Dossier

Classical

Bach counterattacks! Classical music organises resistance in the face of the crisis

by Frédéric Cardin

Quebec’s classical music community is responding with strength and determination to the crisis in the performing arts: Québec Baroque, a new online concert distribution platform is born!

PAN M 360 discussed the matter with Paolo Corciulo, Associate Executive Director of Festival Bach Montréal, initiator of the project.

PAN M 360: What is Québec Baroque?

Paolo Corciulo: Québec Baroque is an online concert distribution platform for classical music (not just baroque). It’s an idea that had been in our heads for some time, and when the pandemic arrived, we concluded that it was time to make it happen.

PAN M 360: When you say “we”, who are you talking about?

PC: It’s the team from Festival Bach Montréal and Bach-Académie. We’re one big family!

PAN M 360: What’s the aim of this new platform – to introduce artists from here to the world or to introduce baroque, and classical music in general, to people here?

PC: The main objective is to offer local artists additional opportunities to showcase their talent. Of course, and at the same time, making music – whether baroque, classical, or romantic – better known to the public is a goal we want to achieve with the same passion!

PAN M 360: Setting up this type of infrastructure must not be easy, what’s the advantage of doing it?

PC: First of all, in these times of pandemic and restrictions on cultural outings, this platform gives us the opportunity to showcase the Bach Festival concerts that, in any case, should have been digitally recorded. If we’re going to do it, let’s do it in a way that sets us apart! There is also another advantage for the artists: with the concerts we’ll be putting online, they’ll have a very nice business card to submit when the time comes to be hired to give concerts elsewhere in the world. We have a list of decision-makers in the United States and Europe to whom we send access to our recordings. Considering the exceptional quality of our recordings, both visually and audibly (that’s the priority!), this will only serve our musicians well in the future.

PAN M 360: The pandemic is forcing everyone to adjust and online concerts have become a necessity, but this situation will not last forever. What relevance will this platform have in the post-COVID era? Won’t you risk hindering the return of the audience to the venues?

PC: That’s a question we’ve obviously asked ourselves. The conclusion is that it will not harm things, on the contrary. First of all, people will need to return to the halls and experience the concert experience for real, this sharing of an intimate moment between hundreds of people. Online broadcasting has not and will not replace the live concert, it’s a new option. What’s more, studies show that online offerings do not harm concert organizations and that they even give them more exposure. In short, we are confident.

Secondly, it is not yet clear how the return will take place, nor when exactly. Some seniors may be afraid to return to the concert hall, so they will be able to use the platform. 

Third, Québec Baroque will give us the opportunity to broaden our audience. Right now, people are listening to us from elsewhere in Quebec or Canada (other than Montreal, I mean). Previously, most of them would not have come to the big city to listen to a concert downtown! That’s an interesting evolution in our audience development opportunities. And for Montrealers, geolocation remains an option if we feel that the platform is keeping them a little too much at home insteads of at concert halls.

Finally, Québec Baroque offers us new sponsorship opportunities. Some sponsors are not interested in supporting an event that will only bring together a maximum of 300 or 400 people. But on the web, there really isn’t a maximum. It opens doors that we didn’t know about before.

PAN M 360: Financially, what objectives do you have?

PC: We would like to break even, perhaps make some profit within a year. But we are well aware that this kind of product in classical music is not intended to raise money! Our real goals, as I said earlier, are elsewhere. It’s a bit like opening a new shop in town. We already have the flagship shop downtown. A branch in another neighbourhood probably won’t generate huge profits, but it will still give us more visibility, while at best realizing some financial benefits or, if not, a balanced budget. That’s what we’re considering.

PAN M 360: In terms of the business model, how do you operate? Who hires the technicians, rents the audio-visual equipment, etc.?

PC: There are different possibilities: the participating organizations can do it or we can do it. For example, the Clavecin en concert on the platform was offered to us on a turnkey basis. They hired the technicians, managed all the logistics, even provided us with the broadcast link. We take care of providing visibility. In other cases, we’ll organize all or part of it with the help of a recording company we do business with.

PAN M 360: Are you optimistic about the year 2021 and the next edition of the Bach festival?

PC: Yes, but realistically. For us, the 2021 edition is already planned in virtual mode. Because when exactly will this situation be resolved? It’s difficult to say. We usually announce our programme in April. But will it be available to everyone by then? What will be the restrictions in the interim period, and how long will they last? We can’t wait until the last minute to decide! Musicians must be booked in advance. So there you go, we don’t take any chances.

And then there’s something more worrying: the real crisis in cultural subsidies is coming, in 2021, and perhaps even later. Tourisme Québec and Montréal, which contribute to our financing, operate essentially with tourist taxes, paid by tourists. In 2020, we were able to count on those in 2019, which were excellent, but in 2021, it will be 2020 that will serve as a guide, and it’ll be zero! The governments are helping us at the moment and we have to thank them. But once the vaccine is offered, they’ll say, “Well, that’s it, that’s it”, while the repercussions of the crisis will only continue to hit us. And then, what will happen when the time comes to reduce the astronomical deficits and increased debt burdens of our countries? We must be ready and arm ourselves with courage and ingenuity for a long time to come, even if we must remain optimistic. People will want beauty, we will have to organize ourselves to offer it to them!

PAN M 360: Mr. Corciulo, it was a pleasure. We wish you the best of success with Québec Baroque, and also with the Montreal Bach Festival, which currently runs until December 6!

PC: Thank you!

Classical / Contemporary

OM Composition Competition: Four aces (Pt. 4)

by Frédéric Cardin

The Orchestre métropolitain’s first composition competition is devoted to four creators, yours to discover at PAN M 360. Today, we talk to Nicholas Ryan.

The Orchestre Métropolitain has chosen four laureates for its first Composition Competition, inspired by Beethoven’s work: Marie-Pierre Brasset, Cristina García Islas, Francis Battah, and Nicholas Ryan. Launched last March, the competition aims to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the famous German composer. Next year, the works of the winners will be premiered by the Orchestre Métropolitain under the direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin. This dossier series aims to introduce you to these composers and their works.

Make way for Nicholas Ryan, a young Montreal-born composer barely 30 years old. Before becoming a composer, Nicholas was a performer on the electric guitar, for which he had already written several chamber pieces. It’s therefore not surprising that he studied with Tim Brady, one of the best contemporary performers and composers for this instrument. He was also trained by Sandeep Bhagwati and Georges Dimitrov at Concordia University, two great advocates of interdisciplinarity and the opening up of contemporary music to non-classical traditions such as electro, noise, underground rock, punk, post-punk, and so on. It is an artistic vision that Nicholas fully shares.

PAN M 360: Where did you grow up, and what led you to become a musician?

NICHOLAS RYAN: I grew up in Montreal. It’s hard to say what brought me to music. I guess good friends and good teachers. That and the discovery of Xenakis!

PAN M 360: Do you identify with a compositional tradition?

NR: No, not really. But if the interdisciplinary artist Ragnar Kjartansson opens a school of new music, I will be his first student.

