Audiences want more than Jell-O music

A notably enterprising new release which stands out from the usual bland 'more of the same' fare is Jazz Raga from Cherry Red Records. This 3 CD set, which is sub-titled 'Spiritual explorations of the two greatest melodic creators on the planet' brings together classic John Coltrane and Ravi Shankar tracks. In  his biography of John Coltrane J.C. Thomas explains that: 

'John Coltrane was more mystic than musician. This is the only logical explanation for the effects his music had on many of his audience: in fact, many of them knew nothing whatsoever about any kind of music, including jazz, yet they were mesmerised, entranced. There had to be something else besides music there; in reality there was a force beyond music that was communicating with Trane's audience on quite a different, higher level of meaning.'

There is much here that the struggling classical community can learn. Coletrane's music is definitely not easy listening, and is way beyond established sonic and secular comfort zones. Yet, as J.C. Thomas points out, it attracted new audiences from outside the art music cohort. Similarly, Pierre Boulez's London Roundhouse and New York 'Rug Concerts' used new sounds to attract new listeners. But today classical audiences are no longer given permission to like unfamiliar music. Instead they are offered a network devoted to 'An uplifting selection of calming classical music to reenergise and rejuvenate' - aka Jell-O music. 

Ravi Shankar was a a mystic and musician, and a brilliant animateur who understood that audiences craved for more than Jell-O, and this understanding manifested itself in a huge Western new audience for Indian and World Music. He realised the truth in Peter Ouspensky's assertion that:

'.... the chief difficulty for most people was to realize they really heard new things - that is, things that they had never heard before. They kept translating what they heard into their habitual language. They had ceased to hope and believe that there might be anything new.'

There is absolutely no shortage of challenging music; John Coltrane and Ravi Shankar are just two examples. In those distant pre Jello-O days a 1970 late-night Prom featured the Soft Machine, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductors David Atherton, and Elgar Howarth. It was broadcast on BBC TV, opened with works by Terry Riley and Tim Souster, and then showcased three tracks from Soft Machine's Third album. Soft Machine was a progressive jazz-rock ensemble formed in 1966 and named after William Burrough's novel. All this and classical audiences did not boycott the Proms and the world did not fall off its axis. 

It just needs today's classical industry to abandon the easy option and stop giving audiences more of the same. If classical music wants to survive, yet alone grow in stature, it should heed this credo from the Sutra in Forty-Two Sections: 

'My doctrine is to think the thought that is unthinkable, to practice the deed that is non-doing, to speak the speech that is inexpressible, and to be trained in the discipline that is beyond discipline.'

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