The art of protest

While in the Guardian author Charles Cumming makes an important point about China's Turkic-Muslim minority - The British media's obsession with Buddhist Tibet says a great deal about western attitudes to Xinjiang and to its predominantly Turkic-Muslim population. It may be that people remain ignorant of Xinjiang because it has no Dalai Lama, no Richard Gere, to bring its cause to the world's attention. If it did, then we would know more about the barbaric treatment meted out to Uighurs on a day-to-day basis.

So paranoid is the Chinese government about the threat of a separatist movement in Xinjiang that it will incarcerate innocent civilians on the flimsiest pretexts. Uighurs have been jailed for reading newspapers sympathetic to the cause of independence. Others have been detained merely for listening to Radio Free Asia, an English-language station funded by the US Congress. Even to discuss separatism in public is to risk a lengthy jail sentence, with no prospect of habeas corpus, effective legal representation or a fair trial. About 100 Uighurs were arrested in Khotan recently after several hundred demonstrated in the marketplace of the town, which lies on the Silk Road.

And what happens to these innocent Uighur men and women once they land up in one of Xinjiang's notorious "black prisons"? Amnesty International has reported numerous incidents of torture, from cigarette burns on the skin to submersion in water or raw sewage. Prisoners have had toenails extracted by pliers, been attacked by dogs and burned with electric batons, even cattle prods.


Listen to samples of the music of the Turkic-Muslim people, not of China but of Azerbaijan here, and more art of protest here.
Image credit Free Tibet Campaign. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

No such thing as a free lunch

Music has been chasing money ever since Bach bundled together six concertos in the hope of earning a few lunches from Christian Ludwig, the Margrave of Brandenburg. In the twenty-first century, as the credit crunch bites and funding dries up in Western countries, hardly a day passes without a story about yet more lavish arts patronage in the Eastern 'sunrise' economies.

Today Abu Dhabi gets the red-carpet treatment in the Guardian. Out in the United Arab Emirates the arts are getting everything money can buy, and more. The Louvre is signed up with a new building by Pritzker-winning architect Jean Nouvel and there is a must-have Guggenheim Museum by the must-have Frank Gehry, and crowning it all a 6,300 seater Performing Arts Centre seen above by British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid who won the Pritzker prize in 2004.

Justin Timberlake and Elton John have already done their thing in the new Abu Dhabi Arts Centre, and classical music is represented by a lavish festival organised by IMG Artists, themselves no strangers to chasing money. Sarah Chang, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and the London Philharmonic are just some of the artists who will be enjoying what looks like the ultimate free musical lunch.

Or is it? Despite power-luncher Steven Spielberg's recent epiphany the Guardian's Stuart Jeffries decides to neatly side-step the question of who pays. Which, I am sure, is totally unconnected with the fact that Abu Dhabi's PR people seem to be lunching the newspapers rather well right now. Musicians need to earn a living, music needs audiences and journalists need stories. But just to help explain who pays for this particular meal here are extracts from the Human Rights Watch web site for the United Arab Emirates, of which Abu Dhabi is the capital:

'The country does not hold elections for any public office, and political participation is limited to the ruling family in each emirate. The government has not signed most international human rights and labor rights treaties. Migrant workers, comprising nearly 90 percent of the workforce in the private sector, are particularly vulnerable to serious human rights violations. A major obstacle to monitoring and reporting human rights violations in the UAE is the lack of independent non-governmental organizations. The government actively discourages formation of such organizations.

Nearly 80 percent of the UAE’s population are foreigners, and foreigners account for 90 percent of the workforce in the private sector, including as domestic workers. The UAE’s extensive economic growth has attracted large sums in domestic and foreign investment, and a recent construction boom is one of the largest in the world.

There are persistent credible reports of abuses committed by employers, especially in small firms and against low-skilled workers. A main factor is the immigration sponsorship laws that grant employers extraordinary control over the affairs of migrant workers. Abuses committed against migrant workers include nonpayment of wages, extended working hours without overtime compensation, unsafe working environments resulting in death and injury, squalid living conditions in labor camps, and withholding of passports and travel documents by employers.

Women domestic workers are often confined to their places of work, and may be at particular risk of abuse including unpaid wages, long working hours, and physical or sexual abuse. According to the U.S. State Department, human trafficking to the UAE is an endemic problem.'

While elsewhere the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information reports on the UAE - 'Freedom of expression is missing despite a decision banning imprisonment for press crimes.'

Is there an acceptable middle way for the artist in a society where human rights are denied?
Header image credit Zaha Hadid. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Where is the Chinese Shostakovich?

BBC News reports today - A prominent activist who publicised human rights abuses across China has been convicted of subversion and jailed for three-and-a-half years. Hu Jia, 34, was convicted of "inciting subversion of state power and the socialist system", his lawyer said. He has long campaigned for the environment, religious freedom and for the rights of people with HIV and Aids.

