Treasure in one’s own home!

It is like a phrase from a fairy story, and in fact it is the subject of many legends and fairy stories all over the world. But sometimes the story has an unusual twist, which makes one think deeply.

In the legends of many countries, there are stories about someone poor who is living in a poor house, which has a treasure buried under it. But he does not know this. He goes out every day to try to earn a few coins, but really he is living on top of great riches, which he does not know about.

In Middle Eastern Persian legend, there is an added twist to this story. The poor man living in Bagdad dreams that he sees a house in Cairo, in a particular street, with a particular number in that street. Underneath that house is a buried treasure but the people do not know it.

He dreams this again and again, so vividly that he comes to feel that it must be true.

With tremendous effort, he travels to Cairo, begging his way. When he gets there, he finds the street just as he dreamt it and then he sees the house of his dreams.  He does not know how to get in and dig up the buried treasure.  The owner, a big man, sees him loitering in the street in front of the house.  He arrests him, and threatens to kill him – he believes this is a thief.  Finally, the poor man tells him the story.

The house-owner bursts out laughing. “Why, you fool,” he cries, “such dreams are nothing! I have often had a dream like that.  I see a particular house in Bagdad, and I see the street clearly.”  He gives a description of the little house, which the beggar recognizes as his own.  “In my dream, too, I know there is a hidden treasure under that house.  But I am not such a fool as to go to Bagdad – these things are just dreams.  I’m sorry for a fool like you.”  He even gives him a little money; he is sorry for the half-wit.

With the money, the beggar hastens back to Bagdad digs under his own house, and finds the treasure.  He had been searching for treasure elsewhere, but really it was under his own house.

The interesting point about this story is, that the poor man had to travel to Cairo in order to come to know about the treasure in his own home in Bagdad.  If he had not gone to Cairo with so much difficulty, he would never had found out about his own treasure.

I was reminded of it when I read of the death of Segovia. This great musician introduced the guitar as a serious musical instrument. I can remember hearing him on the radio in Britain in 1930, playing an arrangement of Bach on his guitar. It took him about twenty years to convince the world to accept his guitar recitals, which included many arrangements of classics by Haydn, Mozart and Bach.

The interesting thing about his struggle is this: he says said that the hardest people to convince were the Spaniards. “In Spain,” he said, “we have for so long regarded the guitar as simply an instrument to accompany songs and dances, that it was almost impossible to change our belief. Spaniards just could not believe that this guitar could make serious music.”

They thought of the guitar as, a sort of banjo, and there was no formal instruction in guitar playing in Spanish academies of music. Even when Segovia had convinced the rest of the world that the guitar has the full status of a solo musical instrument, for a long time many Spaniards did not agree.

I went to Segovia’s last concert, which was at the Festival Hall in London in 1987. He was then over 90. The tickets were sold out in advance, but I managed to get one, next to the editor of one of the chief musical magazines. The auditorium was packed, and there were many young people there, with intent expressions on their faces. The editor whispered to me before the concert began: “This audience is nearly all guitar players. The young ones are the pupils of the pupils of the pupils of Segovia”.

There was an atmosphere of reverence in the great Hall even before he appeared. When he did come out on to the stage, the whole audience rose to its feet and stood in silence. He moved slowly towards the low stool which was the only thing on the wide stage; behind him came an assistant (one of his pupils, perhaps) carrying the guitar for him. He pointed to the stool, and murmured something. Evidently it was too low, and someone went out quickly, to return with a slightly higher one. Segovia nodded approval, and sat down on it. We all clapped. Then his guitar was respectfully passed to him, and as he took it, we clapped again.

He began to play. Watching this very old man, whose fingers could no longer manage the dazzling feats of technique for which he had been so famous, I felt something rather pathetic. He had to play technically simple pieces.

Then I thought to myself: ‘How vulgar I am! I am thinking that technical skill in difficult pieces is somehow superior musically. I have not come to look, I have come to hear.’  I shut my eyes and listened; his interpretations were still as hauntingly beautiful as those I had heard on the BBC radio nearly 60 years before.  It was a great musical experience.

In Spain today, the guitar is fully accepted at last – accepted because the foreigners have accepted it, converted by Segovia. Segovia could not convert his own people directly. It was like the fairy story of the poor man of Bagdad: he had to go to Cairo, and hear from a foreigner about the treasure in his own house before he could believe it. The Spaniards had to hear from foreigners about the true merit of the guitar, before they would believe it. When they saw the respect and even reverence of foreigners for Segovia, they realized their own treasure.

I have sometimes thought that the reluctance of many young Japanese to value traditional Japanese culture is another case of failing to find the treasure in one’s own home. And perhaps, like the Spaniards, they will begin to appreciate what they have when they hear about it more and more from foreigners.

© Trevor Leggett