DISCUSSING JAZZ.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 135, 9 June 1926, Page 12

DISCUSSING JAZZ.

CLERGYMAN AND SINGER.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SAN FRANCISCO, May 18.

Sparks \flew when the Rev. John Roach Straton, Baptist minister of New York, debated -with Madame D'Alvarez, the metropolitan grand opera singer, on "What shall-we do about'jazz?"

Dr. Straton suggested consigning it to a hotter place than New York, and referred to its adherents as "bandits" and "rattlesnakes."

"Let us curb it, let us put it down, let us outlaw this thing." Dr. Straton said. "It is the music of the savage, intellectual' and spiritual, debauchery, utter degradation. The jazz hound is a musical bandit, running amuck. Jazz is bootleg music, and should be outlawed."

Music, he declared, is one of the few things the soul will enjoy in Heaven at the feet of God, and the music of the Church, he added, was as beautiful in the sight of God as jazz is hideous. ' After this outburst Mme. D'Alvarez, ■who speaks English a bit haltingly, was so upset that she could not make a speech, -which she had prepared, but she did manage to tell the Rev. Straton that so far as she was concerned she intended to 'have jazz that it was the musical cocktail," and that when she died she intended to have Goorpe Gershwin's jazz symphony played nt her funeral.;.