When Culture Wars met Cancel Culture and The Wokes at the OK Corral also known as the BBC Proms... As Norman Lebrecht pointed out on the Today programme this week, the Last Night has become an annual beanfeast for 'political commentators' who've never been seen in a concert hall. Cf Boris Johnson, who was frothing with the best of them today, like he'd never left The Telegraph.
Whether it's EU flags, Pride Flags, or the core repertoire, there's always a 'controversy'. In 2001, four days after 9/11, Rule Britannia was dropped, and The Star Spangled Banner was added. In 2017, politicians in Scotland and Wales believed that cameras relaying the crowds at Proms in the Park events in Glasgow and Swansea were deliberately switched off before the community singing classics, Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem. They did get Rule Britannia, as part of the Sea Songs.
There's some really unpleasant stuff on Twitter. Try this....
Finland allied with Hitler during WW2.
— Patricia Page🇬🇧🏴 (@Patricia344130) August 25, 2020
What gives the Finnish conductor Dalia Stasevska the right to make decisions on we, the British people should listen to at the Proms?
Oh yes, the BBC.#DefundTheBBC
Tricky stuff, eh ? Dalia was born in Kiev, and moved to Finland aged 5. Wait til Patricia realises the star singer is a black South African, and the solo violinist is from Georgia. Let the frothing be unconfined.
Could the BBC have handled it better ? Probably. An audience-free concert hall, with a small orchestra, and a small chorus was always going to be odd - but when you've already decided to commission a socially-distanced version of Pomp and Circumstance from former Art of Noise keyboardist Anne Dudley, and a re-invention of Jerusalem from Belize-born Brit, Errollyn Wallen, you should have perhaps been on the front foot much more.
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