A minor interest here is the diffusion of jazz in the early 20th century.
The word and evidence for a kind of jazz first appeared in Salem newspapers in 1917. Its frequency of use picked up in text, and as popular culture it was seemingly embraced by a significant subculture.
In 1919 the only visible celebration of Columbus Day was a dance held by the Knights of Columbus and Daughters of Isabella for soldiers returned from the war. With the conservative sponsorship, perhaps jazz was not featured. The small notices in the paper do not discuss the music.
Perhaps coincidentally, or perhaps not, as it touches on many of the themes Columbus Day expresses and invokes, the holiday also seemed to prompt an editorial screed against jazz.
Here's the whole:
JAZZ is a word so newly coined that it does not appear
in the latest dictionaries. It is applied to rythmic
clamor produced by a medley of more or less discordant
musical instruments. Apparently there is little attempt
at harmony and none at melody. The blatant jars and
discords are popularly supposed to add "pep" to the noise.
The jazz is a relapse to the barbaric music of primitive peoples. It can be heard in the wilds of Africa as
the natives beat their tom-toms and whang their crude
musical instruments. To it the South Sea islanders writhe
their sensuous contortions and the dancing girls of the
orient sinuously whirl. Even the American Red-Skin
galloped his tribal dances to a stately jazz.
The jazz has succeeded rag-time as the popular music,
and like it is a jungle gift from the American negro. Naturally, as it degraded music from civilized to savage standards, it has lowered the dance to vulgarity, a source of
disgust to the spectator and frequently debasement to the
participant. The jazz dance is a discord in civilized society, though harmonizing well with the jungle.
The popularity of the jazz is symptomatic of the
times. It reflects the popular unrest and discontent, the
breaking away from established standards and the return
to the primitive in the search for the new. After the
strain of five years of fighting, the world has a bad case
of "nerves" and the noise of jazz succeeds the noise of
battle, for music has lost its charms in the discord of war.
The jazz is not confined to music. We have it popularized as "futurism" in art, a crazy attempt to out do
the aboriginal in primitiveness. We have it popularized
in politics as Bolshevism, a fantastic and frenzied effort to
turn society upside down and elevate brawn by decapitating brains. We have it popularized in business in the almost universal profiteering of the money-mad. We have
it in industry in the frequency of needless strikes. We
have also the jazz in the United States senate in the brain
storm over the league of nations and the unending clamor
of abuse hurled at the President. Let us hope as conditions
return to the normal, the jazz will go the way of the rag.
The racist themes are obvious, and it is also interesting to see how jazz is aligned politically with Bolshevism and strikes. So much of the pearl-clutching is in bad faith! (But there is also truth: Jazz was indeed commodified in the new media of records and their marketing and distribution.)
Back to Columbus Day, altogether it does not seem to matter much in 1919, and we might adduce this to arguments for cancelling Columbus Day and transferring the national holiday to another day, like Election Day.
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