Harpsichords for Revolution!
People often ask me: What’s it like to live in the San Francisco Bay Area?
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Well, at last, I’ve finally found the perfect answer. From now on, I’ll just send them this link. Yes, it really is what it seems to be: a harpsichord concert intended to incite a socialist revolution.
This is an actual listing for a real event happening this Sunday in Oakland.
The flyer for the event (click on the picture to see it full size) states in no uncertain terms: “A Harpsichord Recital and Lecture — Come take part in a new revolution sparked by ancient music!”
What’s it like to live in the San Francisco Bay Area? Here’s the equation:
Pretentious cultural snobbery + delusional communist fantasies = an overwhelming sensation of smugness and superiority.
Below is an unedited cut-and-paste of the full listing. No further comment necessary:
La Revolution!
August 21st at 7p.m
510-451-5818
Humanist Hall
390 27th St.
OAKLAND-DOWNTOWNLa Revolution is a harpsichord recital and lecture that works to inspire the audience to take immediate action in dealing with our economic crisis and global disasters. Early music performer and political activist, Vibeka Lyman, has probed the concept of what it takes for people to act politically and after spending a year in France, she has returned with some convincing ideas. Experiencing the culture, where strikes are a regular occurrence, she came to realize that freedom to express ones emotions, including anger, is needed for people to hit the streets.
We live in an American culture of emotional repression where anger and other emotions are not allowed to be used freely.
In the Paris general strike of 1968, a single unrelated event sparked the revolt; men were not allowed to bring home women to their dorm rooms, and out of this small protest, a larger strike unfolded. President, Charles de Gaulle eventually went into exile and several social changes were reached.
Ms. Lyman believes the theory that events that unleash emotion in society such as the grocer, Mohammed Bouazizi, in Tunisia who set himself on fire, that brought on the Egyptian revolution, are what it takes for a strike to take place. She hopes that her concert, a dynamic performance of composers: Couperin, Chambonnieres, Scarlatti, Froberger, and Johann Sebastian Bach, will create such an experience in her listeners. Vibeka has performed on the keyboard for over 30 years and has experience with learning with some of the best teachers in the Bay Area and in Paris. Baroque music has been scientifically proven to heighten creative thought in the brain, and this concert is an effort to enhance people’s thinking as well as their enjoyment.
Listening to Bach always gets my blood to boiling….
Ah, wonderful. We’ll use the music of composers who were subsidized by just such elites as we now wish to dangle from lightpoles. Kings, bishops, nobles, all oppressors of the masses, all enjoying through taxation and capitalism the works of great artists as their servants. No one else could afford to commission such works.
But today we shall take their coerced creativity as a symbol of our righteous revolution, and we promise, once we’ve overthrown and appropriated the treasuries of the capitalist oppressors of California, that we too shall patronize serious artistes to produce glorious undying works proclaiming Glory to Us for all our overindebted grandchildren to revere.
Of all the unintentionally hilarious phrases in the listing, my favorite by far is:
“…after spending a year in France, she has returned with some convincing ideas.”
Classic! Nothing tickles my ribs like a liberal drunk on her own clueless grandiosity.
Yeah, that was the best bit of comedy IMHO. At least it was a whole year – I ran into a lot of privileged college brats who came back with all sorts of “interesting ideas” after a 2 week vacation. They would always use that as the defense in their arguments.
I showed them the pictures I took of (then) Czechoslovakia and Eastern Germany just after the wall fell*.
*went there as a kid – the company my dad worked for at the time had business in Germany and he wanted to see what it was really like. Thank goodness bribes were cheap back then
“In the Paris general strike of 1968, a single unrelated event sparked the revolt; men were not allowed to bring home women to their dorm rooms, and out of this small protest, a larger strike unfolded. President, Charles de Gaulle eventually went into exile and several social changes were reached.”
Rubbish. De Gaulle never went into exile in ’68. In fact, he dissolved the French Parliament in order to initiate a June general election that was in effect a referendum on the causes of the General Strikers. The Gaullists won 352 seats in that election; all other parties combined won 135.
De Gaulle resigned in ’69 after the failure of a governmental decentralization referendum that he had backed. The election that followed his resignation brought to power Georges Pompidou, de Gaulle’s long-time Prime Minister. In other words, the strikers lost and the Gaullists won.
Rule Number One: When someone is playing with weapons-grade stupid do not distract them with facts.
“In the Paris general strike of 1968, a single unrelated event sparked the revolt; men were not allowed to bring home women to their dorm rooms, and out of this small protest, a larger strike unfolded.” A short time later, as a result of the student protest, a black man was elected President of the United States.
Causal links abound!
Well of course! Bach, in addition to being one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time, was also one of Christianity’s great theologians, so it makes perfect sense to use his music to impose a political philosophy that ignores man’s essential worth and humanity in favor of a deranged collectivism.
Goodness gracious, what a horrendous thing to do to the harpsichord, a perfectly lovely and delightful instrument.
Maybe we can get Zombie to organize a counter-protest for harpsichord justice.
Heck, I almost feel like setting myself on fire just from reading the listing!
When I plan a recital, I just hope that someone shows up. What if I planned a revolution and no one came?
This is so cool! Thank you thank you! The Harpsichord Revolution! Well, I guess it’s better than the sluts, who seem to be on a mission to remind people why the law requires women to wear clothes.
I just can’t get Bach wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt out of my head now.