KIND WORDS FOR JAZZ

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 89, 11 January 1923, Page 4

KIND WORDS FOR JAZZ

DANGER OF LOSING SUSCEPTIBILITY TO RHYTHM.

What. Professor W. Dykema of the University of Wisconsin has to say about the jazz in America might to applicable to that same form or dancing here in New Zealand. 1 “I have some good tilings,” he says, “to say for jazz. It is not the prin<Tiple of the thing that is bad, it is more often the. performers. Jazz has a new 'rhythm, a new arrangement of tones, a piquancy, a verve, and stimulating qualities which are a real contribution to music. Jazz is being wrecked by nerve-wracking devices. Cow-bells, rattles, and foghorns are drowning out its merits. Jazz is the victim of its wild, modem devotees, Who are as bad as the voodoo worshippers of darkest Africa. “Abandon the foghorns, make jazz music low enough so the dancers will have to listen and think, and to do, some of Ahe rhythm themselves, and it will bo a. different sort. The present danger is the losing of the susceptibility to rhythm. Poor music of this kind produces paralysis of the ear. “Wei are in danger of becoming a nation of piano-pumpers, radio-round-ers, and grafonola-grinders. flieso mechanical instruments, if . unwisely used, aro dangerous to musical lite. “We are musically under-nourished. What better proof of this fact con’d one ask than the' haste with which the nublic turns quickly from one I nd popular song to another in unconscious search for'the songs which will lastingly' satisfy their musical hunger/ “As to the songs which are being sung generally to-dhy, people' are living on unbalanced ration. I. he Wm popular song commonly used, signifies / not quality but newness. ’