edition — a festival for other music.

Recensionen var en obehaglig påminnelse om en av grundanledningarna varför jag ursprungligen startade denna festival – för att göra motstånd mot den dominerande berättelsen om vad som låter sig höras, och vilken slags musik som räknas. Braxton, liksom de musiker som framträder med honom, har ägnat sitt liv åt föra musiken framåt. Är det för mycket begärt att förvänta sig ett uns av möda och självkritik av musikbevakningen på en rikstäckande tidning som DN?

John Chantler
Konstnärlig Ledäre,
Edition Festival for Other Music

It was disappointing to read Johannes Cornell’s review in Sunday’s DN of the Anthony Braxton Concert at Eric Ericssonhallen — not so much because he didn’t like the music, but because he justified his inability to engage with it using the same tired, ignorant and fundamentally racist tropes that critics have been deploying in relation to Braxton’s music for decades. It was clear that Cornell had made little to no effort to familiarise himself with Braxton’s compositional practices and theoretical writings — despite them being readily available via Braxton’s Tri-Centric Foundation website. Even a cursory glance would make it crystal clear that Braxton has never simply borrowed ‘the pretensions of european art music’. To suggest so continues an ongoing erasure of black composers from art music history and denies a broader black intellectual tradition, ignoring the contributions made, for example, by the Association for the Advancement of Creative Music (AACM).

It was a stark reminder of why I started the festival in the first place — to counter the dominant narrative of what gets heard here and what counts. Braxton, and the musicians performing with him have dedicated their lives to the advancement of music — is it too much to expect a little effort and some self-awareness from those with the power of a national newspaper platform?