Monday 9 November 2009

Now That's Not What I Call Music

If America was to throw a concert for its 234th birthday next year, it could call upon a sparkling array of musicians and as long as they didn't invite any Country & Western singers, it would be well worth watching.
If the United Kingdom were to celebrate it's 303rd birthday next year, again, we could have a fine line up. Other places like Canada, Australia and Ireland could rummage around and find enough decent musicians to put on a decent Birthday bash but some places couldn't.
France for example. Great artists but god awful musicians but to be fair to them, they know that they suck so they don't even try which is what someone should have whispered into the ear of the Israeli who decided they would have a concert for Israels 60th Birthday celebrations last year. I saw bits of it on one of the Arts Channels tonight and even the musicians seemed embarrassed to be there.
This got me thinking, why are all the best musicians from only a handful of countries?
If you were to go back to the classical era, Austria and Germany ruled the musical roost but you would rather remove your ears with a butter knife than listen to a concert of the best Austria or Germany has to offer now.
One of the reasons would be that the places where the main group of bands and singers emerge from sing in the English language. Abba would have sunk without trace if they had sung all their songs in Swedish.
So today the top places for musicians would be America, Britain, Canada, Australia and Ireland and then it hit me. All these places are countries us Brits had turned over at some point as part of our Commonwealth land grab. It was the long lost silver lining that i had long sought for our brutal regime.
Okay, so being indirectly responsible for the emergence of Guns N Roses almost 250 years later doesn't make up for hacking our way through hundreds of thousands of the indigenous population globally, but its the silver lining that smarmy British bloggers can arrogantly point to in an attempt to say to seven eights of the globe that thanks to us and our colonies, musically, we are the best and you all suck. Phil Collins excepted of course.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Lucy,

if country & western singers weren't invited, it wouldn't be American - like it or not...

CW is at least as American as rap, blues, or even jazz

q

PS - in the USA if you had a concert and omitted rap you'd be labled racist - same should apply to CW...