On An Overgrown Path: 'Colonial attitudes within Western music'

[Titi Robin, French musician and composer]

Bob Shingleton of the influential classical music blog On An Overgrown Path

writes today on a provocative topic:

Bill, today's post on my blog is not about strictly classical music. But it does make an interesting point -

http://www.overgrownpath.com/2010/11/colonial-attitudes-within-western-music.html

Regards,

Bob

The post is introduced in the words of the French musician and composer Titi Robin:

“I have never felt comfortable with the economic, social and cultural order that reigns over the field of ‘world music’, that makes Western artists travel to countries in the East and the South that possess rich musical traditions. They collect music, repertories and musicians from there and return to fructify this godsend in the privileged world of the well-off West, where the art market is structured in a sufficiently rational manner to allow musicians to develop their careers and live off their art. None of us find this strange. The audience in those countries rarely have the opportunity to judge the results of our work as it is almost unavailable to them. Perhaps the time has come to reverse this trend. In any case, I feel the need to do so in order to preserve the coherence and balance of my own journey as an artist and as a human being.”

Samuel Akpabot & Leo Brouwer Among 400 Composers for American Wind Symphony in 50 Years

[Leo Brouwer; Samuel Akpabot: The Odyssey of a Nigerian Composer-Ethnomusicologist  by Godwin Sadoh]

AfriClassical appreciates the link in this post from Bob Shingleton's highly influential blog On An Overgrown Path to the AfriClassical.com page on Samuel Ekpe Akpabot (1932-2000). The original post features photos of floating performance stages used by the American Wind Symphony Orchestra:
On An Overgrown Path

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

“Bringing classical music to the people 

The search for new ways of bringing people to the music is quite rightly under the spotlight elsewhere. In these difficult times finding new ways of taking music out of conventional performance spaces, and to the people is equally, if not more important. The photos here show one innovative solution which has attracted remarkably little attention. In the early 1970s maverick architect Louis Kahn designed a floating stage, in the form of a 195 foot long ocean-going boat named Point Counterpoint II, for Robert Austin Boudreau's American Wind Symphony Orchestra.”

“Over 50 years the orchestra has commissioned more than 400 works from composers including Georges Auric, Leo Brouwer, William Bolcom, Alan Hovhaness, Colin McPhee, Krzysztof Penderecki, Joaquin Rogrigo, Ned Rorem and the black Nigerian composer Samuel Ekpe Akpabot. Point Counterpoint II features in the documentary film My Architect made by Nathaniel Kahn, the architect's illegitimate son.” [Full Post]

'On An Overgrown Path' Posts Link to Fred Onovwerosuoke's Account of Herbert von Karajan

[Dr. Fred Onovwerosuoke, Founder and President of African Musical Arts, Inc.]

Bob Shingleton, aka Pliable, writes one of the world's leading classical music blogs in English, On An Overgrown Path. On Sept. 30, 2008 he posted the text of an interview on Herbert von Karajan from a 1963 issue of Stereo Review. The same day, AfriClassical posted a link to the interview, under the heading “Herbert von Karajan (1908-1989) on Rhythm and Race, in 1963 'Stereo Review' Interview”. Dr. Fred Onovwerosuoke, Founder/Director of the St. Louis African Chorus, just renamed African Music Arts, told us of his admiration for the conductor, who passed away on July 16, 1989, and whose life he commemorated in a poem. He also described a chance meeting backstage in London, during which Fred's astute questioning of similar recordings led the Maestro to tell the young student he should be a conductor. Consequently, we posted “A Young Nigerian's Homage To Herbert von Karajan in 1990”. On An Overgrown Path subsequently published a tribute to the great conductor, so we forwarded the link to Fred's account, as well as the link to a post on the Festival of African and African-American Music (FESAAM 2009), which Dr. Onovwerosuoke is directing in St. Louis, Feb. 12-15, 2009. Both links have now appeared on the major classical music blog On An Overgrown Path, with this introduction from Pliable: “Bill Zick over on AfriClassical gives us these interesting Karajan links” -

http://africlassical.blogspot.com/2008/10/young-nigerians-homage-to-herbert-von.html 

http://africlassical.blogspot.com/2008/11/updates-on-fesaam-2009-african-chorus.html

AfriClassical very much appreciates the attention Pliable's posting of the links has brought to Fred's personal account of encountering and memorializing Herbert von Karajan, and to the major music festival he will direct next month.

On An Overgrown Path on James DePreist's Absence From The Juilliard Tour of China

Earlier today, AfriClassical posted that the Juilliard Orchestra was touring China without Maestro James DePreist, who had been scheduled to conduct the ensemble from May 26-June 6, 2008. We appreciate the reference to our post on the major U.K. classical music blog On An Overgrown Path: “AfriClassical reports that in a last minute change African American conductor James DePreist, who is Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies at the Juilliard School and nephew of Marian Anderson, will not, as previously announced, be leading the Juilliard Orchestra in their imminent tour of China which takes in Beijing and Shanghai. Instead the concerts will be led by Chinese conductor Xian Zhang.”

Blog Poll Today on Calliope's Saint-Georges CD

The very popular classical music blog "On An Overgrown Path", http://theovergrownpath.blogspot.com/

is conducting a poll today on objections made here to racially insensitive cover art of Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges on Calliope 9373 (2007). The blog links to a reply from Calliope and to a response from AfriClassical. Readers are invited to make comments on two possible views of the art work:

'Bordering on ridicule' or 'giving classical music a younger image'? Over to you, readers ....