Truth THE NATIONAL PAPER THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1928. Jazz Babies

NZ Truth, Issue 1202, 13 December 1928, Page 6

Truth THE NATIONAL PAPER THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1928. Jazz Babies

♦ COMPOSERS of- syncopated trifles are a turbulent family, its members racked with all sorts of pains, seemingly contorted by many weird physical i evolutions, smitten with queer mental warps that produce awful pains m the pit of our musical stomachs. Is there no cure for this tonic sol fa delirium through which we must pass every time we cross the threshold of a gramophone store or go to a vaudeville show? Maybe, the syrupy sentiments which whistle through the noses of jazz orchestra singers, or which glare shrilly at our sensibilities from a two-shilling' sheet of neurotic splurge, are immune from the scissors of the censor. Usually, the melodies are quite refreshing, only to be offset by a meaningless jargon of nonsense about ''My baby, this is that," or else the grey-haired mammas waiting m the corn-breaks for little boys with white hair and suppressed consciences. There is a dangerous element, too. It is the nasty, practically unveiled pruriency which is shrieked at school children as they pass through the streets on their way home. • Such a declaration smacks not at all of squeamishness, but ia delivered m the full knowledge that however "good sports" we all may be, few of us like to see the youthful mind choked with nauseous banality such as that emanating from the vacuous minds of jargon versifiers. If there is no statutory censorship of the stuff, it should be patent to those embryonic politicians who took their oaths- in the Ilouse of Representatives last week that some legislation m the direction of muzzling the output of splurge from composers should be effected. There seems to be too much quacking about abroadmindedness,'' and too little observance by our political representatives of how easily, and by what means, some so-called entertainers increase their. bank balances.