mechanism in the direction of the discontinuous, the 
participant, the spontaneous and improvisational, it can also 
be seen as a return to a sort of oral poetry in which 
performance is both creation and composition. It is a truism 
among jazz performers that recorded jazz is “as stale as 
yesterday’s newspaper.” Jazz is alive, like conversation; and like 
conversation it depends upon a repertory of available themes. 
But performance is composition. Such performance insures 
maximal participation among players and dancers alike. Put in 
this way, it becomes obvious at once that jazz belongs in that 
family of mosaic structures that reappeared in the Western 
world with the wire services. It belongs with symbolism in 
poetry, and with the many allied forms in painting and in music.

     The bond between the phonograph and song and dance is 
no less deep than its earlier relation to telegraph and