A striking band

A municipal brass band, I discovered the other day, can be quite striking.

The city of Arts and Sciences

We’d seen an announcement for a free concert by Valencia’s ‘Banda Municipal’ in the city’s wonderful and modernistic City of Arts and Sciences. I hadn’t realised that because it was called a ‘banda’, the group giving it was a brass band. I suppose the clue’s in the word, but I’m still not sensitive enough to the subtle distinctions of the Spanish language. A band is a ‘banda’, an orchestra an ‘orquesta’. I must remember not to confuse the two.

That, though, wasn’t the last of my surprises. Another awaited us as we approached the hall, to be greeted by the unmistakable sounds of a brass band playing. First, it wasn’t yet time for the concert to start. Second, it seemed to be happening out of doors, and in my experience the point of a concert hall is that concerts take place inside it, not outside.

Still, as we climbed the stairs onto the fine esplanade in front of the entrance to the building, there was no doubting what we were seeing. There was the banda municipal, playing out of doors. A small crowd had gathered around it to listen, and we joined it.

The band was good. I’ve always liked brass bands, especially since the film Brassed Off, with its remarkable and poignant story of a coal mine’s brass band struggling to keep on playing after the mine was closed, and the miners thrown out of work, during Maggie Thatcher’s scorched-earth war against the most powerfully unionised of British workers. The banda municipal was just as striking, with its trumpets and its trombones, its clarinets and its horns, its snare drums and its saxophones. 

Of course, it has every reason to be good. It’s been going for nearly 120 years. It’s had all the time it needs to lay down some pretty strong traditions and to build a reputation for quality. That’s a reputation grounded on its ability to recruit and train the musicians to its high standards. 

They played several pieces. Their sound was naturally very like the English brass bands from the film, but it was also distinctively Spanish, in its rhythms and even in its tunes. And one thing was strikingly different from what I was used to. Each piece started with one of the drummers coming to the front to beat time until the music was under way, but after that he went back to his place among the other musicians, and the band as a whole kept itself going just fine with no conductor to guide it.

Also, the other striking thing was that there was a large banner at the front of the band. “Save the Valencia municipal band – forever with the Council”. 

It dawned on me that this wasn’t just a concert, it was a protest meeting. This striking band was on strike.

Striking and on strike

Now, I don’t claim to have fully mastered the details of the grievance. It seems it was the city council – the Ayuntamiento – that set up the band back in 1903. Ever since, it had played under its auspices. What’s more the individual musicians were employees of the Ayuntamiento, and that gave them the status, coveted by so many in Spain for the rights it conveys, of ‘funcionarios’, civil servants.

There are 65 of them. 21 of that total are interim musicians, and in some cases they’ve held that temporary position for over 20 years. That’s how strong the aspiration to gain funcionario status can be.

Now there’s a plan to move them over to the autonomous – semi-private – organisation the ‘Palau de la Música’, the Palace of Music (in case that doesn’t look like standard Spanish to you, it’s because it isn’t: as befits an organisation in Valencia, the name is in Valencian). 

The Ayuntamiento has assured them that they’ll retain their status as civil servants and with it, all the associated rights. The Council claims that the musicians’ fear that the move will threaten their employment, making their positions precarious, are completely unjustified. The musicians wonder, as a result, why the move is being contemplated in the first place.

It’s because, the other side counters, all the musical activity of the Ayuntamiento is associated with the Palace of Music. Sounds appropriate, doesn’t it? The clue’s in the name, you might think.

Except that there’s another name with a clue in it too. The Banda Municipal. Surely the municipal brass band ought to be closely linked to the municipal authority?

In any case, they add, they don’t trust the people trying to sell this message to them. Starting with the band’s conductor. He was previously the director of the municipal bands in Bilbao and in Madrid. He left both places under a cloud and his opponents claim he ‘destroyed’ their bands. They also point out that, while he’s a highly qualified saxophonist, he holds no kind of qualification as a conductor.

All of which presumably explains why they were playing without a conductor. 

What was particularly attractive, though, was the way they chose to strike and protest. They had cancelled the concert – well, a strike is a withdrawal of labour, isn’t it? But they didn’t want to disappoint their audience entirely. So they played anyway, for a little while. Just outside. And without their despised conductor.

And what we both loved most was when the group with the banner decided that the music of Paquito el Chocolatero, a paso doble, needed to be accompanied by dancing. And so the banner-holders danced.

Good luck, Banda Municipal, I say. We missed a concert but, boy, you gave us an evening to remember. Long may you live and prosper and keep entertaining us all.