In the subway underneath Westminster Bridge I saw two men wearing hats play Oasis and Rolling Stones with guitar, drumsticks and voice. The fourth bridge-related peformance out of seventeen. I have started to write a thesis on this phenomenon that I will post shortly. (That turned out to be a lie)I'd crossed Westminster Bridge from Parliament Square where UK-based Tamils were demonstrating, urging the British government to act on behalf of Tamils in Sri Lanka.
To consider their chants of protest as a live musical experience felt wrong on two counts. Firstly it was questionable whether spoken chanting can be classified as music - had it been backed by drumming (as I momentarily thoug
ht it was, but it turned out to be music from a passing car) would it then have been music?More importantly, though, to shoehorn these demonstrators as my "tick" for the day gave me the uncomfortable feeling that I was trivialising their serious cause.
1 comment:
people get exploded into pieces in srilamka and you care about music more.
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