Vuvuzelas to be welcomed at the Ems… « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger in all he does
By Andre Kirby and Tony Attwood
Andre wrote to Untold thus…
I first came across Untold Arsenal in January and I have become a regular reader ever since. All the blogs are well written and well reserched, which I like. Because of this I am requesting that you write an Anti-Vuvuzela piece, as I have heard some Premier League clubs are thinking about selling them in their club shops. This cannot happpen.
The only thing I like about the Vuvuzela is the name, but I am happy to leave them as a distinctive sound of South Africa, which will also make the tournament that little more memorable. When the 2014 world cup arrives in Brazil, they will have their unique samba sound and if we get the 2018 bid then we will have the lovely sound of the English moans and groans. Only joking. Well kind of.
Anyway, back to my reasons for why I don’t want to see the vuvuzela’s in the premier league is because it takes away all the passion and emotion you get from the crowd. Every club has their own songs, whether they be about a player or the club as a whole, and there is nothing better than hearing a guy a few row’s behind you make a witty comment about a player and then find over a thousand people echoing this in a chant. I also love the sound of tens of thousands of seats slapping shut as the whole stadium stands up when there is a chance on goal.
I’m sure you have heard during a match when the team put together a string of good passes or a player pulls out a piece of individual brilliance and the crowd applaud, when the ball whistles over the bar and the crowd gasp, when the ref falls over the crowd cheer. It’s all part of the match day experience.
And I’m sure you can appreciate when things are not going Arsenal’s way and then the Emirates comes alive with ‘Come on Arsenal, Come Arsenal’ or ‘Arsenal FC, by far the greatest team the world has ever seen’ and it gives the players a lift.
All of this is lost when you have 60,000 people blowing vuvuzela’s. It is one continuous monotonous sound. No emotion at all. Now I don’t know how many Arsenal games you get to, but I’m sure you will agree the only thing missing from the Emirates is a consistent atmosphere and a trophy. So now we find ourselves in a chicken and egg situation where we don’t know if we need a trophy to lift the crowd or the crowd to lift the team to get a trophy. All I know is once we get our first piece of silverwear at the Emirates, the crowd will be louder than ever and I want to hear our fans singing that Arsenal are champions again.
Andre Kirby aka Icedre218
Tony’s reply….
By nature I am a libertarian, wanting everyone to be able to do his/her own thing. I mentioned why, the other day. Half my life as a musician / composer, half as a writer – in both cases always trying out the new and the different, earning a living from being creative.
As such there is always criticism – just go back and look at Ivory’s criticism of me for the Earl of Sidcup piece, (if you are not sure what criticism looks like read this. He/she attacks my very psyche, my spirit, my motives, my creative ability… You don’t get closer to wounding me than attacking my creative ability.)
But I demand in a democratic open society, the right to express myself and to explore my creativity. After all that’s how I earn my living – by writing advertisements.
So, every fibre in my being wants to say, “no don’t ban the Vuvuzela.” Not because I like them, but because I embrace freedom of expression (most of the time).
One of my hobbies (other than Arsenal) is jiving – the dance form which more than any other combines a freedom of expression with a need to master the rules. For a man you have to learn how to lead the lady, even if she doesn’t know the moves you are executing. That is the skill – the combination of creativity as a dancer with the ability to lead.
The Vuvu (I”m getting bored with the full word, so it’s a Vuvu from now on) has no creativity and no expression. It is just a bloody awful noise. But I don’t want to ban it.
In the same way, I think the guys who write Le Grove have got it very wrong, but I don’t criticise them for having a view different from mine. But I am very critical of the way they delete posts they don’t agree with, and even worse, the way they change posts that people send in, either to make them look as if they agree with the writers of the articles, or to make the writer of the comment look stupid. However I would never in a trillion years support any view that Le Grove should be stopped. Indeed I would be on the barricades to support their right to be there.
So, maybe you see my point. I think the Vuvu is a pain in the head, and I can’t imagine what would make any semi-intelligent vegetable want to blow one. But if that’s what they want ok.
What I would say is that if anyone (or any group of fans) is so silly as to bring a Vuvu into the stadium, it should redouble the volume of those of us who want to chant, and sing, and cheer. If the opposition support use them, then we should have a suitable riposte. After a day in the office writing adverts I can’t think of one (even I need to stop sometimes, and besides Tom Petty is on the CD and that always makes me realise why I never made it as a musician), but maybe something along the lines of. “You haven’t got a song” would do.
There’s one other thing… I felt that throughout much of last season the volume of the Ems really did go up. Maybe it was because some of us felt we were under attack. Maybe we were so pissed off with the negativity. But from where I sit, during that unbeaten run towards the end of the season, the noise level was higher than I have heard since we moved.
“Vuvu Vuvu play us a tune” is probably too advanced in its irony for most vuvu blowers to get, but it has a certain post-modernist humour which I rather enjoy.
“You’re braining my damage” (too sophisticated for a football match, but funny anyway)
Or perhaps to paraphrase,
“The fascination of football as a sport depends almost wholly on whether the person next to you is blowing a vuvuzala, or not.”
The masterful riches of a rambling brain