porary forgetfulness, infinitely less harmful than drugs or
alcohol. It is partly for some such reasons that it dominates
the amusement life of America to-day. No one can sensibly
condone its excesses or minimize its social danger if uncontrolled; all culture is built upon inhibitions and control. But
it is doubtful whether the "jazz-hounds” of high and low
estate would use their time to better advantage. In all probability their tastes would find some equally morbid, mischievous
vent. Jazz, it is needless to say, will remain a recreation for
the industrious and a dissipater of energy for the frivolous, a
tonic for the strong and a poison for the weak.
For the Negro himself, jazz is both more and less dangerous than for the white—less, in that he is nervously more in tune with it; more, in that at his average level of economic development his amusement life is more open to the forces of social vice. The cabaret of better type provides a certain Bohemianism for the Negro intellectual, the artist and the well-to-do. But the average thing is too much the substitute for the saloon and the wayside inn. The tired longshoreman, the porter, the housemaid and the poor elevator boy in search of recreation, seeking in jazz the tonic for weary nerves and muscles, are only too apt to find the bootlegger, the gambler and the demi-monde who have come there for victims and to escape the eyes of the police.
Yet in spite of its present vices and vulgarizations, its sex informalities, its morally anarchic spirit, jazz has a popular mission to perform. Joy, after all, has a physical basis. Those who laugh and dance and sing are better off even in their vices than those who do not. Moreover, jazz with its mocking disregard for formality is a leveller and makes for democracy. The jazz spirit, being primitive, demands more frankness and sincerity. Just as it already has done in art and music, so eventually in human relations and social manners, it will no doubt have the effect of putting more reality in life by taking some of the needless artificiality out. Naturalness finds the artificial in conduct ridiculous. “Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away,” said Byron. And so this new spirit of joy and spontaneity may itself play the rôle of reformer. Where at
