The changing faces of music in the city

It has come to my attention that the culture institutions situated within Toronto are forms of elitist art supported by the bourgeois communities.

The city of Toronto is a palette of cultural fusion in which people from all different corners of the world come to live, play and work together in a suburban context, distinctly unique in their cultural backgrounds. I'd like to say that the city of Toronto is a place in which multiculturalism is not a dividing force in subcommunities but rather, a cultural well from which people draw knowledge from in the hope of attaining an understanding of their neighbors in the deepest humanist sense. However, the invisible divides that separate one community from another, also divide the elitist art that is found in affluent neighborhoods such as Yorkville from grass-roots art that is as genuine to cultural identity as Western music is to North American society. It is unfortunate that one form of art should be valued and respected more than another. Millions of dollars in funding have been put into arts Renaissance in Toronto, yet the issue of under financed music education within schools has been left out in the cold. I believe that music that does not reside in buildings, and in cultural institutions such as the COC's Four Seasons Centre, the ROM's Chin Crystal, the AGO's new Frank Gehry-designed facade, the National Ballet School, the new wing of the Royal Conversatory of Music, most of which have been over budget and under financed. Rather, music resides in the heart of the human soul, impenetrable and extinguishable, regardless of federal funding. I do not wish to criticize the obvious attempt made by the government to support the flourishing of arts. Instead, I would like to address the issue that art should be accessible to all, regardless of social status, and cultural background.

On a brighter note, the sphere of musical entertainment has broadened to include the activity of busking. Busking has become quite popular in the city of Toronto, particularly in the subway systems and also in some distinct areas of the city. On the corner of Bloor and St. George, right across the street from the Bata Shoe Museum, a Jewish harpist performs the music of his native land. Street performances of this sort not only allow people to make money, but also allow natives of various lands to impress their music and cultural distinctions on an otherwise ignorant society. This is the kind of music that I believe everyone should take an interest in, regardless of the stipulations of Western music. As a classically trained pianist, and a person who has thoroughly invested in the art music of Western culture, I believe that we should make every effort to acquire an understanding of people of different cultural backgrounds through the immersion of music from distant lands. After all, who is to say that one form of music is more valid than the other? More than likely, you would say, 'nobody.' Yet, millions of dollars have been invested in building projects which address just the dominant European art forms that have had elite status for the last couple hundred years. Somehow, the City of Toronto needs to revise their ethnocentric views on culture, to include less well-known and more personal forms of music within the public sphere.