POPULAR MUSIC

Southland Times, Issue 20661, 17 April 1929, Page 4

POPULAR MUSIC

In days when the entire population of the world is said to be going cheerfully to the kennels it is pleasing to find some evidence of improvement. Frequently it is declared that the taste in music in New Zealand is very low, and the high popularity of “jazz” has been cited as evidence of this fact. The popularity of “jazz” is not necessarily proof of a degraded taste. This music, originating in the United States and barbaric in its basic ideas, is to the present age what “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-uy” and “Two little girls in blue” were in theirs, and a comparison between “Tea for Two” and “The man I love" and the two veterans we have quoted will not. leave the scales tilted against the current period. Folk music, drawn from tho “barbaric" days of the nations, has been used to supply themes and rhythms for some of the great works in music, and the development of "jazz” in the “Blue Rhapsody” is by no means a matter for ponderous head-noddings. There is something cheerful, however, in the report that popular taste, educated by the gramophone, is turning more to the classical and that records of chamber music are in more frequent, demand. Jazz is ephemeral, and most of the jazz numbers have a brief rage before passing into oblivion, but that, after all, is the fate of most of the lighter music which appeals to the popular uneducated palate. One of the tests of greatness in music is its capacity to resist the onslaught of time, and so we find in most gramophone libraries a tendency to build up stocks of those works of proved merit. At the same time there is evidence that the public is buying music of a better class, and the credit for this is given to the teachers of music. This is a matter for congratulation, because it means that the interest in the performance of music is quickening again. The gramophone and the wireless, it was feared, would increase laziness by fostering listening instead of an active participation in music. In these days it is difficult to present great works of music that require organized effort in rehearsals over a lengthy period, because there are so many counter-attractions, but in the face of the more hopeful statement in connection with the purchase of music by the public it is not advisable to despair. Usually these difficulties disappear, or are considerably reduced, when directors of the right type take matters in hand, and so long as the love of good music is being kept alive there is hope for such a revival that, the public performance of major works by amateur organization will again he possible.