Local musicians - financially oppressed?

Is the Ministry of Community Development, Culture and Gender Affairs making it unsustainable for non-Carnival musicians to survive, thanks to their tunnel vision and insistence on spending millions of dollars financing mainly one type of musical art form while others like the Pichakaaree celebrations in Longdenville, Chaguanas, or our Paranderos are forced to cut artist prize money and scrape by or shut down because of Government funding cuts? I wonder if poor marginalized musicians and other artists in T&T want to stab out their ear-drums with pencils instead of listening to more of the same year after year.

While Fay Anne and other Carnival artists deserve a prize for their contributions, that prize should not be so large that it prevents the Ministry from being able to fund a balanced cross-section of artists who represent our culturally diverse islands.

But wait, I forget tyranny is the name of the game in our banana republic. As our beloved Sprangalang boldly did say, "Calling on the culture ministry to give the Hindu Prachar Kendra in Longdenville, Chaguanas, more money, entertainer Dennis Hall said yesterday that the culture minister [Hon. Marlene McDonald] was behaving as if it was her personal money that was being used to help fund cultural activities in T&T."
Sprangalang: Give the people the $$ Ariti Jankie, Trinidad Express, Sunday, March 22nd 2009

 When asked to reflect on his Campbell’s soup can series, Warhol once said “I wanted to paint nothing. I was looking for something that was the essence of nothing and the soup can was it.” There’s quite a bit of difference between nothing and the essence of nothing. One is the mere absence of substance while the other is a much more profound metaphysical contemplation. So when considering meaning in art, we have to ask ourselves – how much we are willing to see?

Takashi Murakami, a Japanese multi-media artist commonly hailed as the Andy Warhol of the East, has made a veritable mint churning out cartoonish, fiberglass sculpture from his very own Tokyo-based factory. Employing production methods that would put Warhol to shame, Murakami is one among a generation of artists (Jeff Koons comes to mind) who often have no hand in the physical creation of their work. Instead, assistants working in the manner of an assembly line produce pieces according to the artist’s specifications. When I first came across Murakami, he struck me as the perfect example of capitalism run amok in modern art. The epitome of art as a highly synthetic product – created only to feed fame and generate profit. But then I read an interview in which Murakami, describing the nature of his work, said simply this:

I express hopelessness.
Suddenly his art didn’t mean what I thought it did.
Despite all of the profundity surrounding modern art, we surely can’t allow ourselves to become too awestruck by the artists’ professed intentions. Considering Warhol’s ability to manipulate his image in the media, its certainly possible that he was more concerned with producing a good sound bite than in painting the essence of nothingness. And Murakami may very well be less interested in expressing hopelessness than in mitigating his staggering financial success with a dash of existential despair. But what value is there to be found in speculating as to the artist’s true intentions? Whether they mean to do it or not, Warhol and the generation of artists that has succeeded him are the ideal ambassadors for the age in which we live.

Artists have always held a mirror to the face of society, showing us what we have become. No matter what he actually saw in the soup cans, by elevating them to the level of art, Warhol managed to encapsulate the increasing emptiness of modern existence. Whether he was commenting on that emptiness or contributing it is a question we’ll never answer. And whether consciously or not, Warhol was the first to see that humanity was spiraling into a vacuum of self-obsession – one where brand names and fleeting fame would exist as muse. In that way, Warhol was profoundly relevant – maybe even more so than Michelangelo. Warhol was Zarathustra on the mountaintop, a herald of the coming nothingness. The first to say, whether intentionally or not – if you want more meaningful art, build a more meaningful world.
- Excerpt taken from "I Wanted to Paint Nothing" - Sarah Nardi* - 23 Sep 2008

Comments

[bob quarless]

hey which one of the bonaparte is your dad? i use to play with bill and block we use to practice in lavantill old st joseph rd with ragga and bill jr i would like to get in touch with you i even played with bill in nassau am in seattle wash now but i would like to get in touch with you

[Trin]

Thank you for gracing my blog with your thoughts Mr. Bonaparte. (Readers who are unfamiliar with his family can read about them here: http://www.trinbagopan.com/steelpan/Bonaparte.htm Please correct me if I am wrong). You are right in saying we have lost our reasonable standards of music. Since we do not have an intelligent Minster of Culture, and she thinks non-Carnival-focused musicians and musical events don't deserve significant funding, I imagine she doesn't see the importance of something trivial like music theory education. Poor artists and musicians will continue to barely scrape by in Trinbago, else leave for foreign soil to live amongst strangers, away from the support of their families, trying to make it on their own. It is a great shame because our people are diverse and talented and we have the financial resources to support them all if we redistribute arts and music funding. Because of the tunnel vision on the part of the Ministry and their frightening attempt to stifle our artistic diversity, we will continue to suffer the loss of non-mainstream and non-Carnival-focused artists. Until we can unite to remove our elected idiots I am afraid the brain and talent drain will continue. So sad.

[Michael Bonaparte ( Bonaparte Brothers)]

Thanks for the opportunity!
I, as a born musician of Trinidad, had experienced the kind of financial hardship. I had to leave Trinidad to join Cruise Ships on the ocean, to meet the financial needs.The last ship I was on for 5 years as an all round musician was the Discovery 1.I am one of the Bonaparte Brothers who will like to see a reasonable standard of music return to Trinidad.Theory that will help the players to be more creative. Composition is out of the musical hands. We need to know scales etc. Got to go!