rough music

English

Noun

rough music (uncountable)

1. (UK, now historical) Improvised noise created by banging saucepans, scrap metal etc., especially as a way for communities to express outrage or displeasure at someone's behaviour. [from 18th c.]
   • 1928 February 26, The Observer:

     Seventeen villagers of Lincolnshire have been fined for ‘rantanning’ […] the ‘rough music’ of kettle and pan, in which the rustic moralist conveys his sense of outraged propriety.

   • 1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society, published 2012, page 507:

     Apart from making presentments in the Church courts, villagers had many informal ways of expressing their disapproval of the way a married couple comported themselves: by playing ‘rough music’ under their window, for example […]

   • 1996, Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy, Folio Society, published 2013, page 108:

     The most common form of punishment was ‘rough music’, or charivari, as it was known in southern Europe, where the villagers made a rumpus outside the house of the guilty person until he or she appeared and surrendered to the crowd, who would then subject him or her to public shame or even violent punishment.

   • 2012, Eric Berkowitz, Sex and Punishment, Westbourne Press, published 2013, page 203:

     People suspected of adultery, whoredom, or the like could expect to be awakened in their beds by their peers, making ‘rough music’ outside by clanging pots and pans.