Another Attack on Jazz.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19112, 22 September 1927, Page 8

Another Attack on Jazz.

Those who remembered the beautiful singing of the Sheffield Choir in New Zealand fifteen years ago were probably not surprised yesterday to learn thai Sir Henry Coward had broken out into a furious denunciation of jazz. Sir Henry is one of the greatest choir-masters England has produced, and he has spent his life training men and women to sing good music; indeed, a great deal of the music he has interpreted so nobly for the public is definitely sacred in character. But even to ordinary people, a jump from, say, Elgar's. "Dream of Gerontius" to a blare of jazz bellowed out by a negro band is about as sharp and painful a transition as the world of art provides. One cannot won'der, therefore, that Sir Henry says that " jazz makes the trom- " bone bray like an ass and guffaw like "a village idiot," and that "it debases " both music and musical, instruments." The'worst of jazz music is hideous in sound and even worse in the associations it suggests—though it may not always, as Sir Henry hints, call up pictures of primitive savagery in Congo forests with tonj-toms beating through a miasma of blood and heat. Yet it would be merely an anti-climax to say that jazz is often vulgar. To realise how low musically some jazz compositions are it is only necessary to introduce into the middle of a programme a tune from one of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, when the effect is like opening the door of a close, stale \rooni and going out into a spring morning. Sir Henry Coward, however, does not

appear to realise that there are many people who can, and do, enjoy jazz without being vulgar or risking anything. While jazz music is sometimes demoralising, and dances to it sometimes unpleasant, it is absurd to suggest that the average young man or young woman who jazzes an evening away" is on the downward path to destruction. These young people remain for the most part quite unaffected by the change from waltz, polka, and lancers to jazzing. It is a dance, and as such they enjoy it, and there is no more in it than that. It must not be forgotten that the waltz was regarded as seductive and immoral when it was introduced, and there are probably many peoplo to-day who still hold that it is an undesirable form of amusement. The popularity of jazz is due in part to its novelty. Music has become a great popular recreation, and there is something in the rhythm of jazz which suits this age —something new, stimulating, and intriguing. There are any number of men and women — and some prominent musicians—who e nj°y jazzing without losing their taste for good music. On the other hand there are numbers who are incapable of liking anything better, and if there were no jazz they would feed as former generations did —on the lush growths' of sentimentality.