Ondioline Radio Show

[hypnotique]

Thanks to Howard for setting up this forum for me.
Hopefully it will inspire me to post a few casual ideas to the electro community!
For the next few days, I'd recommend electro fans to check out a radio show on BBC Radio 4, it's called the Music Machine:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml

It's about the Ondioline, one of the first ever synthesizers. Of course, I won't mention that I got there first with my radio shows about Jean-Jacques Perrey (who features in this documentary) and Early Electronic Oddities about late 19th century (yes really!) and early 20th century instruments. So it's not the first time 'auntie' as we call them have stolen my ideas! The imitators will make the money, but the innovators will be remembered in history...

You can hear the original shows at:
www.switchedonradio.co.uk

Ms Hypnotique
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[seraph]

thanks for the links and welcome to electro-music.com but one post is usually enough so I am deleting your other (identical) one

[Blue Hell]

Some interesting links to old stuff, this will keep my busy for the rest of the day I guess.

Thanks & welcome on EM,

Jan.

[mosc]

I just listened to the Music Machine. Thanks for that link. That's a facinating program. There's are great story, great music, and it's all about an electronic musical instrument.

I love the way the producers tell the story without any straight narration. Splendid.

[K]

I was reading your interview on synthopia (a very interesting one):
http://www.synthtopia.com/interviews/Hypnotique.html
when I bumped into this sentence:

[elektro80]

She is not exactly saying that is she? Remember that state funding of art and artists has been a big thing here in Europe for decades. That in itself is not a bad thing at all. That said, good old USSR and old nazi Germany did have a different outlook on the purpose of art and artists. We certainly wouldn?t want to see that again, even though the same ideology seems to be adopted in capitalist states these days. Scary. Anyway, we should listen to Howard Zinn. The artist?s voice should be a voice of reason and decency in a mad world. Uh, but government art grants and the lot.. yes ! We want that!

[seraph]

Stein
I think you are right but certainly that concept could have been expressed differently without mentioning communism. I would rephrase it: "I vote a return to government art grants attitudes – then you could audition to be a state musician and put on a state salary to do your thing".
btw I would not want to be a state musician anyway.

[elektro80]

[orczy]

We have a funny situation here in New Zealand. We have a thing called "New Zealand On Air" which funds TV, Films, and Music. On the surface, it sounds great. Video garnts of $5000, album grants of $50,000 (NZ$= $0.73 US). Good stuff. The problem is that same people get it all the time, and they are given on a "will it make money, or be successful overseas" line of thinking. Hmmm. Doesn't leave much for music in the way of anything but rock (US copied, or very hip New Wave English stuff) or Hip Hop (very big here, but very American. Even American accents, which is wierd) Please don't interpret this as anti-American, I'm not, I just think that a Government sponsored program that says it is "Our voices, our stories" should be a bit more Kiwi. Sidetracking. The worst part of it all, is that unless you have the "NZ on Air" logo on your video or CD, it won't get played. I would love some of the $ for my project. I don't think "ambient harmonium" would fit any criterion anywhere!

[seraph]

[hypnotique]

now I know I replied to this before so I do hope my own comments are not being censored in my own sub-forum..be warned!

Interestingly I heard a play on radio 4 last night about the black american writer James Baldwin and his early days in Paris, caught between Bohemian partying and trying to become a 'serious' writer. The gist was he felt pressurised into writing black protest pieces for magazines for $$ when he just really wanted to be a proper writer - regardless of his colour.

I think the same is true 70 years on. Minorities are only encouraged to actually be minorities - not just be good artists. Some argue if art needs funding because demand does not exist, it should not be funded and not exist. Market forces. I disagree, because cultural heritage should be invested in, but as I mentioned in that Synthopia.com interview, you have to be a humped-back black jewish lesbian to gets an arts council grant in England.

There's a rather good performance artist here called Marisa Karninsky. Actually, her real name is Marisa Carr, but she's fourth generation Polish immigrant (fourth!! and I'm 30th generation Viking!!) and plays on the Jew/Polish thing to get relevant grants. Although her work is good, I find her connection to her heritage a little tenuous anyway, but she's obviously worked out how she can make a living by doing this. The problem for us white/middle-class/English folks is we are the backbone of this country, we go to the theatre, yet we're never likely to get a grant to develop our art. The stupidist thing was once I applied to get an advice clinic for musicians, then I was told later I didn't qualify because it was for deaf people. How many deaf people need advice on becoming a musician?

I used to be an assessor for the Arts Council of England, and the tosh I went to see in the name of equal opportunities was astonishing. Some, admittedly, like a disability group called Blue Eyed Soul, was amazing regardeless of the able/disabled issue. But most was sheer nonsense - and most of the attendees (of the few) were always able bodied/white/middle class anyway.

I particularly resent 'equal opportunities forms' as basically they are about UN equal opportunities. In desperation for gainful employment, I've started filling them in saying I'm Irish Asian. I'll report back to you and let you know if the uptake is better. It's outrageous to say people who are not white or English are more likely to get an interview or appointment than someone who is native. How does positive discrimation benefit anybody? The most outrageous one was at the Hackney Empire Theatre in London, where black people pay £2 for a ticket and white people £10. Where is the equality in that? This is why England is in a mess with asylum and immigration, and the funding issues comes back to this.

I really think funding should be reserved for protecting the historic heritage of a cultural and nation, incoming cultures should provide their own audiences - they are after all an import and I don't see why my taxes should be spent on bringing in drum tribes from Burkina Faso, voodoo snakes from Haiti, or whirling dervishes from Tunisia (please, these people are supposed to be pious not on some goddam colonial culture show) who are getting the 'stage space' at major funded venues we British artists struggle to get.

And of course I regret nothing I say - ever! Although it was an oversight to say in Communist Russia you could be payed to 'do your think' - but as I rather like military music, oom-pah and staunch russian classical I'd have been alright there!



Hypnotique
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[seraph]

[mosc]

[K]