In a passionate act of independent advocacy for BBC Radio 3’s Record Review, which is being shunted next weekend to a snooze slot, criminal lawyer Oliver Wilmott offers a new definition of music criticism in an age of diversity and inclusion.

Try this for size:

… The strange thing about such inclusivity, which one might associate with the cultural left, is that it sounds remarkably like the thinking of the economic right. If the question ceases to be, what is most worthy, what is most beautiful (because such judgments are subjective and who dares claim a better view than anyone else), and it becomes instead, what will be most approachable to most people, how does that differ from the mindset of the marketer? What is the point of public service broadcasting of music at all?

Record Review embodies a wholly different conception of inclusivity. It is a programme of musical criticism, and implicit in the very status of the critic is the belief that some listen better than others, that some people have an ear better attuned to beauty and meaning. Implicit also is the belief that beauty is something we can actually talk about, not a purely subjective matter of which any discussion would necessarily be pointless. It follows from these beliefs that the rest of us have something to learn, and that process will not involve simply giving us what we like, but requiring us to listen to music with which we struggle, and demanding we listen better. What it does not involve is building a graven image of us, like a Tik-Tok algorithm, and then manipulating us, feeding our desires so as to persuade us to keep the radio on. Unlike the situation that applies in the case of a market-orientated programme, in the case of Record Review there is no buyer and seller, no manipulator and manipulated, only parties to a conversation. Anyone with a radio set or on the Internet in this country may listen and be caught up the conversation. And if the references in that conversation are obscure to begin with, time and attention will make them meaningful. That, I suggest, is truly democratic radio…

Read on here.

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