Radio doings (Dec 1930-Jun1932)

JAZZ In The JUNGLE by Thurston rimd/cn takes little originality to remark I that" 'Jazz'came from the jungle." ' Every talking picture taken in the haunts of jungle man drives home the point so well that the average movie fan has by this time made this pregnant discovery for himself. On the other hand there is still a chance for a village wit to slip one over on the rest of the boys and girls by finding out whal "Jazz" really is, why the jungle should have been its birth-place, and how hot a thing jungle man has made out of it. There are a number of experts who say that "Jazz" is nothing more nor less than "erratic noises." I hold with that other school of alleged thought which maintains, on the contrary, that the_ essence of "Jazz" — in fact, the only possible excuse for "Jazz" — is its peculiar and fascinating rhythm., .And> ' that rhythm is a definite mixture of regular and irregular beats. I believe the reason why it maintains the hold it has on the public is that it can still give our iaded nervous systems a jolt of surprise. The listener's body first of all begins to vibrate to the undercurrent of regular beats. Of a sudden one of the irregular, delayed beats catches him unprepared. It throws him off balance. It releases an explosion of nervous energy which causes a thrill of pleasure. But if the same thing is repeated too many times the listener learns when the delayed beat will occur. Right then it begins to lose its kick for him. And here is where the potency of "jazz" rhythm shows itself. There are many ways to vary the occurrence of the delayed beat or beats while still keeping the same general relation between the regular and the irregular. You can shock 'em till the cows come home. They were beginning to say, five or six years ago, that "Jazz is through?" Now, is it dead? I'm asking you. If you listen to music from the jungle belt that extends around the world you will find that jungle peoples the world over have known how to make effective use of this very definite regular-irregular rhythm-pattern. You would recognize the same thing in music from the Kongo, Madagascar, India, Ceylon, Java, Samoa, Tahiti, Hawaii, Guiana, Haiti, Cuba, Beale Street, or Broadway. Why of necessity should the jungle belt have been the place where "jazz" rhythm originated? Perhaps one reason is the real jungle is a dark and fearsome place, full of known dangers and the unknown perils of the spirit world that is supposed to haunt it. John Vandercook in his interesting book, Tom-Tom, suggests that a race could survive in such surroundings, century after century, only by finding some powerful way of hypnotizing or intoxicating itself. He indicates that such a means was found by beating on the tom-tom. I'll go a step further. We'll suppose that, ages ago, jungle man slapped his leg with his freely swinging hand as he walked through the dark recesses of his natural habitat just as a boy whistles to keep up his courage as as passes a graveyard at midnight. The iungle gentleman noticed with naive pleasure that part of the time his hand hit his leg just as one of his feet struck the ground, while at other times he gave himself a smack half-way between strides. Here was your combination of beat and off-beat occurring in an interesting form. It happens that such a definite relation of a one-two beat going on at the same time as a one-two-three beat is the simplest form of the jazz-rhythm pattern. It may have been that jungle man, once he had realized the interesting nature of his discovery, experimented further with it by pounding with a stick on a hollow log. The fact remains that peoples who live in jungle countries actually use an astonishing number of fascinating variations on the above primitive pattern. Jungle man can work himself into a fcenzy with his cunning use of them; and it will get the white man, too, if he 6 listens long enough. The spell of the delayed beat on the drum first got hold of me when as a kid of five I used to follow a G. A. R. fife-and-drum corps around the streets of my natal town of Salina, Kansas. I' determined then and there that I would find out how they made that "quickstep" time sound so thrilling and just why I got such an inordinate wallop out of it. But it was years later, when witnessing a stage presentation of "The Bird of Paradise," that I got what might be called my first clue that there was a general and primitive formula for placing that fascinating delayed beat in various parts of a measure. In the luau scene several Hawaiian women were seated in a native hut slapping gourds which contained rattling seeds, with the palms of their hands. The delayed beat came in a distinctly different part of the measure than is the case in fife-anddrum "quick-step time." Was it not possible that ALL the vagaries of unpredictable jazz rhythm were obtained from some simple formula — a formula iungle peoples knew intuitively? Here's How It All Started Page Nine