POPULAR MUSIC

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19836, 27 June 1934, Page 12

POPULAR MUSIC

CHANGE IN PUBLIC TASTE BRITISH SONGS TO THE FORE After a long, uphill struggle, British song-writers are at last recovering their former place as the leaders of popular music throughout the world (says the “Morning Post”). Not only are big London publishing firms accepting a greater percentage of their work, and competing with each other to secure their services, but in the past six months they have made a successful bid to penetrate the American market. British songs are now sweeping Americ'. from coast to coast, and many of our native composers are “bestsellers” there. Songs of the novelty and comedy types, for writing which Eritish writers have always had a flair, are more popular now in Germany and on the Continent generally than ever before. Mr Lawrence Wright, the publisher who, under the pseudonym of “Horatio Nicholls,” has himself written many hundreds ol popular successes, told a “Morning Post” representative that the standard of song-writing in Britain had greatly improved in recent years. “It is only recently, however, that we have experienced this sudden demand for English material from American publishers,” he said. Mr Stafford, music adviser to the British Song Society, who receives more than 300 manuscripts every week from composers, said he believed that the present vogue for British songs is explained by the fact that they have returned to the pre-war standard of melody. Mr Eddie Day, of Messrs Francis, Day and Hunter, pointed out that British writers had not succeeded by assimilating the American and Continental idioms. “They have always had the gift of composing ‘catchy’ tunes and writing clever lyrics,” he said. “The wonder is (says the “Morning Post” editorially) that the incredible banalities and endlessly reiterated rhythms of the jazz romantics should have been suffered so long. Jazz music in its proper place, the ballroom, can be a bracing tonic; but there is nothing enervating to the emotions, let alone the intelligence, than the sickly concoctions of honey and spice breathed into the microphone by the average radio “crooner.” It is a relief to know that English-made melodies are slowly but steadily penetrating ihis sickly-sweet miasma, and delighting the ears of an ever-increasing public not only here but in America itself. British song-writers have been superior to their Transatlantic cousins in the quality of their word-music and this (fortunately) has rather handicapped them in the sub-art of manufacturing “hot” rhythm. Now, with a reaction setting in in favour of straight melody, they ought ta be able to knock up a great score in their next innings. Let them give the crooner something worth crooning, and not so many radio listeners will switch off when the dance bands flood the ether.”