AMONG THE war news making the front page of The Irish Timestoday in 1943 were the first reports of what later became known as the "dambusters" raid on Germany's Ruhr valley.
At home there had been a heavy snowfall in Dublin after days of exceptionally heavy rain; potatoes supplies in the city were beginning to run low; the ESB banned the use of all electric space heaters, including electric fires; and the political parties were beginning to limber up for the general election which was to be held at the end of July and resulted in the return of the Fianna Fáil Government.
Another story was about the apparent lifting by Radio Éireann of a ban it had imposed on crooners and dance music. The station, then firmly part of the Civil Service, was broadcasting for about five hours each evening and today’s listings in 1943 included several music programmes, including a musical variety show with Jack McKevitt and Rex Hill O’Brien, and a piano and flute recital by Havelock Nelson and Doris Cleary.
As well as news in Irish (at 10pm) and English (6.45pm and 10.10pm), there was a documentary on Buck Whaley's Houseby the Writers Group and a programme on Poems of Irish Placespresented by poet Austin Clarke.
The ban on crooners and dance music was only one aspect of the station’s strange music policies; as it lifted these bans it appeared to be putting in place another series of restrictions, according to the following report. (Some caution is needed in reading wartime newspaper reports because of the strict government censorship in force at the time; reports were not always about what they might seem on the surface to be about, but were sometimes coded items designed to get around the censors and make particular sense to knowledgeable readers at the time.)
DANCE MUSIC FROM RADIO ÉIREANN
Has Radio Éireann partially reconsidered its “no crooners, no dance-music” ban? Reports received from lunch-hour concert fans yesterday suggest that publication of the taboos may have influenced the broadcasting authorities to relax somewhat the severity of the restriction – and to do so immediately and without publicity.
It has been learned that the ban actually operated in two parts. The first – prohibiting crooners – was circulated among the station staff about two months ago; an edict outlawing all dance music following it quite recently. Yet, yesterday's hospital patients were regaled with numbers such as The Woodpecker's Songon a piano accordion; You are My Sunshine, Paul Robson; selections from the film Gone With the Wind, and songs by Deanna Durbin. This sample, of course, does not qualify as "hot" jazz, but several of the items were definitely dance numbers.
Future plans for these lunch-hour transmissions include, The Irish Timesunderstands, the banning of all songs from the shows, which should mean that however classical or musically innocuous a piece may be, if it has figured in a film, it cannot be broadcast.
A tendency working against modern composers outside the jazz school, which has been noticeable for some time, may crystallise shortly, resulting in the taboo also cutting out from the lunch-time broadcasts representative composers such as Stravinsky, Milhaud, etc. On top of the dance-music ban, which was aimed at making Radio Éireann less lowbrow, the discrimination to be operated against modern “straight” composers will also make the station less highbrow.
To see this article in its original context go to: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1943/0518/Pg001.html#Ar00112