In 1997 Adrian Abbotts wrote - Over thirty million people are estimated to have disappeared through China's gulags since 1949. Fox Butterfield's all too valid critique that when a dissident was sent to a prison camp in the Soviet Union it was headline news, but when it happened in China no-one cared came instantly to mind. The former Soviet Union was for years subjected by the West to the propganda attacks of the Cold War while China, though worse in many ways than the USSR, remained a curiosity shop on the edge of the universe.

It is changing a little now, but names such as Wei Jingsheng amd Phuntsok Nyidron (A Tibetan nun serving nine years for demonstrating, whose sentence was increased by a further eight years in 1994 for singing a song of independence while in jail - she is on the right in the photo below) do not yet trip so easily from the tongue as Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn, and China remains a blind spot in the eyes of the West, visible only when it comes to trade.

Chinese troops can kill hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators in Lhasa or the centre of their own capital, live on television with running commentary, yet 'favoured nation' trading status is not withdrawn by the United States, and British towns twin happily with Chinese cities in a way that would have been unthinkable with the Soviet Union or South Africa a decade earlier. This is all apart from the evidence linking Western companies with the export of precision-made torture instruments to China, none of which have been prosecuted.

It is curious to think that the adults involved in such decisions, presidents and prime ministers included, who are themselves instrumental in perpetuating the worst excesses of totalitarianism this planet has yet produced, would be horrified should their child return from school having been told that the Holocaust was a good thing.


Will we find the Chinese Shostakovich here?
Second quotation from Naked Spirits, A Journey into Occupied Tibet by Adrian Abbotts; out of print, but well worth searching out. Photo credits: Hu Jia European Parliament, Phuntsok Nyidron with fellow dissident Ngawang Sangdrol from Tibet Chine Actualité. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The expression of a moral imperative

There are times when an artist must put their art aside in order to do something positive in life, something modest that may not earn them a place in history, but which is the expression of a moral imperative or simply a love for people - Václav Havel

More new music from Iceland here.
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Songs of freedom

Alex Ross turns to the Venezuela problem, and quotes Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer: "Art within the constraints of a system is political action in favor of that system, regardless of content." I can only agree and re-run this post:


The role of the artist in a society where human rights are denied is a recurring theme On An Overgrown Path. As I write Maria Farandouri sings To Yelasto Pedi from Mikis Theodorakis’ sound track for the 1969 film Z (poster above). This legendary film was a barely fictionalised account of the assassination in 1963 of the Greek socialist politician Gregoris Lambrakis MP, and the film and its soundtrack, became an international symbol of opposition to the Greek military junta. This dictatorship savagely suppressed human rights until its overthrow in 1974, and brought tanks onto the streets of Athens, as is shown below.


The junta was established in April 1967 when right wing army colonels led by George Papadopoulos seized power under the pretence of preventing a communist takeover. The dictatorship received the initial support of King Constantine II, although the King went into exile in December 1967 following the failure of a counter-coup. The King had failed to win support from the US who regarded the military junta as an ally against the nearby Eastern European Soviet bloc. With the Colonels firmly in power human rights were denied, political parties were outlawed, and opponents imprisoned, with Amnesty International estimating that more than 2000 prisoners were tortured. Symbols of western youth culture were banned including rock music, long-hair and atheism.

Mikis Theodorakis was no stranger to opposition and the political left. He had worked in the resistance against the occupying Italian and German forces in World War 2, and was exiled in the subsequent Greek Civil War. After these conflicts he studied music at the Athens Conservatoire, and in Paris with Olivier Messiaen. Following the military junta in 1967 Theodorakis (below) went underground, and his music was banned by military decree. He was imprisoned for five months until an international pressure group including Dmitri Shostakovich, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Miller, and Harry Belafonte achieved his release, and he went into exile in April 1970. Theodorakis continued his opposition in exile through concerts and by enlisting the support of international leaders, and his sound-track for Z became a rallying call for opponents of the military regime. The film, which was directed by Constantin Costa-Gravas, was hugely important in drawing attention to the junta’s denial of human rights, and I remember it as one of the cult films of my post-university years.

Following the suppression by tanks of a student uprising at Athens Polytechnic in November 1973 (seen in the photo above) popular opposition to the junta gathered momentum. Papadopoulos was overthrown by General Dimitrios Ioannides, who then unsuccessfully attempted to depose the President of Cyprus. This debacle triggered the collapse of the Greek military junta, and democracy was restored with elections in November 1974.

Greece lies on the edge of the Middle Eastern political fault line, and the cataclysmic upheavals in the region since 1974 mean that the dark days of the Colonel’s rule are now largely forgotten. The CBS LP of Theodorakis’ music played by John Williams and sung by Maria Farandouri, and including the Theme from Z, was part of the soundtrack of my life in the 1970s. Seven of the songs are settings of Greek translations of poems by Federico Garcia Lorca, while the Theme from Z sets words from the verse-drama 'The Hostage' by the Irish writer Brendan Behan. Maria Farandouri left Greece in 1967 when the junta banned Theodorakis' music, and she sung in more than 300 protest concerts around the world.

