Five reasons arts funding should be shifted from classical music to pop music
1-Unlike classical music, people listen to, purchase and pay attention to pop music Some claim to like classical music because they think it makes them look intelligent but do you see them sleeping out for chamber music tickets? Classical music only gets played on radio to help quell road rage. Nobody wants to hear that harpsichord.
2-Pop music puts a city on the tourist map What Nirvana did for Seattle. What Prince did for Minneapolis. What Gamble and Huff did for Philly. That.
3-Classical music has no more cultural value than pop music Desperate cummerbund-wearing classical music types once convinced parents that babies became more intelligent when exposed to Brahms music. It doesn't work.
4- Wealthy people can pay for their own live music like the rest of us Boston's symphony has an endowment fund of over $140 million, Chicago's is over $100 million. If the rich want their culture paid for, let them pay for it.
5-More bang for the buck with pop musicians. Orchestras pay hefty full-time salaries to a few classically-trained virtuosos. With the same cash we could fund countless more pop musicians by offering free jam space and studio time. Let 'em keep their day jobs. Hell, amateur hockey, soccer, cultural centres all get funded by government but long-haired guitar soloists don't get a nickel, even though they might actually create some financial and cultural value.
1-Unlike classical music, people listen to, purchase and pay attention to pop music Some claim to like classical music because they think it makes them look intelligent but do you see them sleeping out for chamber music tickets? Classical music only gets played on radio to help quell road rage. Nobody wants to hear that harpsichord.
3-Classical music has no more cultural value than pop music Desperate cummerbund-wearing classical music types once convinced parents that babies became more intelligent when exposed to Brahms music. It doesn't work.
4- Wealthy people can pay for their own live music like the rest of us Boston's symphony has an endowment fund of over $140 million, Chicago's is over $100 million. If the rich want their culture paid for, let them pay for it.
5-More bang for the buck with pop musicians. Orchestras pay hefty full-time salaries to a few classically-trained virtuosos. With the same cash we could fund countless more pop musicians by offering free jam space and studio time. Let 'em keep their day jobs. Hell, amateur hockey, soccer, cultural centres all get funded by government but long-haired guitar soloists don't get a nickel, even though they might actually create some financial and cultural value.
I'm all in favor of provocative opinions about classical music culture, especially when they're funny. But this isn't especially funny (humor has to be based in truth and facts if it's going to work). In fact, this article is a succession of flimsy "straw man" arguments that arise either from ignorance or malicious intent. In fact, some of the vitriol borders on ad hominem attack. Can't remember the last time I saw anyone wearing a cummerbund at a classical music concert (at least the word was spelled correctly). But they sure sound sneer-worthy, don't they? And although a small handful of "orchestras" (no modifier supplied, therefore encouraging readers to infer "all" orchestras) do pay a good, full-time salary, tens of thousands of classical musicians (at the very least) enthusiastically play in smaller and per-service orchestras for much less.
ReplyDeleteI guess that one of the definitions of a blog is a place where one can vent spleen without being held accountable to facts. But if, as you seem to, really hate classical music, classical music institutions and classical musicians that much, I truly hope it comes from some basis of real knowledge. I doubt it.
Whether I like classical music or not doesn't matter. The point is that taxpayer cash should not pay any group to cover Mozart tunes any more than we should pay a band to cover Beatles songs.
ReplyDeleteI could have listed all sorts of facts about how the MSO went on strike in 1975, 1985, 1998, 2005, how their musicians earn $2,000 a week to perform songs that only a tiny fraction of the city will ever hear, and how they overspend by $2 million a year, but that would have bogged down the argument.
It's as if the government was funding a theatre troupe but all the same actors appear in every play and they have to perform stuff that's only in one style. It makes no sense.
I wish all classical musicians well and hope that they do well in front of people who love their music, but I don't see why taxpayers should get squeezed to pay for some service that only a tiny percent of the population enjoys or uses.
You're certainly entitled to the opinion that "taxpayer cash should not pay any group to cover Mozart tunes". But other than a perceived sense of injustice, you haven't presented a single valid argument to support it. Once again you go to the "straw man" tactic in citing the MSO's troubles while ignoring, as I mentioned yesterday, the "tens of thousands of classical musicians" who play in other, less troubled groups.
ReplyDeleteAnd speaking of straw men, exactly what "taxpayer cash" are you talking about? Do you have any idea how much (or more accurately, how little) government support actually goes to classical music? Next time you want to rage against the machine, cite the amounts and percentages of operating budget that go to the rapacious dinosaur orchestras and chamber ensembles. This ain't Europe, you know. You'd probably be amazed at how little government funding actually goes to musical organizations. Maybe you'd feel better that a "tiny percent" of taxpayer cash goes to the "tiny percent of the population" that listens to them. And would it upset your state of aggrievance to know that some of that very small amount of "taxpayer cash" actually goes to organizations that support and promote pop music? The key word is "organizations" here; after Mapplethorpe, funding of individuals became anathema. And I'm sure you'd be amazed at how much paperwork and hours of preparation and hoop-jumping goes into procuring even a small government grant.
Hey, I'm not against using public funding to support pop music or any kind of music. But I challenge you to propose exactly how that would work. Grants to garage bands? Help for hip hop artists? Before you can credibly call for transferring public funding from classical to pop music, you have to present a model for how that would work.
P.S. In the case of the MSO overspending $2M per year, you should put that in past tense. That structural deficit was fixed during Mark Hanson's tenure as CEO.
How much public money went into the construction of the Maison symphonique? I don't have the figures at hand but I know it was a government PPP project and isn't free of a price tag for the public purse.
ReplyDeleteSteven, I present a multitude of arguments, even though I think it's incumbent upon the government to justify this spending more than for me to prove why it's not needed
ReplyDeletePerhaps the most important of which is that people don't like classical music. I hope you don't need me to trot out of the records sales of Rihanna versus the Boston Pops. Only a tiny fraction of the population will ever seen one of these shows, so that by its very definition is an elite.
You might ask why don't I target something like drama funding? Well that's because drama doesn't only have the same actors for every play to do plays in the same style. Plus, they are an expression of our current culture, unlike classical music which is generally antiquated European stuff.
Hiring workers to play classical music full time is arbitrary and unusual. Why indeed don't we just use tax dollars to get a prog-rock super group together to cover Genesis oldies? It's because at the very root of funding classical music is the notion that it's high art that is somehow superior to common art. That idea offends me.
As for the numbers, I know the Montreal story but I didn't get into those details, as I've previously mentioned, because this point shouldn't only be limited to the local example.
As for how the grants to pop music bands would work, I'd say a good start would be to purchase one of those big multi-room rock jam halls and let people practice there for free.