Grime vs Classical on Radio 3

[Blackdown]

The legislation in France was to preserve the language. But it also preserved French pop music, and allowed French hip hop to flourish. And it seems to me to be one of the only methods thats worked.

um i wouldn't call this flourishing or working...

"A French court agreed yesterday to consider a complaint brought by a conservative MP against the rapper Monsieur R for referring to France as a slut in a song."

"Sarkozy backed calls to punish rappers whose songs were deemed to incite hatred among youths living on the margins of society."

 

[grosun]

But this isn't 'reality'.

It's a poorly thought out idea for a radio show for a bunch of cardigan wearing middle England housewives who are NEVER going to buy a grime record.

This isn't the BBC doing something negative, but it's not exactly positive. A bunch of 40 year old radio execs descend from their ivory towers for two seconds with a hair-brained scheme to do something for the poor kids. But how is this going to make an iota of difference to anyone in the scene? How is this going to help? Really?

The chattering classes will hear the word 'grime' one more time. And promptly forget about it.

Whoopee-doo

Until the government make a concious decision to legislate and get behind British urban music the way the French did, it's not gonna happen for in any kind of major way for grime, UK hip hop or anything else. It's that simple. It doesn't make financial sense for the major labels or the commercial stations to take risks on new scenes in any significant way. I spent years trying to convince myself otherwise, but if you take Occam's razor and cut through all the hot air, this is the answer you get.

As for these three wildy different groups getting together and coming up with something creative, sustainable and meaningful because a bunch of out of touch suits from somewhere else think it could work, there's more chance of that happening in Iraq.

We're talking radio 3 here, not Radio 4 or Classic FM... they regularly play fairly experimental stuff.. indeed I'd say they're by a long way the most interesting & open minded music station run by the BBC. Most Middle England housewives prob. won't tune in to it most of the time, & particularly not to Mixing It.

& this characterisation of "suits"... where does this come from? Do you have any idea who's actually organised it? Could you not consider the possibility that there's someone rather like you who happens to have got into a position of influence & thought "damn, I could mash these people together, see what happens", or does everyone with influence have to be, like, the man & therefore irredeemably square?

In general, I'm also surprised & somewhat repulsed by the way a lot of this thread's been about what this collaboration might "mean" in terms of commercial success/exposure. I couldn't give a shit whether it makes grime go stellar (tho' this is pretty unlikely I would've thought; chances are it'll maybe expose it to a few Wire-reading types who might not have heard it b4), or whatever... my sole interest in this is "will it sound good", & might it lead to some new sounds (& on both fronts I have my doubts; sounds like an unnecessary novelty idea which is likely to end up as less than the sum of it's parts, but we'll see).

And the government have absolutely no place fucking with music. Personally, I want them to keep their hands out of most things as much as possible, & particularly music. If there's one group of people I *wouldn't* trust to ensure something stays dynamic & exciting, it's the British Govt.

As others have said, the French govt's "support" for hiphop etc. happened purely by chance; all they were really trying to do was follow the Academie Francaise's ridiculous agenda of trying to freeze French language/culture in perfect stasis & halt the English language's influence. Entirely motivated by retrograde anti-change agenda, and I'd be out on the streets demonstrating against it if they tried to implement anything similar over here. How dare they think they know better than their own people what they should listen to? Bunch of elitist bastards with a superiority complex. Just because something's had a good side-effect doesn't mean it's actually a good idea or makes any moral sense.

(also, don't several other European countries have healthy local hiphop scenes, just by virtue of people wanting to hear rap in their own langauge? Doesn't need govt. support/crippling of foreign competition to succeed).

 

[MATT MAson]

My characterisation of suits at the BBC comes from working with/knowing some suits at the BBC. Wilber Wilberforce is an exception and has always tried to do good things for British urban music.

Of course I'm generalizing, there are some with-it brothers and sisters from another mother working from within to revolutionise Auntie from the inside and stick it to the man. And I'm sure there must also some really right on cool dudes somewhere in the French govt too, but it's okay to call ALL of them elitist bastards with a superiority complex?

As I said before, I don't think this is negative, it's all exposure right? It's all good. Maybe it will all be great, and then maybe Wiley will go on Blue Peter and mix up an old accapella of Percy Thrower over Ski-Flow, and maybe Lady Sovereign will become lead anchor on Newsround and make the guards at Buckingham Palace wear hoodies for a day. Whatever. Like you, I don't really think any of this will mean anything either, and this is my point.

As I also said before, 99% of the time I'm not for protectionist measures, I think the free market can and should work. But neither am I for mass globalization that extinguishes local cultures, which is what is happening to grime, british urban music and many other scenes in countries everywhere that are getting squeezed out by the emaps and clearchannels of this world lobbying governments to roll back legislation in the interest of the 'free market'. I don't think big corporations should be allowed to stifle music or creativity anymore than the govt should.

I also agree that the govt should NOT take over music. It's not healthy and the response to the riots in Paris is not going to help French music at all (having said that, music giving people the imeptu to rise up against oppression, as Reggae did in the 60s/70s in JA and hip hop did in the 90s in the US isn't a bad thing in my view either). If MI6 seized Jammer's basement tomorrow, I'd be right there demonstrating with you, but if some legislation was brought back to keep British music afloat on daytime FM radio, as it used to be, I think it would boost music sales and energise a number of scenes, as it used to. If you then wanted to go demonstrate that Kiss weren't playing enough Eminem/Britney/Jackson 5 mash ups anymore, you'd probably be on your own mate.

 

[shudder]

re: government intervention in music, look at Canada (I would say that...)

Gov't intervention works here at a couple of levels. First, there are the "cancon" (canadian content) regulations on radio stations (and TV channels too). A certain percentage of prime-time radio airplay must play canadian content. Canadian content is determined by some (probably out of touch) formula which takes into account the composer, the performer, and the recording, among other things. The point of these regulations is to reserve some airtime for canadian music etc., against total takeover by the big-$$$ US industry. The consensus among Canadians similar to the people who browse this forum seems to be that the result of this kind of intervention has led to a medium-sized selection of very mediocre singers and bands having bigger careers (mainly in Canada, but sometimes outside, as in, say, Nickleback) than they might otherwise have had. So, nothing thrilling from that angle.

However, the government also gives out small grants to independent musicians to record albums, do tours, host websites, etc. Although some of this is controversial, it has allowed a fair number of independent musicians and groups to get more exposure than they might otherwise have had... This is certainly true of middle level Toronto and Montreal indie bands (most of whom, I'm sure many dissensians would not love!). I don't really know how many of these grants go to more electronic/dance style musicians, nor whether they have made much of a difference in that sort of scene. Anyway, this second type of gov. intervention, if done right, seems rather congenial to me...

of course this really doesn't have too much to do with grime meeting the symphony. I'm pretty damn skeptical of what the results might be, but it seems worth a try. Remember Portishead's live disc?

 

[Tyro]

''of course this really doesn't have too much to do with grime meeting the symphony. I'm pretty damn skeptical of what the results might be, but it seems worth a try. Remember Portishead's live disc?''[/QUOTE]

That was their finest moment in my opinion.