AN HONEST WOMAN

What with the Rhapsody in Blue, Stravinsky, and Gilbert Seldes, jazz is on the way to becoming respectable. That it is more than an imagined menace to conservatism is evidenced by the fact that it is being talked about by those who are usually reticent concerning fads and fancies. Mr. Wahio Frank has stopped analyzing America long enough to vivisect this latest of arts, in the New Republic. His criticism is more sapient than the average bombast against innovations, because it has a universal concept as its base Mr. Frank argues that while jazz may be folk art, such qualification does not grant it a halo a priori. "There has indeed been abroad for a full century the curious notion that folk art, as once the King can do no wrong; that folk art is necessarily good art; that the critic who dares to question folk art commits the unpardonable sin." This is undoubtedly true. Ted Shawn might conceivably do setting-up exercises, claim them as an aboriginal dance, and be hailed has even more of a maestro than he is.

There are other things, adds Mr. Frank, which symbolize America as much as jazz: Ethelbert Nevin's "The Rosary" is as native as Irving Berlin's "All Alone"; and Harold Bell Wright and the New York Daily News could exist only in this land of our forefathers. But such trifles are ignored by the modernists, even though they are folk art. As Mr. Frank points out, aesthetic acceptance depends on the intrinsic value of art, whether it be folk or fine. If jazz is good it is good because it is jazz, not because it is American. To be pedantic, art knows no boundaries either of time or of space.