Down in the Dumps

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 300, 23 March 1945, Page 9

Down in the Dumps

WAS. disappointed in 4YA’s "Music from Mexico." Indeed, if ‘"Viewsreel" may venture to purloin the idea of The Listener film critic, the "little man" of music would be _ depicted slumping in his seat. Every musician has a bete noir, some particular tune which raises his hackles, and in my Case it’s "Over the Waves." I imagine no more trite melody has ever been invented; to me it is the acme of musical boredom. Imagine then my distress when the first

part of this programme proved to be three waltzes, of which "Sobre las Olas" was one, the others being of a like vintage. I don’t know what I expected in "Music from Mexico’-probably -something vigorously original, certainly not poor copies of the Viennese waltz at its soupiest. It was as disappointing as tuning to "Maori Music" and getting the staid three-four rhythms of the European waltz tunes which form so much of the average Maori concert. The "little man" woke up at the second half of the programme, which was a fantasia on Mexican Revolutionary Songs, but it was a fireworks revolution staged for the benefit of tourists, and I think the stage directors must have issued the soldiers with blank ammunition.