PAN M 360: What aesthetic are you involved in?

NR: A good part of what I do as a composer consists of trying to translate ideas from the visual arts or literature into sound. At the same time, most of what I do as a visual artist consists in trying to translate ideas from composition into images or installations.

PAN M 360: What are the main features of your work? 

NR: Sound. Silence. Something…

PAN M 360: In your opinion, is there a difference between today’s academically trained composers and those of the past?

NR: It’s hard to say, because I don’t think my university training in composition was very conventional.

PAN M 360: What are your musical tastes as a music lover?

NR: I came to music through the electric guitar, which for me is an eclectic instrument. So, yes, I listen to everything, even if it may sound cliché.

PAN M 360: What are your main works, the ones you are most proud of?

NR: Something for James Tenney’s Spectral Canon for Conlon Nancarrow:

Symphonic Poem 2.0 (BETA):

Quintet (For 5 Electric Guitars and Audience):

They are all available on my new N.M. Ryan YouTube page. I also publish micro-pieces on my Instagram account (@n_m_ryan).

PAN M 360: Is there a long-term global project that drives you as a composer, a legacy you would like to leave?

NR: It’s said that the musicians of the Titanic continued to play while the ship was sinking. If I could find a way to recreate that scene, but in a plane falling out of the sky instead of a sinking ship, without the artists and the audience getting hurt, then I could probably retire from the arts the next morning.

PAN M 360: Describe the piece that will be performed by the Metropolitan Orchestra?

NR: It’s a sort of marriage between Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question and Steve Reich’s Four Organs. It wasn’t even intended, but it just came out like that! For the moment, the title is Eroisca, but that could change.

The structure was inspired by the text Easter Pome by bpNichol, a Canadian multidisciplinary artist born in 1944 and died in 1988, but also, obviously, by my reflections on Beethoven’s relevance to the 21st century. 

Before concluding, I would like to say how honoured I am by the opportunity offered to me by the Orchestre Métropolitain and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. I can’t wait to see (and hear) the result!

Classical

OM Composition Competition: Four aces (Pt. 3)

by Frédéric Cardin

The Orchestre Métropolitain’s first composition competition is devoted to four creators, yours to discover at PAN M 360. Today, we talk to Francis Battah.

 Crédit photo : Denis Cloutier

The Orchestre Métropolitain has chosen four laureates for its first Composition Competition, inspired by Beethoven’s work: Marie-Pierre Brasset, Cristina García Islas, Francis Battah, and Nicholas Ryan. Launched last March, the competition aims to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the famous German composer. Next year, the works of the winners will be premiered by the Orchestre Métropolitain under the direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin. This dossier series aims to introduce you to these composers and their works.

Today, we’re talking to Francis Battah, a young Montreal composer born in 1995. It was his piece entitled Prélude aux paysages urbains that allowed him to be chosen among the winners of the composition competition.

Battah studied with Alan Belkin, Ana Sokolovic and Denis Gougeon, and is currently pursuing his master’s degree at McGill with Denys Bouliane. He’s already won several prestigious honours, including the Antonin Dvorak Composition Competition in Prague, at la Société de concerts de Montréal, compositions performed by Serhiy Salov, Nicolas Ellis and l’Orchestre de l’Agora, a collaboration with actress Monique Miller, and several composition residencies (including one with l’Orchestre de la Francophonie canadienne).

PAN M 360: How did you react when you received the news of your nomination?

Francis Battah: Let’s just say it was quite exciting because it was Yannick Nézet-Séguin who called to tell me. It couldn’t have been announced in a better way!

PAN M 360: How do you see this challenge in the coming months, until May or June 2021?

FB: To be honest, the piece is already fully written! It’ll be less stressful than a commission where you start from scratch. Let’s just say that the bulk of the work is behind me.

PAN M 360: Are there still details to be worked out?

FB: Certainly, but quite minor. These are details that will be discussed directly with Yannick when he has the complete score. They mainly concern questions of tempo, correction of errors, etc. But when the orchestra has the music, we’ll only have one 40-minute rehearsal to set everything up. That’s it! We won’t have time to change things that are too precise, like rhythms or notes. And technical errors, or typographical errors, let’s say, are absolutely to be avoided. If a musician raises his hand because he stumbles on something imprecise, precious minutes are lost, and in this case, they’re at a premium!

PAN M 360: Let’s go back to the very beginning, if you like. How did you become a composer?

FB: When I received an electronic keyboard at the age of about six, the first thing I did with it was a little composition! Then I took piano lessons, but I eventually realized that I had a better chance of standing out as a composer than as a pianist.

PAN M 360: Has your career always been classical?

FB: No, I did quite a bit of jazz too. It’s music that certainly colours my musical language.

PAN M 360: Do you identify with a musical tradition? 

FB: I identify myself as independent. Of course, if you want to do the genealogy of the fundamental sources that I’m drawn from, you have to talk about the “traditional” classical tradition (laughs) – that’s a redundancy, oh well – like Mozart, Beethoven and the usual suite. But there’s also jazz and a bit of prog rock, with contemporary music to fill in the rest.

PAN M 360: Speaking of contemporary music, is there a specific aesthetic to which you are more inclined to relate?

FB: Ligeti’s is very much alive in me. I recognise myself in his interest in rhythm, in his search for unusual sounds, and also in his independence. He didn’t belong to any particular “school”. For me, he’s a model.

PAN M 360: Three terms that describe the music you like to write?

FB: One, concern for harmony, whether consonant or dissonant. Two, use of forms that allow the listener to understand my message. I do not seek complexity at all costs. Rather, I try to communicate ideas that can be very complex and refined as directly and simply as possible. Three, diversity. I like to touch on all sorts of things, to express characters that are very different from one another depending on the work. 

PAN M 360: For you, what is more important: sound or harmony?

FB: I think of the notes and their harmonic organisation before the raw sound. That’s my starting point. That said, afterwards I always work on the sound finality of the work. And here I come back to Ligeti: he had the ability to navigate between the two, between harmony and the raw, virgin sound. I like this type of in-between, this search for links between two opposing premises.

PAN M 360: What do you prefer, music that expresses musical ideas or music that expresses emotions?

FB: I tend towards emotions, but there’s a need for nuance. I don’t try to bring them to the forefront. Once the inevitably abstract process of musical composition is completed, I think one must feel something, despite the complexity of the construction.

PAN M 360: In your opinion, is there a difference between today’s academically trained composers and those of the past?

FB: Yes, previous composers did not have such broad and easy access to everything that was being done around them. Today, we’re awash in countless influences, coming from all over the world, and almost in real time. It is sometimes even difficult to channel all the ambient noise. For some, the solution is to make a cocoon that only includes the traditional lineage, from classical music (Renaissance, Baroque, etc.) to pure contemporary music.

PAN M 360: How do you position yourself in the face of this?

FB: I didn’t grow up with classical music. I love it, but I can’t deny that I learned to love and appreciate something else as well. I have friends who do jazz, electro, pop, it inspires me indirectly.

