After reading the two articles I shared over the last few hours, the one thing that stands out for me is the misappropriation of the word, elitist. It seems that many of the commentators on the blogs and perhaps this is indicative of national and international opinion or not, but it seems that these people have confused the term elitist and uneducated. Now, before I get lynched for using such a fi
lthy word, I would like to point out and argue that, yes indeed, the reason we get sucked into the KJ's and the Watson's and the Rieu's of the recording world is that we, as a nation and nations, are not educating people in the way to listen to music properly. Listening with your 'heart' is not enough, you need to listen with your brain; I mean really listen and be critical in your listening. It is this fundamental that we are lacking and yes some of us are more fortunate than others to be able to listen with open minds and hearts. Classical music demands a certain level of critical thinking. It has nothing to do with being elitist; most of the musicians I know struggle or have struggled to pay their bills on a monthly basis. There is nothing elitist about that. It also demands time. Time is a precious commodity in the world we live in and many people will simply say they do not have the time to sit down and really listen to a whole Symphony or Sonata. These people need to be convinced that when they sit down and listen to a KJ recording it is a so far from the education they will receive by listening to another singer who has spent years honing their craft to get the perfect sound you hear. What we should be looking to take forward from the articles is a renewed sense of challenge to all classical and non-classical musicians; to educate as many as we can in the art of listening. Live performance is the way forward here. Live performance always sorts the men from the boys. Most of the 'pops' singers can't sing without a mic or at all, if we take that mic away then we remove their power. Not by physically taking it away but by metaphorically removing it through the promotion of the real stars of our genre - the ones who just sing. Of course nobody is going to admit to being uneducated, especially in something as basic as one of the five senses, but perhaps people ought to admit this. Perhaps people should stand up and say "I don't know how to listen to this." Then we can start to bring the world back to the music that makes it worth while. Classical music has not lost any of its relevance, these two articles prove it albeit in a rather distasteful way, but what has happened is that the general populace has lost classical music. It is our job as ambassadors of the craft to bring it back to them.
David Wallace
Mmus, Bmus, PgDip
