. . . It is impossible to have a music that is not 
based on the rhythms of a particular tongue or 
speech. Speech is the “hidden” ground for the music 
as figure in any culture whatever. There are specific 
and complex reasons why the oral tradition of 
American Southern speech constitutes the only 
possible ground for jazz and rock. Some of these 
reasons include the fact that English is almost the 
only language in the world that has actual feet and 
not mere syllables. Equally basic is the relation of 
English to the metropolitan patterns of industrial 
sound. New technological sounds and patterns are 
processed through the speech in order to become 
“music.” To people who do not understand this