They are quite hopeless: drooling, drivelling, doleful, depressing, dropsical drips. – Thomas Beecham, English conductor, composer and impresario on music critics.
Criticism that is DEstructive has always been a bother to most. And devastating to some; not surprising, given how much of ourselves we put into our music.
To escape such criticism, as the writer, artist and philosopher Elbert Hubbard once said, you would have to do nothing; say nothing. Be nothing – like most of the critics are.
It is not always easy to take harsh criticism – especially from the ignorant, uninitiated and neophyte; but as we artistes are always advised, if the criticism is untrue, disregard it; if it is unfair, don’t let it get your goat; if it is stupid, smile contemptuously at the idiot.
We are cautioned, however, that if the review of our work is justified, we should learn from it. There was nothing to grasp from the rabid report of a certain online newspaper on the Celebrity Tent’s recent offerings.
Via the contradictions and miasma of a mass communication student on internship – and who had never visited a calypso tent before – and a journeyman, who should know better, a picture was painted that in nearly every facet defied accuracy and flew in the face of contentment of patrons.
It was an exercise in virtual philistinism.
The French artist and printmaker Henri Matisse once said: “Creativity takes courage.”
None of the two above had any courage, though the lesser experienced one might be able to persuade me to overlook her transgression.
Having not experienced, by her own admission, a calypso tent before, how does she determine what a “judging night” really is or should be?
Miss Intern was “expecting strong performances filled with sweet lyrics”, but she was never able to define what these were, seeing how she is uncultivated in calypso tent culture. With feeble, illogical pretension she attributed the absence of all this expected sweetness to “the band overpowering the singers”. Well, shiver me timbers!
The young critic, with no talent for singing calypso – hardly writing it, and with no known expertise in choreography, purports to tell how young Pedro G and his dancers should have presented his popular Boost And Build, as she laments the absence of runners with Star Perez and her Ready To Burn.
Then Miss Intern confesses to failing to “figure out” noted tenor Anthony CoCo Barnard’s Figure It Out, a parody of a love relationship, to the melody of La Donna e Mobile. Woe are us!
Then to cap it off, an equally unhewn headline writer, with all the “set[ting] ablaze” of the audience by Terencia TC Coward titles Miss Intern’s ramblings Lukewarm Celebrity . . . .
The journeyman, who is obviously a bad influence on the intern, failed in the first fundamental principle of reporting: check!
With the bravado of an errant and raging bull he informs all that Celebrity “certainly made a gamble” – he meant took – in being judged on opening night. Had he checked, he would have learned that the tent show planned the Friday night before had been cancelled because of expected bad weather and flooding – as were other shows.
Like most of the other untalented critics of calypso, our journeyman throws in the air the perennial claim of difficulty in hearing the singers. Really, most of the time all they need to do is just listen.
I have found that critics – as well as arguers – do not listen. And not listening, they do not understand – anything!
Instead of reporting faithfully what transpired and attempting to take readers to the show, Mr Journeyman seeks to pontificate on what the audience “appeared to enjoy” and what they “evidently did not expect” and other such mumbo-jumbo and gobbledegook. This is the kind of tosh I may now expect daily in my retirement years.
I yearn for the day when the calypso tent writers can take me there and help me experience the talent I missed.
I yearn for the day when these reporters would keep their uninformed opinions to themselves – and spend their energies really learning how to write.