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Richard Kurth’s Heritage Committee notes
By admin1 | June 7, 2008
To: The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage (CHPC)
From: Richard Kurth, Professor and Director, UBC School of Music
Re: The CBC Radio Orchestra (CBCRO) and Radio 2 programming changes.
Date: May 29, 2008
Honourable Members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage,
Thank you for this opportunity to comment on the recent and unfortunate decision to disband the CBC Radio Orchestra.
I speak to you as a music educator, and specifically as Director of the School of Music at the University of British Columbia, which includes about 400 undergraduate and graduate students preparing for professional careers in the concert music tradition. Across Canada, about 4,000 students are enrolled in similar university programs.
These institutions are devoted to cultivating the boundless talents and energies of the next generation of musicians in the concert music tradition, and our enrollment numbers indicate that this tradition remains an urgent inspiration to young people today. We operate in an atmosphere of respect for the long musical traditions of many countries, languages, and cultures, knowing that they are the richest source of nourishment for the musical life of the present and the future. Collectively, our programs produce about 1,000 graduates each year, who are active across the country (and beyond) as professional soloists, orchestra members, and chamber musicians, and as teachers in universities and schools. We represent a broad cross-section of Canada’s always-evolving multi-cultural fabric, and in particular we represent young adults who want to invest their professional lives in music, more for artistic and cultural reasons, than for fame and fortune.
The Radio Orchestra represents the ideals to which our students aspire. It has been our nation’s most eloquent proponent of Canadian music and talent. It has launched the careers of our most illustrious soloists, conductors, and composers, and has presented them to the world.
Our students look to the CBC for artistic leadership, investment, and endorsement. But the CBC has eroded its investment in the efforts of dedicated young artists, cutting its vibrant Young Performers’ and Young Composers’ Competitions. This gives the younger listening public little chance to hear their amazing peers, and it amounts to a progressive silencing of a vital component of Canadian culture and heritage.
The music students in the nation are ample reason why our national broadcaster has a moral duty to reinstate the Radio Orchestra, as an engine of dynamic cultural vitality. There are thousands of students in university music programs, and hundreds of thousands in high school bands and orchestras, civic youth orchestras, or taking private lessons. For every garage band, you can find at least as many young players devoted to concert music. The CBC should be a beacon for these young people, and the Radio Orchestra is the most effective and inspiring way to embody and enact their aspirations.
The Radio Orchestra is the very heart of the radio music mandate of the CBC, and it should never be cut. In thousands of broadcasts, and through visits to Northern communities such as Iqaluit, it has played an instrumental role in creating and sustaining a living musical heritage that is distinctly Canadian but that also reflects the long and diverse historical traditions that meet in a unique way in our nation. The Radio Orchestra has proved its value and earned its right to continue making relevant, indispensable, and lasting contributions to Canadian culture and heritage!
I am not disputing the social and cultural relevance of popular music in its moment. I am also a consumer of popular music and popular culture, and also include it in my courses. I salute the innovative approach to Canadian indie pop on Radio 3, and the representation of mainstream popular music on Radio 1. What concerns me, however, is that programming on Radio 2 is drifting toward the demographic model used by commercial broadcasters.
Commercial radio pinpoints pieces of the demographic puzzle, using music genres as a marketing tool to attract specific groups, and pitch products to them. Over time, this approach has increasingly segregated musical genres and styles. The quality of the music may be very good (or it may not be), but what matters is the demographic angle, the endless permutations of market hype, and the wasteful dynamics of consumption and disposal. The marketing model of radio programming has created a false sense that demographic groups have one-dimensional music interests that don’t intersect.
CBC management seems to take an uncritical approach to the demographic orientation of commercial stations. Moreover, marketing considerations are irrelevant to the mandate of CBC radio. Radio 2 should not fall prey to simplistic ideas about who is listening, and what kind of music they want to hear. Radio 2 should not take a supermarket approach and try to appeal to a variety of demographic groups by slotting each one somewhere in the schedule. It needs to have a clear identity, so that listeners can rely on it, and respect it for its commitment. It should not try to appeal to everyone on a statistical but incoherent basis.
Radio 2 should focus its mission on cultivating national identity and culture in the historical and global context. Let Radio 2 be the voice of Canada’s longer musical heritage. That is a noble calling, and it will serve to educate and enrich the public, enhancing our nation and showcasing it for the world. The Radio Orchestra has a central role to play in this vision of Radio 2.
The flexible production structure of the Radio Orchestra makes it capable of providing fabulous and innovative programming at far lower cost than could any other production mechanism. The budget of the orchestra was already minimal, and there was essentially nothing to be gained financially by disbanding the orchestra. This shows that the decision was motivated either by ignorance or downright ill will. Recently, the CBC has also progressively marginalized the impact of the Radio Orchestra, by not featuring it in a predictable broadcast schedule. The public has been given few opportunities to witness and celebrate the orchestra. It is not too cynical to wonder if this was part of a phase-out plan.
The CBC should reinstate the Radio Orchestra, and program its new work and archived recordings more prominently and regularly, at least one hour per week. The public is proud of our national artistic resources when they know where to find them.
In summary, the decision to cancel the Radio Orchestra is wrong. It destroys a vital and important component of Canadian heritage. It impedes worthwhile educational goals, reduces opportunities for emerging talent, and sends a discouraging and disrespectful signal. It reduces the ability of the CBC to fulfill its mandate to express Canadian identities, and to facilitate democratic expression and debate unhampered by commercial enterprise.
I urge the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to ensure that our cultural past can connect with our future. Please give the CBC Board and management clear directives to reinstate the Radio Orchestra. It is a precious and living instrument of Canadian heritage, ready and eager to serve the public good by creating and sustaining a living legacy of Canadian music and culture.
Respectfully submitted,
Richard Kurth, Ph.D.
Professor and Director,
UBC School of Music
Topics: CHPC Briefs, Public Speeches |
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