Last month, I highlighted twenty-one reasons why classical music is booming in Britain – and there are plenty more. But a low-lying cloud, seemingly in permanent residence over these shores, threatens to engulf the huge efforts that are being made by the profession to ensure classical music remains a vital part of twenty-first century culture. That cloud is musical education.
The latest of several ‘scary surveys’ claimed that many of our children leave school unable to differentiate between a violin and a guitar, let alone between a bassoon and a steel drum. So this month I determined to discover the facts about our musical education. Instead I uncovered a quagmire of quangos, quandaries and other words which may be useful for playing Scrabble but are less so when it comes to one’s offspring being able to distinguish their Arne’s from their Elgar’s.
To get a picture of musical education – or the lack of it – in Britain today think Wembley Stadium, Battersea Power Station, the state of our railways or any other of the Class A botch-ups that expose us as a nation hopelessly incapable of making a decision and sticking to it. Many conversations with senior politicians, head teachers and pupils have led me to an inevitable conclusion: there will be no meaningful improvement in musical education until the myth that classical music is White, Middle-Class and Elitist has been debunked. These three watchwords are constantly being employed to excuse the lack of instrumental tuition in schools, particularly at primary level. All three categorizations are offensive and wrong.
If classical music is for ‘whites only’ where do three of its greatest present-day practitioners – Mitsuko Uchida, Jessye Norman and Yo Yo Ma – fit into this racially discriminative scenario? As – to our shame – it has become well established that young people in the Far East take a far greater interest in classical music than their Western counterparts, are orientals now honorary whites when it comes to music education? Obviously this lazy ‘white’ demarcation really means ‘non-black’. But music is not about race, it is about access.
I was lucky enough to be brought up in a home where music of different kinds was always in the background. Had it not been, the only place I could have discovered it would have been at school (forget television as there is virtually no classical music on mainstream TV). What chance does a young British black child have of coming to know classical music? In many urban primary schools they would be lucky to find two sides of a triangle in a back cupboard. Many conversations with senior politicians, head teachers and pupils have led me to an inevitable conclusion: there will be no meaningful improvement in musical education until the myth that classical music is White, Middle-Class and Elitist has been debunked. These three watchwords are constantly being employed to excuse the lack of instrumental tuition in schools, particularly at primary level. All three categorizations are offensive and wrong.
If classical music is for ‘whites only’ where do three of its greatest present-day practitioners – Mitsuko Uchida, Jessye Norman and Yo Yo Ma – fit into this racially discriminative scenario? As – to our shame – it has become well established that young people in the Far East take a far greater interest in classical music than their Western counterparts, are orientals now honorary whites when it comes to music education? Obviously this lazy ‘white’ demarcation really means ‘non-black’. But music is not about race, it is about access.
I was lucky enough to be brought up in a home where musi If classical music is to survive and prosper in this country we must tackle the wretchedness of our musical education system. So, in the immortal words of that great ‘white, middle-class, elitist’, Elvis Presley, can we have “a little less conversation, a little more action, please”?
