Yesterday morning I spent two hours in the company of
Professor Nigel Osborne, a man who believes that music can transform lives and that politics and art make for a bad combination.
âThat always makes me think of Hitler and his watercolours.â He said with hint of a smile.
The Professor was guest speaker as I joined colleagues from ±«Óătv Scotland for a day-long conference at the Stirling Management Centre on the campus of Stirling University. He describes himself as a âcreative musicianâ because he dislikes the term âcomposerâ, but one glance at tells you heâs being modest to the point of absurdity.
Over the past forty years he seems to have travelled the world and always seems to have been in the right place at the right time when history was being made. He was there in Poland prior to the launch of Solidarity. He was chums with
as Czechoslovakia broke free from Soviet control. He describes his sense of frustration at watching the Bosnian war unfold on television and so went there to help the orphans who had been left traumatised by their experiences.
More recently heâs been working in Kampala and, indeed, with a special education project here in Scotland. Heâs also been working on a music therapy device which will detect a personâs heart rate and breathing and then offer appropriate music to help regulate the rhythms of your body.
He told story after story and Iâll share two of them with you. The first concerned his time in Iran where he worked with students on a project that combined music and dance.
âOf course dancing is banned in Iran,â he explained, âso I had to go to the censor and ask for special permission to perform the work. The censor agreed saying the work could be described as expressive movement â not dance.â
And then there was his bafflement with the cult of
John Lennon among those groups who were fighting for democracy in Eastern Europe. Many seemed to see Lennon as a hero because he had âsuffered so muchâ.
The Professor explained that he had actually met John Lennon and that he was a nice guy. But he had been brought up in Liverpool by his Aunt and his suffering was nothing compared to the people behind the Iron Curtain.
âThen one night I found myself shouting âyouâd be better off with Lenin than Lennon!â