organization.

     The word “jazz” comes from the French jaser , to chatter. 
Jazz is, indeed, a form of dialogue among instrumentalists and 
dancers alike. Thus it seemed to make an abrupt break with the 
homogeneous and repetitive rhythms of the smooth waltz. In 
the age of Napoleon and Lord Byron, when the waltz was a new 
form, it was greeted as a barbaric fulfillment of the 
Rousseauistic dream of the noble savage. Grotesque as this 
idea now appears, it is really a most valuable clue to the 
dawning mechanical age. The impersonal choral-dancing of the 
older, courtly pattern was abandoned when the waltzers held 
each other in a personal embrace. The waltz is precise, 
mechanical, and military, as its history manifests. For a waltz 
to yield its full meaning, there must be military dress. “There 
was a sound of revelry by night” was how Lord Byron referred