Word: jazzed
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...supposed antipathy of the highbrow "classicists" to all forms of popular music is a strangely persistent myth that keeps cropping up all the time in writings and discussions about jazz. Last Monday's interesting "Swing" column, for instance, used the phrases "blinded by tastes" and "overexposure to culture" to express what a lot of people honestly and unthinkingly believe, that classical music, in contrast to popular but ungrammatical jazz, is some sort of esoteric cubbyhole where a number of aesthetes hide away from the common emotions...
...seem paradoxical on the surface, but, actually, a taste for real jazz usually takes more time and effort to acquire than a feeling for Beethoven. The circumstances that begat the two different types have, in this discussion, nothing to do with the case. Most jazzmen would be amazed at the similarity between strict jazz and the thoroughbass music of Bach's time. In both cases you have the rigid rhythmic pattern over which an intricate web of thematic variations is woven. Bach's work had the advantage of being composed by a single highly developed talent, while jazz...
...jazz is a manifestation of human spirit, an art form like poetry or painting. Something that reaches beyond physical limitations and unites souls and minds. A trumpet solo of Frankie Newton tells you what he's like inside. He extracts a bit of himself and holds it out for you to examine. After hearing Frankie for years, you may meet him personally for the first time. Maybe he's like his music, maybe he's not. But there's always a part of him which you know and treasure, which doesn't pass between you in a handshake...
Those who haven't let their minds be dulled by overexposure to culture will realize, moreover, that training isn't necessary, though it helps. Good jazz, the best jazz, is only too often like the Sacco-Vanzetti letters. They are not masterpieces of grammar, but of literature, slices of life that echo endlessly in the channels of your conscious and subconscious...
Should tastes and modes of expression change, perhaps the letters will lose their force, perhaps jazz will lose its force. After the war there's no telling. But for the short period that jazz will have run its course, and the even shorter period that you have known it, jazz will have been its own justification for being. In spite of misunderstanding and ignorance, you will still have a rich experience to remember, for which you will envy no man and pity many for not having...