Author: Insider's

©Robert Stark

Slow Music Manifesto

Slow Food was born as a protest to a McDonald’s restaurant opening at the Spanish Steps.  An offshoot has been Slow Cities.  Both are essentially about preserving diversity of local traditions.

I would propose that we are in urgent need of a Slow Music movement to preserve local, traditional music against the onslaught of mostly American pop music that has become ubiquitous even in Italy where one usually hears the same loud, intrusive music whether one is in a fast food restaurant, a small and intimate Slow Food restaurant, a large supermarket, a gourmet food market selling Slow Foods, a petrol station, a department store, an artisanal shop…. it rarely matters.  Italian music (regional folk or classical) which was for generations a pillar of Italian culture is largely dead even in Italy.

But I would go further than just preserving the great traditions of music.  I would argue that, except in one’s own home or earphones, recorded music should be supplanted by live acoustic music or no music at all.

Slow Music should be about allowing us fully to inhabit the place in which we are, rather than being transported to some homogeneous imagined place.  I love grand opera but siting in a small trattoria, is not sitting in an opera house; let alone a rock concert in a football stadium.  If I am eating in a small trattoria or café, I should be immersed in the natural sounds of that place, including ambient sounds of conversation and, indeed, birdsong if sitting outside. If there is music, it should be performed by present musicians using acoustical, un-amplified instruments or voices.  Slow Music should advance this principle to all public spaces.  We should be immersed in the sounds of life itself.  Virtual life is a sad alternative, disconnecting us from life and from one another.

Robert Stark

Rome