The Relation of Jazz Music to Art

Abstract

A CROWD of some two hundred thousand people overwhelmed a Chicago park for a summer series program which was devoted to jazz music. In Boston, the Athens of America, twenty-five thousand people attended a charity ball where a battle between sweet and swing music was featured. In Philadelphia and New York, truancy on the part of school children has become a serious problem when favorite bands are playing in local theaters. In the May, 1938, issue of the Metronome there are three hundred and seventy-five dance bands listed, and all of those bands are playing for American youth. Through their radio facilities they entertain an audience beyond computation. In addition, thousands of our young people have become record collectors. While no accurate figures are available, it appears that some eighty or eighty-five per cent of the records sold by leading companies are recordings of popular dance music, of cowboy songs, and hillbilly music. It will be little short of a calamity if we who are responsible for the guidance of Young America ignore these manifestations of a tremendous mass interest in a