Backing track, back tracking or tracking back?
Vesna ‘are not your dolls’: Eurovision Q&A
Six piece girl band Vesna have already made the final, with a song that urges support for Ukraine.
When I saw the headline I thought this might be a political comment, for if typically you tried to make a political statement at a sporting event you would quickly find that sport is apolitical. Whilst the joining together of the indefinite article and the adjectival noun is intended to express that politics is not permitted to enter sport, that is patently untrue. It is a mere pretence to cover up some other motive. Politics does have a part to play. So, the strap line of the BBC article which gave the impression that a particular performer was not only permitted to make a political statement but that that statement was an integral part of the performance aroused some interest. Even where apolitical is abused in sport, to go that far is hardly permitted.
A careful reading of the article however suggests that superficially at least there is no political statement at all in what is said or done. It is a matter of interpretation in a particular context. In a different ages and places different interpretations may be placed upon the words expressed in a particular language, as it is for the words ‘Lead kindly light’. However, there was something of greater interest and concern, but as one who has used similar techniques I have to be careful how I criticise.
Imagine what it would be like if you turn up at the cup final and on the field you do not see twenty three men, but one man and twenty-two androids. Would you not feel somewhat cheated? ‘Oh no, the reply would come. Don’t worry each android would behave exactly as you would expect the individual upon whom it has been modelled to behave. It will be just like watching the real thing. Each android has been programmed with AI to imitate its model. It will do even better. It will avoid all of the mistakes that the star performer would make or could make. The game will be far better’. Is the placement of artificial turf a preparation for such a change? Imagine being able to watch Pele, Hurst and Beckenbauer again even if only in avatar.
Or, if having spent months writing the dissertation for your finals, you find that everyone else wrote theirs just the day before using ChatGPT; and that the examiners were quite happy about that. Or again, you hear that Menuhin shall perform the Beethoven in the RAH, but when you arrive there is an empty dais and the compiled sounds of a Deutsche Grammophon recording* booming out of the speakers.
It was the words ‘The technical complexity of Eurovision means that all songs are sung to a backing track’ that caught my attention. I had always thought that the performances were live, though of course very well rehearsed and flawlessly performed, just as in every other music competition throughout the country. What would you think if the Black Dyke Band turned up and simply mimed to their own playing, which was a compilation of several different ‘performances’ from which all of the faults had been ironed out. In Leeds the whole orchestra turns out to play live for the pianists. So why, in the light of so called technical complexity, is a band not permitted to play its own music in front of the audience. Do they think that in some way a wholly live performance will devalue the ‘competition’? Do they fear that the quality of the acts may not be as good as the organisers want you to think they are. It becomes a sham of a competition when you are permitted to iron out the defects in the backing track. Might as well project holographs of the group as mime.
In any event, what is this reference to a backing track? Has someone lost sight of what the music is. Is not the backing track an intrinsic part of the musical presentation? Erlkönig would not be as fearful as it is without its ‘backing track’. Or do they actually not care about the music at all, it is really simply about physical gyration? Nothing else matters.
How disappointing! But then that is what this world loves. It loves the appearance, but not the reality. The splendid buildings which rise up contrary to the building regulations, but collapse at a shifting of the ground beneath them. The war games fascinate and captivate many in their games’ rooms and virtual reality worlds, but place the same in the reality of Bakhmut, Dresden or Saigon; what then?
It is the same with godliness, men love the appearance of it, but ask them to change their way of life to live godly lives and they turn away. They are very happy with a religion which says: ‘Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,’ all of which concern things which do not endure. These are but the commandments and doctrines of men. They are regulations. ‘If we keep them we shall live’ is what they think. Well, these things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in a self-imposed religion, but it is a false humility and are of no value against the indulgence of the body. (Colossians 2:20-23) Ask them however to become lovers of God rather than pleasure, and they turn away. They want the benefits of religion, but do not want its power to change the way in which they live. We love ourselves, we love money, we love pleasure. This will all pass away, and then what? ‘What good will it do for a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul?’ the Lord Jesus Christ asked us.
Let them have their backing tracks if they will, but let us, without hypocrisy, love the Lord our God, who gave himself to save our souls, with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!
* Coco is not aware of any such recording