P.M. challenged on pop remarks

Press, 24 April 1980, Page 21

P.M. challenged on pop remarks

PA Wellington A Mahler symphony contributes no more to a person’s intellectual development than a song by Mi-Sex, according’ to the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s manager, Mr Peter Nisbett. Mr Nisbett has taken issue with assertions by the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) that pop music is not cultural. “Of course pop music is an art form. Simply because It makes money doesn’t make it any less of an art ; form,” Mr Nisbett said, s

It wduld be wonderful to be as black and white as Mr Muldoon about what qualified as culture, he said. • .

Referring to the orchestra, Mr Nisbett said: “Time tests what is good in our field. What is good in.- one time may be utterly revolting In another. I suppose that is the thing with pop music — will it last?”

Mr Muldoon’s comments, made in reaction to the recording industry’s campaign against sales tax on records, have astounded Ray Columbus, the Auckland entertainer.

For his services to New , Zealand entertainment — largely pop music — he was awarded the 0.8. E. Two singers, John Rowles and Howard Morrison, ■ also have been recipients of Queen’s Honours. '

The Government also appointed Mr Columbus to the Arts Council, to serve the arts in general, and to represent the ■ entertainment industry. - , Ray Columbus said that on hearing Mr Muldoon’s words he had felt as if he had worked 10 years to promote the local recording

industry at home and overseas for nothing. :. A Wellington musician, Roger Fox, who with his Big Band has been invited to fill a good billing in the Montreaux International Jazz Festival, said he was taken aback to hear Mr Muldoon’s views. The purist would say the only cultural music in New Zealand was Maori music, Mr Fox suggested. “When the bulk of the population listens to pop, to turn round and say it isn’t cultural Is just ridiculous.”

Mr Douglas Mews, associate professor of Music at Auckland University, said: “Culture Is not something that necessarily as a greater sense of beauty and order or is a source of private intellectual pleasures.”

Generally speaking, he said, culture was what people devoted their creative energy towards — and in that sense pop music qualified.

But Dr Mews has some sympathy for Mr Muldoon’s views.

“Pop music can be a little hypnotic, and then the people concerned are not using creative energy but are being drugged,” he said. Mr R. J. Tizard, who was Minister of Finance when the sales, tax on records went from twenty per cent to forty per cent, in the 1975 Budget, said that debates over what was cultural or not did not feature in Labour’s thinking. The reasoning was purely political and economic. He said that to try to reduce the amount of the wage settlement being negotiated with the Federation of Labour the Labour Government- had offered income tax cuts in return for restraint. At the

same time, the Labour Government was making a start on a long-term switch from direct to indirect taxation.

Professor J. A. Ritchie, head of the school of music at the University of Canterbury, said he believed that Mr Muldoon’s comments had been misunderstood.

“He said in the ordinary meaning of the word that pop music was not culture, but he did not deny that pop music Was part of the culture of the country,” said Professor Ritchie. The ordinary meaning of the word “culture” referred to sport, songs as well as serious music. That included pop music. There was another meaning of “culture” which meant blue rinses and dinner jackets, he said. “I think that pop songs are nart of the country’s heritage. Beetiroven used popular songs in his symphonies. It was difficult to say what good music was, but the ultimate test was how well it lasted, said Professor Ritchie.

“Probably the best comoser of our time is Gershwin. Lots of people thought he was just ephemeral, but he is the twentieth century Schubert. “There is some awful serious music and some good pop music. Because I have got vested interests in serious music I tend to think there is better serious music than pop music.”

Professor Ritchie said that music department staff almost unanimously agreed that the tax on records should be reduced.

“Our students are paying a lot for records, and they are buying both cultural and o records,” he said, said.