babbalute wrote:
I think that most private schools would have a band, I know my son's school has. They have music classes as subject. The band performs at various school functions. I doubt there will be many bands in model C and other types of schools.
The trouble is that if you want to teach music as something that people can study and then take exams in then pop music isn't particularly helpful and won't appear in many syllabi. You turn to the classical repertoire. Even then there are gear costs which will be non-trivial and I doubt that it's justifiable by schools or affordable by many parents. And how many people can a "band" have?
If you want an extramural activity - and somebody is willing to pay - then pop bands may happen.
When I was at scholl (AFTER the rinderpest, in case you were going to ask) we had quite a few musicians, some of them pretty good (Greg Georgiades was a couple of years after me, and a mate of mine made a good living on the 70s/80s cover band circuit), but no formal school band. So you can be in a band despite your school not actually having a band.
When I was at school we were told that all undesirable conditions in a boy could be traced to a sluggish liver. The causes of a sluggish liver were long hair and motorbikes. The cure for a sluggish liver was lots of manly sport. "Manly" sport was really rugby, though cricket had it's benefits and track and field were not actively damaging. Surfing was most definitely not manly, and soccer was regarded with some suspicion. The headmaster was not going to spend much time considering the school encouraging participation in a pop (or, worse, "underground") band, though I know that some of the musicians had considerable support from their families. My mate was a keyboard player, and so was studying "proper" music as well, but his dad also bought him a Hammond and an ARP synth.
