Crackpot Culture

DJ Culture video, in which Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe re-enact the trial of Oscar Wilde

[As featured in Noted, Autumn 2008]

(Attention! Attention! Trente-neuf, quarante)
…
Bury the past, empty the shelf
Decide it’s time to reinvent yourself

[Pet Shop Boys: DJ Culture, 1991]

Despite amassing over 250,000 words in personal and academic blogs over the past five years, I have said very little of my love for music. True, I only got interested in music in my mid-teens, I rarely attend concerts, and I have a diverse taste that rarely comes close to that of my peers and often leads to friendly ridicule. However, it sometimes takes considerable recognition that an outsider cannot qualify what, or how much, music means to an individual through knowledge of their ‘taste’ alone. Music works on much more complex levels than that. It is easy to label particular artists or genres as meaningless or terrible, and to associate their followers within that same bracket. Yet, one person can happily find as deep a connection with Pink as another with Pink Floyd. Music can provide a non-impenetrable private relationship with its listener, in addition to its social, public function. Furthermore, when people are learning English through music; when music can locate itself within, elevate, stimulate, sympathise, heal, and make a hugely positive difference, it is surely worth acknowledgement!

What is it that has instilled in me this concern that my experience with, and love for, music is somehow illegitimate? I have, after all, travelled abroad to follow music, spent an eyebrow-raising amount on individual albums, and, as an amateur DJ, produced several sets to positive reception. Perhaps it is because one always thinks of physical dedication to the cause – braving the rain, mud and portable toilets at Glastonbury, for instance – as the dedicatory act of note. Perhaps it is because I have not made my own musical contribution to the world. Or perhaps it is because music has not really provided a straightforward method of establishing relationships. As well as a catalyst for joining groups, music can easily prove a method of distancing from the popular crowd.

In preparation for this article, I constructed a subjective survey for willing friends and anonymous contributors to share opinions about music. Questions ranged from whether music represents an expression of personality, to whether music is important in forming social bonds, or for popularity. I invited definitions of what constitutes a love for music, and opinions on whether music can become a locus for pressure, if one neglects their own ‘taste’ feeling compelled to follow whatever is deemed popular.

Responses to certain questions were clearly divided. Regarding the definition, one contributor argued that passion for even a small amount of music takes precedence. For another, to be a music lover is to embrace a variety of genres rather than restricting oneself. Regarding the role that music plays in the formation of social bonds, one respondent admitted that his taste was just not conducive to forming bonds; one suggested that it has a non-definitive role to play; while one suggested that it could potentially have a large impact.

Responses to some issues, however, were more unanimous. The first, a belief I hold strongly, is that music expresses or defines personality to some degree. Also conceivably true with literature, we can consider this in the production of music as well as reception. Choosing what to listen to is one form of self-definition, yet creating music could be the deepest expression of the self. The second common response was that music can easily become a cause of pressure and inhibition. Rigged by sexual, generic, fashion and even class stereotypes, music is often a fast-track to snobbery and ridicule. How many personal treasures lie on hidden CDs that must never be exposed? How many times have we pretended to love songs, purely because they are ‘arbitrarily popular’, in order to benefit reputation? There is almost always some level of deception or silence regarding music taste which is designed to uphold a kind of social credibility. Finally, inextricably related to this, is the connection with age. This could yet be the most crucial of all.

Given our media revolution and digital age, music plays an ever greater role in the lives of young people. Social and cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz suggests that man is ‘in need of symbolic sources of illumination to find his bearings in the world’ (The Interpretation of Cultures, 45). Music is the ideal medium to achieve that aim, but how often does it take on a destructive rather than a constructive force? Although subject to stereotype, music has become a cultural format, feeding accusations that particular genres glamorize violent crime. Yet music itself is glamorized in other defeatist ways, playing to our predatory habits.

The Howard Stern factor: love it or hate it, reality television offers something, however banal, to appeal. The UK’s kingpin is the X-Factor, where thousands of substandard performers audition either for their minute of fame, or in the deluded hope of success. Somehow, we cannot help but enjoy some of the ego-battering, scything remarks from a panel looking to invest £1 million in the winner. Once we have watched the enticed and enchanted hoards embarrass themselves and be promptly bullied off to infamy, the ‘exhibition’ is over. Likewise, the volume of news turning music into a farce is stunning. Amy Winehouse’s issues are well documented; for a premonition, the once revered Robbie Williams is currently forgotten. A newspaper interview with James Blunt reflects on a bizarre paradox: he is the most hated man in British pop, and yet one of the most successful. How can the two co-exist? As music becomes as much about method, apart from one’s madness, I grow ever prouder of my dear favourites, the Alphavilles, Erasures and so forth. Keeping a low profile, they produce new material and perform for fun and for fans in equal measure; a connection with music as ‘true’ as one might hope for.

Perhaps one eventually grows out of this great stigma surrounding tastes and preferences, but then does music have the same meaning if it has been ‘repressed’ for a number of years? Is the right way to deal with shame, fear, or inhibition to wait until we grow out of it? Perhaps not, would be the resounding cry of a man who has done so much, single-handedly, to revolutionise the way in which select groups of young people have approached music.

