Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
WESTERN COMMENT
Awake, Ye That Slumber!
REVIEW OFFICE, REPUBLIC BUILDING, CHICAGO, I I I . , JUNE 23,
ing and Banjo Crossing is to the open prairie with its motor road
and its farmhouse every mile. And if one were to ask what,
after all, is the one distinguishing note of all this huge mass of
active, hustling, noisy, good-tempered provincialism, from New York
to the Wyoming desert, one should have to say: It is the persistent
search for something better in life. Whatever else may be said
about the American people, this must be said: It is a people cease-
lessly seeking culture. It is a people ceaselessly in search of some-
thing better. For a century this people has sought its goal in the
accumulation of raw money power. Personal enrichment has been
a gospel. But the gospel of enrichment begins to lose its glamour.
Everywhere arises the cry for intellect, for taste, for more civi-
lized living. "Of what use is the money," men and women say,
"if we know not what to do with it when we have it. One can
only wear one suit of clothes, ride in one motor car, eat one din-
ner at a time. What next is to be then our aim?"
1928
IT is only necessary to keep an eye upon the daily newspapers to
learn that the men, the women and the children of this day and
age are definitely conscious of their existence in
Of, by,
a WO rld of mechanism, in a world of machines,
° r ' , .
run by machines, and, in some ways, existing; for
Machines
/
, „ . , . .
-
, ,
machines. Mechanism is ceasing to be the terror
or the mystery it once was. The very women are learning the in-
sides of gasoline engines, and every boy is rapidly becoming an
electrical engineer through the medium of the radio set. Along
with this vast and steadily increasing interest in the constitution
of the machinery which now makes the world a world of machine
tenders goes, of course, an increasing desire to do mechanical work.
By this I mean that the man in the street, his wife and his chil-
dren are more and more coming to seek a relief from the cease-
less round of passive participation in a mechanized world by them-
selves, learning to use tools and to take part in the maintenance,
if not in the actual creation, of these Slaves of the Lamp on which
civilization now so utterly depends. How many men spend their
hours of spare time each day and week in garages dissecting gaso-
line engines, and seeking thereby to improve their performances,
heaven only knows but the number is certainly enormous. How
many women are expert in the internal economy of sewing ma-
chine, cream separator, and vacuum cleaner, who can tell? And
it safe to say that to the race of mechanical and electrical engi-
neers will soon be added, in the persons of the same men and
women, a race of refrigerating engineers expert in the mysteries
of expansion of ammonia and kindred arcana. If it is a mechanical
age in which we live, it is also an age of mechanics, amateurs far
outnumbering professionals. Any fool, of course, can say, if he
likes, that the race has to-day become so accustomed to button
pushing and so disinclined to physical labor that all its mental
pabulum, all its entertainment, all its recreation, must be pre-
digested. Talk of this facile kind is typical of the third-rate mind,
and unfortunately industry is too largely peopled with minds of the
third and lower orders. The music industries have their share of
these alibi-hunting minds.
A NATION of mechanics is not, however, necessarily a nation of
persons unable or unwilling to interest themselves in what, for
want of a better term, may loosely be defined as
New York
Culture. The first impression gained of the United
em , anjo g t a t e s fay a n y intelligent visiting foreigner, espe-
cially if he or she be connected in some way with
education or the arts, is the immense amount of activity in all
cultural directions. Nothing indeed is easier, nothing is more
usual than to make the statement that the male youth of to-day
has no thought save of getting a speedy car, a flask of synthetic
gin and a girl willing.to form number two in a petting party out
on the high road. But facile generalizations of the kind are al-
ways false. The country is very big and the state of society
which characterizes one part or element of the whole is likely to
be individual and anything but characteristic. There are still mil-
lions who have never seen New York, who probably will never
step on Broadway and to whom its supposed intellectual and psy-
chological atmosphere are as alien as Buddhism. For that matter,
the most interesting thing about New York, when one comes to
fynow the great city, is that the vast majority of its population,
that is to say the real "typical New Yorkers," do not in the least
Resemble the "typical New Yorker" of the stage, of fiction and of
widespread legend. The real "typical New Yorkers" are quite
as provincial as the "typical Chicagoans" and make just as big
idiots of themselves over things just as childish. And what New
is to Chicago, Chicago is to Zenith, Zenith is to Banjo Cross-
AND the answer comes clear. The facts can be discerned by any
man who has eyes to see and ears to hear. This American people
is waiting eagerly, with an eagerness pathetic, for
The
the leader to arise who shall say, "Follow me, I
Answer
have
the road to happiness"; and even to-day
Clear
there is a deep undercurrent of certainty about
his message. It is felt rather than known that the way he will
show will be the way of culture, of intellectual cultivation, of ac-
complishment in the arts, of an American civilization as great for
the New Ages to come as the "Glory That Was Greece" was for
the Ages which passed away. Culture and Mechanism; they are
strange twins, yet they are the legitimate offspring of America's
marriage to Plutus. A people intensely alive. A people intensely
interested in the machines by which they live. A people of ama-
teur engineers. A people intensely motivated by the greatest of
all mechanisms, which is Money: Yet a people intensely dissatisfied
with the mere accumulation of Raw Power and intensely desirous
of the knowledge which shall show them what to do with their
wealth.
MEN of the music industries, why do you complain ? Why do
you cast anxious eyes towards the business or the political skies?
Why do you spend good money and careful hours
Awake
\ n ^ e s tudy of business charts, in the desperate
_.
attempt to find magic keys to prosperity; when all
the time the door lies open before you? Arise,
dash from your eyes the blinders of prejudice and tradition, and
look ahead. See before you a people incredibly wealthy, incredibly
ambitious, incredibly desirous of something better. See before you
millions of mothers, each hoping that her children at least shall be
cultivated ladies and gentlemen, each highly resolved to do her
part to build in her family civilized thinking and living, accom-
plished men and women. See the piano, basic instrument of music,
greatest implement of culture the world has ever known. Is not
the most interesting, the most beautiful and the most satisfying
of all accomplishments, the accomplishment of piano playing? See,
too, the millions of men, women and children to whom machines
and machinery are subjects of living interest; and then think of the
piano as a machine, as a piece of the most delicate, wonderful and
efficient mechanism that the mind and hand of man have ever
brought forth. Can you not link up these two great forces of
desire and focus them on your pianos? Can you not see that you
have been wrong for, lo, these many years, in selling the piano with-
out telling the story of its mechanism, without striving to spread
the gospel of its tonal beauty to a people eager for machines yet
hungry for beauty. O Men Wake Up! The world is yours.
—W. B. iW.
10