The recording was made by legendary CBS staff producer Paul Myers, and my vinyl copy still sounds quite wonderful today. But by the time the LP catalogues were being transferred to CD in the late 1980s communism was collapsing and the Greek junta was ancient history, so Songs of Freedom didn’t make it onto CD in the major territories. But Theodorakis remains a folk hero in Greece. He was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2000, and opposed NATO’s involvement in Kosovo and the invasion of Iraq, and has been very critical of George W. Bush. More controversially he was also been critical of Israeli Government policies under Ariel Sharon, and this led to accusations of anti-Semitism.

Mikis Theodorakis’ continuing high profile in Greece thankfully means that Songs of Freedom remains in the Sony catalogue in that country, albeit sadly without the original beautiful sleeve art which is reproduced above. But in a chilling timewarp the original English sleeve notes are retained for the CD version, so they read as though the Colonels are still in power! It is available online from the splendid Studio52 in Thessalonika; my copy arrived speedily and cost €12.50 plus shipping.

Songs of Freedom is a classic of the gramophone. It contains very moving performances by two very fine musicians. But more importantly, it is living proof that creative artists have an important role to play when human rights are denied.

Now read about Mikis Theodorakis' Requiem.
Image credits; That wonderful poster for Z from Filmpostersdownunder.com, tank on Athens street from Wikipedia. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Alan Hovhaness - Mysterious Mountain

Robert Fisk writes in today's Independent ~ "There is nothing so infinitely sad - so pitiful and yet so courageous - as a people who yearn to return to a land for ever denied them; the Poles to Brest Litovsk, the Germans to Silesia, the Palestinians to that part of Palestine that is now Israel. When a people claim to have settled again in their ancestral lands - the Israelis, for example, at the cost of "cleansing" 750,000 Arabs who had perfectly legitimate rights to their homes - the world becomes misty eyed. But could any nation be more miserably bereft than one which sees, each day, the towering symbol of its own land in the hands of another?

Mount Ararat (photo above) will never return to Armenia - not to the rump state which the Soviets created in 1920 after the Turkish genocide of one and a half million Armenians - and its presence to the west of the capital, Yerevan, is a desperate, awful, permanent reminder of wrongs unrighted, of atrocities unacknowledged, of dreams never to be fulfilled. I watched it all last week, cloud-shuffled in the morning, blue-hazed through the afternoon, ominous, oppressive, inspiring, magnificent, ludicrous in a way - for the freedom which it encourages can never be used to snatch it back from the Turks - capable of inspiring the loftiest verse and the most execrable commercialism."

Alan Hovhaness was born in Boston in 1911. His Armenian father came from Adana, which is now in Turkey, and his mother was of Scottish descent. Hovhaness trained at first in the New England Conservatory, and was organist at St. James Armenian Church in Watertown, Massahusetts, (see photo below), where he was influenced by the music of the composer/priest Komitas Vartabed. Listen to MP3 samples of Vartabed's music sung by the Yerevan Chamber Choir here.

In 1942 Hovhaness won a scholarship to study at Tanglewood with Bohuslav Martinu. But Hovhaness did not fit into the Tanglewood clique dominated by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein. The official Hovhaness web site says that his compositions were ridiculed by the Tanglewood set, and that Bernstein called it "ghetto music." After leaving Tanglewood Hovhaness developed his unique composing style, and continued to be influenced by Armenian, as well as Indian music. After rejection by the Tanglewood group of composers his champions included fellow mavericks John Cage and Lou Harrison.

Hovhaness wrote 67 numbered symphonies, the second of which was composed in 1955 and titled "Mysterious Mountain." Those who believe that youth is a time of life should note that Hovhaness wrote his first symphony aged 25, his second aged 40, and his last aged 81. It would make the perfect overgrown path if the title "Mysterious Mountain" referred specifically to Mount Ararat, but sadly this is not the case. The title refers to mountains in general rather than one specific peak, and the apocryphal story is that the title came about because Leopold Stokowski asked the composer to give the symphony a name.

Whatever the derivation of the title Hovhaness' Second Symphony, like all of the composer's music, should be heard more often. I will be playing the symphony in my Overgrown Path programme on Future Radio tomorrow (Sunday August 5). This is a test webcast, and will be broadcast between 5.00pm and 6.00pm British Summer Time, and is available on web radio. Convert on-air times to your local time zone using this link. Click here for the audio stream. Windows Media Player doesn't like the stream very much and takes ages to buffer, WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. If you happen to be in the Norwich, UK area tune to 96.9FM.

