English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, described by its founder conductor Daniel Barenboim as a “utopian republic,” is a much publicized example of the contemporary trend for engaging western classical music with social concerns. In this article I situate it in the context of Richard Dyer’s reflections on musical utopia, and take the concerts that it presented in the summer of 2006 as case studies. I also explore the potential of Alfred Gell’s theory of art to problematize the singularity of the orchestra’s utopian projection (harmonious collaboration between Arabs and Jews) and expose a range of competing utopias that sustain it. As an epilogue, I contribute to the debate about how we can contextualize the orchestra within the thinking of its former intellectual figurehead, the late Edward W. Said. Daniel Barenboim devoted one of his 2006 BBC Reith Lectures to the idea of “Meeting in Music,” and focused on the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, his ensemble of young musicians from Arab, Jewish, and Spanish backgrounds. [1] He conceptualized the orchestra as a “utopian republic,” but he also played down its political significance by asserting that its utopian quality was a function of music. In music, he explained, one had to be aware not only of oneself but also of “the other,” so that music was “in this case not an expression of what life is, but an expression of what life could be, or what it could become.” When in conversation with Edward W. Said, who was involved in the orchestra’s early years, Barenboim was nevertheless also enthusiastic about its directly political implications, and the two of them agreed that it had demolished Arab stereotypes about Israelis, and Israeli stereotypes about Arabs. [2] The “utopian republic,” then, was a model for a Middle East in which the various peoples listened to and understood one another without prejudice. In a by-now iconic essay on utopia in musicals and variety shows, Richard Dyer has demonstrated some of the ways that musical genres offer audiences apparent remedies for (or at least escapes from) the problems that they face in life. [3] Instead of scarcity these entertainments present abundance, and counteracting exhaustion they express energy; they replace dreariness with intensity, manipulation with transparency, and social fragmentation with community. This last substitution may seem close to the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra as constructed by Barenboim and Said, in that Arabs and Jews work through music to become an interactive and productive sociality, in contrast to the destructive conflict that the majority are understood as living out in real life. In his essay Dyer also engages with some of the more complex aspects of utopian musical entertainments, however, pointing out that by offering escape from certain types of suffering, they covertly define the type of suffering that is open to discussion. [4] We might compare this with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra’s utopia, which corrects a specific type of suffering (feeling misunderstood by “the other”), while most suffering in the Middle East is economic and political—in many areas to extreme states of existential crisis. Dyer also argues effectively that entertainment implies a sense of absence that can be magicked away by capitalism, while entertainment genres themselves depend on the success of capitalism. They are thus often self-serving: as he expresses it, “entertainment provides alternatives to capitalism which will be provided by capitalism.” [5] The circularity of the problem-solving process is to be traced in the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra too, as it projects a utopia in Europe and for European audiences, while this is not necessarily one that people in the Middle East PDF

Whose Utopia? Perspectives on the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra