Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Funk isn't Classical

Nothing bothers me more than these instrumentalists on YouTube who take famous classical works and translate them into upbeat and funky music. While I understand that everyone doesn't enjoy standard classical music, I don't think it is appropriate to alter music. The first problem with this is that the performer is sacrificing and downing musicianship. They are playing more for audience appeal so they loose the structure of the music -must I add that classical composers work extremely hard to establish and maintain structure through music. And secondly they are loosing the style and ultimately the history behind the music. There is no way that you can keep the Baroque style while sliding up and down the finger board of a violin and adding drum beats behind it. I wonder how Bach or Haydn would feel if they heard their music being portrayed in this way.

Talking about this, the image that I always have in my mind is Joshua Bell, VERY famous violinists, dressed as a normal person standing in the New York subway playing his violin and not making a dime. But the man across from him playing hip music on the guitar received a lot of money and attention. Why is this? Im pretty sure Bell was playing some works that even half of today's symphony musicians couldn't play. I just don't understand. Talking about Joshua Bell, this leads me to the next point about artists having to play contemporary music to stay interesting and appealing to artists. Why can't they continue to play standard music and develop new interpretations of standard classical music?

As I looked on YouTube its a shame that people who have altered classical music into funk receive more hits than standard musicians playing music -and pretty well I must add. As I looked at the people who commented and liked these video's I did find that more often, minorities especially African American's commented on the funk interpretations rather than the standard classical pieces. I also got upset when I look  at the McDonalds commercial and there are two African-American hip hop violinists. Why does it have to be this way to appeal to a certain audience. What do we have to do to expose minorities to this new world? I just want to be able to a classical concert and see people who look like me sitting on the stage and sitting next to me on the concert.

Check out this video to see this guy playing a 'Hip-Hop' version of a Paganini Caprice. What can we do to end this?

1 comment:

  1. I would totally have to agree with you. Nothing frustrates me more than when I practice day in and out on my instrument in classical studies while these do-op people just scrub the strings. I think there are several people who don't appreciate classical art and they just find ways to destroy something that is so carefully put together!

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