Orpheus Snapped, Soundcheck Observed

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra's gala last night is the newest addition to the photo gallery, here:

http://www.shutterfly.com/pro/nysun/outandabout/20080418

The highlight of the evening was the performance of Bartok's Rumanian Folk Dances, with the help of an ensemble of the Budapest Festival Orchestra — a performance in honor of the event's Hungarian honorees, Daisy and Paul Soros.

Not only the Soroses, but so many of the guests of various backgrounds took pleasure from a musical tribute so personal in nature. You clearly don't have to be Hungarian to enjoy Bartok, and on this night, the folk dances left everyone feeling vibrant and joyful.

"Music and identity" just happened to be the topic of the WNYC talk show Soundcheck this afternoon, which I had the privilege of sitting in on to observe.

One's personal ethnic background can have a powerful influence on the music one listens to, although it is probably one of many factors in the complicated and complex forces that determine musical tastes.

Certainly America is a melting pot of music, and some of its most talented musicians have thrived in part by freely working in many musical traditions. So the most provocative topic of Soundcheck for me today was a discussion of the negative feedback that the band Vampire Weekend has received recently for doing fun, pop-y things with West African music. The music critic of the Globe and Mail in Toronto, Carl Wilson, posited that the critics had decided to view what Vampire Weekend did — appropriate music from a culture not their own — as an elitist gesture... elitist because the band has found success so young and because they were educated at Columbia University. He pointed out that the critics were probably just as well educated.

The criticism seems just plain silly to me. This is a band representing the American ideal — obtaining a great education and doing something worthy and interesting with it that appeals to a great many people. What is wrong with good music? and does it really matter who makes it?

Anyway, that's my two cents. On the show, a Princeton professor, Kwame Anthony Appiah, author of "The Ethics of Identity," talked briefly about the music of Ghana, where he was raised, and a caller talked of how his musical tastes reflect the diversity of ethnicities in his family.

More on the program, hosted by the marvelous Jonathan Schaefer, is available at the Soundcheck Web site, http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/.