Keith Kinder, McMaster School of Arts Director: CBC genre argument spurious
posted | August 5, 2008
http://www.earsay.
com/standonguardforcbc/2008/08/05/keith-kinder-mcmaster-school-of-arts-directo
r-cbc-genre-argument-spurious/
On Fri, 01 Aug 2008 23:57:47 -0400
Keith Kinder wrote:
Prime Minister Harper, Minister Verner, Deputy Minister LaRocque;
I am writing to add my voice to those thousands of Canadians who are
dismayed by the demolition of CBC’s Radio 2, in particular the
reduction of “classical” - I prefer the term “serious” - music
broadcasting from 120 to 25 hours/week and the “ghettoization” of
serious music to a few hours in the mid afternoon when working
Canadians and young people will have no op****tunity to listen. I live
in Metro Toronto and so can turn to a local serious music
broadcaster. Canadians outside the Toronto region are out-of-luck. Unless
they
can
free up those few afternoon hours, they will have no op****tunity to
hear performances of the musical monuments of the past.
Apparently this change is being undertaken in order to provide
“diversity”. However, as Russell Smith has tellingly written in the
Globe and Mail, how is diversity served by making Radio 2 sound like
every other radio station around the dial?
CBC management babbles on about broadening the genres available to
listeners, and refer to jazz, pop, rock, rhythm&blues,
singer-songwriters, new folk, etc. Apparently they consider serious
music as simply one more genre equal to each of the above. However,
except for serious music, none of these genres has any history prior to
the 20th century. (I’m sure I need not remind you of George Santayana’s
admonition: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat
it”). Serious music has a history of more than a thousand years.
Medieval Music, Renaissance polyphony, the Classical style of which
Mozart and Haydn are the prime representatives, 19th-century
Romanticism, Opera, Chamber Music, Symphonic Music, Piano Music,
Choral Music and others are all separate genres and by the reasoning
presented by CBC itself, each deserves equal broadcast time to jazz,
pop, etc. Even if we consider only the 20th/21st centuries, serious music
genres equal and probably surpass those in the more popular vein. I
would cite Impressionism, Serialism, Primitivism, Futurism, Minimalism,
etc. This argument by CBC management is completely spurious.
We need you to intervene and change this wrong-headed policy. Culture
that is developed in a purely insular manner is no culture at all.
The CBC has a responsibility to take the long view and deliver to
Canadians nation wide, a broad exposure to more than the latest fad.
Radio 2 is too im****tant to become “just another radio station”,
indistinguishable from anything else on the dial.
I appreciate your consideration.
Keith Kinder
Director, School of the Arts
McMaster University
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