On Sunday week (August 12) I will be playing William Alwyn's Fifth Symphony which featured in Brain music. Lou Harrison championed Alan Hovhaness. I will be webcasting an all Lou Harrison programme on September 23, and you can read an interview with him in Going Buddhist with Lou Harrison.


Listen via internet radio to Armenian Radio here. Photo credits. Mount Ararat from Wikipedia. St James Armenian Church, Watertown, Mass from church web site. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The political dimension of the artist

'So it is a question of with whom you want to communicate. It must be a free person for an artist can only communicate with free people. Yet in order to be free that person must have solved certain problems. He must have a job, he must be educated and in good health, he must have certain rights and dignity. I, as an artist, would like to have an interchange with such a person. You can't create art with slaves, no matter whether they were forced into slavery or made to adopt a slavish attitude. At this point the political dimension of the artist comes into force. He must contribute to the rescue of mankind out of pure self-interest.'

Mikis Theodorakis was born on July 29th 1925 on the Greek island of Chios, and his words above are from the sleeve notes for his own recording of his Requiem. The concept of 'free people' resonates strongly for Theodorakis. He had fought in the resistance against the occupying Fascists in World War 2, and was exiled in the subsequent Greek Civil War. He then studied music at the Athens Conservatoire, and in Paris with Olivier Messiaen.

Following the Greek military junta in 1967 Theodorakis went underground, and his music was banned by military decree. He was imprisoned for five months until an international pressure group including Dmitri Shostakovich, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Miller, and Harry Belafonte achieved his release, and he went into exile in April 1970. Theodorakis continued his opposition in exile through concerts and by enlisting the support of international leaders.

After the fall of the Colonels, Theodorakis returned to Greece, and took an active part in politics on a left wing ticket. He was elected to the Greek Parliament twice, and became a minister in the government in the early 1990s. He was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2000, and opposed both NATO’s involvement in Kosovo and the invasion of Iraq, and has been publicly critical of the policies of George W. Bush.

Mikis Theodorakis is best known for his music for the cinema, notably for his sound-track for Constantin Costa-Gravas' film Z which became a rallying call for opponents of the military regime, and for the film of Nikos Kazantzakis' novel Zorba the Greek which became a sound-track for tourism in Greece. But there is a lot more to Theodorakis' music, including five published symphonies, a string quartet, a Requiem, and five operas.

His 1984 Requiem sets the words of the 6th century Syrian monk John of Damascus. The structure of the work follows the Orthodox Mass for the Dead, and is quite distictinct from the more common Roman Catholic and Protestant requiems. Theodorakis is best known for his music for the theatre, and his Requiem is theatrical as well as sacred music.

Although rooted in the Orthodox rite it uses elements which are not permitted in the Orthodox liturgy - children's and women's voices and a full symphony orchestra, and builds Western polyphony and harmony on a Byzantine foundation. But this is most definitely spiritual music. Although sacred music started moving from the church to the concert hall in Haydn's time, Theodorakis' Requiem, thankfully, does not move as far into the concert hall as Leonard Bernstein's Mass - A Theatre Piece for Singers.

An excellent recording of Mikis Theodorakis' Requiem is available, with the composer conducting (photo below) the St. Petersburg Academic Capella Children's Choir, Choir and Symphony Orchestra. The recording was made in 1997 in the Capella Concert Hall, St. Petersburg, and is on the German Intuition Classics label, as are many other CDs of Theodorakis' music. You can read about Mikis Theodorakis' songs of freedom on this path.


Predictably BBC Radio 3 is not marking Mikis Theodorakis' birthday today, instead they are presenting that rarest of twentieth century music, a Shostakovich symphony. So I will make some small amends on my Overgrown Path programme on Future Radio this afternoon by playing the concluding six movements of Theodorakis' Requiem, plus the Greek Dances of Nikos Skalkottas, who studied with Schoenberg.

The programme is broadcast between 5.00pm and 6.00pm British Summer Time on Sunday July 29 (and following Sundays) and is available on web radio. Convert on-air times to your local time zone using this link. Click here for the audio stream. Windows Media Player doesn't like the stream very much and takes ages to buffer, WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. If you happen to be in the Norwich, UK area tune to 96.9FM

Today's broadcast and the following week (Aug 5) are test transmissions, and will be identified as such. The station launches on August 6, and here is the provisional forward schedule for Overgrown Path radio with links to the blog articles they are based on. Unless indicated all works will be played complete:

July 29 (test) - The political dimension of the artist: Nikos Skalkottas Seven Greek Dances, Mikis Theodorakis Requiem (excerpts).
Aug 5 (test) - The American Symphony: William Howard Schuman Symphony No.5 (Symphony for Strings), Aaron Copland Short Symphony, Alan Hovhaness Symphony No. 2 "Mysterious Mountain".
Aug 12 - Brain Music: Thea Musgrave Helios, Howard Skempton Lento, William Alwyn Symphony No. 5 "Hydriotaphia".
Aug 19 - Pierre Boulez - great bogeyman of 20th century music: Boulez Messagesquisse, Gyorgy Ligeti Violin Concerto, Boulez Rituel in Memoriam Bruno Maderna.
Aug 26 - Malcolm Arnold - Neglected 20th century master: English Dances, Set 1, Guitar Concerto, Four Scottish Dances, Symphony No. 5 (last movement).
Sept 2 - American minimalists: Terry Riley Cortejo Fúnebre en el Mont Diablo from Requiem for Adam, John Adams Shaker Loops, Terry Riley The Philosopher’s Hand, Terry Riley – In C (excerpt).
Sept 9 - The eternal feminine: Beata Moon Piano Sonata, Elizabeth Maconchy String Quartet No 5, Elisabeth Lutyens Wittgenstein Motet, Vanessa Lann – Dancing To An Orange Drummer.
Sept 16 - Contemporary sacred music: Judith Weir All The Ends of the Earth, Morten Lauridsen – Lux Aeterna, Salve Regina (Gregorian Chant), Bayan Northcott Salve Regina, Morten Lauridsen – O Magnum Mysterium.
Sept 23 - Music of Lou Harrison: Varied Trio, Piano Concerto, Kunsonoro kaj Gloro (excerpt from La Koro Sutro).
Sept 30 - Benjamin Britten - music does not exist in a vacuum: Concerto for Violin, The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.
Oct 7 - New music from the Baltic: Pehr Henrik Nordgren Equilibrium for 19 strings, Peteris Vasks Botschaft (Message), Per Nogard Constellations.

This is going to be real 'post-ratings radio 2.0. You can even see Pliable on the studio webcam, and send messages to the studio via the Future Radio website. To paraphrase Mikis Theodorakis this is my tiny contribution to "the rescue of mankind out of pure self-interest". Or as Libby Purves wrote - "ratings have to be watched, but calmly and with a sense of proportion. You have to believe that if even one person is swayed, or inspired, or changed, or comforted, by a programme, then that programme has been worthwhile". As ever comment, on both the schedule and transmissions if you can catch them, are welcome.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Is this composer the future of grand opera?

As a welcome antidote to English National Opera's ill-judged Kismet (I note that Peter Bazalgette, the big cheese from Big Brother is on the ENO board - which explains a lot) this email was very welcome ~ Hello, I just wanted to inform you that 'Edalat Square' won Houston's Opera Vista Competition over the weekend. It will be staged next year at their festival in June. An MTV affiliated network, LOGO, is considering filming the opera and airing it on TV. Here is a flattering review of the opera:

"The most adventurous of the lot — in both music and libretto — was R.Timothy Brady's poignant, highly poetic Edalat Square, a disquisition on the torture and hanging of two Iranian teenage boys for homosexuality. With keening strings and an overwhelming performance by Vanessa Beaumont as the wailing, distraught mother, Brady used almost calligraphic musical motifs to limn both the intolerance of Shari'a law and man's inherent divinity. Prodigiously talented young Brady is the composer to watch. He may prove to be grand opera's future."

The full article can be found here. Thank you again for your support of the opera.

Best regards, R. Timothy Brady

For the back story on Edalat Square follow this path.
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Orchestras and human rights

It is difficult to believe that we are in the 21st century after reading about the alleged anti-gay discrimination at the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (seen in photo above). A statement by dismissed Buffalo Philharmonic oboist J Bud Roach alleges both homophobic remarks by an orchestra principal, and a lack of remedial action by music director JoAnn Falletta whose credits include being inducted into the Western New York Women’s Hall of Fame, and receiving the Human Relations Award from the Buffalo/Niagra Chapter of the American Jewish Committee.

The Buffalo discrimation case will be high profile as it is being handled by The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), an organisation that has done remarkable work eliminating homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation by championing fair, accurate and inclusive media representation.

GLAAD's press release states: The Division of Human Rights on March 22, 2005 in J. Bud Roach v Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra Society, Inc. ruled that there was “probable cause to believe that the respondent [the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra] has engaged in or is in engaging in the unlawful discriminatory practice complained of. Pursuant to the Human Rights Law, this matter is recommended for public hearing.” On June 18, 2007, there will be a public hearing before the New York State Division of Human Rights in the case of J. Bud Roach v Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra Society, Inc.

Now read about an extraordinarily powerful statement of gay rights by a young American composer
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Berlin Philharmonic's first Black conductor

“At a concert this week in Berlin, Berlin's famed 65-year-old Philharmonic Orchestra was led by a U.S. war correspondent in battledress. Besides being a war correspondent, the guest conductor was a Negro, born in British Guiana. The 2,000 Berliners and the 500 Allied soldiers in the audience found it quite an experience. They applauded warmly when the conductor led the orchestra through Weber's familiar Oberon and Tchaikovsky's Pathétique. They broke into cheers, and called him back five times, when he gave them Berlin's first hearing of fellow-Negro William Grant Still's boisterous, bluesy Afro-American Symphony.

