Arts and Culture in the Post-Covid Era

Sometime in May Washington area's music organizations started selling tickets for tentatively scheduled live summer concerts. The first sales went very much like the early offers of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. You had to get your computer ready ahead of the appointed start of the ticket sales and jump in as quickly as you could into the organization's website. The battle for a seat, or rather seats since individual tickets were not available, was as fierce as the battle for a vaccine in January and February. The experience reminded me of my youth in former Yugoslavia, where often we had to line up and fight for our share of coffee, tooth paste, toilet paper or some other scarce commodity.

The first concert to line up for as the Covid restrictions eased in May was the National Symphony Orchestra's performance at the Kennedy Center, featuring Russian virtuoso pianist Daniil Trifonov. The immediate obstacle was logging into my account. The website kept rejecting my user name and password. If I tried to get in as a guest, I was able to move two seats into the shopping bin, but when I reached the payment page the frustration continued. The system automatically added a $50 donation to your bill, which theoretically you could refuse, but when you did, your seats disappeared from the shopping basket. My friend was trying simultaneously on her lap top with the same result. We concluded that only people who agreed to pay the donation could purchase tickets. By the time we figured that out, all the tickets were gone. 

I managed to obtain a ticket through a different channel and saw what had sparked the fierce battle for seats. Out of 2,500 the Kennedy Center filled only about 260.  

Kennedy Center Concert Hall, May 28, 2021, photo: Z. Hoke

The small group of patrons ushered into the concert hall spoke in hushed tones as if going to a funeral.  Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter struck a cheerful note with brightly colored clothes, better suited for a summer lunch al fresco than a Friday evening concert. She thanked the patrons for coming, seemingly oblivious of the struggle they had gone through to win the honor.

On arrival to the podium, Maestro Gianandrea Noseda was so emotional that he cut  his greeting short. Overall, the event, with a drastically reduced orchestra as well as the audience, had the aura of a rehearsal rather than a real concert, but when the music started, the magic of yore returned.

The opening set was Four Noveletten, a rarely heard work by black composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. U.S. music organizations are now including at least one piece by a black composer in every new program to make up for years of neglect of African-American talent. The Coleridge-Taylor piece and Haydn's Symphony No. 95 that framed Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No.1 were pleasant, fluffy and forgettable in the face of the powerful piece performed by masters such as Trifonov at the piano and William Gerlach with the trumpet. 

GianandrGianandrea Noseda conducting NSO's forst 2021 concert, Photo: Scott Suchman

The second NSO concert on June 3 was designed to entertain. Called "surprise", it did not reveal the program except to say that Maestro Noseda would engage with the audience. Perhaps that's why it was a little easier to get the tickets. I expected a list of popular short pieces by well known composers, but I should have given more credit to Noseda. In many ways, the event was more fun than a usual classical music concert because it comprised six pieces that were either written by little known composers or were obscure pieces by well known composers. Noseda was in a cheerful mood as he made the audience guess what the orchestra was playing. Again, he opened with a black composer, William Grant Still. I had never heard Still's Serenade before, but was able to recognize that the music was American. I even whispered to my companion: "sounds like old Hollywood." As it turned out, Still had written arrangements for Hollywood musicals. 

The program included another black composer, Washington D.C. native George Walker, with his Lyric for Strings. Richard Strauss, Samuel Barber and Ottorino Respighi were probably the best known composers in the program, while Still, Walker and Italian Giovanni Bottesini were lesser known. Bottesini, dubbed the "Paganini of the double bass" is credited with developing bass technique that has opened up people's eyes (or ears) to the instrument's versatility.  NSO's, principal double-bass Robert Oppelt was given the opportunity to shine in Bottesini's Elegy No. 1 for Bass and Strings.

Noseda also showcased the orchestra's clarinetist Lin Ma, bassoonist Sue Heineman and harpist Adriana Horne in Strauss's Duet-Concertino for Clarinet and Bassoon with String Orchestra and Harp.

The most exciting piece for me was the closing, Respighi's Gli ucelli (Birds) whose tune I recognized immediately and could hum along all its five movements, but could not guess what it was. Don't you hate it when that happens?

The NSO will perform in Wolf Trap later this month, introducing another rare piece, The Anonymous Lover by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges from 1870, another black composer.  How I would love to be there, but I'll be away.  I will return to Wolf  Trap in July after a two-year absence. The tickets for the two concerts I plan to attend were sold in "pods" of two to eight. While the small audiences at the Kennedy Center concerts felt sad despite the obvious advantages (no rustling of cough-drop wraps, or patrons sucking at their water bottles right next to your ear) a smaller audience at Wolf Trap's Filene Center will be a blessing. For years I have eschewed the mass shows there, opting instead for a more intimate setting at the Barns. But this summer that option is not available.

Museums also are reopening to a reduced number of visitors and shorter hours. The need to secure timed passes eliminates the spontaneity of going to see art when you feel like it. After three years of waiting (nothing to do with Covid) and several letters of complaint, I managed to obtain passes for the National Museum of African American History and Culture for June 30. Who knows if it will be hot or pouring on that day, whether I will have a headache, or whether I will feel like doing something entirely different, but June 30 it is and I should count my blessings.

The pandemic has taught me lessons: not to take free museums in DC for granted, to feel privileged when I am able to attend a concert or visit a museum, and to prepare physically and mentally for the cultural event I am seeing. Arts and culture deserve our full attention and appreciation, which we often forget when they are easily accessible. 

