In some erudite quarters it’s called “reverse colonialism”: the process by which innovations that the West imposed on the rest of the world are reinvigorated by former colonies and sent zinging back to staid old Europe. We’ve seen it happen in sport. Just think of all those games that the British invented and exported, but at which the rest of the world now loves to thrash us.
It has happened in religion too. Once it was Western missionaries evangelising Africa and South America. Now the beleaguered Churches of Europe often look to the Third World for moral authority. And it’s happened in manufacturing. Britain may have been the crucible of the Industrial Revolution, but we have only to scrutinise the labels on our clothes, cars and household appliances to see how comprehensively Far Eastern traders have outmastered their former rulers.
Is it also happening in the arts?
Western artists as diverse as Gauguin, Picasso and Henry Moore have long drawn inspiration from the supposedly “primitive” Third World. But it’s in music that “reverse colonialism” has been most apparent. Most people acknowledge that modern rock, pop and soul music grew out of African-American song and dance. But think, too, of how the Western musical scene has been liberated and energised by the comparatively recent explosion of “world music”.
Just as fascinating is the way that musicians from unexpected parts of the world are now taking Western classical masterpieces – masterpieces that are perhaps too reverentially treated in the West – and revitalising them by injecting pulsating energy and fresh, uninhibited ideas. Listen to how a brilliant new generation of Chinese pianists is reinterpeting Chopin and Debussy according to their own sensibilities. Listen to the exuberant Venezuelan youngsters of the Sim?n Bolivar Orchestra skipping, whooping through the stern Austro-German symphonic repertoire – unencumbered by preconceptions, or the paralysing sense of awe, that sometimes grips European musicians tackling these pieces.
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And listen – or better still, watch – what the mesmerising South Africans of the Isango/Portobello theatre company do to The Magic Flutewhen their irreverent take on Mozart transfers to the Duke of York’s Theatre in London’s West End this week. I saw it at the Young Vic and had a few fuddy-duddy reservations. But I was bowled over by the delectable riffing of the massed marimbas that replace the usual 18th-century orchestra, and by such inspired incongruities as the magic jazz trumpet that stands in for the magic flute, and the sexy girlband who replace the Three Boys.
What I found most compelling, however, was the way that the Africans simply swept away all the racist, misogynist and patriarchal aspects of the libretto that so worry modern white liberals. It’s instructive to compare this uncomplicated feast of dance and song with the overblown, symbolism-saturated production currently playing at the Royal Opera. The Africans may come from a different continent and have a fraction of the classical music expertise available at Covent Garden. But for my money they come closer to embodying the innocent, pantomimic joy that the dying Mozart wanted to shine out from his stage swan-song. www.theambassadors.com/dukeofyorks