Hard News: "Creative" and "Flexible"
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*grabs popcorn, sits back and waits for an arse shredding and handing back ceremony of biblical proportions*
i got 5 on the bedraggled teddy bear looking dude :)
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No, the middle-class people think it a suitable creative activity for brown kids - the don't enjoy it in the sense that they would have it in their homes or neighbourhoods. And they don't care if the kids do not have access to broader culture, to the sort of art which middle-class people can afford to buy.
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I distinctly remember the works of the Smooth Crew being everywhere I went back in the 80s, and there were others. Mostly, they were commissioned works, although they might not have studied entirely legally. Other wall paintings did seem to last longer, but possibly because the Smooth works were often advertising for something ephemeral, like a movie.
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Only thing is Paul.
The best graf artists aren't brown. Daniel tippett, Otis Frizzel (son of dick), Elliot O'donell (world champion graffer) to name a few.
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No, the middle-class people think it a suitable creative activity for brown kids - the don't enjoy it in the sense that they would have it in their homes or neighbourhoods.
That's a quack. I'm sure I remember Otis Frizzell (the multi-talented son of famous artist Dick Frizzell) did one right in the heart of Ponsonby. He was a white boy, IIRC.
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Now hold on, chaps. I don't doubt that a lot of graffiti is done by white folks: I know some of them; quite a few went to Elam. But that was not my point. My concern is that brown kids are ghettoized by middle-class people in the sense that the various forms of Hip Hop are prescribed as their only cultural activity.
I did not claim this to be racist because middle-class brown people do it as much as white folks. I do think it limiting. Kids should have access to culture broadly, and not be constrained by what is thought by others to be "relevant" and "accessible."
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Eagle vs Shark ... that film annoyed me in about 15 different ways
Same.
Sigh. -
Kids should have access to culture broadly, and not be constrained by what is thought by others to be "relevant" and "accessible."
If anyone had ever said they should be, you'd have a point. At least as far as that particular person was concerned. To generalize to the entire middle class white demographic is ... overgeneralizing.
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I was prompted by Sacha's link, "for a local creative life probably deprived of the 'best' concertos, ballet and oil paintings." I don't want kids to be deprived of such art forms; even ballet, which I loathe.
One of the reasons I want Concert FM to remain untouched is that people can discover classical music on the radio, free of charge and unmediated by the demands of advertisers. Certainly people who already know about music and have money can go to record shops or find music online, but people who don't have those advantages need places where they can learn.
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Kids should have access to culture broadly, and not be constrained by what is thought by others to be "relevant" and "accessible."
going to have to re write the entire school curriculum to not be eurocentric and designed to churn out good lil capitalists then eh ?
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Eagle vs Shark ... that film annoyed me in about 15 different ways
Same.
Sigh.Yeah, me too. The ingredients were great but somehow they made the cake inedible. Or maybe an acquired taste.
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I was prompted by Sacha's link, "for a local creative life probably deprived of the 'best' concertos, ballet and oil paintings." I don't want kids to be deprived of such art forms; even ballet, which I loathe.
Who does? The question is around whether that particular good outweighs others that could be delivered on the same dime. Sure it's questionable whether that's a fair trade off, whether other goods should/could come from other dimes. But that doesn't stop us asking the hypothetical question: What if it that was the only dime? How fair would it seem that the Concert program with its current programming has this special spot? And I can't see any compelling reason other which doesn't make a lot of questionable assertions about the greater value of European classical music over ... the entire rest of the world/history.
I don't want kids to be deprived of ballet either. But there is seriously bugger all funding for dance, and my little sister has struggled for a decade trying to make a living out of contemporary dance here. One thing does come at the cost of the other in the arts. Keeping the ballet alive does cost us a lot of our dancing budget. The decision has to be made constantly - is it worth it? It's not automatic, and I don't envy CNZ for having to make those kind of decisions at all. To decide what art should be funded and what shouldn't. In NZ, it seems that the older the art form, the easier it is to justify funding, and to me there is something just a little bit screwy about that. Curiously, that's mostly because the older stuff is more popular with the audiences. It's less challenging, it's considered more beautiful because the style is established, people know what a graceful ballerina looks like. It doesn't matter one whit that the 'message' (if there is one) is hundreds of years old, whereas contemporary dance is about contemporary issues, uses contemporary styles, and challenges contemporary views. The people making it are also a contemporary underclass of artists, eking out their lives on meager budgets and big dreams. This is the 'cost' of ballet.
