Kings Jazz Review 8th Year No 2 Apr/Jun 1996
The order of priority that I have placed in the title above is correct, but the reality of it is sadly quite the reverse.
It has been said far too often in the past, and more particularly so during the years immediately after WWII, that the Europeans regard the British as being a race without a musical culture.
This opinion was startlingly brought home to us recently by no less a notable than Richard Baker, a Radio 3 presenter and authority on classical music, when reading out the nominations for opera, an Italian art form, in lavish settings during the 1996 Laurence Olivier Awards ceremony held at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London.
I would remind all those people abroad who subscribe to this viewpoint about the British that the Welsh are famous for their operatic voice, moreover, their country is well known as "the land of song."
It truly is a sad fact that England's musical culture, Traditional jazz, born out of the English lilting lullaby and more so the Scottish bothy songs cultivated by the early Scottish settlers to the Americas and re-created in the 40s by the legendary Englishman George Webb at Barnehurst in Kent, and others, has had no government support throughout its long and honourable history.
With some irony, it became apparent that when La Fenice Opera House in Venice was wrecked by fire on Monday 29 January 1996, Italy, we were told, had been neglecting its own musical culture, (at least that country has not had the embarrassment of not knowing what exactly is its own true musical culture) and that a famous opera singer would be staging a concert for no fee to help restore it. I recall watching on TV a member of our Royalty, and our Prime Minister, sitting in the pouring rain in Hyde Park, London, with a vast crowd getting soaked through, or if you like, drenched to the skin, watching that very same opera singer performing under cover and in full song.
A video of the event graced our screens the following Xmas.
Furthermore, a six part weekly TV series which ended on 20 February this year was about "The House." No, not the House of Commons, but about The Royal Opera House, in Covent Garden, London, upon which vast sums of national, and lately, lottery monies have been lavished to sustain its three performing outfits, the Royal Ballet, the Birmingham Royal Ballet, and the English National Opera, which one can interpret as being just one enormous Opera House art-form.
For the layman, such viewings of the workings of the Opera House were an eye-opener, and whether Jeremy Isaacs, its director, did the right thing in having the whole fiasco shown, seemingly unexpurgated, he must be applauded for having the courage in so doing.
Using one stage designer for brothing, oh! if you must, souping up over elaborate props for both ballet and opera productions combined, was shown to be a disaster, overextending lavishness, and much the reverse of achieving cost savings, if that was the intention.
Any horseman would have told her that staging a team of colts to undertake Clydesdale tasks would be little else than an invitation to the Cobbs to leave a steaming mark for the dustpan and brush man to sweep up.
Mercifully, the horse did not break a leg descending the glacier or piste-like slope on exit.
A Welshman in Cardiff would be glowing, without the need to paint his face a stinging-on-the-skin crimson pink and without the rustic handlebar moustaches for the women, making them look androgynously hideous, as was graphically shown to the TV viewers, and furthermore, hearing of a Scotsman and Englishman squabbling over how a fine Italian opera composition ought to have been presented was just too much to handle. Little wonder that the end result in both cases, to an Irishman and others, would be seen to become a flop.
It is pitifully obvious that millions of pounds spent over the years have been too extravagant and the brow-furrowing search on how an enormous overspend can be reduced appeared to this viewer as being just pretty obvious.
The Opera House is seeking £4.5m a year, over a four year period, as an operating sum, whilst the building is closed for £78.5m extensive refurbishment. This sum, even, appears to be a questionable purse string under which to operate, considering that there is corporate finance at the ready which it can attract to keep it elitist.
Hive off the Birmingham and Sadlers Wells art-forms to settle and conduct their own spheres elsewhere thus slicing its £19.5m 1996 government grant in the process. Note Kirov.
Mr Isaacs, having made yourself known to us, perhaps Wales should have its opera house after all, and you could return your House to the wartime occupants, now under the alias of the Jazzitoria, saving the need to spend £213m in extending the building to the dismay of the local residents, but continue with the £78.5m refurbishment for our use. Second thoughts, I would much prefer that The Traditional Jazz Jazzitoria has its own new Millennium £50m castle built, if not here in Croydon, then somewhere else in England.
It was half a century ago when the heavy curtains of the Royal Opera House rose to the performance of the dance Sleeping Beauty. The previous wartime years saw jazz dance performed at the venue, then, overnight, ballet took over, culminating in the end of the Cakewalk, Lindy Hop, the Jitterbug and other very famous traditional jazz dances. Oh! we were in hock to them - but I don't think at the time we appreciated what good the ordinary Yank did for us. Anyway, prime minister Wilson, using the Beatles, helped to defray some of the debt, and our music was relegated to the pub backrooms.
Inspired by Maynard Keynes, the Arts Council was created and England forsook its own dance and musical culture in favour of promoting foreign musical cultures, with pointed and ominous imbalance on the horizon.
What a fine mess we're in!
Nonetheless, Isaacs and King did have something in common. Before the lottery came into being, KJR stated that The Traditional Jazz Jazzitoria should have direct funds from government, thus in tune with a subsequent report which came out to do away with the Arts Council, but it was for a quarter of the sum that Jeremy Isaacs was unceremoniously seeking at one of his meetings with the now established Arts Council of England.
Administrators must have their cut, as was brought to light by the glossy designer influenced mammoth set of rules concocted up for getting lottery grants and applicants like ourselves to fill in, now seen as being overdone by a change of rules.
I earnestly hope that before the new Millennium dawns, England will come to its senses and ameliorate the sad neglect of its true musical heritage.
A Jazzitoria castle is an innovative idea, one of the criteria set by the lottery grant rules and which would give England a badly needed chance to make itself proud again of its achievements as we approach the Millennium making amends for allowing the Highlands of Scotland to be sold off under the hammer. After all the French are now concerned about what is happening to their chateaux. With more knighthoods among architects than any other profession, surely one Englishman is capable of building us a castle. If not, go north of the border and ask any Scottish architect to do it for us.
Ian King