BANISHED MELODIES.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9467, 9 June 1909, Page 7

BANISHED MELODIES.

The London County Council is in many respects a fatherly body. Not only does it spend a large smn£l3.soo is the estimate this year—on music for the people, bat it sees that good music-is played. This year an index expnrgatorins of tones has been drawn up, and the bauds are to be bound not to play any of the items on the list. A good deal ot American trash is placed on the index, such as “Darkies Oako Walk ” “A Goon’s Holiday, “Darkies’ Revels,’’ “Dusky Dinah,” “Plantation Revelry,” together With “Life on a Troopship,” . Lue on the Ocean,” “A Soldier’s Life, and other inanities. Even The Swanee River” is banished. The Council takes np the sound position that if music is to be provided at the public expense, it should be music that will elevate public taste. “The Council,” one of the Parks Committee stated, “has tried to ' follow the ideal that should lie before every public body—the cult of the beautiful. Those who ■ have to depend on their efforts for a livelihood axe often lower, it not altogether to sety aside, the pursuit of the beautiful; T-lje Oouncif, like, all public bodies, has it in its power to educate the popular taste, and the removal of certain items from the band prorgamme is doe to this cause alone. They are trying to pursue the ideals— commonly practised in Germany, by the .way—that would actuate such an institution as a national theatre,, the artistic development of the ueople in all phases of their life.” The authorities propose to giade the programmes according to the locality. If you live in Peck ham Rye or Battersea yon are held to be of superior culture to the people of Poplar, and have slightly better music played to you by the Council’s bands. The Bands Com- - mittee find that there has been a great advance in the taste of the London public during the five or six years p and the chairman thinks it does not fall far short of the German standard. An interesting innovation is the provision of fortyfive specially constructed gramo phones for places for which bands are not available.