Rebel, Rebel

Available for 19 days

Rebel Rebel visits the world of those who don’t obey from composers and performers including the wild living Debussy and the minimalism of the pioneer Erik Satie and later the American composer Steve Reich who broke all the rules from the very start of his career in the 1960s, fighting against the musical establishment with his groundbreaking style. And, of course, you’ll hear the work of Mozart who did everything from composing his country’s national anthem to writing cruel parodies of his contemporaries’ work to make fun of them. You’ll also hear Don’t Rain on My Parade from Jule Styne and Bob Merrill’s musical Funny Girl, performed by Barbra Streisand who has had a hugely successful long career in Hollywood while refusing to conform to the rules. Samuel West and Natalie Simpson read from poetry by the maverick Emily Dickinson, who refused to live in the real world, and the French writer Arthur Rimbaud who wrote nearly all his work between the ages of 16 and 20 before he abandoned poetry. Yearning to get away from the conventions of society he chose to give up his artistic life for that of a vagabond in East Africa. We have Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind and Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, poems by two writers who broke all the rules, moral and artistic, both involved in the social and political problems of their revolutionary age. In Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, a character who, like Roald Dahl’s Matilda, begins her difficult early life as passionate, intelligent and defiant child. In a special link up with the Poetry Society’s Young Poets Network, Jade Cuttle and Aisha Mango Borja’s writing is featured. And we begin with J.D. Salinger's classic novel The Catcher in the Rye which tells the story of the troubled teenager Holden Caulfield, at odds with a world he feels is cruel and unfeeling. First published as a novel for adults it’s become popular with teenagers around the world: it’s hard to believe it was first published at the end of WWII. Producer: Fiona McLean