CAMPAIGN AGAINST JAZZ.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3762, 3 March 1928, Page 1

CAMPAIGN AGAINST JAZZ.

SIR. H. COWARD’S ATTACKS. MENACE TO WHITE RACE. “The Biological Aspect of Memory and Jazzery,” was the title given by Sir Henry Coward, conductor of the Sheffield Orchestral Society, to a talk to the Incorporated Society of Musicians. It followed, as he explained, his recent condemnation of this newer form of music, and he carriel his criticism to a stage further by declaring that on moral and ethical grounds jazz should be banned and suppressed.

“Many people must be asking themselves where we are drifting,’ lie said. “We see a decided lowering of the prewar standards in ethics, morals, language, and conduct. Joined to this there is a feverish exploitation of low types of pleasure in the younger generation. This has led to synchronise with, or the vulgarisation of English .taste and artistic ideals by means of many American cinema pictures, the unutterable Yankee musical comedies, revues and plays, until we are led to exclaim: ‘Where are the white races drifting morally ethic ally, artistically, and commercially?’ I am no't a pessimist, but I wish to preserve the dignity of the white races against the decadent tendencies which we see on hand, but which, happily, are not universal or irreparable.

“If we wish to avoid the fate of the great Empire which have dominated and declined, including Egypt, Babylon, Greece and Rome, we must see that our lotus-eating does not take the place of working and that we do not allow jazz to pay fat dividends, while s'teeJ, cutlery, and plate, cotton and cloth languish and our high thinking and spirituality decay.” FARMYARD NOISES.

After observing that jazz was a low' type of primitive music, with decidedly atavistic tendencies, Sir Henry continued: “It is founded on crude rhythms, suggested by the stamping of the foot and the clapping of the hands, and it always puts an emphasis on the grotesque by bangings and clangings of pots, pans or any shimmering metallic substance, reinforced by special drums. This latter has to a great extent gone now, but the same spirit is present. It debases both music and instruments by making both farcical. The noble trombone is made to bray like an ass, guffaw like a village idiot, and mpan like a cow in distress. The silver trumpet, is made to screech, produce sounds like drawing a nail on a slate, tearing calico, or like a nocturnal tom-cat.

“The next indictment is that jazz vulgarises the perception of tone qualities. Just fancy the deplorable taste of a man who cart tolerate the dull, cloudy, hooty, out-of-tune tone of a saxophone, or the twangy banjo, which is forced by its limited' tonality and technique to an incessant ploiig, plong, plong, which is eked out by a set o.f exasperating tipity-tapatay vampings (laughter). The person who is unconscious ol such bad taste is on a level with the rich parvenu who stuffs liis room with all sorts of gaudy ornaments and adorns his walls with oleographs. The so-called jazz classics are merely desiccated jazz, and even in that form they remind me of a buffoon parodying serious speech. Those and all the othei characteristics of jazz indicate atavism, a going back to the standards and conditions of the cave man and the negro of the Southern plantations. This popularisation of this •class .of music, with its reaction on sub-conscious memory, evoking practices and usages of the past, such as immodest dances, led to a lowering of the prestige of the white races. To check any further loss of prestige we must ban jazz.” ' ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT. Mr. Arthur Bliss,' the composer, disagreed with much that Sir Henry iCmvard had argued. “It is a figment of an over-pow-erful imagination,” he said, “to conceive of this great gigantic black man striding over the world with a banjo in one hand and a saxophone in the other, disintegrating the British Empire.” The restlessness of the post-war generation which thought of progress as speed, and a fast life as necessarily a full life, would have had to invent jazz if jazz had not been there, v Mr. Reginald Baten, the leader of the Cavoy Havana Baud, in a letter which was read in support of jazz, wrote that many people who were continually damning dance music had never heard any of the best dance bands, many of-which “arrived” because their renderings of popular numbers were musically clever and pleasing. Modern dances were designed to allow for the utmost originality. The individual 1 dancer bad ceased to be an auto-

mation, and that he thought was the secret of the enormous success of dancing at the present time. 'Sir Henry Coward, replying to the discussion, admitted that jazz bad good points. The orchestration, he said, was very good, but there had been some very good orchestration without jazz.