ABSTRACT
When a European composer adopts the idiom of jazz, he deserves pity. Eumenides, as well as less mythological hounds in the form of music critics are sure to be on his trail. He is also an easy prey, for in his admiration for the exotic delight he is bound to lose his sense of balance and overdo things. Americans who hold the secret of jazz-making are even less tolerant of their European followers than the Europeans themselves in judging American art and American tastes. Few fair-minded Americans would consciously recall that jazz-rhythms were first born among negroes, and that the jazz band, fascinating because of its incongruity, was scattered all over the terrestrial globe before having been assembled at some preVolstead bar on the Pacific Coast…. The banjo came from Central Africa (origin disputed), the ukulele came from the Sandwich Islands, or, according to Joan Lowell, was introduced there by a Harvard student. The saxophone was invented in 1842 in Europe; the sliding trombone is by no means a new device; in the realm of percussion only the drum, electrically illuminated from inside constitutes an unquestioned innovation, with the derby hats for mutes imparting an air of informal joviality, essential to the new art.
