Reasons to Believe Jazz is Evil

• Pastor Andrew Grosjean on music and evil Pastor Grosjean believes that jazz was "born out of black arts and blues music, has sensual harmonies and rhythms, encourages emotionalism, and encourages physical appetites." Is this true? What does it mean and why believe it? What are the justifications and explanations for these claims? Are any of the things in the list bad? Why?

• "Where Does Jazz Lead? Woman Author Contends It Arouses Undesirable Instincts," Anne Shaw Faulkner, MacLean's Magazine, (Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg: Canada, October 1, 1921)

• “Moral and religious concerns are addressed in an article in The Ladies Home Journal (August 1921) entitled, "Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation!" Just as rap lyrics are being criticized today, so was jazz attacked on moral grounds. Yet, we also read in this article: "Syncopation is found in its most highly developed forms in the music of the folk who have been held for years in political subjugation. It is, therefore, an expression in music of the desire for that freedom which has been denied to its interpreter." The December issue of The Ladies Home Journal, however, contained a piece entitled "Unspeakable Jazz Must Go," in which we read that "jazz is worse than the saloon because it affects our young people especially." This statement, by dance master F. T. Bots, expressed the opinion of various dance associations that actively worked against jazz as dance music because of what their members felt was an immoral association of dance with jazz. They declared, in no uncertain terms. 'The road to hell is too often paved with jazz steps." In the 1920s, jazz had reached a new zenith of popularity, respectability, and controversy. The era that has become known as the Jazz Age actually began years earlier with the import of Tom Brown's Band from New Orleans in 1915 and the arrival of Joe Oliver in Chicago in 1918. When a few New Orleans musicians working in Chicago (Paul Barbarin, B. Johnson, and J. Noose) decided to form a band, they sent for Buddy Petit, who was considered the best jazz cornetist in New Orleans. Petit refused to join them but recommended one Joseph Oliver, who eventually became the leader of the most famous black jazz band in Chicago. The legendary "King" Oliver Band of 1922 included Honore Dutrey (trombone), Baby Dodds (drums), Bill Johnson (banjo). Lillian Hardin (piano), and a young cornet player from New Orleans named Louis Armstrong. The political atmosphere of 1922 somewhat resembled what we are experiencing today: the uncovering of the Teapot Dome scandal; the appointment of the first female U.S. Senator, Mrs. W. H. Felton of Georgia; and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, guaranteeing women's suffrage. In the theater, Abie's Irish Rose began a record run of 2,327 performances, and the Pirandello play Six Characters in Search of an Author premiered on Broadway. The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated on May 30 in Washington, D.C. Variety, the show business magazine, ran the headline "Radio Is Sweeping the Country." On August 28, the first commercial was broadcast over WEAF in New York, and on October 4, the first radio play-by-play coverage of the World Series was hosted by Grantland Ricc. There was also a great deal of activity in jazz that year. Miff Mole went with the Original Memphis Five, and Duke Ellington made his first trip to New York City. Coleman Hawkins was with Mamie Smith's Jazz Hounds. and the Friar's Society Orchestra first recorded for Gennett Records. The ongoing criticism of jazz music continued. The people who took a stand against jazz music and dancing were particularly vocal. Laurette Taylor, a well-known actress of the time maintained that jazz music "destroys one's appreciation of the great arts." A preacher expressed the opinion that "jazz must be analyzed as a combination of nervousness, lawlessness, primitive and savage animalism, and lasciviousness" (New York Times, March 3). Others objected to the use of "jazzed up" classical musical themes on the grounds that classical music "has always been approached with respect and even with reverence" (New York Times, December 10). These opponents even objected to the use of negro spirituals in a jazz context. A group of high school students from Chicago were quoted as saying, "We believe jazz music had done much to corrupt dancing and to make it impossible for young people to learn the more refined forms of dancing at the same time vitiating their taste for good music ("Students in Arms Against Jazz, Literary Digest, March 18). While this controversy raged an article appeared in The Music Lover's Magazine that began with a quote from Fritz Kreisler "There is no such thing as bad music. When it begins to be bad, it ceases to be music." The author of this article introduced jazz by saying, "It is generally considered that the 'bad music' of today is jazz; while it may be vulgar, vulgarity is not badness." He stated, "Jazz's origin comes from a composite of the Negro and Gypsy expression of racial emotion." And funkier, "while jazz is perfectly justifiable and legitimate, when it becomes the insincere and degraded gesture of a presumably higher class, then it starts the downgrade to the pernicious. Jazz is not bad itself, but becomes bad from the company it keeps. Jazz, when performed by the people of whose spiritual and mental calibre (it is the legitimate expression), is perfectly all right." This points up the essential difference between the jazz purist and the progressives in jazz. One article expressed the belief that "jazz was only a process of music evolution that in time would take care of itself and would require no concerned effort on the part of musicians either to kill or give extension of life. Jazz would self-exterminate in its old form or self-assert into a new and higher order of continued musical existence" (Melody, July). Jazz was evolving into a new and commendable style. The president of the famous Ludwig Drum Company wrote: "Jazz ... is a form of improvising and added syncopation, a development of ragtime and syncopation. Radical 'jazz' is already gone never to return." An article about the stage play Jazz—Our National Anthem (Musical Courier, May 4), provides many revelatory observations. One is that jazz did not evolve in Europe, as so many other genres of music did. The second is that jazz no longer depended on the performer's "making up" the music as he went along. It was now primarily in the hands of that newly invented creature, the arranger. One of the leading musicologists of the time, Carl Engel, discussed jazz in an article in The Atlantic Monthly. He was in favor of jazz purity and against imitations or the use of various accessories like sandpaper, gongs, etc. He said: "Like any kind of music, jazz can be bad or good. Good jazz? 'Mere exists such a thing as good jazz music—good jazz a great deal better than had playing of Beethoven. Good jazz is a composite, the latest phase of American popular music."” (bold not in original)

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