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It always seemed logical that musicians and music-lovers
would be more creative than the stolid bean counters who
run major corporations. But when the musicians' union for
the Denver Symphony Orchestra wants a new contract, the
management sings the same tired tune played by distressed
airlines and asbestos manufacturers: Do It My Way, or
I'll File for Chapter 11.
When word got out that Denver, which already lacks something that Cleveland has, a major-league baseball team, might soon lack something else that Cleveland has, a symphony orchestra, then came the predictable wailing about how the quality of metropolitan life would soon deteriorate to the quality of metropolitan air.
American symphony orchestras have never been profitable. Professional soccer and spring football weren't ever profitable, either, but nobody ever feared that Western Civilization would collapse if we didn't send money to the Colorado Caribous or the Denver Gold. When a public entertainment gets a reputation for being an aspect of high culture, though, it's a different story.
Our cultural betters not only insist that we ought to share their worries, but also that we boorish philistines should help pay for their symphonic entertainment -- directly, through taxes, or indirectly, through the tax breaks received by those who do contribute. In the age of Reagan, this makes perfect sense: tax the poor to provide pleasure for the rich, but tell the poor that it's for their own good.
Even if you can't afford to dress for a concert, much less attend one or know when you're supposed to applaud, this theory has it that your life is better because there's a full-sized orchestra down the street, capable of performing unintelligible works by obscure composers. You've heard of trickle-down economics. This is trickle-down culture.
Both function pretty much the same way, but there is an important difference. When the money doesn't trickle down, those of us on the bottom don't have any. But whether or not the haut monde can enjoy a tax-deductible night at the subsidized symphony, those of us in the lower orders of American life would still have music.
The only real American contributions to music have come from saloons and churches on the wrong side of the tracks. Bluegrass, jazz, folk, blues, country, gospel, dixieland, country and western, rhythm and blues, soul, gospel, rock and roll -- those forms of music were invented, performed and perfected by poor folks, black and white. Most of them couldn't read street signs, let alone sheet music, many were in prison, and few of them would have enhanced a corporate image.
American low-life music is immensely popular in the rest of the world, a fact known even to our national propaganda ministries; the Voice of America often plays blues or jazz, but seldom puts on a symphony.
In this country, blue-collar music is the only music that pays its own way. Peter McLaughlin has to devote considerable time and energy every year to organizing the Denver Symphony Run, because upper-class music can't support itself and must resort to this and other peculiar forms of financing.
Nobody has ever organized a Denver Country & Western Run or a Mile High Gospel Marathon, for the simple reason that no one has ever needed to. No one has ever come on my TV set to solicit charitable donations for the Colorado Bluegrass Festival or the Telluride Jazz Festival. As for rock festivals -- the musicians sometimes raise money to support other causes, instead of relying on other causes to support the musicians.
People who like those forms of music are willing to pay for their pleasure; unlike symphony dilettantes, they don't expect the rest of the public to contribute. America is a nation of music-lovers; even in my remote little town there are dancehalls, churches, radio stations, home stereos, private instruments, bands, combos, choirs, glee clubs, automotive cassette decks, ghetto blasters and a summer series from the Aspen Music Festival.
If the Denver Symphony Orchestra cannot attract enough patronage to turn a profit, that doesn't mean that Colorado people are too uncouth to appreciate music. All it really says is that most of us don't have the same musical tastes as 18th-century Austrian aristocrats. Is there any reason why we should?
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