I'd be the first to say there should be no such trade off, the two should not be connected budgetarily at all. Yet they are, every bit as much as one genre of music is to another. So the hypothetical question above does need to be asked - certainly it is asked behind closed doors all the time whether we like it or not.
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Muldoon had the answer years ago. He suggested getting rid of a few of the violinists from the NZSO to save some money.
Obviously RNZ could sell some records.
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Technically, they're not - that's why there's a seperate organisation with its own board and everything running it.
And The Edge ran a $2.8 million net deficit according to the 2009 annual report -- it seems Ethan Hawke and a pretty damn good production of My Fair Lady weren't the same boffo box office as Ian McKellen and those other old queens. :)
Oh, well I'll drown my sorrows in more Sondheim. From one pack of clapped out old bump-and-grinders to another:
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Ben, I quite agree with you about contemporary dance. It gets a raw deal, both here and in Britain, while ballet companies soak up the budget.
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Jonathan Fa'afetai Lemalu., on the other hand, has talent and has not been constrained by others' expectations of what a Samoan boy should be.
He didn't exactly come from the ghetto either. He grew up in Dunedin, his parents are educators and he was groomed (no, not like that) in the Anglican church choir.
Yet it's hardly the case that young Samoans are constrained from becoming opera singers. The churches provide a breeding ground and there are quite a few working internationally. They're high-status citizens.
But Lemalu is a gifted recital artist. He'll probably never write anything he sings, and his art is ill fit for many of the roles for which we value art in a society -- commentary, insight, the challenge of ideas. A community that had only opera singers would be hardly able to talk to itself.
Had my special power been singing, rather than writing (and it so isn't), I would have become the rapper and not the the opera singer, just like I'm a journalist and not a novelist. It's more ... useful.
I find the sight of middle-class folk praising the suburban poor for their hip-hop culture to be just a little unsettling. Look at the brown kids, being creative with their culture [which, of course, has been imported wholesale from the USofA]. It is all so street.
When I was at high school, punk rock happened. We cut our hair and affected working-class English accents when we sang. It changed my life, and it led directly to a popular music culture that we regard as our own, and which inspired kids in America when they picked up guitars. The Beatles, of course, originally fancied themselves as singers of what was still called "race music" in America, and Afrika Bambaata sampled Kraftwerk.
I know some of them; quite a few went to Elam. But that was not my point. My concern is that brown kids are ghettoized by middle-class people in the sense that the various forms of Hip Hop are prescribed as their only cultural activity.
You've created entire suburbs of middle-class strawmen, who patronise and prescribe, but stay entirely separate from, the creative cultures of other communities.
What say we actually enjoy what they do? Hip-hop has mostly disappointed me for years, but it was nice to be able to feel a connection to the hip-hop music made in my town. In particular, Ermehn's Samoans Part II and Tha Feelstyle's Break It To Pieces tell real stories. And you can dance to them.
It's not as if I'm living on another planet. My boys went to the same schools as Nesian Mystik did.
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As I said earlier, I started off this stoush because I was incensed by Sacha's link, "for a local creative life probably deprived of the 'best' concertos, ballet and oil paintings." It is a huge assumption to say that PI kids are deprived of such things and the implication seems to be that such deprivation is a good thing.
I mentioned Lemalu because the stereotype of PI kids is that of rap and graffiti. As you say, there is a rich choral tradition. I mentioned him also because of all the talk of Concert being for old white folk and because of the demands for diversity.
There are also more than a few visual artists who draw on both their island traditions and on the heritage of Western Art, and do not seem to get hung up about things being Eurocentric. These hang-ups seem to be created by Palangi and by academics who write in terms of the Post-Colonial Discourse.
Of course, you might respond that I am hung-up about Hip Hop. Well, the music is alright, some of the time, and it is good that local acts are making their own styles. The graffiti is largely repetitive and unadventurous.
You might think I am creating strawmen, but you should hear some of the stuff I come across at Varsity, such as the "essentialist" architectural theory which says that only Maori academics are entitled to research Maori architecture.
Anyway, punk changed my life as well, and I agree that music mixes things up. This is a good thing. What I dislike is the suggestion that that Western influences are hegemonic or colonial. A few dead white males in the mix does no harm at all.
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But Lemalu is a gifted recital artist. He'll probably never write anything he sings, and his art is ill fit for many of the roles for which we value art in a society -- commentary, insight, the challenge of ideas. A community that had only opera singers would be hardly able to talk to itself.
Wow, if you want to tick Paul off for being reductive I'd suggest taking a look at Lemalu's engagements this year.
