WHAT IS SCATTING?

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 May 1934, Page 8

WHAT IS SCATTING?

A LONDON DISCOVERY. An indication of modern culture is prose that no one can understand, but thousands read. Another indication is crooning, but crooning, already, is threatened by scatting. What is scatting? One would not like to take the responsibility of defining it, or to assume lightly that the word has a feline origin, but here is what a London correspondent says about it: —

As though it were not enough that the London County Council and its £40,000,0.00 budget should have been handed over to the “Reds,” we have in our midst a new affliction, known as the “Scat” singer. For the latter we have to blame Mr Cab Calloway, the high priest of “scatting,’.’ who .has been making converts by the thousand at the Palladium in recent weeks.

To “scat” is to utter meaningless sounds which are something like shrieks of distress or a cat-fight on a really grand scale, “sung” to the rhythm of “hot” jazz tunes. Even Mr Calloway is hard put to it to explain why he perpetrated this invention. When pressed on the point the other day, he could only say that he had discovered that certain vocal noises suited certain notes of music, no had not been inspired to “scat”; he had merely “scatted” spontaneously, improvising as he went along. Whether he has originated an art or a nuisance is a matter of opinion. The theatre is filled nightly by goggleeyed young people whose chief ambition in life appears to be a. desire to scat. On the slightest pretext, they scat in chorus, and, doubtless, return to scandalised homes to scat as individuals, so long as the endurance of suffering relations and parents lasts. Thousands of bathrooms and livingrooms are reverberating to the raucous “hi-de-his” and “ho-de-hos” of the Calloway brand. The. very office'boys scat as they stroll out on a message, preferring this mode of selfexpression to the old-fashioned whistle.

London is a patient town, but its tolerance may soon be strained to breaking point. It can, at a pinch, put up with an epidemic of influenza, t.r a scries of black fogs, or a wet summer, but when its peace is shattered day and night by juveniles and adolescents who “scat” in public, it is inclined to rebel. Indeed, there are already those who talk of invoking The Prevention of Crimes Act, lest tho aesthetic reputation of the City go completely to ruin. But, fortunately, it may not be necessary to go to extremes. Mr Calloway will not bo here much longer, and, in any case, no craze, however widespread, lasts for more than a few weeks. There is always a new craze to displace it.