WHAT IS SLATTING?

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 77, Issue 108, 9 May 1934, Page 10

WHAT IS SLATTING?

A LONDON DISCOVERY. NEW ABUSE OU THE EAR. 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 £4O 000,000 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 rounds 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 oc the point the other day. he could only say that he had discovered that certain vocal noises suited certain notes of music. He had not been inspired to “scat”; he had merely “scati?.l” 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 goggle-eyed 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 tv scandalised homes to scat as indi .duals, so long as the endurance of suff-iring relations and parents lasts. of bathrooms and living-rooms are reverberating to the raucous “hi-dc-his” and “ho-de-hos” of the Calluway oral d. The very office-boy } scat as they stroll out on a message, preferirg •.his n one of self-exoressiod to the old fashioned whistle. Londcn is a patient town, bu* its tolerance may soon be strained to breaking pdint. It can, at a pin<b, put up with an epidemic or influenza, or a series 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 the aesthetic reputation of the City, go completely to ruin, but fortunately, it may not be necessary to go to extremes. Mr. Calloway will not be 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.