STREET ORGANS BANNED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22822, 5 March 1936, Page 10

STREET ORGANS BANNED

By ban of Mayor La Guardia that classifies organ-grinders with street beggars. New York city will no longer league itself with mendicancy by collecting licence fees from them (writes the Christian Science Monitor). In the city licence department this puts the hand organ-mandolin piano on the “ nuisance value ” list along with the full-toned horns and brasses of the German bands and with the court yard singer. Just 14 of the organ-grinders got in their licence applications tor 1935 before the Mayor’s decision that the city should not go partners, even to the extent of a 10-dol'ar-a-week licence fee, with those who denend on .begging. These licences will not be renewed. The year before there were 54 organ-grinders, but the 1935 list of 150 was more typical of how it used to be before apartment houses replaced the brown-stone dwellings and the area of performance was narrowed down to the poorer streets. In 1917 there were four manufacturers of hand organs in New York city. To-day only Edward Molinari remains, his organ-maker shop in Brooklyn having been set up in 1862. His business clearly indicates the state of affairs in the street music world, for he said he had not sold a hurdy-gurdy in seven years: that now it was " just repairs." So the hand-organ, with its “II Trovatore.” “My Wild Irish,Rose,” the “Lucia” Sextet. “0 Sole Mio.” “Tarantella,” “ La Paloma,” goes on the list with the lamplighter and his ladder, the horsecar, and the tandem bicycle.