Tuesday Dance Trivia: The immorality of jazz
by Alain Wong
Last week’s answer
Which modern Lindy Hop team originally performed to “The Last Jump (To End All Jumps)” by Charlie Barnet? Bonus question: which team got people talking by choreographing and performing to the same song a year later?
ANSWER: Silver Shadows performed to the song “The Last Jump (To End All Jumps)” by Charlie Barnet at the American Lindy Hop Championships in Stamford, CT in 2006. They also performed it at the US OPEN that year in Anaheim, CA. Ninjammerz performed a choreography mixing the slower Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra’s “Happy Go Lucky Local” and the faster “The Last Jump” during the Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown in St. Paul, MN in 2007.
Congrats to Breanna for guessing the right answer. Andrew and Alain, I totally agree with both of you - that performance was magical. At the end of the routine in the video, you can see Carl and I rise up to our feet (we are slightly to the right of the center)… I remember us both being so energized and inspired by the moment. It still gives me giddy shivers when I think about it.
This Week’s Tuesday Dance Trivia Question: Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation?
Complete the last sentence. In August 1921, the widely read (about 6 million subscribers) and highly influential Ladies’ Home Journal published an article by music professor Anne Shaw Faulkner titled “Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation.”
“Jazz disorganizes all regular laws and order… it is harmful and dangerous, and its influence is wholly bad… Jazz originally was the accompaniement of the voodoo dancer, stimulating the half-crazed barbarians to the vilest deeds. The weird chant, accompanied by the syncopated rhythm of the voodoo invokers, has also been employed by other barbaric people to stimulate brutality and sensuality. That it has a demoralizing effect upon human brain has been demonstrated by many scientists… the effect of jazz on the normal brain produces an atrophied condition on the brain cells of conception, until very frequently those under the demoralizing influence of the persistent use of syncopation combined with inharmonic partial tones are actually incapable of distinguishing between good and evil, right and wrong.
Such music has become __________________.
Know the answer? Let everyone know and comment.
“Such music has become an influence for evil.”
Same could be said about Pantera, Snoop Dog, Jonas Brothers, or a thousand other bands
The answer is “Such music has become an influence of evil”.
Isn’t it true though?
Interesting
Oh I think Anne Faulkner was thinking “Such music has become my secret pleasure.” Then she continued to ponder about how this new music gave meaning to her repressed and otherwise joyless life, and how it could be a useful tool in the dismantling of the Patriarchy. After writing this article, she smoked a reefer and enjoyed some madness with her butler. (All in secret of course.)
Did I read the same article? Are we talking about the same person?
I know that I’m commenting on an old LB entry, but I can’t help myself.
I wonder how Anne Shaw Faulkner felt about the use of tritones in music. I’m looking at a Beethoven Piano Sonata, and I keep seeing diminished fifths. This means that clearly, Beethoven’s is the music of Satan. We can’t have our children listening to such demoralizing music as Beethoven. They’ll never learn to distinguish between good and evil.
Ooh look, I see syncopation in the very same Sonata… I guess I’m going to hell.