MODERN MUSIC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 69, 18 October 1940, Page 11

MODERN MUSIC

Sir,-I have read with great interest the articles on Modern Music, or "Swing" in your paper. To me it’s like a politician telling a baker how to bake bread to read the views of Mr. Austin and L.R.M. Why must people who obviously know nothing of Swing Music criticise it? Mr. Austin is unknown to me, though I am a musician with years of experience with dance bands. He has never cropped up in our little world, so how can he speak with authority on "Swing?" The trouble is that people think that "Nursie, Nursie" is swing music, and then compare it with one of the great works. This type of tune is played because it is simple and the public can understand it. The ambition of dance musicians is to play swing as played by Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, etc., and to us this is the highest form of art, not the lowest. Also to be able to play this music, one’s musical ability would have to be colossal. In this entire country there wouldn’t be one single man, straight musician or otherwise good enough to play 4th trumpet or 4th saxophone in a band of that calibre. Does that seem like a low form of art? There is one musician in New Zealand who once played in the New York Symphony Orchestra for a few weeks and could be there even now. Yet this player, with all his ability, would have to go to the "woodshed" for a long time before he could play for Benny Goodman’s Band. No, one type of music is as good as another in my opinion, and if any man thinks that Swing Music is beneath his dignity, let him try to play it, and he'll be lost in the first eight

bars.

R.

LESTER

(Wellington). |