PAN M 360: How do you see the movement of “accessible” contemporary music, so-called neo-classical, such as that of Ludovico Einaudi, to name a very obvious one?

FB: I don’t feel at war with it. On the contrary. We have to ask ourselves, wwhat makes this music sound contemporary? Because despite its very simple and consonant harmonies, it couldn’t have been written like that 100 years ago. There is clearly a way that’s contemporary, the construction of the chords, their relationship to rhythm, the arpeggios, etc., and the way it is written. In one piece, I wanted to take these ultra-simple, almost primitive ideas and develop them further. So I was inspired by them.

PAN M 360: Which work have you been most proud of?

FB: A series of six preludes, written with the pianist Philippe Prud’homme. I am very proud of that.

PAN M 360: Is there an overall, long-term project that drives you as a composer, a legacy you would like to leave?

FB: I’d like to found my own ensemble, bringing together musicians from various horizons such as improvisation, jazz, classical and invented instruments. I’d like to mix it all together, add synthesizers, electro, and try to make a 21st-century symphony. Because it’s not going to be possible to do it with the traditional symphony orchestra. You have to add a lot of instruments to represent today’s creativity. And it takes more than 40 minutes of rehearsal to be creative like that!

PAN M 360: Describe Prélude aux paysages urbains, the work that will be performed by the Orchestre Métropolitain.

FB: I was inspired by the 6th symphony, the Pastoral. My idea was to do the same thing but for an urban landscape. What character does the modern city represent? I use the main theme of the first movement, I hit it, I fragment it, I give it another rhythm, sometimes breathless. 

PAN M 360: I can’t wait to hear that in May or June 2021! Thank you for this beautiful meeting, and good luck!

FB: Thank you!

Classical / Contemporary

OM Composition Competition: Four aces (Pt. 2)

by Alain Brunet

The Orchestre métropolitain’s first composition competition is devoted to four creators, yours to discover at PAN M 360. Today, we talk to Cristina García Islas.

The Orchestre Métropolitain has chosen four laureates for its first Composition Competition, inspired by Beethoven’s work: Marie-Pierre Brasset, Cristina García Islas, Francis Battah, and Nicholas Ryan. Launched last March, the competition aims to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the famous German composer. Next year, the works of the winners will be premiered by the Orchestre Métropolitain under the direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin. This dossier series aims to introduce you to these composers and their works.

Our dossier continues with Cristina García Islas, reached in Mexico City.

The Mexican-Canadian composer, lecturer and teacher has participated in international festivals and symposia. She has been a guest professor at IRCAM (Paris), Laval University, and at the Consulate General of Mexico in Montreal (Canada). García Islas holds a doctorate in composition from the University of Montreal and bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Conservatoire de musique et d’art dramatique du Québec (Montreal). She’s hosted Contemporary Musique at CISM 89.3 FM in Montreal, and has participated in panels and juries around the world. García Islas currently teaches at UNAM University and Anáhuac México University.

PAN M 360: Where did you grow up, and what led you to music?

Cristina García Islas: I grew up in Mexico City. As everyone knows, it’s one of the largest cities in the world, with a cosmopolitan atmosphere, known for its cultural exchanges. So I started playing the piano at the age of five. When I was three, I took a stick (pencil, etc.) and played conducting an orchestra in front of my pets in the living room. As far as I can remember, I always loved Beethoven and Mendelssohn. Thanks to the interest of my doctor parents, I started my musical journey. They wanted me to develop a strong sensitivity towards art. My first musical studies began at the Yamaha Academy, at a time when the Japanese travelled to Mexico City to stay for a few months and give us important exams. I spent my entire childhood studying in this context.

PAN M 360: What’s your academic background?

CGI: I went to primary school in Mexico City, while my secondary education was divided between Ottawa and Mexico City. My parents wanted me to learn English first and so I went there several times, and one day I stayed in Canada. I studied music at the Escuela Superior de Música (México) before moving to Montreal, where I did my degrees at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal. After a few years, I did my doctorate at the Université de Montréal, on an inter-university exchange with the Schulich School of Music at McGill University. In 2015, I went to Tel Aviv to work for ten days with musicians from the Meitar Ensemble and the Ensemble Intercontemporain at the Israel Music Conservatory. This exchange was not only academic, which is why I consider it a very important moment in my musical career.

PAN M 360: Do you identify with a compositional tradition? 

CGI: I’m not very sure that I belong to a tradition. My music has always been very melodic, I look for expressiveness before experimentation. Classical music touches me a lot, and romantic music even more, but singing – which goes beyond tonality and textures – is very important to me. So I wonder if noise and textures belong to the tradition in this century. If so, I’m totally traditional and if not, I’m probably a kind of musical hybrid.

PAN M 360: What aesthetic do you subscribe to? 

CGI: I don’t consider myself as belonging to a single aesthetic. However, French spectral music, the music of the Italian Fausto Romitelli, the Mexican Silvestre Revueltas, and the Dane Per Nørgård are important pillars in my creation.

PAN M 360: What are the main features of your work, in instrumental music and opera?

CGI: My music expresses this need for me to seek a balance between expression linked to singing (and the search for a melody) and textural exploration, which do not precisely have to do with the traditional classical heritage. I am motivated by sound exploration that goes beyond harmony and gradual, vertical musical discourse, linked to a relationship of harmonic tension and relaxation. I am looking for a more horizontal treatment, guided by sound echoes contained in chromatic melodies that sometimes result from free movement, inspired by colourist, imitative, or purely resonant explorations that seek to impose themselves in long and full sonorities. All kinds of emotions are reflected in the world of creators and this includes self-acceptance. I have integrated the fusion of different cultures throughout my development as a composer and human being, which in my case lies between Canadian and Mexican influences. I also like to seek a union between being and nature. 

PAN M 360: What do you see as the difference between a composer educated in higher education in 2020, compared to composers from previous generations?

CGI: I find that the education of previous generations has benefited from a great deal of research and development in musical acoustics. Composers were closer to scores on paper and handwriting was much more present than it is today. On the other hand, I find that the development of auditory training, the theoretical and practical skills required in composition were very different. Today, many composers focus on learning how to mix and process sound. Progress has been made in the study of the amplitude of artificial sound spectra and not only acoustic spectra. It is more necessary to amalgamate technology with acoustics and to generate mainly electro-acoustic or mixed mixtures. The creation of new generations is mainly reflected in the computer and in the exploration of new forms of expression, mixing the machine and the performer. Furthermore, it seems to me that the use of technology has opened up a wide range of possibilities for sheet-music publishers in this century.

PAN M 360: What are your musical tastes as a fan?

CGI: I love the orchestral music of Northern Europe (especially Jean Sibelius and Per Nørgård), also the music of Kurt Weill, and I have developed a particular taste for Italian electronic swing. When I’m very tired, I like to listen to Bach rather than Handel. I like medieval music to meditate and cleanse my thoughts, especially the music of the composer Hildegard von Bingen. But when I feel stressed or depressed, I prefer to listen to pop music from the ’80s. I also like French songs with accordion. 

