Identity Politics and ABC Classic

Listeners to ABC Classic did not respond well in September when Cancel Culture made a brief appearance. A regular presenter, Stéphanie Kabanyana-Kanyandekwe, had wondered on-air if it was time for the FM station to retire the popular Hiawatha Overture.

All week she had featured works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (right), Britain’s first black classical composer, and audience interest in his broader oeuvre was distinctly building. Requests were coming in, while other presenters were adding his music to their program playlists. Then Kabanyana-Kanyandekwe voiced doubts about the merits of the Hiawatha Overture, his best-known orchestral piece. Her listeners were advised how, according to “contemporary social thinking”, Coleridge-Taylor’s Hiawatha cantatas, composed between 1898 and 1900, are nowadays not acceptable to right-minded people. She did not cite any authority or source for this assessment, although she suggested the overture had racist overtones.

Being inspired by Longfellow’s 1855 poem The Song of Hiawatha, and using at points melodic fragments from Negro Spirituals, this composition surely embodied the prejudices of unenlightened times, because the music “celebrated the White man’s triumph” over Native Americans. The Indian chief Hiawatha and his lover, Minnehaha, were gauche cultural stereotypes in the poem, thereby indicating the oppressive society which violently drove First Nations peoples from their sacred homelands.

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Kabanyana-Kanyandekwe described the former custom in London for family groups attending performances of the Hiawatha cantatas to bring along their children dressed up as Red Indians. Some may still think this practice cute, but surely it was a lamentable custom from colonial Britain’s racist past.

Of course, her sentiments smacked of the movement in America which strives to remedy “cultural appropriation”. Schoolteachers are brow-beaten into removing from studies literary works—including Longfellow’s Hiawatha—by white male writers which portray ethnic peoples in disapproved ways. County councils are pressed to bar white children from publicly wearing Indian and Mexican costumes at Halloween. Protests are staged outside urban restaurants where white chefs cook Mexican, Soul Food or Asian dishes. Little is exempt from condemnation by a new Thought Police.

It looked as if this same Cancel Culture was migrating to ABC Classic. In a form of straw poll, FM listeners were invited to “text-in” whether it is now time to cease playing the Hiawatha compositions.

This did not go down well. Admittedly responses were filtered, Kabanyana-Kanyandekwe reading out portions of their comments. Only two people appeared to support a partial ban. Others labelled the suggestion “oppressive thinking”; called it wrong-headed to get “moralistic” over music; insisted that composers be free to exercise creative licence; and contended that making music about other races is “not colonising” them. One cheeky respondent suggested ABC Classic place a broadcasting ban on Wagner.

What disturbed about the entire business was that professional opinion was not sought. At no point was it said, “These are complex issues, we must get experts in to discuss them.” Instead, matters moved hastily, with concerns that material might be politically risqué leading straight to the suggestion it be proscribed. This is the same unthinking path that historically has led people to start defacing statues and burning books for purportedly ethical reasons.

Already a musical Cancel Culture has been quietly introduced by Greens politicians elected to Melbourne’s suburban councils. They are against playing religious music in public. So each festive season community choirs and music groups that apply to local councils to perform Christmas carols in shopping strips and parks can find striking restrictions imposed on their repertoire.

Only secular tunes are allowed in Greens-controlled suburbs. Where “Jingle Bells” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” are acceptable, “Silent Night” and “Away in a Manger” cannot be sung, nor may instrumentalists play music from Bach’s Christmas oratorio. In one memorable year the Greens-controlled Darebin City Council deliberately substituted irreverent new verses in sacred songs performed at its annual Carols by Candlelight.

It is unlikely ABC Classic would even consider adopting the same secularist guidelines, most presenters clearly taking pleasure in planning music for religious festivals. A veto would not only see each year’s carefully designed Christmas and Easter playlists monumentally redacted, but weekly listening would also lose the popular program For the God Who Sings, while a great deal of music spread over each week throughout the year would have to go. One suspects the production staff would be mortified.

It is one thing checking music for disapproved content, but what does the national broadcaster consider meritorious? In 2021, ABC Classic and ABC Jazz launched the “Composer Commissioning Fund”, a scheme to support emerging musical talent. At first appearance it looks like a generous initiative: like a sports sponsorship, but targeting the highly talented in classical music and jazz. However, there are strings attached.

Instead of being open to all of proven ability, the ABC’s new music grants are available only to “women, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, people with disability, gender diverse people, and other diverse voices”. Why just individuals in these categories are singled out for support is not explained. Would the same restrictions be placed on sporting talent? It recalls the ominous sign put up by the new managers in Orwell’s Animal Farm: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Favouring people in this way would make sense if this were a prejudiced society where those singled out do not get an even break. But for decades we’ve had government legislation to prevent such bias. Besides, anyone familiar with bohemia in this country knows how our performing arts scene has long been known for its diversity. Just what we have enjoyed was apparent several months back when a small non-white ensemble visited Australia, and its director spoke on ABC Classic of lingering prejudice in orchestras overseas. Her remarks made quite a contrast with our own companies, such as the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, which has been a flagship for inclusion and has embraced talent irrespective of ethnic, racial or sexual identity. Witness Hiroyuki Iwaki’s twenty-three-year tenure as the MSO’s chief conductor.

Something similar might be said of Australia’s jazz scene. Historically our jazz crowd has marked itself out by its open support for non-white and gay performers. Take the Second World War years when visiting African-American musicians drafted into uniform performed alongside whites in the hotels and clubs of Melbourne and Sydney. Segregation was shunned here, local audiences ejecting from those jazz venues US military police who tried to impose it.

