THE JAZZ ERA

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 224, 16 June 1919, Page 6

THE JAZZ ERA

TnE BIG NOISE PLANE. "I see," S3 id the man in the corner of the carriage (writes Mr. D. Newton in the "Daily Chronicle"). "I see that the usual bishop is .condemning Jazz dancing, and the usual doctor is supporting him. But why do I hey stop at dancingWhile they arc dealing with why' don't they mention .Jazz painting, and Jazz poetry, and Jazz dressing, ami Jazz music, as well as Jazz thinking and reading, and revolution making, and all the rest? What's the good of condemning just one Jazz thing, when they've got the clionce of denouncing a Jazz era,"

"Jazz," said the fat man rather densely, "is a specific name for a definite thing. There is, I understand, a. dance—"

"The whole of the world and all the minds of the men in the world are dancing, and J<rez is the note they dance to," said the other. "It's a good name. Expressive. Jazz—it sums up the temper of the time. We're nil of us just Jazzing through existence. We'rs all svneopation. We do nothing steadily or coherently or continuously. We two-step for a few minutes, and then without the slightest reason we are dipping away oil unother. tack altogether. Wo oau't be tied down to one line of action. Continuous effort bores us. Life, 'like the waltz; is fa.r too monotonous for us. We like things to be short, sharp, dramatic, noisy; we arc'out to get the greatest possible effect, with the least pains.

"People no ■longer even think consecutively. They Jazz an idea into the general fireworl; display of conversation, and are off again after other ideas which have no relation to the first, '•heir brains leap from point to point. They never build up, they never dwell upon or develop anything, their minds ore full of bits without any definite pattern. And their reading's like that, too; bitty, syncopated, full of sudden Jazz noises, with nothing much between. People can consume nothing but scintillating scraps and cymbal-like clashes; you'll find that note running through all _ the novels and the lwoks of Jazzy reminiscenc, and the glittering and impertinent '.olunes of criticism and impression. "As for poetry and painting, they are sheer Jazz. What with the desire of people for pictures and verse that will lean out at them with something of the sudden shock of a nigger bandsman striking ,i piece of tin, and the determination of poets and painters to make impressions without going through the tedious process of learning their trades, we have to-day art which is not so much art 'is a succession of impacts, just for nil the world as though poetry and painting were affairs of the tap-drum. "Living—well, ifs no longer what onr fathers called living, it's Jazzjng. We jump about in the vast bnllroom jof the world from sensation to sopsation. We've got a jigging unrest. \ye are always saying 'What $ext.' Balls, dinners, kiriemas, strikes, 'revelations, revues, pageants, scandals, flying stunts, thrill us for a minute, but even as they thrill wo are reaching out for the next thrilling, blar. ing, blazing item in the heacly round of our days'.

"There's no smoothness in us, we're constant to nothing, we change our time, we can't 1m pinned down, we want to do everything at once, and yet can't wait or concentrate enough even to carry one plan through; one moment re are up in the clouds with a' crash and a tempest of sound, the next we ore in the depths, moving at piano, asking querulously when the 'big noise' which sounds like something doing will come again. We want to live life on the 'big noise' plane. We want life to be one long sweet Jazz."