PAN M 360: Do you believe you have a global composition project that sets you apart from your contemporaries as a composer?

CGI: I hope so! (laughs). I believe that the audience will be the most relevant to answer the question, and will be able to see that one day. At the moment, I’m thinking of creation as the integration of the great cycles, a bit like Stockhausen did with his operas. Recently, I’ve been working on a project that will take me three years, because it’s exactly a cycle for orchestral, vocal, and chamber music with a single subject. I want all the pieces that result from this cycle to be connected by a very similar sound, a similar character, and to feed off each other, regardless of the endowment.

PAN M 360: What’s the project for the Orchestre Métropolitain?

CGI: The writing of an orchestral piece inspired by Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony. This work made me think of the title Re-silience, considering the English word “silience”, which refers to the type of excellence or talent that has gone unnoticed and is almost unquestionably unknown. On the other hand, adding the prefix “re-” invites us to think that we are once again exposed to the passage of the unnoticed, unknown, or little understood. Also the word “resilience” refers to the ability to overcome critical moments and adapt after experiencing an unusual or unexpected situation. Personally, I think the Eighth Symphony is perhaps a kind of beautiful ghost that honourably takes up its sweet melodies from the back of the room. Finally, the main message, or objective, I would like to reflect in my work is to integrate more traditional and more textural elements, in the search for a language inspired by the expressive force of the great genius of Ludwig van Beethoven. 

Classical / Contemporary

OM Composition Competition: Four aces

by Alain Brunet

The Orchestre métropolitain’s first composition competition spotlights four creators – here’s your chance to discover them, at PAN M 360.

The Orchestre Métropolitain has chosen four laureates for its first Composition Competition, inspired by Beethoven’s work: Marie-Pierre Brasset, Cristina Garcias Islas, Francis Battah, and Nicholas Ryan. Launched last March, this competition aims to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the famous German composer. Next year, the works of the winners will be premiered by the Orchestre Métropolitain under the direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin. This dossier series aims to introduce you to these composers and their works.

We begin with Marie-Pierre Brasset, a regular contributor to PAN M 360.

Our team is very proud to make her better known to you. Born in Quebec in 1981, she’s been working in the field of contemporary classical music for about 15 years. Her works have been performed by groups such as the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (NEM), the Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal (ECM+), the Trio Fibonacci, and the Quatuor Bozzini. As her biographical profile indicates, “her music is characterized by a melodic and motivational abundance that develops in ample and organic forms.” Moreover, “the contemplative listening to nature has a profound effect on her creative work.” Marie-Pierre Brasset holds a doctorate in creative research related to contemporary opera, and also lectures at the Université de Montréal. She created the radio program Pulsar, devoted to creative music, which is still broadcast today on CISM in Montreal. She regularly writes articles on music for Circuit magazine, the website cettevilleetrange.org, and for PAN M 360.

PAN M 360: What’s your academic background?

Marie-Pierre Brasset: A long journey. Bachelor’s degree in musical composition at Université Laval, Master’s degree at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, doctorate at Université de Montréal, research internship in Paris 8. Before that, I had done a bachelor’s degree at UQAM in History, Culture and Society. Let’s just say that I did my time in school!

PAN M 360: How did you become a musician?

MPB: It’s hard to say… I’ve been making music for as long as I can remember.

PAN M 360: In which composition tradition do you belong?

MPB: I would say contemporary classical music. 

PAN M 360: Do you have an overall creative development project that defines you and sets you apart from your contemporaries?

MPB: These days, I’m passionate about theatrical and vocal music. The projects I work on shape my creative development, in a way. I can also say that my music is, most of the time, strictly acoustic. I don’t use new technologies, I don’t make mixed, electro, or acousmatic music, although I admire and love these practices. My path has led me to work with live and unplugged musicians!

PAN M 360: What do you see as the difference between an educated composer with a higher education degree in 2020, and composers from previous generations?

MPB: There is much greater openness to difference, to new perspectives on the practice of the profession, to inclusion. This comes from a great questioning of the dogmas of classical music established by white Western men over the last 400 years or so. There has been a lot of progress in this direction over the last ten years or so, and it is a blessing for the young composers of the new generation.

PAN M 360: What are your musical tastes as a music lover?

MPB: I’m open to everything. Really – thank you, PAN M 360, for all these discoveries!  On the other hand, I have a great need for silence, or rather to take a break from music, because that occupies 99 percent of my activities. I very often listen to music and ask myself too many questions, and it becomes an exhausting mental exercise rather than a nourishing aesthetic experience.

PAN M 360: What are your main works?

MPB: La Piñata, a chamber opera that was due to premiere in Quebec City last September, and was postponed until next year. It’s a big work lasting an hour and twenty minutes, with five singers and ten musicians. A beautiful project, carried by Erreur de type 27 and Ensemble Lunatik. I’m looking forward to the birth of this opera! Currently, I’m working on another major play, a 50-minute monodrama for baritone, wind quintet, and shadow theatre, with baritone Vincent Ranallo, the Choros Ensemble, and the Ombres folles theatre company. The premiere is scheduled for January 2022.

PAN M 360: What’s the project for the Orchestre Métropolitain?

MPB: A piece for orchestra! No kidding, the theme of this composition competition is Beethoven’s music. For me, amor fati, that great “yes” to life, is the most important legacy of this composer. There is no self-pity, no renunciation in this music: Beethoven stands upright and follows his impulses to their conclusion. This gives a formal discourse that leads to an impressive degree of perfection. There are no blurs, everything is cut with a knife, everything is placed in the right spot and seems to arrive at the right time. That, let’s say, is what will inspire me for this musical project. But I can’t say more than that. A piece being composed is so difficult to describe…

ADISQ Gala 2020: The Winners

by Rédaction PAN M 360

The 42nd edition of the ADISQ Gala took place this past Sunday evening (November 1) before a small audience composed mainly of the nominated artists.

The event, hosted by Louis-José Houde, provided an opportunity to look at the year’s highlights and artists in the music industry, despite the current context. Les Cowboys Fringants took home five trophies, and Louis-Jean Cormier left with two Félix awards. Les Cowboys Fringants also performed, and the night saw Quebec talent at work, with Flore Laurentienne, Marie-Pierre Arthur, Matt Holubowski, Anachnid, a duo composed of Eli Rose and Marc Dupré, as well as a medley performed by Naya Ali, Evelyne Brochu, KNLO, Bleu Jeans Bleu and 2Frères.

Click on the image to listen to the gala on ICI Radio-Canada’s website.

