year's Suzy Klein + her deaf ear for Holst)

[french frank]

I don't see why the Proms should be a repository of "classical" music

I suppose for the same reason most of the other big music festivals in this country are 'pop' festivals - and contemporary 'pop' at that. I can see that contemporary composers might not wish to be called 'classical', but most of what most people (it seems) think of as 'classical music' was written in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries - paying proper respect to the works composed before and after, and being duly aware of the narrower meaning of 'classical' in this context. That's what one means, generally speaking, by introducing 'new audiences' to 'classical music', stultifying and unsatisfactory or not.

Providing that it's understood that the term 'classical music' does indeed embrace 'a massively rich, centuries-old, many-threaded cultural phenomenon', I'm not sure why the label should be 'stultifying'. Yes, of course some wondrous works have been composed both before and after the main body of what is thought of as classical music, but not all of it would be suitable for performance in the RAH/at the Proms (and there are specialised 'Early Music' and 'Contemporary Music' festivals too).

But your main point I do agree with - nothing wrong with incorporating various forms of contemporay music in a creative way: it's the fact that a) it's not being done very well and b) it's being passed off as a fusion of urban [or whatever] and classical, introducing 'classical music' in a truly 'accessible' way that is annoying.

[french frank]

and the first of yesterday's proms was simultaneous with BBC Asian, and the light music prom was simultaneous with Radio 2 - we're just one big happy family
I reckon it's a concerted effort to steal some of the other networks' listeners to improve R3's listening figures

But if they're broadcasting them on the other services too, why would people want to listen to them on Radio 3?

[DavidP]

Im not sure if this post is genuine or just a skillful parody but I'm afraid to say that the BBC is staffed (one dare not say 'manned') with people who SERIOUSLY think in this cliche-ridden way which is why you will be seeing more, MUCH more of Proms like this urban one in the future. The poster's obsession with race, demographics and 'outreach' make me suspect he's really a BBC commissioning editor.
The BBC (or at least its most influential members) hates the proms in its current form and are determined to change it. If the proms had never existed and the BBC had to invent it now from scratch, it obviously would take a VERY different form, a multicultural event where Western music played only a small role. They are moving towards that goal by stealth.

I know – it’s political correctness gawn mad!

I’m not sure if the above post is genuine or just a skilful parody of the kind of comments you might find below an on-line article in the Daily Mail or Daily Telegraph. And, I bet you're one of these people who think the EU has banned curved bananas and that ‘equal marriage’ is a plot by the gay lobby to undermine Western Civilization - you silly old duffer!