Edinburgh v Glasgow,
and...
"Narrow-minded nationalism is crushing Scottish Culture?"
Stormer of an article in The Times from Jenny Hjul:
The Year of Homecoming is, increasingly, a nationalist propaganda exercise, complete with clan gatherings, to mark the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns’s birth, and what it has to do with musical excellence is anyone’s guess.
But in the new Scotland, culture is only culture if it is cloaked in a Saltire and plays the bagpipes. Ministers will find money to support the arts if they comply with the nationalist mission statement.
None of the cash-strapped festival directors sniff at £200,000 hand-outs to “promote and extend the involvement” of Scottish artists, but they are not in their jobs to celebrate Scotland.
And nor are the directors of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Scottish Opera and the other national arts companies. And neither is their goal increased sustainable growth, nor social inclusion, nor Scottish independence.
If the nationalists had their way, future festivals would open with Braveheart: the Musical; Scottish orchestras, directed by Scottish conductors, would play works by Scottish composers; Scottish paintings would replace the Titians in the National Gallery; and Scottish authors would hold national conversations among themselves in Charlotte Square.
I'll finish off with a relevant quote on the subject from Gandhi:
No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive.
And no "national" culture can thrive if its proponents attempt to exclude others.
6 comments:
Hjul has been whining about the Scottish arts scene for as long as I was aware of her. She was always banging on about Scottish Opera and Scottish Ballet even when Labour was in charge.
To be honest she is a middle-English Tory with middle-English Tory views. The day she writes anything positive about any form of Scottish governance is a long way off.
She of course has a right to her views. However sometimes I think it would be easier for her just to write out "I hate Holyrood and the SNP" 200-300 times and collect the cheque.
She and Alan Cochrane got a kicking in the Sunday Herald a few weeks back for apparently being gleeful over the banking crisis. They were dubbed the "Juan and Eva Peron of Orthodox Unionism" Ouch!
Possibly a coincidence but they have been muted over the situation since.
She will be repairing the plaster at the moment. An Alan Cochrane shaped hole will be in their ceiling upon hearing Murphy's call for UK Olympics football team. Cochrane is at one (for a change) with Salmond on this one.
Anyway for a parochial fest here is:
http://www.homecomingscotland2009.com/whats-on/events/scottish-tides-polish-spring-4666.html
http://www.homecomingscotland2009.com/whats-on/events/scots-music-abroad-4668.html
http://www.homecomingscotland2009.com/whats-on/events/guildtown-bluegrass-music-festival-2009-4711.html
The schedule so far-----
kicking in the Sunday Herald a few weeks back for apparently being gleeful over the banking crisis. They were dubbed the "Juan and Eva Peron of Orthodox Unionism" Ouch!
Possibly a coincidence but they have been muted over the situation since.
If Mr Cochrane, in particular, was anyway sensitive to the incendiary comments and rants which invariably follow his articles, then he'd have given up journalism a long time ago; I suspect neither he nor Jenny is overly concerned with the outpourings of Cybernatdom!!
Re her overall point, re the under-subsidising of overall "non-political" culture is a valid one and it's one we have some experience of in NI.
I realise this comment is somewhat tangential, but...
I am a keen Go player. (The oriental game played with black and white stones on a 19x19 board).
One of the most famous games in Go is known as "The Atom Bomb Game". This was one of the series of games being played in 1945 for the Honinbo title and the venue for this particular game was Hiroshima. The blast upset the game and flying glass caused some minor injuries. The pieces were reset and the game completed. They were in he suburbs and didn't realise just how much devastation had occurred.
One of the players there was Kaoru Iwamoto who later dedicated part of his life to spreading Go throughout the world with the intention of using Go to bring people from different cultures together. (His book is the best short introduction to Go I know).
I suppose it is all about whether you view your culture as inclusive or as exclusive.
It was not the cybernats who savaged them. It was the paper itself.
One thing to be mocked in Alan Taylor's diary, quite another to get lambasted in the Business Section as was in this case.
Normally outside the Taylor's Diary Scottish Hackdom does not tend to publicly savage other. Not since Andrew Neil left the Scotsman a 2-3 years ago anyway.
I stand corrected then. But I can's see Mr Cochrane's state of mute lasting for too long!!
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