The complete list of winners:

FIRST GALA (Wednesday)

ALBUM OF THE YEAR – BEST SELLER
Les Antipodes, Les Cowboys Fringants 

ALBUM OF THE YEAR – ROCK
Les Antipodes, Les Cowboys Fringants  

ARTIST OF THE YEAR WITH THE MOST EXPOSURE OUTSIDE QUEBEC
Alexandra Stréliski 

ALBUM OF THE YEAR – ANGLOPHONE
Wave, Patrick Watson 

ALBUM OF THE YEAR – ALTERNATIVE
Des feux pour voir, Marie-Pierre Arthur 

VIDEO OF THE YEAR
“L’Amérique pIeure”, Les Cowboys Fringants

ADISQ GALA

ALBUM OF THE YEAR – ADULT CONTEMPORARY
Quand Ia nuit tombe, Louis-Jean Cormier

ALBUM OF THE YEAR – FOLK
L’étrange pays, Jean Leloup

ALBUM OF THE YEAR – POP
Rien ne se perd, Marc Dupré

ALBUM OF THE YEAR – RAP
Sainte-Foy, KNLO

INDIGENOUS ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Elisapie

REVELATION OF THE YEAR
Eli Rose

SHOW OF THE YEAR (WRITER – COMPOSER – PERFORMER)
Robert en CharIeboisScope, Robert Charlebois

SONGWRITER OR COMPOSER OF THE YEAR
Louis-Jean Cormier, Daniel Beaumont, Alan Côté, David Goudreault/Louis-Jean Cormier pour Quand Ia nuit tombe, Louis-Jean Cormier

GROUP OR DUO OF THE YEAR
Les Cowboys Fringants 

FEMALE PERFORMER OF THE YEAR
Alexandra Stréliski

MALE PERFORMER OF THE YEAR
Émile Bilodeau

SONG OF THE YEAR
“L’Amérique pIeure”, Les Cowboys Fringants (Jean-François Pauzé)

Smartsplit at the service of music – intelligent contracts ahead!

by Alain Brunet

Quebec company Smartsplit is working on “intelligent contracts”, the computerized sharing of revenues generated by musical works. Welcome to the blockchain universe!

Advances on the Internet are revolutionizing the sharing of rights for music creators and performers. Irreproachable and impartial in their application, i.e. perfectly in line with the provisions of the agreements concluded between the parties, these intelligent contracts are now possible in a digital environment. The advent of the web-based blockchain now makes it easier to distribute them in a complex manner.

Cue the advent of Smartsplit, a new service that a company founded by Guillaume Déziel developed. Thanks to this new service, creators and performers of intellectual works could significantly improve the efficiency of sharing the profits generated by their work.

The idea of the intelligent contract has its roots in an original agreement that was struck by the group Misteur Valaire, with whom Déziel had business ties, and the Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal. In 2014, 59 musicians of the Orchestre Métropolitain under the direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, flanked by 200 young choristers from the École Joseph-François-Perrault, treated an audience to symphonic adaptations of 20 songs by Misteur Valaire, with the band’s participation and arrangements by Olivier Hébert. Presented at l’Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste, the concert was recorded by a team from Radio-Canada. Recently released, an album is now available.

At the end of the 2014 performance, the recording of the concert was sold to the Orchestre Métropolitain, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and Misteur Valaire, who chose to split the rights and revenues. Why such an arrangement, this time economic? Since the Valaire gang could not afford to pay recording fees and resale rights to the 66 musicians involved, it was proposed that the income from the co-production be shared collectively. With the endorsement of the Quebec Musicians Guild, the intelligent contract was born. 

More specifically, arranger and composer Olivier Hébert was entitled to a share of the copyright of his symphonic version of the work. The associated rights of the performers of the work during the sound recording were divided equally among all on stage. These same performers were designated co-producers of the sound recording, in equal shares. Finally, the choir of 200 young people accepted a symbolic percentage of the profits, this time for the Joseph-François-Perrault School Foundation. One can’t be sure whether all these fine people filled their piggy banks with the revenues from this recording, but the nature of the agreement heralded a small revolution in the distribution of rights.  

“The great particularity of Smartsplit,” explains Déziel, “lies in its user experience (UX). It’s not designed by and for rights administrators, but for artists. Right from the start, they have to ask themselves, who created what on a musical piece? Who played what on the sound recording? Who owns the sound recording, that is, who paid for it to happen? Once the creators, writers, composers, performers, and co-producers have agreed on the sharing of rights, two things are done: first, a beautiful PDF agreement is made available to them, ready to sign; second, the agreement is published on a blockchain to freeze it in time, so that the trace is indelible.”

Um… could we get a better picture of the mechanics of an intelligent contract?

“We use common centralised technologies, as any good web platform can do,” Déziel continues. “However, as soon as there is an agreement between the rights holders, we use decentralized technologies to make the automated application of the intelligent contract possible, i.e. to crystallize the agreement and proceed with the sharing of rights. We then use ERC-998-type tokens to write the agreement (in Solidity code) on Ethereum’s blockchain.”

Tokens? Blockchain? Ethereum? What does it eat in winter? 

Ethereum is a decentralised exchange protocol allowing the creation of intelligent contracts by its users. These contracts are based on a computer protocol allowing to verify or implement a mutual contract. They are deployed in a blockchain which allows their consultation. A blockchain, in fact, is a technology for the storage and transmission of information without a control body. The information provided by users and internal links are checked and grouped at regular time intervals into blocks, thus forming a chain. The Ethereum exchange protocol uses a unit of account, the purpose of which is to apply the provisions of the intelligent contract and to pay the entitled parties.

Guillaume Déziel

A player in the Quebec music industry, Guillaume Déziel saw in the advent of the blockchain a solid development model for the evolution of intellectual property in a digital environment. Needless to say, intellectual property has been in bad shape over the past 20 years or so; the overwhelming domination of the web giants has considerably weakened content creators, and alternatives are slow to emerge by which artists, who are overwhelmingly living with precarity in the digital era, can find their way back to prosperity.

“Only an open blockchain,” says Déziel, “can allow several players, regardless of their nature, political allegiance or commercial interests, to interact. We’ve seen enough turf wars in the music industry that we thought we’d go there to play above the fray.”

In this way, Smartsplit promotes the sharing of rights. The services offered by the company consist in making the agreements concluded between the right holders of works concrete: drafting, links with collective rights management societies, publication on legal deposit, publication of metadata on works (credits, etc.) to maximise their discoverability, protect the works, provide all the necessary information to right holders on the provisions of their agreements and the application of their intelligent contracts. The list goes on…

“One of our great strengths,” says Smartsplit’s spokesperson, “is to offer a user experience that respects the learning curve of artists and craftspeople. You don’t come into the world knowing what a distribution key or a public performance is. So we strive to use terms that are understandable to everyone, far beyond accountants, lawyers, and publishers.”

And who are Smartsplit’s customers?

“Before launching GarageBand,” recalls Déziel, “Steve Jobs was inspired by a market study revealing that half of households had at least one musician. Our clientele is there. According to data published by the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN), 6572 new members were welcomed in 2016 by the rights collective, with annual growth of 6.1%. Also in 2016, 124,472 new works were reported to SOCAN in Canada alone. These works are in addition to a worldwide catalogue of 27 million available compositions. In another type of market, CD Baby distributes more than 9 million tracks in digital format; its Pro Publishing division administers more than one million works and acquires more than 25,000 new works per month. Finally, Bandcamp, a B2B online sales service, currently has 13.9 million tracks available for download, with average annual revenue growth of 174.94%. This growth in creation inevitably feeds the reflection on the sharing of their rights.”

