MUSICAL SNOBS.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18917, 4 February 1927, Page 2

MUSICAL SNOBS.

AND THE ORDINARY MAN. "We do not want a set of musical 'highbrows' who consider themselves a raco apart," said Mr T. Vernon Griffiths, to a representative of Tho Press last evening. "Wo simply do not want the amateur musical snob. But we do want tho ordinary man in the street to regard music as he regards literature — as something recreational, and something to bo enjoyed—so that he can look forward to joining a musical society or some similar body as a, social affair from which he will derive much pleasure." Mr Griffiths is tho newly-appointed Director of Music in Schools, who arrived in Christchurch yesterday from England, and h. will carry out his work of teaching music, in all its branches, to schoolchildren, under the Canterbury Education Hoard. Ho believes in children being taught to regard their musical studies as pleasure, and as something to benefit them in after-life —not as a mero lesson. Jazz Is for the Dance Hall. "What is your opinion of jazzP" asked the reporter. "Ah, now you're touching on a big question," replied Mr Griffiths, "and it is ono that leads to many mistakes. One of the mistakes is that many people listen to jazz music as music, and there you have the trouble. Even jazz enthusiasts become bored with it. The professional musician, unless he is a musical snob, cannot resist the rhythmical charm of it—if he x is anything of a dancer. But no one wants to listen to it as music. Jazz is for the dance hall, and in the dance hall it is charming and most suitable. The old, crude typo of jazz-drummer has gone. Thank goodness we are now released from the tyranny of the noise produced by sticks, tins, horns, and percussion." Mr Griffiths concluded by saying that jazz had progressed remarkably, and had now anproached something like mciodv. "But T am not a jazz advocate," be said with a. smile.