It always irks me when classical music is used to rid an area of kids. First of all, who’s to say that the loiterers might not like Mozart anyway? (Read this to see what I’m talking about.) And why do we want to imply that Mozart is guaranteed to drive kids away anyway? This says so many things to me (and, perhaps, to them). Either they can’t appreciate great music, or great music is really not so great, I guess.
I think Mozart is pretty fine music … great art, to be sure. So why the heck do we try to punish or repel kids with great art? Sigh. Personally I’d like to see them come to concerts! Aren’t we telling them they’ll hate those as well?
My suggestion? Some of those really sappy hymns that I had to sing as a child. And maybe some of the contemporary worship songs too. Not the good ones, mind you (there really are some good old hymns and even some good contemporary ones, although those are few and far between), but the sappy ones with the awful lyrics and even worse music would surely drive kids away!
OR … maybe put together some heavy metal turned into elevator music? Take that metal stuff and add some Montovani strings.
Might that drive kids insane? Or at least drive them away.
Or maybe not: as was suggested in the article, the kids have headphones anyway, so probably nothing really works.
Hmmm. How about live music? Live music is best, right? Hire a brass quintet to play.
It might even interest some of the kids. You never know!
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