THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 119, 3 October 1941, Page 3

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

E don’t know much about ersatz in New Zealand. We can still get butter and meat in plenty. Our clothes are still genuine wool, worsted, serge, or peau de cygne, our. boots are leather, and so far we don’t even need coupons to get them. In fact, the only ersatz commodity we’ can think of offhand is Home Guard equipment which, like faith, is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, But the fact that we use no ersatz is no reason why we should ignore it. No one should go near water until he learns to swim. Tune in, therefore, to Dr. R. G. Gardner when he speaks from 4YA on Tuesday next. He will be talking about " Synthetic Materials," | Records With Records

4t 1s with some dilfidence that we raise the subject again, but one of our scouts blundered on some incidental intelligence concerning Bing Crosby, and, well, here you are. Sales of records made by Mr, Crosby were nearly 500,000 in January of this year, setting what the Americans usually describe as an all-time "high" for any artist. Last year his sales reached 3,500,000, and this year they are expected to reach the 5,000,000 mark. This being the case, his records will return Mr. Crosby the handy sum of 100,000 dollars, on top of which, of course, he will probably earn two or three hundred thousand dollars from radio and film

work, Bing’s record of Silent Night, the proceeds of which go to charity, topped the 150,000 mark for the last two months of 1940, this figure exceeding by a comfortable third a previous record sale for the same song by Mme. Ernestine Schumann-Heink. As the above figures indicate, there is no dearth of Bing Crosby in the average radio programme, but listeners who are especially interested in him are reminded that he will be featured from 4ZB in the Dream Time programme on Sunday, October 5, at 10.30 p.m,

Dinner Music Those who are interested in musical pranks and curiosities are reminded that next Monday night 1YA will be presenting Ted Steele’s Novatones in Raymond Scott’s composition "Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals," a title which ranks for originality with Templeton’s " Undertakers’ Toccato" and Reginald Foresythe’s "Serenade for a Wealthy Widow." Raymond Scott, you may be interested to know, began his career with a Quintet which contained six players, and ended up on Broadway a few months ago with a 13-piece band and a demonstration of "silent" music. This created a great "to do" among the long-haired musical intellectuals, which is not surprising, since, according to reports, most of the instruments made a furious display of playing but the only sound from the band was a soft swishswish from the drummer, a low bump-

bump from the bass fiddler, and an unobtrusive plunk-plunk from the pianist. It was all rather reminiscent of that famous Dada‘concert in Paris at which the star item was a motionless dance, and, like Russell Clark, we refuse to take it seriously, Wreckers On another page in this issue we have had occasion to draw the attention of feminists to a film just released. Now we draw their attention to a programme from 4YA on Monday featuring the story of Dame Ethel Smyth. Ethel Smyth once spent two months in jail for suffragist activities, and, we are told, taught Mrs. Pankhurst much of what she knew about civil disobedience and breaking windows. That is not her only claim to fame, and, as Percy Scholes points out, sex is of

no importance in judging the quality of her music. She wrote some choral and instrumental work and several operas, the most noteworthy being The Boatswain’s Mate and The Wreckers. -And Now A Ghost In real life the average ghost is a species of exhibitionist. By haunting the scene of its crime with wrung hands and dismal howlings it performs no useful purpose-its sole aim is to draw atten-

tion to itself. This summing-up may be a little hard on the type of ghost which appears with monotonous regularity on the South Turret at midnight on Christmas Eve, for it, just as much as any Government clerk, is a prey to routine, a mere victim of the clock-watching habit. Surprisingly enough it seems that only those ghosts invented by dramatists have any serious purpose. The elder Hamlet warns his son of the evils of procrastination and spurs him to revenge, Banquo and Caesar reproach their respective murderers. And in Ivor Brown’s play, I Made You Possible, which will be heard from 1YA next Sunday evening, the feminine counterpart of these gentle-

men appears,*She is the ghost of Agnes Cottingham, who gave her life in the cause of women’s suffrage. She comes to ask a group of young women of to-day what use they have made of the rights she won for them. We will leave it to listeners to decide whether she will rest content in her grave or whether disillusionment will convert her into the unfortunate type of ghost condemned to walk in accordance with a regular departmental schedule. Six Martyrs The story of six humble men of Dorset who just over a hundred years ago were persecuted because they sought to organise themselves and demand wages higher than the few shillings a week they were paid for labouring on the farms of wealthy landowners, is told in the next episode of There’ll Always Be An England, from Station 2ZB on Saturday, October 11. The Tolpuddle Martyrs -- George Loveless, Thomas Stanfield, John Stanfield, James Brine, James Loveless, and James Hammett---presumptu-ously formed themselves into the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union, and were arrested, brought before a‘ magistrate, and sentenced to transportation to

Tasmania for seven years. But their cause triumphed, and they have gong down in history as valiant representas tives of the many thousands broken under the wheel of reaction. On the same evening There'll Always. Be An England tells the story of St. Paul’s Cathedral from 1ZB, of Caractacus from 3ZB, and of Captain Oates from 4ZB. Tragedy in Asia Even in New Zealand to be a refugee is not very pleasant-there are matters of money and language and racial prejudice to be overcome. Yet in spite of our sympathy with the troubles of those who have left their past to come and live in New Zealand, we can have no realisation of what it means to be a war refugee, or even a political refugee, in Europe or Asia, Pen pictures are inclined to make us shocked, and films leave us aghast, at the horrors that are endured by those that suffer, but the impressions they leave are at best transitory and at worst misleading, since we believe we understand when we do not. However, | we must make the best by tapping every possible source of information, and nothing could be more suitable than to hear the first-hand experiences of one who has actually seen, Barbara Collins is to speak on Wednesday from 2YA on "What it is Like to be a Refugee-an Observer in the Far East." An interview with her appears on page 7,