Slender, serious Rudolph Dunbar is no musical freshman. He studied at Manhattan's Julliard School, has several times conducted the London Philharmonic. He was in Berlin as correspondent for the Associated Negro Press of Chicago. Shortly before the Berlin Philharmonic's Conductor Leo Borchard was accidentally killed by U.S. sentries, he had invited Dunbar to guest-conduct. U.S. occupation authorities were all for it, though their interest was more in teaching the Germans a lesson in racial tolerance than in Dunbar's musicianship.”

The news story above was published in Time on September 10, 1945 when the career of Rudolph Dunbar was at its peak. Dunbar lived for another forty-three years, but what happened in those years to the first Black musician to conduct the Berlin and London Philharmonic Orchestras is a mystery. The story starts at the turn of the last century in British Guiana (now Guyana). The date of Dunbar’s birth is variously given as 1902 or 1907, and classical music was an unlikely career for a Black Guyanese boy at that time. But the young Dunbar’s interest was sparked by hearing transcriptions of Wagner and Elgar played in Georgetown by the British Guiana Militia Band. He joined the Militia Band as an apprentice clarinettist at the age of 14, and stayed with them for five years.


His talent was such that he left the band when he was 19 to study at the Institute of Musical Art (now the Juilliard) in New York, and lived in the city until he graduated in 1925. His subjects at the Juilliard were composition, clarinet and piano, but he was also active in the Harlem jazz scene, and was clarinet soloist on recordings by The Plantation Orchestra (photo above). While in New York he became a friend and champion of the African-American composer William Grant Still, and their correspondence is held today at the University of Arkansas.

In 1925 Dunbar moved to Paris as a post-graduate, studying conducting with Philippe Gaubert (below), and composition with Paul Vidal and clarinet with Louis Cahuzac. He also spent time with Felix Weingartner in Vienna. Dunbar’s reputation as a clarinettist grew, and reached the widow of Claude Debussy who invited him to give a private recital in her apartment in 1930 for members of the Paris Conservatoire.

Dunbar moved to London in 1931 to work as a music critic, and he also started the first ever clarinet school, which attracted students from around the world. His reputation was such that in 1939 he was commissioned to write a textbook on the clarinet, and his Treatise on the Clarinet (Boehm System) became the standard reference work for the instrument. It remained in print though ten editions, and today commands high prices as a collectors item.

Dunbar remained active as a jazz musician, and in the 1930s in Britain he led two jazz groups, the All British Coloured Band (also known as the Rumba Coloured Orchestra), and Rudolph Dunbar and his African Polyphony, and made pioneering recordings of West Indian music with both these groups. He also composed, and his 1938 ballet score Dance of the Twenty-First Century (described by Dunbar as ‘ultra modern’), which was written for the famous Cambridge University Footlights Club, was broadcast nationally by NBC with the composer conducting.

The outbreak of war in Europe opened up conducting opportunities for Dunbar, and in 1942 he led the London Philharmonic in the Royal Albert Hall in a concert that was described at the time as a fund-raiser for “Britain’s coloured allies”. He wrote for the Associated Negro Press of Chicago, and this gave him credentials as a war correspondent in Europe. He took part in the Normandy Landings with a Black regiment, and was the first foreigner to conduct a symphony orchestra in Paris after it was liberated, and then went on to conduct in Berlin.

In 1945 Dunbar presented a Festival of American Music in the Théatre des Champs Elysees, Paris with the Conservatoire Orchestra and pianist Jeanne-Marie Darré. The programme included the premiere of In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy by William Grant Still (right), as well as Still's Afro-American Symphony. The following year Dunbar made his US conducting debut with the Hollywood Bowl Symphony in a programme that again included Grant Still’s Afro-American Symphony. In other concerts he programmed the music of the Afro-British composer Samuel Coleridge Taylor (photo below).

Dunbar was a pioneering activist against racism. When asked at his US debut if he would settle in the country he replied: “I think I will make my home in Paris where, if you are good, they will applaud you whether you are pink, white or black, and if you are bad they will whistle at you.” But he was also supportive of the US, and objected to the British Government promoting his career for political ends, saying “It is not the British who have done it for me, it is the Americans.”

At the end of the war the promise was immense. Dunbar was established as a leading performer and authority on the clarinet, his conducting career was in the ascendant as concert life restarted, and he was seen as a role-model for West Indians. But the promise wasn’t fulfilled. Dunbar is documented as being the first black conductor of a symphony orchestra in Poland (1959), and Russia (1964), both concerts were in Soviet bloc countries at the peak of the Cold War. He promoted concerts for the Jamaican Hurricane Relief Fund in 1951, and toured British Guiana in the 1950s conducting the country’s Militia Band, Philharmonic Orchestra and a youth choir. Rudolph Dunbar died in London in June 1988.

