HOW WE GOT JAZZ
AN AID TO CELERITY Military hands never play slow music except at a funeral. The object of the .drum and fife band, as of all military bands, is to keep up the marching spirit. An industrial magnate once tried the effect of a baud on his operatives. He found that they did twice as much work to a dance as they did to a dirge. Singularly enough, jazz music and rag-time owe their origin to this idea. Both began on the cotton plantations, where celerity in picking the bolls meant so much to the owners. The negro pickers were forbidden to sir.g anything hut music of a lilting, galloning nature, to which their hands would naturally keen time. In this motion of the hands of the cottonpickers lies the origin of rag-time, and it was presented to the public in the first place by purely negro choirs.
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New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12151, 30 May 1925, Page 16
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151HOW WE GOT JAZZ New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12151, 30 May 1925, Page 16
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