21.12.2004 08:46 - Loss of Musical Tradition
Last night was the last night of my German class, so we decided to have a little party. The class consists of people from Poland, White Russia, China and Japan. It has been discovered (basically the teacher told them about a gig I did) that I can play guitar. I am therefore elected to provide this evening\'s entertainment, which consists of about four or five songs (due to my still-dodgy throat from a nasty cough).
So I sat there and played my little Kinks and Beatles tunes and they listened. Not in the English, vaguely-disinterested-we\'d-rather-have-a-disco way, but quietly and intently, clapping enthusiastically at the end.
And the reason why? It\'s because the majority of these people come from the former Communist Bloc, where they haven\'t legislated live music to death. Over there, if you have a party, then someone brings a musical instrument (typically an accordian) and sits down and plays it, and everyone listens, rather than sticking the latest befuddled moanings from Portishead on the player for everyone to ignore. In some areas, particularly the more out-of-the-way bits of the former Soviet Union, this is the ONLY way that you will hear music. These people live in the middle of the back of beyond, and the only shop is a mobile one that turns up on the train once a week. There\'s no records, no tapes and no CDs and even if they did have a player, the nearest record shop is three days journey away. Internet doesn\'t even come into it. If they\'re lucky, the post office has a telephone.
This - the live performer at a party - is a tradition which is now completely lost from the supposedly \"more advanced\" western democracies. It seems to have only reappeared here recently due to the large influx of jobseekers from the East, bringing their ideas of what constitutes a good party with them. (Ideas which, it must be said, also include far too much cheap vodka.) It is something that has been totally killed-off in the UK, between the pathetic NIMBYist licencing laws and the mobile disco. When was the last time you went into a pub which had a piano? When were you last invited to a party because you could play a musical instrument?
