One of the concerns  of contemporary radical activists is “ Cultural Appropriation”: the  using stealing of

elements in a culture not your own and featuring them in one’s own culture, in music,dance,dress,food,decoration,architecture etc. An example of this is the appropriation of the Aboriginal flag by a non Aboriginal company which has then made it into a  product protected by intellectual property law . Hollywood has done something similar.It has produced an attractive fake Hispanic  “product” which it hopes will appeal to the sizeable 

Latino minority in the USA and to the Anglos hankering for a bit of “ castanet clicking and foot stamping” entertainment. Hollywood has never claimed that the “product” it offers is more than just that-a product. It is neither art nor really Spanish but 

if the customers want to buy it and be entertained they,and the Latino entertainers  can go to bed untroubled and dream of the money they’ll be making.There are no intellectual property laws stopping Hollywood  from doing whatever it desires and it has no interest in giving the public anything genuinely Hispanic if it can make lots of money by offering the public a cheap and vulgar imitation .

Before we continue it would be advisable to know some Spanish history and to see

how this is reflected in Spanish music. Spain was part of the Islamic Empire for a long time-800 years.No other European country has had such a long exposure to Oriental culture.In addition there were sizeable Christian and Sephardic Jewish minorities . In the 15th century

many Gypsies arrived in Spain adding yet another strong  flavour to the bubbling musical stew.

There is a Spanish word which refers to a sort of spiritually intense quasi religious experience felt whilst listening to music.The word is DUENDE and it is often associated with that quintessentially Spanish musical genre ,of Gypsy origin, namely FLAMENCO. Maybe the nearest English equivalent to the concept of DUENDE is SOUL. Such a moment of exaltation cannot be programmed,

it either happens or it doesn’t and is therefore a rare occurrence in the concert hall. However,the great French composer Maurice Ravel,in his RHAPSODY ESPAGNOLE comes very close to giving us 

a “DUENDE MOMENT”. Here is what the  Spanish composer Manuel de Falla had 

to say about it. “ The Rhapsody surprises me by it’s Spanish character. But how could I explain the subtly Hispanic quality of our musician knowing ,by his own admission,that

he had but neighbouring relations with our country , being born near it’s frontier?I rapidly solved the problem. Ravel’s Spain was a Spain ideally presented by his mother, whose refined conversation, always in an excellent Spanish,delighted me ,particularly when she 

would recall her youthful years spent in Madrid.”Ravel himself recalled his mother singing

Spanish and Basque songs to him and Spanish was spoken in the family home.  Ravel’s father was French and his son Maurice was the epitome of French elegance and sophistication.So he was not a “full blood” Spaniard ,   but a HALF CASTE in racist parlance.

 To someone as racist as Richard Wagner this mattered.Had Ravel been born and bred in Germany Wagner would have had misgivings as to his qualifications for writing German music. This is what Wagner had to say about Felix Mendelssohn,the darling of European concert audiences and Queen Victoria’s favourite composer.Unfortunately Mendelssohn had been born a Jew and in Wagner’s mind this was the greatest of crimes for which there was no expiation. “ The Jew can make a clever imitation of Western classical music but since the Jew lacks a real soul he can never feel it.” So Mendelssohn’s music was never performed in Germany during the Nazi era because he lacked the proper genes.According to Wagner’s way of thinking Ravel,being only half Spanish, should not have been capable of providing more than an IMITATION of authentic Spanish music.Let us see if there are any other ways to disqualify a gifted composer from composing Spanish music. Let us look at the other three composers in our program and see what we can come up with. The first composer to be considered is Edouard Lalo, French from way back. You will hear his SYMPHONIE ESPAGNOLE which is really a violin concerto.As far as I know Lalo  never spent any time in Spain but he obviously was well acquainted with Spanish music idioms and would surely have known some of the many Spanish musicians who came to Paris. There are Spanish folk songs also in his cello concerto.Spain is the geographical neighbour of France and Lalo was not the only French composer of note who was attracted to the vibrant musical life happening on the other side of the geographical fence – the Pyrenee mountain range. Of course Spain is not a geographical neighbour of Russia, the homeland of the two other composers in our program, Nicolai Rimsky Korsakov and Mikhail Glinka. So Ravel had a Spanish mother and Lalo lived reasonably close to Spain but how can one connect the two Russians to things Hispanic?

Russia had it’s own Oriental experience and it’s own deep connections with countries seen as sensual, exciting,alluring.Russia’s other side of the geographical cultural fence was Central Asia and to the South ,the Caucasus . It had itself been under Mongol control for 200 years during the Middle Ages .For the Russians the Orient represented both a real and an imaginary world , a place where the inhibitions and taboos of the Western “civilised” world didn’t apply. Of course those “taboos” were replaced by indigenous taboos of which they were not aware.The adventurous Russian could dream of harems,exotic customs and wild warriors whilst

the Russian composer found it easy to

respond to the  exotic and the unusual . The two composers featured in our program did that in unexpected ways. Nicolai Rimsky Korsakov had been travelling around the world as an officer in the Russian navy. He came from a family of naval officers and was following in their footsteps before he took the plunge and decided to devote his life to music.During this world tour the ship happened to stop at a Spanish port for three days and this was the only direct contact Rimsky Korsakov had with Spain.This did not stop him later on from composing a brilliant “Capriccio Espagnol” full of local colour,the product of a sensitive imagination and a superb orchestrator .He could have just as easily done it without spending  only three days in a Spanish port.

Mikhail Glinka’s connection with Spain was much more substantial.As a rich footloose amateur he had plenty of time to indulge his interests and Spanish music interested him very much. During the two years he lived in Spain he not only imbibed the local colour but also studied the “indigenous” music in depth. The result of this , later on, upon his return to Russia, was the “Jota Aragonese” which you will hear.

Non Spanish composers writing Spanish music cannot be expected to provide us with DUENDE moments- such moments are rare even with Spanish composers,maybe because commercialism and the concert hall aren’t the right venue for what is an intimate and fleeting sensation. But whether you are half Spanish like Ravel or not at all Spanish like Lalo and the Russians , there is nothing to stop you composing wonderful “imitations” which like a fake Gucci handbag made in Thailand is almost indistinguishable from the real thing.So yes, you don’t have to be Spanish to compose Spanish music.

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