What is culture? A sum of knowledge acquired from books, endless quotations or a typical way of living or feeling? One way of defining culture is to distinguish it as a concept from that of nature, in a way parallel to the one by which civilization has been opposed to barbary, but without this pejorative lyricism about it.

Simple as it may look, it can help us to emerge from a world of prejudices. Nazism, for example, thrived on an approach where culture proceeded from nature just as a plant grows from the earth. So that culture and nature would be almost the same. So the German culture would be the result of Germanity, and even of the German land. This confusion led it to chaos.

Anyone who has studied geography knows that, even in European forests, much of the original fauna or flaura has been extinct for centuries. Some areas have been widely reforested. Thus, even forest scenery can be described as culture! By the way, Beethoven’s scene by the brook in his Pastoral Symphony could owe as much to this idea of culture as to “authentic” wilderness.

Assuming that, when one glances at the way classical music has always been performed in its native European countries (Austria, France, Germany…) and compares these atavisms to the performing style of classical musicians in the US, one discovers something essential to every form of culture.

Music, be it secular music or classical, can be performed with little reference to “original” tradition, especially when this tradition replaced the way music was performed or sounded when it was composed centuries back. US orchestras would ignore much of the European tradition and would play the music with a renewed vision, just relying on the notes and without the “habits” their European counterparts had accumulated with the passage of time in their way of playing.

More explicit perhaps is the case of baroque music (15th to 18th century). Bach’s Oratorios were performed in Europe until the 1970s by huge orchestras and choirs, with much overemphasis, and a misplaced romantic style. Since musicologists and scholars reacted to that, Bach is peformed closer to what he wanted, with limited forces and much less exaggeration. Yet nobody has had the final say about this music. The truth is that it can move on with totally diffferent approaches.

So it may seem odd to want Mauritians in the classical repertoire to see themselves as indebted to the past and without direct connections with local realities. But why should not Mauritians or people born in Mauritius have their own atavisms, even when playing Mozart, without even betraying him. Or, to put it otherwise, accepting a foreign culture does not necessarily mean the death of local ones.

Because culture is not just nature. Just as roots don’t just rely on past rainfalls, its strength does not only rely on a fixed deposit but needs more complex human and technical qualities to live, be enriched and enrich…

In America, Ray Charles did it by bringing the gospel from the church to the music-hall, replacing the religious context with romance. He also created music from elements of the country style integrated with his own rythm and blues. The outstanding local example is Kaya, who rejuvenated the sega with reggae influences. He gave a new flavour to the music of the Mauritian melting-pot.

<B>Florence BERVOIX</B>