THE NEW JAZZ

Southland Times, Issue 19502, 17 March 1925, Page 11

THE NEW JAZZ

AMERICA’S DEBT TO EUROPE. BORROWED MUSIC. After triumphing in all the seaside bandstands and hotel lounges, the new American dance-music made sb bold as to invade the Queen’s Hall, London, recently—the Queen’s Hall, the haven in our noisy age of Mozart and Beethoven! (says the London Daily Mail). This concert of saxophones and foxtrots and banjoing was given by the clever “Savoy Orpheans.” Muted trumpets and trombones comically misbehaved themselves like aidermen at a Continental carnival. Fragments of Wagner and Dvorak were light-heartedly travestied—for the new American music is no respecter of persons or property. It was as though a cannibal feast were served in the dining-room of the Athenaeum. And the large audience evinced extreme pleasure. “SYMPHONISED-SYNCOPATION.” The fox-trot now aspires to be listened to without dancing, as we listen to Bach’s sarabands and Chopin’s mazurkas. The saxophones and their underlings played to us several pieces founded on fox-trot rhythms, by Messrs J. Russell, H. Nicolls, Chaliapin, Earl Burnett, and others. The official name for this music is “sym-phonised-syncopation”—rather too clumsy a name to persuade people to leave off calling it jazz. The new jazz is a little more civilised than the old, but not too much. We feel it to be still very near to nature—with its quaint rude noises and obsessive rhythms. The very music for schoolboys and Hottentots! This new music cries out: “Wanted—a composer!” The performers were brilliant—and remember that they not only have to play loudly and vivaciously, but also to look as pleasant as Punch all the time. Some of the Savoy Orpheans are virtuosi, quite apart from their smiles. It was clear what was wanted—a strident, busy, rattling music, all excitement. COOL BORROWINGS. g The American composers do not as yet compare with the performers ip meeting this want. There seemed curiously little talent among them, and as for morals—why, they hadn’t heard of the Eight Commandment. The coolness of their borrowings! X, lacking an idea, appropriates one of Grieg’s; and Y, in like case, one of Gounod’s. Shreds of borrowed Tchiakovsky, Dvorak, and Wagner also appeared in this new American music. And they talk of Europe’s debts! These Savoy Orpheans—they are clever enough to deserve it—should get some musician to write for them, say Stravinsky or Arthur Bliss, if they are going to make a habit of concert-giving.