Were Dunbar's conducting talents simply eclipsed by de-Nazified conductors returning to the podium after the war, or were there other reasons why the promise wasn't fulfilled? Exactly what happened remains a mystery, but there are some tantalising clues. Dunbar's brief obituary in the Musical Times says: 'He gradually withdrew from public life, and devoted himself to fighting racism and trying to increase black involvement in Western art music.

But there seems to be more to it than a gradual withdrawal from public life. It is known that Dunbar conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra. One of the leading authorities on music in Guyana is Dr Vibert C. Cambridge at Ohio University, and in an article for the Stabroek News in Guyana in August 2004 Dr Cambridge quotes from an interview Rudolph Dunbar gave six months before his death in 1988:

“Dunbar spoke about the particular vindictiveness of a producer/director of music at the BBC who derailed his musical career in Europe. Dunbar described that director of music as “despicable and vile” and the BBC “as stubborn as mules and ruthless as rattlesnakes”.

Today Rudolph Dunbar (left) is remembered as a one of a pioneering group of West Indians who fought racism in the UK. The musician who was the first Black conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, and who wrote a standard reference work on the clarinet, does not warrant a single mention in the current or earlier editions of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, or other major music reference books. Why remains a mystery.

Sources:
* Rudolph Dunbar by Dr Vibert C. Cambridge, Stabroek News August 22, 2004
* W. Rudolph Dunbar: Pioneering Orchestra Conductor, The Black Perspective in Music, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Autumn, 1981), pp. 193-225
* Rudolph Dunbar, The Musical Times, Vol. 129, No. 1749 (Nov., 1988), p. 619
* Debut in the Bowl, Time Sept 02 1946
* Rhythm in Berlin, Time Sept 10 1945
* The Pantheon of West Indian Heroes Framed, Black Britain, July 8 2006.
* Settling Scores: German Music, Denazification, and the Americans, 1945-1953, by David Monod, NewMusicBox Oct 24 2006.
* Listeners to the BBC Radio 4 programme on Rudolph Dunbar broadcast on August 7 2007 should read Echoes of Rudolph Dunbar on the BBC.
(c) Bob Shingleton 2007

Now read about Multicultural, multimedia, and banned.
I have contacted Dr Cambridge for more information on the later years of Rudolph Dunbar's career. Other information from readers is very welcome, updates will be published. With thanks to John McLaughlin Williams who read a draft of this article. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Just your typical rebellious teenager ...

I have written several articles recently praising contemporary Turkey. Today's Guardian reports on the flipside:

"Five Turkish punk rockers and their agent face up to 18 months in jail for insult after a bureaucrat took offence at their song criticising the country's unpopular university entrance exam. The head of Turkey's central examination board, OSYM, Unal Yarimagan reportedly smiled when he first saw a clip of OSYM, Kiss My Arse by Deli (mad), a group from the western city of Bursa. "I'm a tolerant person, but that didn't stop me doing my duty and checking it wasn't breaking any laws," he said. Last month, an Ankara prosecutor said it was, and a court case is due to begin on May 2.

"It's ridiculous," says the lead singer and lyricist, Cengiz Sari, 24. "I was 17 when I wrote that song. I was just your typical rebellious teenager." Sensitivity to criticism is a common trait of Turkey's great and good. Since March 2005, when the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, sued a cartoonist who portrayed him as a cat tangled in wool, he is believed to have earned at least £100,000 in damages. The cartoon is below.


Turkey's understanding of freedom of expression surfaced again last month when a judge ordered the website YouTube to be blocked. YouTube has a central role to play in Deli's story. Until last June, few had heard of the band. It was then that a fan uploaded a clip of himself lip-synching his way through OSYM. "Let me tell you something:/ screw your exam system," Hako mouthed over a sound track reminiscent of the Sex Pistols. Posted days before 1.5 million Turkish teenagers took the much-criticised university entrance exam, Hako was an overnight sensation."

For more on this story from Istanbul follow this link, and here is the video five young Turks may face jail sentences over:


Now, for a different view of Turkey take this overgrown path.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Opera is such a powerful way to say something

The Southern Voice reports: Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution Iran, an estimated 4,000 people have been executed for the crime of lavaat, or sex between two men. One particular execution captured the attention of R. Timothy Brady, a 21-year old music composition major at Emory University, while he was studying abroad in Italy during the summer of 2005. It was the case of Mahmoud Asgari, 17, and Ayaz Marhoni, 16, who were publicly hanged in Edalat Square on July 19, 2005, after they were accused of being lovers. “I’m gay — that could happen to me,” Brady says. “It doesn’t matter that they’re Iranian or they’re half way across the world, it still really hit home.”

