Prom 37 - 10.08.13: Urban Classic Prom

[DracoM]

Back in the mists of time, there were some astonishing Classical Indian late night proms + Nusret Fatah Ali KHan in others.

They went on for literally hours, way, way over the schedules, and they were absolutely fantastic. All manner of 'new' prommers there, and the atmosphere was electric in the best sense, and music making of an intensity I have rarely stood through in RAH. Mesmerising.

I still have large sections of the concerts on cassette, kindly done for me by a friend.

The 'urban prom' did not even begin to touch the hem of those events. Splashy, meretricious, with repetitive strutting.

[pilamenon]

Back in the mists of time, there were some astonishing Classical Indian late night proms + Nusret Fatah Ali KHan in others.

They went on for literally hours, way, way over the schedules, and they were absolutely fantastic. All manner of 'new' prommers there, and the atmosphere was electric in the best sense, and music making of an intensity I have rarely stood through in RAH. Mesmerising.

I still have large sections of the concerts on cassette, kindly done for me by a friend.

How wonderful it must be to have attended such events, and to still have partial recordings of them. Did you really stand all the way through? I remember hearing a couple of them back in the early to mid-eighties, falling asleep and then waking to the sound of the applause at 4 in the morning. Quite magical.

In a different league, as you suggest, in terms of expanding the horizons of the Proms.

[DracoM]

Well, I have to confess that I did sit on the arena floor for a bit. Some curled up and slept. It did go on for literally hours. It may even have been billed as an all-night Prom, nd 4 a.m. waking sounds about right. Someone with better cataloguing might recall. I do remember drowsing down to some Gloucester Road caff for the earliest breakfast I have ever had - along with a troop of by-now friends all of whom had been inspired by what we heard.

Can't see the BBC having the guts to programme such an event ever again like that, AND broadcast it live as back then. Donald Macleod was the R3 presenter.

[Frances_iom]

Can't see the BBC having the guts to programme such an event ever again like that, AND broadcast it live as back then. Donald Macleod was the R3 presenter.

not popular nor trendy enough for Wrecker - recall also the Russion orthodox Xmas masses etc - Wecker Wright has as most recognise has moved R3 into an easy listenining channel which every so often just manages to indicate how good it once was.

Did anyone actually manage to listen to Service's interval feature - pretentious claptrap from the bits I heard but then Tom Service is one I normally can't stand for long.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It may even have been billed as an all-night Prom, nd 4 a.m. waking sounds about right.

That was how I remembered them being described DracoM, with the Ragas for the specific hour being performed. I think there were two such events, both quietly magnificent - drifting in and out of sleep with the event broadcast on the Radio (a rare event in those "Cocoa and Bed by Midnight" days) - the beginnings of my love affair with "World" Music.

Can't see the BBC having the guts to programme such an event ever again like that, AND broadcast it live as back then. Donald Macleod was the R3 presenter.

"Guts" or imagination. Is there any "non-Western" "Classical" Music broadcast these days? Gamelan? Ragas? Ghaanaian drumming? The focus (or, at least the focus of the advertising, when such programmes are advertised) seems to be on the Musics that closest resemble Western "pop" styles - unless I've missed something. (And, if I have, anyone please feel free to innundate with what I've missed: I'd actually prefer to be wrong in this matter.)

[french frank]

Friday 28 August 1981 appears to have been the date of the all-night Prom, suggesting it was a Robert Ponsonby initiative. Agree, where else could such music be broadcast but on R3? - but World Music has displaced world music.

[DavidP]

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

[COLOR="#0000FF"]Surely time will expose the fallacy that everything is equally valid, and the fear that unless everything is made "inclusive" and easy then it is impossible to justify its existence (to use some phrases from Stephen Pollard's article about this the other day)?

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?

Every year we lose another proper prom to garbage. The Dr Who prom, Hollywood film music, Proms in the Park, British light music prom, now 'urban' prom.

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

This Prom wasn't for me, either, but I don't object to its inclusion and it is not garbage, any more than film or light music are "garbage".

Don't be fooled by the orchestra "enjoying it". I've played in many trashy concerts for children where "dumbing down" was far too mild a term. We we given strict instructions to look as though we were enjoying ourselves, and as we were being paid for it, we did. What we said about it in private afterwards was quite a different matter.

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.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Friday 28 August 1981 appears to have been the date of the all-night Prom, suggesting it was a Robert Ponsonby initiative. Agree, where else could such music be broadcast but on R3? - but World Music has displaced world music.

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.

[french frank]

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.

All in Ponsonby's time. Whereas World Music was 'created' on June 29 1987 ... Is that when global classical music became 'history' in the west? As for the Asian Network ...

[amateur51]

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.

What's age got to do with it?

[french frank]

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.

Though the classical music (all 7 minutes of it) was edited out of the television broadcast on BBC Three, where the 'largely white, largely middle-class and elderly audience' is largely absent. Isn't this the point? They aren't being brought into classical music; they're getting more of their own 'preserve' - what they already know and like? It's hard to see how schedule constraints prevented the broadcast of two pieces of a few minutes each.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

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?

By having the courage to introduce young people to classical music in schools and on children's programmes. By amending chemes like SingU, so that they arenot constantly dumbing down by turning communal singing into undisguised rock concerts. I've been in musical education for my entire working life, and I know what works. Believe me, if we continue down the same suicidal route the "tiny, largely white, largely middle-class and elderly audience" will fizzle out altogether.

[Resurrection Man]

......
..... 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?

......

Not by dumbing down the orchestra to be an incidental bit of string tone and brass as a backing band!

[french frank]

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?

Including it on the BBC Three broadcast would have been a small start. The controller of Radio 3 said in the interval talk that several of the Urban Prom performers went to the Beethoven 5 performance (the one of the previous night, I presume) and described how impressed they were. That's what I call "outreach".

The notable thing about the Doctor Who Prom and the Urban Classic was how hyped up and excited the audience became: sadly it wasn't by the timid offering of some short pieces of classical music: they were hyped up by Doctor Who and the urban music. Did they even remember anything else?

I have higher hopes of the 6 Music Prom tonight with an older, hopefully more thoughtful, audience being introduced to Berio, Varèse and John Adams. I try not to think 'triumph, 'hope' and 'experience'.

[DracoM]

Though the classical music (all 7 minutes of it) was edited out of the television broadcast on BBC Three, where the 'largely white, largely middle-class and elderly audience' is largely absent. Isn't this the point? They aren't being brought into classical music; they're getting more of their own 'preserve' - what they already know and like? It's hard to see how schedule constraints prevented the broadcast of two pieces of a few minutes each.

And with the greatest respect, and dealing with the white middle class thing in postings above, the urban music we saw in that prom was pretty well performed exclusively by young black performers. Just a different exclusivity. The BBCSO did not get a showing on BBC3 except as a shadowy halo, so where's the 'interaction' / 'crossover'?

For me this was a pretty cynical piece of Saturday night BBC scheduling / marketing, with all manner of lip service being made to airy-fairy pious platitudes that simply did not work out ON SCREEN the way the PR rhetoric had hyped it.

I have nothing whatever to criticise about the performers, all of whom in their own ways were slick, clever, professional and clearly with engagement with their audience. But this was a essentially TV EVENT, and not the culturally interesting Proms event the BBC hyped it as.