Dawn Ritch, Contributor
I HAVE a confession to make. There is one breed of intellectual that I absolutely adore, maybe two. Classically trained and practising musicians for sure, and trained chefs.
The second set can be trouble. I've never met one of them who couldn't be tricky. They will see you falling into error and say nothing about it out of sheer clinician's interest in what might happen next.
A classical musician is rarely like that. They are generally kind people. Only when personal bloody-mindedness is combined with an ability to write articles and proposals, are trained musicians a danger to society.
Otherwise they all wear their learning lightly. They behave as ordinary people do, with good manners and a proper interest in the welfare of others.
THE THREE FURIES
Jamaica has had the misfortune however, of having the three Furies, Pamela O'Gorman and her proselytes the Misses Joan Tucker and Audrey Cooper. All are classically-trained musicians. They could not only play, but write and make convincing policy proposals. They dumbed-down the teaching of classical music in Jamaica, first at the School of Music and later, the University of the West Indies.
The thinking then was that since reggae music was such an international success, nobody in Jamaica needed to learn classical music, much less wanted to break into song, play a musical instrument or read a music score. So classical music was abandoned as a form of education in Jamaica.
In August 2003, and again in September of the same year, I said that, and became the object of a vitriolic letter-writing campaign to the editor of this newspaper by Miss Tucker and others of her ilk. They'll all pop up again, I suppose, to defend the indefensible, their official contribution to making Jamaica into a country of classical music illiterates, something it had never been before.
It hurts doubly because the one who started the decline was Ms. O'Gorman, who was a white Australian. She was articulate and had a talent for writing. She held the deeply subversive view that black people didn't need to know classical music since they already had the drum. It was an ultimate foolishness.
Nevertheless it was part of the politically correct thinking worldwide in the 1970s. This thinking became local government policy here, and remains so.
Now entering the fray is Mr. Basil D. Ferguson, chairman of two rural schools in the hills of St. Andrew. He begs for classical music and even a couple of instruments. On July 19, he wrote to the editor of this newspaper saying:
MUSIC IN SCHOOLS
"There was a time when every school in the country had a doh-ray-me modulator and many schools would strive to obtain a piano. Singing was a part of the curriculum and children were exposed to singing in parts and there was an appreciation for melody and interpretation.
"Is music still an important part of the curriculum in all schools? As chairman of two rural schools, Woodford and Craighton All-Age schools in the hills of St. Andrew, I would like to develop a music group in both schools starting out with guitars, beginning September.
"I am appealing for help to bring this about. if you live in the Kingston/St. Andrew area and you have a guitar that you are no longer using, please donate it to this cause. Call Mr. Ferguson at 944-2900, Mr. Mais 750-8118 for pick-up. Let us start getting our children singing school songs again. Basil D. Ferguson, chairman."
When I expressed much the same sentiments two years ago, it unleashed a torrent of abuse from Joan Tucker and other powerful people in the musical hierarchy of the island. Yet, here is a customer and victim of these dumbed-down government policies. The lack of facilities in these and other schools are an example of the bloody-mindedness of those same intellectuals, who already have training, towards those without, and who they are determined must not be allowed to have any training at all. Not even the schools must be allowed to teach any music. This is the official government policy towards not only music, but other classical education in Jamaica.
INTELLECTUAL SOBRIETY
This is the ugly scrawling signature of black petty bourgeois intellectualism. They are the ones with the power in this country, and that is why I run from people with doctorates unless they are scientific degrees. People with doctorates in the arts, unless in organ recitals, are continually making decisions about what other people should and should not know. Scientists are not like that. Boring maybe, and sometimes eccentric, but they have the virtue of keeping themselves to themselves in a spirit of genuine intellectual sobriety.
Intellectual sobriety of any kind was banished from cultural education after the 1970s, and vacuity has since become the mark of too much of society today. Jamaicans don't really know how to break into song anymore, except for a few paid professionals, so more of them are breaking into houses and murder instead.
The musical authorities, who then existed, allowed adults and children to batter the bass notes on a piano until the felt wore off, and play none of the others. Then those music teachers told their students they were doing fine and didn't need to learn anymore, much less practise. Classical music was eurocentric, they said, useless and irrelevant to the new social order. Well, the rural schools would like some help with music education and I hope they won't be treated with the scant regard reserved for education in general in this country.
It goes to the heart of the wrong that has been done us. That fraught creature, the intellectual poseur, who can talk a blue stream and write convincingly, came along and told us we were fine on interpretation, therefore we didn't need to have any further knowledge. The government bought the argument hook, line, and sinker, because it was the path of least resistance.
But Mr. Ferguson would like some help with music in two rural schools, and it's going to take a little effort on their parts. Joan Tucker is the senior lecturer in music education at the University of the West Indies. I recommend that he lay this problem at her feet without delay.
