MellowSmokeMan wrote:quinterbourne wrote:People in Europe enjoy classical oriented concerts a lot more than here is North America. I guess the "culture" of it is bigger there.
Yeah. Kind of like the "culture" of hating Jews and Americans.
I'll take individual freedom and poor musical taste over "cultured" communities who listen to Brahms and Zappa any day, any time.
God bless America.
-MSM
Religion and politics are tricky matters!
I am totally aware that two infamous European –isms have caused innumerable cases of death, suffering, and sorrow in the decades around my date of birth.
I am aware, that the Danish fishermen salvaging the overwhelming majority of the Danish Jewish community during WWII asked for a lot of money to risk their boats and their lives.
But I have in a musical context met one of these Danish Jews, who happened to be in a far out provincial place, when the nazis went for the Danish Jews. He had absolutely no complaints about having coughed up the cash for being transported to Sweden.
My father was a fundraiser within the resistance, as I later on have been it in cultural contexts. That’s why I was raised in Germany, where my father went to teach within the Danish minority after the war.
I was raised in liberal Protestant Christianity, but my social surroundings were brainless conservative Protestants after I moved to Denmark.
I left the Church of Denmark. My father didn’t like that, as he was a high ranking official within the voluntary functions of the church. But he by now accepts, that I consider myself a non-converted Jew (no knives are allowed around my private parts).
The argument bringing me out on top of any discussion even with theologists is: Jesus never considered himself as anything but a Jew.
Still some of my best musical performances have been carried out within the Faroese and Danish Protestant churches. I loved to play in churches, but mostly I had to reduce myself to being the organiser and conductor.
Like I see some Scandinavian languages just being variants of each others (a point of view not popular in Norway), then I see no real problems between the Jewish and Christian religions.
It may be known that my little coastal provincial town for periods has been under a state of siege caused by Palestinians faking as refugees committing murder and arson.
Recent court cases caused heavy sentences. And they revealed to my surprise, that the Palestinian clan causing the problems was Christian. So I could not air my religious biases.
I am not biased against Americans. The best-educated ones are excellent carriers of the cultural heritage from all over the world.
Klaus Smedegaard Bjerre
