Time to take out the Eurotrash – San Diego Reader

There is a practice in classical music which I find to be somewhat disingenuous. That practice is overtly politicized concertizing.

As I've written in the past, almost every great opera has a political edge but it is a natural consequence of the story as opposed to, for instance, a concert against the Trump wall. (June 3, Friendship Park, where the border fence meets the Pacific.)

That Trump wall idea is exactly the concert which The Dresdner Sinfoniker is raising money for on Kickstarter. This group of freedom fighters is traveling halfway around the world to improve the border relationship between the United States and Mexico.

I'm calling BS. Perhaps this is just a case of opportunism, but there is a fundamental misconception at play here regarding the arts and social justice. The traditional term for social justice is freedom.

The arts do not provide freedom. Nothing provides freedom. Freedom arrives by a process of reduction. Remove the oppression and there is freedom. No government in the world provides freedom. Some are more repressive than others but every single government, by definition, removes freedom via the institution of laws.

Wait. Dont governments ensure freedoms? No, no they do not.

Yes, the arts can help us to remove our personal oppression which by proxy can lead to less onerous laws writ large at least thats what Plato thought. In other words, micro freedom can lead to macro freedom, but I dont see macro freedom leading to micro freedom. It is my opinion that the arts are most effective within the micro realm.

As an aside, if we were all more diligent with our micro/personal freedom agendas then neither Trump or Hillary would have even been candidates. We would have had better options. But because we keep looking for a macro move to create our personal freedom we keep getting con artists as leaders and its on both sides of the aisle, bitches. Im not taking any sides.

To add gravitas to the situation, members of the Dresdner Sinfoniker are touting their Berlin Wall heritages. It pains me to say this but the arts did not bring down the Berlin Wall and furthermore I think the Berlin Wall was built to keep East Germans in the country not to keep West Germans out. In this scenario Mexico really would be building the wall instead of the Trump administration.

To compare the hypothetical Trump wall to the Iron Curtain orchestrated by Premier Khrushchev sounds just a tad shrill. I am giving this concert a hard pass based on the context, and on the more damning fact that the Dresdner Sinfoniker performed with The Pet Shop Boys.

If we want to build a wall perhaps it should be between orchestras and West End Girls. Perhaps its time to take out the Eurotrash.

See original here:

Time to take out the Eurotrash - San Diego Reader