Fortress Europe Getting Militarized

When I revisited Rome in 2006, I was disappointed to find that once wide open St. Peter's Square could only be accessed through metal detectors, at least during the pope's general weekly audience. I could not imagine it would become worse. But it has. The video news packages I have worked on this week about security measures in Rome, Paris, Brussels and other European cities all show the same scenes of heavily armed police and soldiers, patrolling major streets and landmarks. 

Apart from the quality of the picture and different uniforms, one could be watching footage from World War Two Europe. Officials in Brussels are shutting down schools, public transport and some businesses due to "serious and imminent" threat of terrorist attacks in more than one place.

Soldiers and police squads are combing Belgium's capital for suspects, lurking behind every corner. Officials are warning citizens to avoid crowds while promising to defeat terror. France has intensified its bombing campaign against ISIS in Syria as did Russia. Hillary Clinton said the United States must lead the fight against ISIS - "not to contain it, but defeat it." In this country as elsewhere politicians want to close the doors to Syrian migrants as a way of protecting the country from terrorist attacks.

About a year or so ago, I took an online course on terrorism offered by the University of Leiden. One of the things I remember best from that course is a plethora of facts and findings showing the disconnect between politicians and scientists regarding terrorism. For example, according to the scientifically collected data, more people have been killed in Africa, Asia and the Middle East by terrorist groups such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Shabab and Boko Haram than in the combined attacks in Europe and the United States since September 11, 2001. One could add that more people in the United States are murdered each year in mass killings or "ordinary" homicides than have ever been killed by terrorists.  

Yet, as the Dutch academics pointed out, more money has been invested in the ramped up security, including new agencies in the developed countries than in those most hurt by terrorism. The Leiden scholars also pointed out that these efforts have not made the world a safer place. They suggested that the money would be better spent on financing centers to research terrorism, especially in parts of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Africa,  the Middle East and other regions most endangered by violent groups. But most helpful of all, the online course suggested, would be for politicians to consult with scientists on the matter. ( I am not so sure when I see how some of our politicians reject scientific findings on climate change).

From what I can tell, this is not just the view of a bunch of liberal European scholars. Rosa Brooks, law professor at Georgetown University here in Washington, wrote in an article for Foreign Policy: "If we want to reduce the long-term risk of terrorism — and reduce its ability to twist Western societies into unrecognizable caricatures of themselves — we need to stop viewing terrorism as shocking and aberrational, and instead recognize it as ongoing problem to be managed, rather than “defeated.” "

Years ago, I interviewed Mark Juergensmeyer, the author of what is now a standard textbook on the subject, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. He noted an increase of violent terrorist attacks since the 1990s and said they are committed by people who see the world as being in some sort of "cosmic war." During the Cold War, he said, the world was divided into the communist East and non-communist West, with the Third World balancing in between. But after its end, "the rise of geopolitics and of a global economic system, although in some way unites everybody, it also disrupts traditional societies and gives a sense of uncertainty to people who feel that they are not a part of the new world."

According to Juergensmeyer, those who feel disenfranchised, especially  younger people, commit acts of violence or join terrorist groups whose leaders employ religious images of the divine struggle against evil in the service of their worldly political battles. The barbaric acts that seem senseless to most of the world, are what he calls "performance violence," designed to engage the world in the war, quite unlike the kind of terrorism associated with left-wing Marxist movements that was more strategic and had a more practical goal.

According to that analogy, a world leader who declares war against terror, would appear to be falling into the terrorists' trap. Many Europeans seem to think so. A German friend e-mailed me, "It's crazy. Total overreaction - like after 9/11. I thought the Europeans wouldn't do such a thing but apparently yes. And Hollande - like Bush - is of course internally weak and unpopular and now tries to exploit it to boost his image and electoral chances. It's terrible."

Pope Francis has refused to succumb to the terrorist strategy. In his address to the faithful on Sunday he stressed that the doors to the church will not be closed under any circumstances.

Ordinary citizens also have displayed more sang-froid after the Paris attacks than their leaders. Many said they were concerned, but won't allow fear to control their lives, and a video of a Parisian father telling his son "they might have guns, but we have flowers" went viral online. 

Of course, no political leader can ignore the terror threat, and short-term security measures are in order.  In the long term, I am inclined to believe in my grandmother's maxim "better to prevent than to cure " (a disease). 

What have we done all these years to predict, let alone prevent, the march of al-Baghdadi's forces from Syria into Iraq early last year? The sweeping victories by well armed and well trained fighters were a huge surprise to the general public who had never heard of ISIS. But sociologists, scholars, authors, even film makers have been giving us hints for years - decades - of what the future may bring. I mentioned Kureishi's movie "My Son, the Fanatic" in one of my previous blogs. 

Why is it that political leaders cannot read the writing on the wall when a lot of ordinary citizens can? Politicians react and over-react to compensate for the lack of timely action at a great cost to their nations, and it's just what the terrorists want. ISIS is now a household name in every corner of the world, partly due to their own propaganda, and partly due to the attention they are getting from the media and the political leaderships.

As Brooks and others point out, the best way to reduce the benefits terrorists reap from the world's attention is to stop overreacting. History shows that terrorism cannot be defeated by arms, and that safety measures work only until attackers figure out a way to circumvent them.  Even if you destroy one terrorist group, another one will crop up. But a lot can be done to prevent any new wave of violence by foreseeing it.  Closer cooperation between scholars and politicians might help produce a more successful final outcome in the so-called war on terror.

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Furter reading:
An academic study from 2004
http://www.humiliationstudies.org/documents/WyattBrownNY04meeting.pdf  

Recent article from The New York Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/nov/16/paris-attacks-isis-strategy-chaos/?printpage=true