Talent Won the Quest
HE 4ZB Talent Quest has been won and lost. I didn’t hear more than three or four of the broadcasts, but judging (continued on next page)
(continued from previous page)
. by the competitors I heard, there seems to be a prevalent idea that the popular vote will go to elocution items of Victorian vintage, imitators of hot jazz band combinations, singers of blues with an accent meant, presumably, to be that of the Southern States of the U.S.A., or such instruments as Hawaiian guitars, ukeleles, and piano-accordions | playing popular hits of the day. Very few competitors offered serious music, but I should like to say to the young singer who actually gave us Delius that there was at least one listener who appreciated her temerity. Such professional musicians as I spoke to on the subject of the Talent Quest had either not heard of it, or had listened once and switched it off; if they had the cause of good music at heart, they should of course have urged their best pupils to enter for the competition, and so provide an alternative type of item. It may therefore take the wind out of the sails of these musical snobs to know that, in the end, the musical critics who merely listened, and the public vote which actually decided the winner, came to one and the same conclusion-namely, that such a respectable sum of prize-money must not be given indiscriminately to purveyors of popular hits, but must be awarded to a performer of genuine merit. The winner is well known locally as the possessor of a fine voice and the ability to use it; and if he made a slight concession to popular taste in his choice of a song, anything more classical would scarcely have got him into the finals, and that would have been a pity. It is interesting that a Talent Quest, which judgment by public vote may have been expected to turn into a Popularity Contest, should have been won by the competitor best fitted to use its benefits for the furtherance of genuine musical talent.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 284, 1 December 1944, Page 8
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353Talent Won the Quest New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 284, 1 December 1944, Page 8
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