That determined attitude remains evident in the robust egalitarianism of our music, drama and visual arts schools. As inclusion goes, I could tick each of the ABC’s minority group boxes several times over when reviewing students I taught during my twelve years at the Victorian College of the Arts. And they included refugees, too. In selecting students we made a genuine effort to interview, audition and then enrol any talented person of high promise. And we supported them in the same manner throughout their studies, guiding their artistic growth towards maturity into skilled and creative professionals. The teaching staff were just as varied ethnically, racially and sexually, many of them unwittingly becoming role models.

But ABC Classic and ABC Jazz are having none of this. Like teenagers listening doubtfully to their parents’ talk of the past, those at the national broadcaster know prejudice was rife in the grim olden days, so the cultural and music scenes cannot be egalitarian and inclusive. Only they can introduce such values.

ABC Classic, as regular listeners know, has a commitment to music with indigenous leanings. The station supports current composers who blend Aboriginal components with Western instrumentation. Leading this field have been the efforts of the renowned soprano Deborah Cheetham, who is excelling in short compositions for groups of native women singers. Especially significant is her “Welcome to Country”, a musical arrangement to accompany an Aboriginal speaker giving a set address before a public concert. Setting a contemplative tone before the performance begins, this has been much needed.

ABC Classic has also been attempting to press indigenous elements into the classical repertoire. The FM station has been spruiking for music where a didgeridoo is used in an arrangement for orchestral instruments. Likewise it promotes compositions where, in similar manner, a soloist sings in an Aboriginal language while accompanied by Western musicians.

The results are mixed, very mixed. You can’t select a key with a didgeridoo or support a melody being played, while harmony is anathema to traditional tribal song. A few efforts stand out, like Peter Sculthorpe’s measured compositions with William Barton—extolled by the station as “a didgeridoo virtuoso”—but much doesn’t cohere. And despite the vocal intensity of the Yolngu singer Gurrumul Yunupingu—a favourite of presenters—his untranslated chants still amount to a tuneless drone driving against the background instrumentation.

It does not help such work that, like talk of the fabled Emperor’s New Clothes, what is said of Aboriginal music appears gush. No one in ABC Classic ever discusses Aboriginal music technically. Do they know how? So audiences listen as the station plays awkward efforts to meld utterly different traditions, the didgeridoo honking noisily over a chamber quintet.

Much of this recalls similar orchestral efforts blending European with Indian, Chinese or Japanese instruments, which were often heard on ABC Radio in the 1970s. Such efforts to mix Western instrumentation with Asian forms are now forgotten, although they did result in a fine recording of Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar playing together. Little else of those cross-cultural musical experiments has survived—perhaps there is a lesson here.

There is a curious aspect to ABC Classic’s enthusiasm for things indigenous: the acknowledgment of country has been extended into a new component in concert music. In its radio and television news, the national broadcaster adds Aboriginal country names to news items, and now if an orchestral piece was recorded in Australia, the FM station has begun to declare which tribal homeland the musicians were performing in. For example, before playing a concert of Stravinsky’s Firebird recorded in Sydney, the presenter announced it was “performed on Eora country”. The Aboriginal location was even cited when publicising the broadcast.

This is tokenism. There is no reason for doing it. There is no musical connection between the Aboriginal tribe and the concert. But the tribe is introduced in a manner which implies it has contributed to the performance, like a guest soloist. Tribal homelands will be inserted into the details of the concert, listed with the conductor, orchestra and any singers.

Connecting concerts with tribal land can lead to strange talk on ABC Classic. Certain presenters adopt a reverential tone when saying how orchestral works were performed “on country”. It is as if tribal location has enhanced the composition’s content, giving it emotional depth. Did Mahler and Holst realise that their concertos and symphonies sound best when played on Aboriginal homelands?

Of course, assorted composers have explored their own ethnic roots via music, often by tapping traditional melodies. Grieg delved into his Norwegian heritage, Chopin quoted Polish folk tunes, and Bartok would echo Hungarian song. Shostakovich soaked up all he heard: Russian country dances, washerwomen singing, spruiking street vendors, coachmen’s whistles. Is this earthy material with its stress on authentic identity so remote from talk of indigenous content? Using the term “homeland”, Czech musicians will even speak of how Dvorak’s compositions express his spiritual attachment to Bohemia, his own native “country”.

So how does ABC Classic intend to handle Australian concerts of such works? It would be improper to declare that a concert of Dvorak’s symphonic poems, steeped in Czech folklore, was being performed on, say, “Wurundjeri country”. Ethnic listeners may be distressed at a dedication to another’s homeland imposed upon their own heritage, especially for music with a nationalist flavour.

We do not value recorded music more if we know where it was taped. Apart from notable recordings of works historically associated with, say, La Scala or Bayreuth, it is not customary at ABC Classic to announce where a recording was made. All day on the FM station when the track is played listeners are told the composer, title and performers. This is to identify the music. The presenter will say, “Here is the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony performed by the Berlin Philharmoniker conducted by Herbert von Karajan.” That’s the full deal. Why, then, announce tribal country for classical concerts that have no Aboriginal component whatsoever?

Where does this tokenism stop? Like watching a person in the grip of obsessive behaviour, with identity politics at ABC Classic we must wait and see.

Dr Christopher Heathcote, a frequent contributor, lives in Melbourne