A Canadian federal committee has voted to hold hearings on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.’s decisions to change its programming and to shut down its radio orchestra, reports the Vancouver Free Press. “I want Canadians who are concerned about classical music, who are concerned about the CBC Radio Orchestra being disbanded, and who are concerned about the direction of Radio 2 to have an opportunity to express those concerns to … the parliamentarians on the standing committee on Canadian heritage,” said the member of Parliament who initially moved to hold the hearings. “I also want the CBC to pay attention to what these folks are saying to the committee.” Not being familiar with Canadian politics, I must admit that I have little inkling of what sort of effect these hearings may have. But it seems like a first step.
Meanwhile, Chris Boyce, director of programming at CBC Radio, has penned an op-ed in the Vancouver Sun defending the network’s decision to cut back on classical in favor of other musical genres. He writes:
And what we heard was loud and clear. People love classical music. But they also love other kinds of music, too, as long as it’s of high quality and intelligently presented.
Consider the following. Of the approximately 30,000 pieces of music released each year in Canada, 240 receive regular airplay on Canadian radio stations. We intend to take advantage of this vast body of Canadian music that is otherwise ignored and make the best of it available to our listeners in an intelligent, creative and engaging way. We see this as the embodiment of our mandate.
I certainly sympathize with the CBC’s critics. But I also have a hard time finding fault with this argument.
Reflecting on the CBC’s dilemma, I’m struck by the differences between the Canadian and American models for public broadcasting. Stateside, public radio stations certainly suffer to some extent by their lack of central control. For instance, this may go hand in hand with the relative lack of federal funding they must endure.
But our less centralized model also allows for a far more diverse public radio system. Stations are freed from the responsibility of gauging national priorities and can cater to local tastes and priorities. They have the option of buying programs from national production houses such as NPR, Public Radio International and American Public Media (and even the CBC). But station programmers call the shots. And ultimately, the listeners benefit from that, even if they at times disagree with the decisions at stations.
Which brings me to the matter of KCSN in Northridge, Calif. There are rumblings that the station serving the Los Angeles market may switch format. Licensed to Cal State Northridge, the station now airs a diverse mix of music, including (from what I’ve gleaned) classical music that might not appear on the airwaves of the city’s bigtime classical station, KUSC. At this point, it’s all just unattributed hearsay, but the details are here. The station’s program director declined to discuss the matter with me, and I have yet to hear from KCSN’s general manager or the university administration. More details to come, I hope.
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I’ve been watching the debate over CBC Radio 2 and the disbanding of the CBC Radio Orchestra over the last couple of months, and, while I am a devotee of classical music, I have to say that the rhetoric of those opposing the changes to CBC’s programming is overheated and borders on the paranoid. One gets the impression that the programming change amounts to nothing less than a cultural apocalypse for Canada.
I, for one, feel that the CBC’s argument for rebalancing musical genres in Radio 2 is quite a reasonable one, with the caveat that the CBC must take very seriously the mandate to present music – of whatever genre – in an intelligent and contextual discourse. The fact of the matter is that classical music in North America generally is a niche taste, which like many other niches has a devoted audience. The audience for classical music is aging and shrinking, but there will always be a small but enthusiastic audience for it. Although very few advocates for classical programming on the CBC have made this argument explicitly (multicultural sensitivity being one reason), one can sense an undercurrent of cultural superiority assigned to Western classical music which, presumably, no other musical tradition in the world can hope to approach, and it is the duty of Canada’s national broadcaster to ensure that the Canadian populace is exposed to this great, edifying tradition on the airwaves. I don’t buy it. The prestige of Western classical music rests largely on cultural, not purely musical, factors. Its dominance in elite institutions like university music departments follows partly from the fact that the theoretical tools developed to describe this music (tools that privilege pitch and harmonic function over parameters like melody, rhythm, and timbre) are well suited for it, but are less successful in describing other musical genres. The fact that we do not yet have an adequate vocabulary for dealing with complexities of melody, rhythm, timbral, or other musical features does not mean that Hindustani music, avant-garde pop, or gamelan music, to name three examples of genres we might hear more on the CBC in the future, do not deserve our attention.
In short, the Western classical tradition is wonderful and worthy, but it is a difficult argument to make that in a diverse society it alone deserves to dominate the airwaves. Furthermore, little in the current debate convinces me that CBC’s intention is to turn Radio 2 into a pop station, but this canard pops up quite frequently as well.
Dear Lassus,
I love your blogging name! It’s for sure we don’t hear much Lassus on the radio these days. Most Lassus is sung, and vocal music is a no-no on classical stations which are limiting their playlists more and more (and consequently lowering their chance of survival).
Thank you so much for your thoughtful response. I couldn’t agree with you more. For a dozen years I have been trying to convince programmers to include more world music in their mix.
On my own show I used to have Scottish music on Burns day and Irish music on Bloomsday and St. Patrick’s Day. I had a Portuguese fado singer, Icelandic balladeers, four professors from Uruguay who played all sizes of panpipes, including the huge five foot tall zampognas, classical Indian sarod and tabla players, a variety of African musicians, like the fascinating Ugandan who demonstrated body percussion and call and response used by nomadic people who couldn’t carry instruments with them. Cape Breton fiddlers, flamenco musicians. Japanese koto, Javanese and Balinese gamelan, Galician bagpipes, Andean quena (an endblown flute), African kora and mbira.
The list of world musicians I had in the studio is vast. It was all sprinkled sparingly into the mix with mainstream classical music, and it added amazing spice to the sound. We eat Chinese, Thai, and Indian food in restaurants. Why wouldn’t we want the variety of ethnic music, too?
When I was at NPR, we did a weeklong series of how “The Village Meets the Concert Hall.” We mixed ethnic world music with classical music. The audience response for that week was astonishing.
I can appreciate the other side of the coin, though. Classical stations are losing ground. They don’t bring in big bucks or big audience. And those of us who love classical music don’t want to lose what little we have.
But our cultural mix is changing. We have populations on the move, new global markets, new neighbors, and a growing demand for tolerance and cultural appreciation. So if the Canadian government wants their programming to reflect their population, that’s admirable. I hope, as you say, they won’t give in and play pop music. There are plenty of pop stations already. In the U.S. a lot of owners switch format to go after more money. Even NPR has dumped most of its classical music and is trying to appeal to the younger, popular culture. It’s a canard with legs, unfortunately.
I hope Canadians will hold CBC 2’s feet to the fire, and make sure they make intelligent, enriching choices!
All the best,
Marty