What about competition from Smartsplit?

Guillaume Déziel points out that, “in the field of intelligent contracts in music, there are currently only nice ideas with millions behind them – nothing has been launched yet. As such, we’re ahead of the game. According to Gartner, which publishes its annual Hype Cycle, the massive adoption of decentralized technologies such as blockchain is expected between 2022 and 2027. We will be there. We will be ready.”

Contemporary / Jazz Rock / Prog Rock

Markus Reuter: Prog-ilific!

by Réjean Beaucage

German’s Markus Reuter is an extremely prolific musician for whom quantity doesn’t preclude quality. Three albums at once? Calls for a dossier!

Photo: Kai R. Joachim

Here’s one who would find it hard to pretend he’s not a King Crimson fan. The German musician took Robert Fripp’s guitar-craft classes for several years, which led him to play the Chapman Stick (like bassist Tony Levin), then the Warr Guitar (like Trey Gunn), before designing his own model of “augmented” guitar, the Touch Guitar. He formed a duo with drummer Pat Mastelotto, which allowed him to join the STICK MEN (Mastelotto and Levin), then the double trio of the Crimson ProjeKct (the STICK MEN + the Adrian Belew Power Trio). Through all of this (and, to tell the truth, a whole bunch of other things), he also collaborated on the record This Fragile Moment, by singer Toyah Wilcox (wife of Robert Fripp).

Here’s a chance to take a serious look at his work, as he has just released three albums in one breath, on Moonjune Records: Reuter Motzer Grohowski’s Shapeshifters; Nothing Is Sacred by Markus Reuter Oculus; and under his own name, with Mannheimer Schlagwerk, Sun Trance.

Let us add to this preamble that on the first disc from his group Oculus is an appearance by violinist David Cross, who was with King Crimson in the glorious period of 1973-74. This record features a quartet recorded live in the studio: drummer Asaf Sirkis, bassist Fabio Trentini, Cross (also on keyboards), and Reuter. They were later joined by guitarist Mark Wingfield and Robert Rich’s soundscapes. In short, there’s substance here. The mastermind explains in the notes that he wanted to achieve something that could have been as radical as Bitches Brew at the time, and we’re certainly swimming in the murky waters of jazz-rock, but, for yours truly, it brought back memories of Brand X (the Phil Collins era), rather than the Miles Davis of 1970.

Shapeshifters is Reuter, sound texturist Tim Motzer (guitar), and drummer Kenny Grohowski. The trio also produces a variety of jazz-rock, but with a strong free-jazz vibe and a distinctly prog feel (there is a real reminiscence of the improvised flights of fancy of the quartet of David Cross, Bill Bruford, John Wetton, and Robert Fripp, and a piece like “Dark Sparks” recalls the joyous energy of “Fracture”). And of course, it’s normal if we still think of Brand X here, Grohowski having joined the English group since 2016. Very inspired improvisations, from a power trio who have some to spare.

Sun Trance is more akin to contemporary music. It was commissioned by Dennis Kuhn, the artistic director of the Mannheimer Schlagwerk, a percussion ensemble, as its name suggests. The work was premiered in concert on May 23, 2017, and it’s this recorded performance that is featured here. Eleven musicians surround the composer and guitarist: two vibraphones, two glockenspiels, two shakers, bass clarinet, synthesizer, drums, electric guitar, and bass. The 36-minute piece is a call to meditation that slowly develops into a crescendo that is nourished by a long guitar solo by Reuter (here, more than ever, in the shoes of Robert Fripp). Watch the performance here:

Note that the ensemble has commissioned a new work from Reuter to celebrate its 25th anniversary (in 2020… the premiere is postponed until May 2021). You can contribute financially to this adventure right here.

Basically, if I had to rate these three very different recordings, they would all come out with a good score. Composer and guitarist Markus Reuter produces a lot, but he doesn’t overdo it, and among the many musicians who have been influenced by Robert Fripp, he’s certainly one of those who deserve attention. These three albums were released in September on MoonJune Records, and you can see that more will follow soon.

To find out more about Reuter, visit his Bandcamp page. 

Rock

Eddie Van Halen (1955-2020): Teen genius, supervirtuosity, zero headaches

by Alain Brunet

The paradoxical legacy of the late Eddie Van Halen is both brilliant and superficial. Which to choose?

“I’ve already changed the way to play rock guitar, right? Well, I don’t see what else I could come up with? Of course, I can play as fast as I used to, there are new things that come up unconsciously here and there. As I play and play and play again, things happen. But when I’m asked if I’ve developed a new technique yet, I invariably answer in the negative.”

Taken from my interview with Eddie Van Halen, published in La Presse in 1995, this quote sums up the artist he was. His disconcerting skill enabled him to achieve extraordinary technical feats and innovations, but this self-taught player, not much inclined toward music theory, stuck for a lifetime to a post-pubescent vision of rock creation. This legendary life came to an end on October 6, 2020, 50 years and 18 days after the death of Jimi Hendrix, the ultimate guitar hero of the modern era. Cancer had already beset EVH previously, and it finally got the better of him. Rest in peace.

A gifted pianist when he was very young, Eddie Van Halen played mainly drums at the turn of adolescence, and his brother Alex, guitar. One day, they reversed roles, and the family band was deeply transformed. Alex became a great hard-rock drummer and… the third instrument Eddie chose would last his lifetime. 

It should be remembered that Van Halen perfected tapping, certainly his main contribution as an instrumentalist: this technique consists of amplifying the neck of the electric guitar to allow the left hand (for right-handed players), which performs the harmonic or melodic functions, to emit notes and chords by hammering or choking the frets of the neck while tapping the strings of the guitar with the right hand – or vice versa for left-handed guitarists. 

The technique comes from classical guitar; Van Halen isn’t the first to have popularised it on the electric guitar, but he is certainly the one who offered a virtuoso and simply spectacular blueprint for it. Tapping was then adopted by so many hard rock, metal, and jazz guitar champions, who took the matter further – one thinks first of Steve Vai, an associate of Frank Zappa before flying on his own – and put forward music that was both highly technical, and highly boring….

So EVH’s post-pubescent genius, his super-virtuosity and the technical revolutions in his playing made him the most outstanding rock guitarist since Jimi Hendrix. His famous solo on MJ’s “Beat It”, that absolute hit of the ’80s, confirmed his status as an absolute guitar hero. In addition, he developed a guitar model in his own image, the Frankenstrat, a composite instrument made up of different brands, including the mythical Stratocaster that Jimi loved to play – hence the evocation of Frankenstein, a fictional composite creature as we know it. 

At the end of the ’70s and beginning of the ’80s, Eddie Van Halen was without a doubt the dominant guitarist on the rock planet.  

