I.

Jazz is upon us everywhere. To deny the fact is to assume the classic ostrich pose, head buried in the sand, tail-feathers to the sun. To shout alarm hysterically from the housetops, is to exhibit over-confidence in clamorous indignation as a purifier of morals, if it be not wholly to ignore historic precedent.

The situation we are facing is not new. It offers many problems which are grave, yet seemingly not more perplexing than those which have arisen, under similar conjunctures, in the past. True it is that the dance to which jazz music has been coupled is not precisely setting an example of modesty and grace. True, also, that certain modern dance-perversions have called up music that is as noxious as the breath of Belial. Only by a bold stretch of fancy can this delirious caterwauling be brought under the head of music proper—or improper; as noise, its significance at times becomes eloquent to the point of leaving little or nothing to the imagination.

However, let us remember that the worst of our present dances are not beginning to approach in barefaced wickedness the almost unbelievable performances of our forefathers, for which we need not seek much further back than the time of the French Revolution, when the 1800 dance-halls of Paris were not enough to hold the whirling pairs, but dancing went on gayly in churches and in cemeteries. And let us admit that the best of jazz tunes is something infinitely more original—perhaps even musically better than the so-called “popular” music that America produced in the “good old days,” that golden age which lives only in the mythology of disappointed sinners.

My ideas on the dance and the possible causes of its recurring degeneration I have set forth in an article, “Why do we dance?” which appeared in the Musical Quarterly for October, 1920. I shall merely remind you that almost every race and every age have known social conditions which result in an unloosing of instincts that nature wisely has taught us to hold well in check, but which, every now and then, from cryptic reasons, are allowed to break the bounds of civilized restraint.

Such excesses have not infrequently attained to tragic madness. The silly, lewd gyrations for which jazz is held responsible by some are the release of tension in a witless, neurotic stratum of society. But such dances were common long before the word “jazz” was coined. Our latest dance craze has known the Tango, the “shimmy,” the various zoological trots, to much the same purpose that now cries out for jazz.

Whoever wishes to reform the dance must break the grip that clutches partner against partner, in shuffling, wriggling ambulation. Abolish the comparative intimacy of that twofold company; make room for the benign third party that turns company into crowd; devise a dance in which there is general participation, as there was in the quadrille, the figure dances, the milder forms of country reels, and you will not only improve the tone of public amusements, but possibly you may open a way for dance-music to resume a swifter, ampler, and more sweeping gait, instead of the repeated, jogging, stubborn motives which lead to stupid, short, reiterated movements.

For the present, I am not concerned with dance reform, nor am I interested in jazz as an accompaniment to Terpsichorean atrocities; it is rather the musical side of jazz—how it originated, what it represents, and what it may lead to—upon which I shall try to throw a little light.

II.

To a great many minds, the word “jazz” implies frivolous or obscene deportment. Let me ask what the word “sarabande” suggests to you? I have no doubt that to most of you it will mean everything that is diametrically opposed to “jazzing.” When you hear mention of a “sarabande,” you think of Bach's, of Handel's slow and stately airs; you think of noble and dignified