Wednesday, April 16, 2003

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IN MUSIC

Music critic Norman Lebrecht writes:

It has become, for example, impermissible to allude to the music that the cellist Yo Yo Ma recorded with a bunch of country friends as "hillbilly". When I did so at an ancient Pennsylvanian college where George Washington reputedly slept, I was instantly attacked by a liberal-arts professor for employing "defunct" and "pejorative" terminology.

Just so, I replied. The term "hillbilly" was case-specific, describing a localised genre of white country music, and I intended it pejoratively to criticise the classical soloist for slumming it with hootenanny musicians. "That's elitist", snapped the professor, reaching for the ugliest put-down in the PC lexicon.

Precisely, I said. I was seeking to differentiate between high and low music in order to define the terms on which they could usefully correspond. "You have no right to do that", was the common-room consensus, "it's discriminatory." In that case, I shrugged, what earthly point is there in attempting to describe or criticise art in any terms except nice and not-nice?


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