Two major works by John Adams -- and you'd think his Christmas opera-oratorio El Niño would be pretty "relevant" to one or two God bothers in South Auckland.
And in-between is a major role in a world première of Moby-Dick a new opera by Jake Heggie. (Teddy Tahu Rhodes headlined the world premiere of Heggie's The End of the Affair in Houston in 2004, and the Australian debut of his Dead Man Walking three years later.)
I don't care how talented a "recital artist" you are, you're not getting booked by the Dallas Opera or the San Francisco Symphony for those kinds of gigs without a lot more under the hood.
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Sadly, I can't see how any opera company in New Zealand is going to make the budget work on a fully-staged contemporary opera (see below), let alone commission one that is quote unquote "relevant":
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I'd try harder if I were arguing for real.
No need to say so. If there was ever any doubt, it was obvious you weren’t really trying when one of your comebacks was that you could rent something for free.
Concerts are about serious music ... Music with something to say. You certainly don't want to be dragged out of it...
But that’s true of music that is not considered ‘concert’, and equally there’s some concert music that’s not particularly serious.
More than Midnight Youth or whatever they're called? I'd say so. More than Shihad? I'd say so. More than Smashproof? Lyrically? No. Musically? Hmmm.
Well, those are pretty average bands. Or at least, they average out to average. It’s early in Smashproof’s career, but they’re pretty meh, if it weren’t for that one song. Shihad are good but not life changing. Midnight Youth... well, let’s just say they bring the average down. Arcade Fire is a contemporary rock band that produces music better than many a contemporary classic, or otherwise “concert”, musical artist
The question is around whether that particular good outweighs others that could be delivered on the same dime. Sure it's questionable whether that's a fair trade off, whether other goods should/could come from other dimes. But that doesn't stop us asking the hypothetical question: What if it that was the only dime?
But as has been pointed out before, it’s not as if this is a “last dime” scenario; it’s not as if this is about whether a cut in funding for the Concert Programme will result in a commensurate increase in funding for contemporary dance.
This is the point some seem to be making here: that by raising this as if it’s some sort of “question that needs to be asked” or “Devil’s advocate” question, all we really do is play into the hands of the right. You’ll (theoretically) lose the concert programme – including its infrastructure – and gain nothing for your sister’s dance efforts.
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Steve, I was never connecting dance funding with music funding in my analogy. I was connecting one kind of dance funding with another kind, and funding of one genre of music with another. But certainly the one dime scenario is 'constructed for the purposes of argument'. I pretty much felt that was what Danyl was saying from the start - "If you must cut something could it be this instead of that?". I didn't actually read him to be advocating any cuts of any kind at all.
This is the point some seem to be making here: that by raising this as if it’s some sort of “question that needs to be asked” or “Devil’s advocate” question, all we really do is play into the hands of the right.
Seems so and I thoroughly disagree with it. Devil's advocates should probably expect to cop a lot of flak if they haven't made it clear what they are doing, but most of the time they drive the debate, bring out the good arguments, make the case stronger. If they make the case for the Devil stronger too, it's probably because it's a strong case, and the Devil will be sure to come up with it himself anyway - best to be prepared for it.
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I pretty much felt that was what Danyl was saying from the start - "If you must cut something could it be this instead of that?". I didn't actually read him to be advocating any cuts of any kind at all.
Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt but when it comes to arts funding I really am as big an asshole as I seem. I think that in a small, poor country like ours the government should direct it's money and energy into areas like education, welfare and healthcare, not paying ballet dancers to stage productions nobody watches or composers to write symphonies nobody listens to.
There's a strong case to be made for arts funding around Maori culture, because that's unique to us. And I guess there's a case to be made for pop-culture productions like Outrageous Fortune with the added bonus that lots of the people who pay for it actually watch and like it. But government funding for most high culture artists and projects mostly seem driven by a desire for politicians and civil servants to play arts patron with somebody else's money.
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...and you still have to brown nose after you submit your application...uhhh, i mean lobby to get the funding in which case its still who you know and who you know who knows somebody whose opinion counts for something in the highly subjective and cliquey arts sector.
I've found it tends to be the usual suspects who keep heading back to the trough for successive handouts, which begs the question. If their art was any good why does it need to be subsidised ?
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These hang-ups seem to be created by Palangi and by academics who write in terms of the Post-Colonial Discourse.
Now, you know I'm not gonna be responsible for those motherfuckers.
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If the stereotypes outlined previously in this thread are accurate, I'm wondering why no one has piped up to say "If we lose the Concert programme, where are we going hear our lovely Kiri?".
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