Tribalism is ruining classical music
The self-styled 'world's most-read cultural website' is Slipped Disc. This high-profile face of the classical music brand enjoys the full support of the classical music industry. Yet for years Slipped Disc has leveraged tribalism through its on-line lynch mobs - last week Arts Council England, this week Emma Stenning, and next week Klaus Mäkelä...... Only a few minutes perusing comments on the classical industry's voice piece of choice uncovers a transparent political and ideological agenda that at times descends into what can only be described as hatred. Any potential sponsor, arts funder or parent wanting a child to learn an instrument would surely run a mile from brand classical music if they landed on Slipped 'the naked maestro limerick competition' Disc.
Leaving aside its click bait addiction and underlying ideological agenda, the Slipped Disc website is shoddy. It has poor graphics, errors of fact, spelling mistakes and dodgy pop-ups - see example below. Just look at that screenshot. Is this really the best that the classical music brand can do? If this is the go-to news platform for the classical industry, is it really surprising that Arts Council England has lost its enthusiasm for funding classical music?
There are many other well-meaning but nevertheless damaging examples of tribalism in classical music. Some time back Proms audiences were cited as the best in the world. Today attending a BBC Prom is like attending a football match. The tribe of fans cheer on the home team - the performers - at every opportunity. It doesn't matter if the home team musicians are playing well, averagely, or just plain badly; the fans cheers them anyway, usually between movements. While over at BBC Radio 3 the once-respected network has committed harakiri in a futile battle for the Classic FM tribe.
These are just a few examples of tribalism based on the prevailing erroneous assumption by classical brand marketeers that their target audience is a homogeneous tribe of affluent young people who have the attention span of gnats and turn into pumpkins if they are parted from their mobile phone for more than two minutes. This is just nonsense: there is no single mass market tribe for classical music. The classical audience always has been and will always continue to be a granular group of individuals with differing but overlapping tastes.
Yes, I am quite prepared to accept that I am a grumpy old man whose views are not representative of the whole classical audience. This is quite true because, due to this granularity, my views and tastes and those of of any other audience member, young or old, female or male, affluent or not, are not representative. That is the beauty of classical music: it means different things to different people. One size fits all tribalism will never work. Which is why, despite many different 'initiatives' by misguided marketeers, classical music has recently struggled to retain its core audience, yet alone build a new one.
The classical industry's obsession with tribalism has allowed it to ignore the two crucial and related challenges that it faces today. The first is that irreversible demographic, cultural, and technological shits are reducing the demand for classical music. Following on from this is the challenge that the whole classical industry remains in denial of. Namely that there is a serious oversupply of classical music. Until these two challenges are faced up to, classical music will continue to believe that tribal rituals such as naked maestro limerick competitions, worshipping at the altar of social media, virtue signalling, and marketing stunts can save the classical brand.
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