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Bangkok is not a city for classical music
Fresh into Thailand, these were some of my thoughts. It's quite easy to make the case that I don't know what I'm talking about, but anyway, I'm putting it out there. Enjoy!Bangkok is not a city for classical music. This city is organized around cacophony, not the fine mathematical confines of Strauss or Beethoven. It isrnnot by random chance that the great cities of Europe: Paris, Vienna, Prague have street after street of fine architecture. Buildings that obviously tookrndecades of care and craftsmanship to fine tune to a standard unseen by the restrnof the world.
Even in sprawling cities that are full of uncontrolled growth, there seems to be a rational plan to it. Centuries of largely slow demographicrnchanges will do that. A city with permanence that cannot be destroyed by two world wars has a way inspiring an attitude of patience in its inhabitants; they will wait generations to achieve harmony and beauty, and if there is a setback like V-2 rockets or a great fire, these are things that can be overcome with time.
Classical music is much the same way. The fine structures composed by the great musical minds of Europe took an eye for detail and a knack for planning that seemed embedded in the way of life in the great cities where this music was lovingly created.
Bangkok is too quick a city for classical music. The great commercial centers here have a sense that they are still in the act of startling construction. And for much of the city, this is true. This is not the craftsmanship of making a perfect molding over an archway, but the actual construction of huge glassrnand metal behemoths.
The huge commerce centers that are being built have cranes and bulldozers strewn about them like a five-year-old's sandbox. Much of the rest of the business that goes on here is in the form of sidewalk markets.
Each day the street hawkers must contend with one thousand others for the prime spots, only to have to repeat the struggle the following dawn. And the sidewalk markets are significant. I haven't found a single area of the city that isn't drowning in these portable storefronts. Now, I do not begrudge these people their livelihood, there is nothing wrong with the way they are feeding their family.
I am merely commenting on the psychology as I've found. However, it does not appeal to my sense of the aesthetic.
If I could describe the musical structure of Bangkok, it would consist of furious atonal melodic movement laid over sprawling dissonant chords. But the piece itself is unfinished. The pollution is tearing down the buildings asfast as the construction is putting them up. It is constantly being recast. This is a city coming into its own, and each day the challenges of feeding and housing and clothing ten millions is being dealt with anew.
The city onlyfeels thirty years old, it is barely an adolescent. And like an adolescent, it should be forgiven the shortsightedness of youth and let come to its own conclusions about its path. It certainly cannot be hemmed in. Bangkok is here, and it is a true city of the twenty-first century.
from http://www.mangodaily.com
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About the author:
Jonathan Cemenuk maintains the websites at http://www.eslsociety.comand http://www.mangodaily.com
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