A year later, when choosing a topic for his senior honors project, the boys’ story still haunted Brady, and became his inspiration for the project, “Edalat Square: Opera in One Act.” Brady, a Gwinnett County native, based his opera on Asgari and Marhoni’s executions, setting the story inside the head of Asgari’s brother, Hassan, who is “imprisoned in pain and memory.” The setting of the opera is abstract and barren, reflecting Hassan’s torment, Brady explains. The horrifying photo below shows the actual execution, and is from the Iranian Student News Agency via Wikipedia.


Rather than a traditional set for “Edalat Square,” Brady instead chose to project images of Persian artwork on stage. Brady juxtaposes post-revolution, modern Persian art with the inherent homoeroticism present in some classical Persian art. He explains that there is “this love for other men in their culture that is really denied today. Look,” he continues, “you have this in your culture, you should embrace it.”

Brady incorporates other non-traditional elements in his 40-minute opera, a form he chose for the piece because, he says, “Opera is such a powerful way to say something.” He utilizes a Persian classical vocalist and an R&B soul vocalist, as well as two more traditional opera vocalists. The ensemble also includes a traditional string quartet, conductor, an actor with a speaking role, and a tape controller, who incorporates noise elements into the performance.

To prepare for the composition of the opera, Brady immersed himself in Persian culture. He listened to Persian music, read Sufi poetry, and spoke to many local Iranians. However, Brady was cautious not to simply appropriate what he learned. “I didn’t want to take their music and put it in the opera and say, ‘Okay, this is mine,’” he explains. “What I wanted to do was incorporate their aesthetics.”

In January, Brady attended the Iranian Human Rights Symposium in Toronto, organized by IRQO, the Iranian Queer Organization, a grassroots effort to “defend the rights of Iranian LGBT people against social and civil injustice.” It was there that Brady made contacts that will help him further the reach of his opera. The University of Toronto will host a screening of “Edalat Square” in May, and the opera will air on Sirius Satellite’s OUTQ radio station as well as a local station in Vancouver.


While Brady has found some support in the Persian community, he has also received e-mails from some who feel the opera is anti-Islamic. He is quick to note that his work has no anti-Islamic sentiments, but is instead a political piece commenting more on the strict Iranian government who, according to Brady, has hijacked Islam. “We keep talking about, ‘Oh, the nuclear bomb!’” Brady states. “That’s not really the problem right now. The problem is human rights issues.”

Brady, who used to be more traditionally involved in GLBT activism, sees his opera as a form of activism. “In 2004, 2005, after the election, I became disenchanted ... I wanted to think of other avenues to express myself socio-politically,” he says. “I thought this would be a good way to continue my activism in an artistic manner. It’s a better way that I can express myself.”

As for what’s next for Brady, he plans to attend graduate school for composition, and to pursue a career as a composer and producer. For now, though, he wants people to be moved by “Edalat Square.” “I hope people will walk away being spiritually affected, not just emotionally, but I want something deeper,” he explains. Brady hopes that Asgari and Marhoni’s story will continue to live within the audience “long after the lights go down, long after the music is forgotten.”

* Visit Timothy's Myspace page here.

Now read about another topical contemporary opera that reached primetime TV.
Header photograph by Bo Shell and text reproduced with full acknowledgments from The Southern Voice, execution photo added from Wikipedia . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The view from Lubyanka Square, Moscow

‘Meanwhile, in the Lubyanka of Farringdon Road ….’ screams fellow blogger Jessica Duchen as she throws a tantrum about a Guardian article that questions the mono-culture of classical music. (For those of you over the water the editorial offices of the Guardian are in Farringdon Road, London).

Now, we all have our own views on the different media. For me the Independent, which Jessica contributes to, regularly appears ridiculous with sensational headlines about global warming juxtaposed with salivating reviews of gas-guzzling super-cars. While, over at the Guardian, the acres of public sector-speak are not always to my taste. And back with blogs I am sure On An Overgrown Path is not everyone’s cup of tea. Just as for me Jessica’s is one of several blogs currently in the ‘if I read another word about the new book or the cat I will scream’ category.

But, although I may have reservations about the views of the Independent, Guardian and Jessica, I will fight tooth and nail to allow them to express those views. I'm all in favour of colourful headlines, but let's understand what that Lubyanka simile actually means.

The Lubyanka is the popular name for the former headquarters of the KGB and the adjacent prison in Lubyanka Square, Moscow, seen in my header photo. The prison in the ground floor of the building is immortalised in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s study of the Soviet police state, The Gulag Archipelago. It was in this prison that Raoul Wallenberg, Father Walter Ciszek, and many others were interrogated and tortured as they were denied that fundamental human right - their freedom of expression.

Now read Shostakovich’s persecutor finally speaking out.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk