I can only speak for Col A: you will have realised that each house was different.PeteC wrote:Well this Pop/Jazz ban has shattered some of my fond illusions. I look back on my time at CH as having been spent in a moderately liberal environment. How was it policed? What were the parameters? I mean lots of serious 20th Century music was profoundly influenced by jazz, from Debussy & Ravel onwards (and of course numerous American composers). Was Debussy's "Golliwog's Cake-Walk" allowed? (I suppose nowadays it would be more likely to fall foul of the Political Correctness people!). Amazing.
It was effectively the monitors who ran the house, backed up when necessary by Kit Aitken. There are two parts to the music control; someone(s) persuaded the powers that be that pop music was distracting the boys from their duty to bring home the record for Oxbridge scholarships and O levels and in Col A we had a monitor who felt that he could play pop music not only in free time (when it was often appreciated) but also during prep when others were trying to work.
Given that the boy concerned was one of the more senior monitors there was little any other boy could do so it needed a command from on high.
I left shortly after but in that intervening period the music volume fell to almost inaudible. John W left a year later and reports that the noise returned to higher levels (because, I suspect, the boys allowed it to). I'm not sure exactly what music would have been allowed because during the period I was affected nothing was approved (I suggested earlier that the National Anthem would take so to approve that Queen would become King ---and require new approval?)