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07082_Field_TCUM T647.txt
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1996-04-10
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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