Although … the artistic depth of this young Dutch immigrant transplanted to the Californian suburbs was not always equal to his extraordinary talents as an instrumentalist. He did more in spectacular entertainment than in research and refinement. The singers of his famous band, David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar, were hard-rock party entertainers, needless to say they sang banalities and celebrated the rock lifestyle in its most superficial form. Eddie’s anthems, “Jump” and its ilk, nevertheless conquered a large portion of his generation and more. American fighter pilots, for example, used VH hits to fuel their fighter jets while on mission during the Gulf War. Hmm…

A rock multi-millionaire, Eddie Van Halen preferred the life of the show to that of the concert, although he inevitably reserved for himself long parentheses of creative virtuosity. In front of arena audiences, the band’s superficial compositions allowed for inspired, very warm, very sensual playing, far beyond technical prowess. Eddie’s feel was at least as powerful as his giftedness.

When asked why he hadn’t collaborated with composers and virtuosos from more “serious” fields of music, he replied that no one had asked him. Too bad… but anything that looked like a headache was immediately rejected by EVH.

“For me,” he said in the same interview with La Presse, “music is a question of feeling. Fuck all the technique! And, as so many grunge bands reminded us at the beginning of this decade, let’s focus on creating good songs. Standards are higher than before, you say? I don’t think it’s that important. If music doesn’t come from the heart, it’s absolutely worthless. It doesn’t matter how you do it – if people like your art, you’ve achieved the main goal. When you’re able to reproduce the ideas you have in your head on your instrument, that’s what matters. You don’t have to be a great technician at all if you want to communicate strong feelings.”

Reggae

In memoriam: Bunny “Striker” Lee (1941-2020)

by Richard Lafrance

The legendary Jamaican producer Edward O’Sullivan Lee is no more.

The “Gorgon” died of kidney problems at the age of 79, on October 6. Born in 1941 in Kingston, he made his debut in the music industry in 1962, thanks to his brother-in-law, the singer Derrick Morgan, as a promotional agent for Duke Reid’s Treasure Isle label, then for Leslie Kong (Beverly’s). His first big hit, Roy Shirley’s “Musical Field” (1967), in the midst of the rocksteady explosion, led him to found his own label, Lee, with which he would become a major player in this golden age. Then, with the advent of the new early reggae sound, he put on the huge hits of Slim Smith (“Everybody Needs Love”), The Uniques (“My Conversation”), Max Romeo (“Wet Dream”), Delroy Wilson (“Better Must Come”), Eric Donaldson (“Cherry O Baby”), John Holt (“Stick By Me”), and many other titles by Stranger Cole, Derrick Morgan, Pat Kelly and others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIAQTD7U0DQ

At the dawn of the 1970s, he became one of the pioneers in the development of reggae in the U.K. by signing licences with the Palmer brothers (Pama) and Trojan Records. Between 1969 and 1977, he released over a thousand productions on his various labels –  Jackpot, Third World, Lee’s and Striker Lee! But it wasn’t until 1974 that Bunny Lee, with the help of Lee Perry, broke the monopoly held by Coxsone Dodd (Studio One) and Duke Reid (Treasure Isle) with productions such as “Rockers” by Johnny Clarke, Owen Grey and Cornell Campbell. That same year, at the suggestion of Bunny Lee, drummer Santa Davis developed the “flying cymbals” style, influenced by the drumming of the American band T.S.O.P., with the song “None Shall Escape the Judgment”, performed by Johnny Clarke. From the beginning of the ’70s, Lee experimented with dub with his friend King Tubby, a new style… born of a goof at the console. Moreover, in the studio, he keeps everything, even mistakes. In an interview, he explained that “every spoil a style, man!”, that the biggest hits, the new sounds, often come from technical mistakes. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjensgkVogw

On the other hand, since he never owned his own studio, with the advent of multitrack consoles, he quickly understood how to maximize his investments. In a day or two, he recorded a dozen rhythms with Sly & Robbie’s Aggrovators. On the third day, he brought in singers and DJs to record the vocals. On the fourth, he went on to mix, producing three albums – one of the singers’ versions, one of the DJs’ versions, and a dub version – all of which would be released the following Monday! After 1976, he turned to Tubby’s apprentices Prince Jammy and Phillip Smart to mix his albums. He then helped to put DJs on the charts with productions by U-Roy, I-Roy, U-Brown, Dennis Alcapone, Prince Jazzbo, Jah Stitch, Trinity, and Tappa Zukie, among others, for whom “Striker” had no qualms about picking up the classic rhythms of Studio One or Treasure Isle. Towards the end of the decade, his favourite artists would become Linval Thompson, Leroy Smart, and Barry Brown.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqXr-YmqJfw

In 2008, the Jamaican government awarded Lee the Order of Distinction in recognition of his immense contribution to the music industry. In 2013, a documentary, I Am the Gorgon – Bunny Striker Lee and The Roots of Reggae, directed by Diggory Kenrick, was released. It tells the story of his life through interviews with the artists he helped make popular, such as U-Roy, Alcapone and Lee Perry.

People were beginning to think he was immortal… A jovial man, a businessman above all, never lacking in superlatives about himself, but who was said to be very close to his artists, just like King Tubby, another legend who profited from the genius of the Striker. Lee is survived by a son, Errol, born in 1968, whom he had with the singer Marlene Webber.

Don’t miss our journalist Richard Lafrance’s Basses Fréquences special on Bunny Lee, Sunday, October 11th, from 4pm to 6pm on cism893.ca!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVWm6geSn0Y

Festivals, undeterred (Pt. 4 – Nuits d’Afrique)

by Alain Brunet

FME, MUTEK, Pop Montreal and now Nuits d’Afrique have moved forward with their respective programs despite the pandemic. PAN M 360 connected with them to explore the concerns, constraints, and many obstacles they have had to face.

Our ongoing dossier continues with the co-founder and general director of the Nuits d’Afrique festival, which has been presented in Montreal since the 1980s. Needless to say, Suzanne Rousseau was in shock over the Quebec government’s announcement on Monday of the suspension of live performances and concerts for a (minimum) 28-day period.

“It doesn’t seem very logical to me to have cancelled everything, but they’re the ones who know, right? I’m trying to be diplomatic, but… All this preparation, all the efforts made to hold safe public events in this context… I wonder to what extent government decision-makers are aware of this. We had already gone through this in March, everything came to an abrupt halt. Afterwards there was hope of reopening, and we couldn’t do so until mid-July.”

Last March, the programming of Nuits d’Afrique was just about complete, when…

“We hadn’t launched our advertising campaign – we had made all our agreements with the international artists, but we were careful not to announce anything. In April, we decided that we would present a different festival in the fall. We thought we were on the right track when we announced it in August, because the capacity had been increased to 250 spectators. 

“In addition, in August we presented Les Visages de Nuits d’Afrique, an interactive multimedia work projected on the facades of the Quartier des spectacles, featuring artists Djely Tapa, Mateo, Naxx Bitota and the Benkadi troupe. The multimedia concept was imagined by the artist Jérôme Delapierre. In addition, photos and digital projections from Les Visages de Nuits d’Afrique are still being presented in October at Complexe Desjardins.”

