The Patient, The Doctors, The Verdicts [American music] 1/29/29

American music is not jazz. Jazz is not music…. With these words opens a provoking book by a provoking writer: “An Hour with American Music” by Paul Rosenfeld. Since it is virtually impossible to spend a full hour with American music without jazz obtruding on the auditory nerve, Mr. Rosenfeld’s statement assumes at once a paradoxical guise. His book is a torrent of words and unverbal vocables, which, by its very force of impetus, washes away all prejudice of established beliefs, and floods over the head in its irresistible onrush. After the promised hour is over, the reader finds himself in the condition of the Niagara tourist traversing the Hurricane Bridge and getting out at the Rock of Ages: utterly benumbed, soaked to the bone, lashed by the winds, yet singularly refreshed by an experience, very jungle-like, but safely within immediate reach of modern civilization.