Visiting a group of my former students who have set up a new
music school in India, I was told of one particular problem they were facing
and for which their foreign education had not adequately prepared them. How, they wanted to know, could they persuade
parents in India that there was any benefit in teaching their children Western
Classical Music. As one of the former
students put it; “All is progressing well until visitors go the pupil’s house,
see the piano and are told that the child is having expensive music
lessons. ‘Play us something’, they insist,
and when the child plays a simple Minuet by Bach or Beethoven the visitors are
appalled. ‘That is not proper
music. Why waste money learning to play
that?’ And the parents think; ‘Yes. We do not hear our child playing real music
at home. What is the point?’ And they
stop the lessons. For the visitors and
the parents – for, in fact, most of the older generation of Indians – music is
Indian Classical music. Western
Classical music is an irrelevance and so alien to them that when they do not
hear anything they recognise as music, they feel we are bad teachers.”
As ever in any field of education, there is a potential
problem when a child is being taught something beyond the parents’
knowledge. The parents perhaps feel
intimidated by seeing the child exposed to an area of knowledge alien to them,
and, more significantly, cannot appreciate the value of learning something
which they themselves were denied during their successful journeys to
parenthood. This is very much a problem amongst
Indian and Chinese communities where, only a generation or two ago, hardly
anyone was exposed to Western Classical music.
In our discussions one former student had a very strong idea
of what needed to be done. “We first
must brainwash the parents against Indian Classical Music. Then we get the child to play some simple Bollywood
songs which the parents can understand, and then we progress to Western
Classical Music.” That seemed to strike
a chord with the others who all agreed that Western Classical Music was in some
way better or more intellectually advanced (and therefore of more educational
value), and so, as a priority, parents had to be convinced that perceptions of
Indian Classical Music as “real” music were wrong.
I find myself on the horns of a dilemma over this not least
because, not understanding the intricacies of Indian music, I am in no position
to comment on its educational value. However,
I can never accept that one kind of music is more “real” than another, and
while I might fervently believe that there are huge benefits in studying the considerable
intellectual substance and emotional depth of Western Classical music, I am the
first to accept that the spiritual plains sought by Indian Classical music, the
extrovert exhibitionism of a Bollywood song, or even the instant gratification
of a Western Pop number are not generally to be experienced in Western
Classical music. The idea that one
should “brainwash” people away from one music in order to understand another seems
utterly wrong to me; but I am looking at it from the point of view of one whose
own native culture has long ago been destroyed, so cannot begin to know whether
people with a powerful inherited culture are capable of willingly setting it
aside in order to appreciate another.
The root of the problem is, however, blindingly obvious; it
is that word “Music”. Is any other art
form saddled with a name so loose and all-embracing as to be utterly meaningless,
yet which so firmly means something to those who freely use it? “I love music” is such a common phrase that
most people believe it can be true; indeed many people believe it in
themselves. A good few years ago, a
group of us Associated Board examiners found ourselves battling in a restaurant
against the insidious background din of piped music. Finally, exasperated at not being able to
hear ourselves think, one of our more distinguished number (a leading orchestral
conductor) asked the waiter if it could be turned off; “You do not like
music?”, asked the waiter incredulously.
“No, I do not like music” was my colleague’s response. In that context, he was speaking the truth,
and saw no irony in what he had said.
Music is a virtually indefinable word (all my students are
faced with the task of coming up with a definition of music which can encompass
all known musics but which can define nothing else; and none has really done so
yet, despite one or two clever attempts) because it is an indefinable
thing. Music is Rachmaninov on a piano
or Cage on a prepared piano, a Gibbons Motet, a Tablā playing a ghazal, a
painted woman singing Peking opera, the Sex Pistols performing “God Save the
Queen”, Mr Suzuki belting out “My Way” at the local karaoke, sitting watching a
DVD of Michael Jackson doing his Moonwalk – there are people who regard any one
of those as the epitome of music; although if anyone genuinely likes all eight
in equal measure, I would be hugely surprised.
We have had correspondence in this blog about noise and about how, for
some people, music they do not like is noise; but that cannot be so if music is
something which can be defined as a distinct entity. Music, if it exists, is music. We can have nice music or horrible music, but
it is still music; from that list above, I would go a long way not to be
exposed to six of them, but would never for a moment dismiss those six as not
being music by some people’s definition.
Yet too many people hear music they do not like and say “That is not
music”, believing that music only exists in their personal definition of
it. So when I tell someone I am a musician,
the immediate response is usually either “What instrument do you play”, or
“What is your favourite band?”; both responses showing a fundamental disconnect
between their definition of music and mine.
I detest the phrase Western Classical Music, as it implies a
cultural specificity which it actually does not have (except in the minds of
those - Indians and others - who need a justification in not liking it), yet it
is the only generally accepted phrase which distinguishes that kind of music
from another. In the West they use the
term “Classical” music to distinguish it from “Pop” music, but that is
meaningless in India, where “Classical” music is something else entirely. And there again, “Pop” music in the West is
such a loose term (only Wikipedia
offers an online “definition” which is, almost inevitably, utterly wrong) that
it would seem to lump together performers as disparate as Frank Sinatra, Bob
Dylan, the Sex Pistols, Abba and Lady Gaga as a single, distinct and cohesive art form.
My former students need first of all to realise that this is
not a cultural issue. While Indian
Classical music may be defined by the culture from which it originates, Western
Classical music has no societal or geographic cultural exclusivity; no single
aspect of the art derives wholly from Europe (or “the West”) and while its
dissemination through musical notation was the result of the Roman church’s
global spread (hence the use of the word “Western”), elements of musical
notation can be traced back to ancient Chinese, African and Arabic – even
Polynesian Aboriginal and North American indigenous – cultures. Thus, it is not a question of one culture
replacing anther (I have had heated discussions with Chinese students who
suggest that the growth of Western Classical music in their culture amounts to
“Cultural Colonialisation”) but rather of misunderstanding that two totally
different concepts which can (and should) happily coexist, unfortunately share
the same name; Music.
If we were to refer to Indian Classical Music as “Chalk” and
Western Classical Music as “Cheese”, my former students’ problem might be
solved.
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