Suzanne Rousseau (Photo: Marie-Joëlle Corneau)

At the Nuits d’Afrique festival, they really wanted to present events in front of audiences, and deploy a digital strategy.

“We signed an agreement with Livetoune, a company that does quality recordings. We also invested in the club, Balattou, which is now transformed; we have a new lighting system, show curtains, new stage floor, the whole kit! This summer, we presented an acoustic cabaret, with two groups every night from Thursday to Sunday. Our audience followed the instructions very well, we were encouraged.” 

Thus, 25 concerts were programmed, including several webcasts. Obviously, this is no longer the case: only Wesli and Mateo’s performances have been held in front of an audience, those not scheduled for webcasting have all been cancelled, the others will take place as planned but without an audience.

“We were very proud to showcase the scene here, but we still chose local artists of international calibre. Many of them are already touring, and many others have the potential to do so. Our media partners were ready to get on board, our advertising campaign was off to a good start and it all stopped suddenly. It’s very hard to live through,” Rousseau laments.

Like so many organizations dedicated to the performing arts, Nuits d’Afrique are seeing several initiatives shot down in the red zone.

“We wanted to show that it was possible to present a festival to the public in complete safety. When scheduling our indoor concerts, we took great care to keep people at a distance and within the prescribed rules. It was really well organised, it’s a pity that this was not taken into consideration. I don’t have the time to analyze what’s going on… in fact, I don’t want to. I have to stop thinking about it… it’s too much emotion! Instead, I try to focus on our webcasts, making sure they are well edited and widely seen. So I’m saving my energy for those who can play and be seen, and to make sure it goes well. Afterwards, when it’s over, I’ll be able to analyze it, but for now…”

Fortunately, the management of Nuits d’Afrique had foreseen the financial viability of the event without an audience. “Our set-up involved a very low gauge on the ticketing side, so we did not expect significant autonomous revenue. This is why we are going to maintain all the performances in the theatres planned for audiovisual recordings.  We’re confident of achieving real success with the webcasts. What worries me is what comes next.”

NUITS D’AFRIQUE

Saving Music with Politics (Saving Politics with Music?)

by Ian F. Martin

A global perspective on music’s relevance as 2020 shakes up lives around the world

A British expat based in Tokyo, Ian Martin is the head of the indie record label Call and Response, a music columnist for The Japan Times, and author of the book Quit Your Band! Musical Notes from the Japanese Underground. This essay was originally written for and published by Japanese music magazine Ele-king, and appears here at PAN M 360 with their gracious permission.

“Music is just music. Leave politics out of it.”

If you’re reading a platform like PAN M 360, there’s a strong chance you already disagree with this statement. But as this disastrous year of 2020 continues shaking up lives around the world in ever more ways, it’s perhaps worth pushing this idea further and asking, “Is music even relevant if it’s not political?”

Firstly, we should think a little about what we mean by “political”. Politics is often understood as synonymous with “issues” and “activism’, words that suggest (often with negative connotations) some direct engagement with matters of government and society. And some music, whether Billy Bragg, Rage Against the Machine, or Run the Jewels, is certainly political in that sense. But music is also already political in the sense that it talks about human lives and experiences – relationships between people, their daily struggles, navigating work, friends, family: all these things are invisibly influenced by political decisions that affect working hours, gender roles, salaries. The fact of being mainstream or underground is political simply by virtue of occupying one place or another in relation to culture’s dominant aesthetics and values. When people say they don’t want something to be political, what they usually mean is simply that they don’t want to think about its political implications.

But many people do think about how politics touches their lives. They are enraged by the shameless lack of justice they see around them and the total lack of consequences for the powerful purveyors of those injustices. The flood of anger that erupted this spring at Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s attempts to stack the legal system with his allies was interesting, as was the speed at which the singer Kyary Pamyu Pamyu was pushed to erase her Twitter criticism of Abe over the issue. This was a specific issue with big political implications, attracting wide engagement across Japan, but the entertainment industry is institutionally incapable of reflecting those sorts of feelings.

The COVID-19 crisis has pushed politics right up to our front doors and pressed it against our faces. The act of walking to a convenience store, the assessments we make over fellow pedestrians’ mask usage, the negotiations we make over space as we pass on the sidewalk, the decision over whether to go out to a venue and support the music we love – that’s all politics intervening in our lives. The crisis has also accentuated inequalities and injustices around the world, with an important thread of the Black Lives Matter narrative coming from the pandemic’s disproportionate effect on racial minorities and the inequalities that push them into vulnerable service jobs.

Whether through the music itself or an artist’s public statements, engaging with those feelings is part of music’s role though. It is part of the landscape of how we think and feel as a society; it’s a mirror that lets us see not just ourselves individually but also collectively – it shows us that we aren’t alone. And when the mainstream is incapable, that role falls to the independent or alternative scenes (because if not, what are they even independent from, an alternative to?) The U.K. chart success of acts like Stormzy and the subversive rise of indie bands like Sleaford Mods shows the power music can carry when it connects to the politics of people’s daily lives.

Something like Black Lives Matter may seem like an American problem and not really a Japanese issue. This is debatable, but even if we take it as true, the issues it raises about society and how we include or exclude people based on their race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or social background exist here and deserve to be untangled. Whether in big issues or personal interactions, the social conventions we follow without thinking about are the ones most in need of exploration by the arts. It’s not just that music has a social responsibility to consider these matters: it’s that music, regardless of what it’s about on the surface, can be richer and less prone to cliché, when it doesn’t take “the way things are” for granted.

The relationship between the arts and politics is important in another way too. There are numerous institutional barriers that limit radical thought and alternative culture’s ability to communicate their creativity or visions for the future simply because media landscapes have grown up around the same interests that those independent voices seek to challenge. Their power instead lies in the ability to gather together and amplify their voice – whether in concerts, meetings, social events, or rallies – but COVID-19 disrupts that ability. China took advantage of the lockdown in Hong Kong to strike a savage blow against the protest movement there, while Donald Trump is openly using the postal service to restrict people’s ability to vote safely in the upcoming U.S. election.

While the stakes are lower and far less violent, alternative music culture too, in its own way, is affected by these forces. The pandemic has closed down people’s ability to gather, the word-of-mouth networks and physical meeting spots that keep the culture alive when it is already locked out of wider discourse by media ownership, talent-agency influence, Spotify algorithms. The matter of how to organize, disseminate information, and amplify voices under the restrictions brought on by the pandemic should be a matter of mutual urgency to both artistic and political spheres.

On the most intimate level, an underlying political awareness can enrich something as personal as a love song, helping it slip free of clichés and touch listeners in fresh ways. On a broader social level, artists feeling a greater freedom to directly address the politics of our daily lives can help music connect to the anxieties, anger, and concerns people already have, as well as help articulate more optimistic possibilities for the future. On a purely practical level, political activism and creative culture face many of the same obstacles and could well look to each other for help building the tools to help overcome them. In that sense, perhaps asking if music can retain its relevance without politics is not strong enough. Perhaps instead, we now need to be asking, “Can music even exist if it is not political?”

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