"BARBARIC SWING"

Evening Star, Issue 25301, 9 October 1944, Page 2

"BARBARIC SWING"

STANDARD OF BROADCASTS' A criticism of. broadcasting stations which failed to fulfil .their major task of education was made by Mr V. Martyn Bonner in an address to parents of Rongotai College pupils on the new curriculum for post-primary.educa-tion. Mr ißcuner was emphasising the importance of music and art in education, and tho proper use and pronunciation of the English language. " Where they should educate by fostering a taste for good music, they strive to please all types of listeners, particularly those who mistake the barbaric strains of ' swing ' for good music and those who consider no soup; worth listening to unless it is of tho ' drooling ' sentimental type," said Mr Renner. " Listen to any request session and you will get the measnrc of- how low is the standard of musical appreciation amongst us and how little the broadcasting stations do to raise it. Granted that all sorts of people lis.teu to the wireless and pay their fees to do so—tho wise and the ignorant, the educated and the uneducated, tho highbrow and the lowbrow—and that they are entitled to get value for their money; granted all that, yet there is no excuse why art should be so brazenly prostituted to entertainment and whv the young people of to-day should be hourly confronted with false instead of true standards of art and have their taste for really good music utterly spoilt. .. • • " The broadcasting stations could be a very valuable and a very powerful instrument to instill into young people a. love for real music. But by their constant presentations of false and meretricious forms, they negative tho effect of whatever real artistic compositions they put over the air. However, the removal of music, arts., and crafts from the list of extra subjects of the soconday school curriculum and their definite inclusion in the-core subjects, may ultimately have tho effect of increasing the ■ number of . those trained to appreciate the beautiful in art; and, by increasing the number of young people who are proof against, or will not be misled by, what I have termed the false and meretricious, ultimately raise the general aesthetic taste of the' community as a whole."