Gareth Malone, a choirmaster for the London Symphony Orchestra, became a cult hero last year with the broadcast of the documentary ‘The Choir’. Having chosen an ordinary comprehensive school, Northolt in London, with little background of singing, Gareth’s ambition was to form a choir of 25 eager participants and take them to the World Choir Games in Xiamen, China, nine months later. The new ‘Phoenix’ choir had only four weeks to produce a CD for their application, and a two month wait for the result caused a real dip in motivation. The struggle for commitment, discipline, and quality is felt and suffered by Gareth at every step. He takes the challenge for the golden rewards, the epiphany moments, which his students are driven to believe will come. Just in time, ‘Phoenix’ begin to gel, and with new bonds of trust and receptiveness, they begin to truly perform. After a respectable performance in Asia, students were tearful reflecting upon how beautiful the experience was: not only a remarkable achievement, but a new-found community finding harmony on several levels. Gareth waits for solitude before it strikes him too: ‘Phoenix’ would not go beyond the first round – it was never about miracles and bringing gold medals home – but the extraordinary, life-changing, bonding experience that music provides.

BBC 2: The Choir: Boys Don’t Sing (first aired 22/02/08). Gareth Malone addresses the audience of the school proms at the Royal Albert Hall (left), before bringing his tutees’ rendition of ‘Stand by Me’ to a close (right).

One year later, Gareth took on an even tougher challenge: joining Lancaster School, Leicester, an all-male sports college, with the ambition of forming a choir and taking it to the Royal Albert Hall. An alpha-male environment resounded around the school, and gender and gay stereotypes against singing and classical music were thrown around with abandon. The boys initially delighted in putting up a resolute defiance against the new, unwanted, musical culture. Yet, with kind, firm persistence, belief in his ambition, and an ability to make a fool of himself to break inhibition, Gareth was able to make an unlikely breakthrough. With no auditions for entry, this was based purely on interest and willing: interest which eventually included boys with dyslexia and cancer. This was about progression and confidence building as much as it was about quality, and one is always proud to watch a final performance that is raw, coarse, yet sparkling with endeavour.

We are reminded of The Breakfast Club, when stolidity begins to crack, a point when some of the group realise their own social stigmas. A painful silence sounds in contemplation: if they passed each other in the corridor, wouldn’t the athletic and popular Andy just blindly ignore the nerdish Brian? ‘The Choir’ brings different factions together in a phase of enlightenment. The most touching moments are wrapped in humour, subtlety, or human nature. There is no mistaking confidence for the brash, boisterous front. Love becomes a strength, celebrated in a context of singing. When choristers emerge several weeks into Gareth’s tenure, now less afraid to reveal their guarded secret pastimes, we realise just how inhibitive a school environment can be. The series finishes, delightfully, with their choral rendition of Pie Jesu. Music, with the right figurehead, can unlock this means of expression, or the fear to express, which is otherwise bottled up with nowhere to go. Deborah Ross’ Independent review says it all: ‘it has to be as profoundly a moving piece of television as has ever been made’.

With this emotional backdrop, I ventured in April to a rare UK performance by the ‘finished article’, and one of my favourite artists, boys choir Libera. Under the direction of the excellent Robert Prizeman, Libera have amassed a huge following in Japan and America, and can even be heard on soundtracks, including Hannibal and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet. As much as I often enjoy a certain exclusivity about the artists I follow, I cannot help but be a little surprised when a dazzling musical act, who recently sang at the US musical awards ceremony in front of George Bush, Robert de Niro, Diana Ross, and others, and also for the Pope at the Yankee Stadium, cannot fill a modestly sized London venue. It seems that Britain is just not interested in contemporary music which approaches the word ‘classical’. Yet, alongside a stunning rendition of Bach’s ‘Air’, their latest album includes arrangements of Enya’s ‘Orinoco Flow’ and Brian Wilson’s ‘Love and Mercy’. Composer and director Robert Prizeman has a stunning project in place. Even the album titles, from Luminosa, to Free, to New Dawn, encapsulate this very sense of liberty found through music.

In the context of thoughts listed here, watching Libera perform was illuminating even beyond the magic of their voices. A bunch of ordinary boys from south London are singing in Latin, with complex harmonies, and choreographic arrangements. It is incredible that boys as young as nine can take this on board and revel in their achievements. Even the witty presentations between songs were remarkable. This group of boys, who must miss a great deal of mainstream schooling, are confident, articulate, clearly very intelligent, and above all, happy in a group and within themselves. One suspects, and hopes, that all of the boys involved will go on to achieve great things. After the performance, my partner and I were interviewed for a documentary. Perhaps it was because we were clearly the younger end of the audience. Outside the concert hall, I am sure that is not the case. I have loved this group for six years; I would have done so as a young teenager, but equally, I would have been reluctant to admit it. The problem does not stop there though: who, even as a twenty-something-year-old, is prepared to enter or initiate a conversation about music and talk about their love of a boys’ choir?

There are ideas and frustrations well beyond this article, but the message is clear: there needs to be the opportunity to instil the confidence, and the freedom, to love the arts as we may. If not, there may be a part of our confidence that never develops as it might, or even a dialogue between the soul and body, wondering when freedom will be found.

With thanks to Andrew H, James Aukett, David Forester, Simon Clark, and Dr. Martin Leer.