FIRST HEARINGS IN JAZZ
Sir-Under this heading your contributor Ray Harris has included two orchestras which are obviously swing bands (Listener, April 12). Does he not realise that swing is not jazz? One of the most essential characteristics of jazz is that arranged passages are entirely absent. Greig McRitchie and Les Elgart are nothing but highly-disciplined aggregations which turn out one arranged piece after another, each one meticulously rehearsed down to the last cymbal crash. We all know that jazz stemmed from the primitive music of the West African Negro via the slave ships to the New World. This makes jazz folk music, but swing is the stereotyped music of the commercial world. The Bobby Enevoldsen Sextet, also mentioned in this issue, appears to be a swing group which on occasions attempts to break into the jazz idiom. Here we find a faux pas on the part of the bandleader as swing is meant for dancing and jazz for listening, and consequently appreciating. You cannot do both, and obviously the choice is left to the listener. However, I have no wish to denigrate these swing bands’ valuable and excellent work in that sphere; it is only on the use of the word "jazz" to label their music that I have any difference of opinion. This letter is an attempt to vindicate the integrity of those who have kept jazz alive during the long years of its eclipse behind the meretricious blaze of artificially exploited swing.
A. JOHN
SCOTT
(Christchurch).
(This letter was shown to Mr Harris, who replied as follows: ‘Your correspondent revives an old and well-worn argument. I suggest that he listen to Leonard Bernstein’s excellent illustrated lecture, "What is Jazz?’"’--to be broadcast from. Station 3YA on May 10 at 10.0 p.m. Bernstein covers the points raised more than adequately and leaves no. doubt in my mind (there wasn’t any, anyway) that swing, along with bop, progressive, Dixieland, spirituals, and even rhythm and blues, is jazz." )
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 924, 26 April 1957, Page 11
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327FIRST HEARINGS IN JAZZ New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 924, 26 April 1957, Page 11
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