Dawn Ritch, Contributor
JOAN TUCKER, Senior Lecturer in Music Education at UWI, has taken me on in a letter to the Editor. At issue was my comment "singing is not taught in our schools, neither is music".
In order to disprove this, she should have been able to showcase the development of instrumentalists and orchestras in schools. But it doesn't faze her for an instant that she cannot come up with any of this.
Instead Ms. Tucker writes, "The changes that occurred in the School of Music in the 1970s have been a thorn in the flesh of those whose Eurocentric preoccupations debarred them from understanding that classical elitism (read classical music) was being questioned in Jamaica, but also in a number of European countries."
I've never heard such a pile of hogwash in all my life. Is this bureaucrat saying that classical music is not the focus at the School of Music or in secondary schools any longer because during the 1970s it was condemned as elitist? And who was the genius behind that decision? As I recall she was part of the School of Music at that time.
If European countries were questioning the value of classical music at the time, it can only be because the Orientals were about to beat them at their own game. Names denoting European Jewry like Arthur Rubinstein, Isaac Stern, Yehudi Menuhin and Itzhak Perlman (from Israel) were the greatest performers.
Today their successors are performers with names like Yo Yo Ma. He is the celebrated Japanese cellist. It should be noted that Yo Yo Ma also has a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Harvard. Recent scientific data in the United States shows that students with higher degrees of music literacy get better SAT results, and particularly in the sciences.
In her letter Miss Tucker writes, "Infor-mation and Communi-cation Technology (Mr. Paulwell's Ministry) has provided us with a range of tools that now allow our children to study 'world music'..." Is a Jamaican student studying CXC music (which she tells us, focuses on "world music") likely to get better SAT results? I hardly think so.
TAG
Readers should note that the term "world music" is the tag given to a fake and pernicious intellectual exercise which lumps all countries, cultures and music together, as long as it's not Western classical or Euro-American pop. According to this perverse philosophy everything from Balinese Gamelan music to Cuban salsa is under one blanket of so-called "world music". What this represents is a spurious ethnic attempt to assert cultural superiority. This is easy to do if you exclude most music from the world's most economically and culturally dominant regions.
Below is a list of what secondary schools in Jamaica would need in order to teach "world music" in class, as prescribed in the CXC syllabus.
Very high quality recording and listening equipment
An array of musical instruments, including a piano electronic keyboard, acoustic guitars, conga and other types of drums, recorders and sets of tuned and untuned percussion in-truments
A library of high quality recordings of a wide range of musical styles and idioms
A range of scores, texts and other written materials related to music.
I rather doubt that our schools are so well-equipped, in need as they are of desks and functioning water closets. I also doubt there are a handful of teachers capable of teaching the subject at that level. Moreover, I see little point in Jamaican school children struggling to identify the different styles and sounds of an Arab maqam, or an Indian raga, when they can hardly identify a simple chord progression, recognise a modulation, and sing at sight a simple part song.
SIGHT SING
Primary school children in pre-independent Jamaica could sight sing. How many primary school children in today's Jamaica have ever seen a musical score? These are basic skills in musicianship, and lay the foundation in the development of a good musician.
For many years the School of Music has been graduating 'music teachers', the majority of whom can hardly begin to play a simple hymn-tune on the piano, or attempt to sit an "O" level music exam themselves.
Only a year or so ago, the headmistress of a well-known secondary school was highly embarrassed.
She discovered to the surprise of herself and the entire school, that the music teacher whom she had just hired (a School of Music graduate) was incapable of playing the simple accompaniment for a short song or hymn for a school function.
Miss Tucker dismisses the ability to play the piano, or train a classroom choir, as mere European musical skills, not relevant to the natives out here. Are we only to train music teachers then to hit steel pans and beat conga drums?
It's a very good thing that Miss Tucker was not in charge of public music education policy in the Far East during the past three decades. Those countries now boast some of the world's great international concert artistes, symphony orchestras, conservatories, and concert halls. Lang Lang, a brilliant young pianist from mainland China, made his debut on the BBC Proms last year with Rachmaninov's 3rd Piano Concerto.
BRILLIANT JAPANESE CONDUCTOR
This year he was invited to play Tchaikovsky's 1st Piano Concerto on the opening night of the Proms with the BBC symphony orchestra. Yundi Li, young and again from mainland China, was the winner of the Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw. Seiji Ozawa is a brilliant Japanese conductor, and music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Kyung Wha Chung, a Korean, Sarah Chang, a Chinese, and Midori, a Japanese, are all internationally-renowned violinists, and female.
Is Miss Tucker so foolish as to suggest that the governments and people of mainland China, Japan, Korea and Singapore have "Eurocentric pre-occupations"?
She sings the praises of the Festival Commission, and bemoans the fact that their events are seldom attended by music lovers from "upper St. Andrew". Well, anyone who had the misfortune to view the recent festival performances on our local television stations can understand why. The appalling standard of the competition and its adjudication over the years is hardly likely to attract serious musicians from upper St. Andrew, lower St. Andrew, downtown Kingston or rural Jamaica.
I am sure that none of this will make a piece of difference to Miss Tucker. She will continue to use her university post to promote her obsession with ethnic culture, while presiding over the artistic stagnation of the country and its people. She, like so many others in the cultural life of this country, is in the business of trying to make a virtue of illiteracy.
FOOTNOTE: Some long time ago Melville Cooke promised a reply to my column on "The white man's burden". It was to be called he wrote, "Part III: The African Explanation".
Instead Cooke in his third piece descended into a torrent of personal invective. Obviously the columnist's promised piece on "The African Explanation" is not good enough to face the light of publication.
Belatedly Cooke says that he's coming back to the fray (hopefully with the long-awaited explanation). But in the meantime he says he's staring at his screensaver, and blames me for his writer's block.
I suppose I should be happy that he didn't blame it on slavery and colonialism, but that can't be far behind.
