People who don't like jazz ..

... have often, historically, been people who don't like blacks or Jews, either. Maybe it's just a coincidence? The sexual overtones of jazz (real or imagined) also bother them. This is a well-known story, but it never hurts to remember some things ... especially since, in some circles, this past isn't that far away.

--Jeff Weintraub

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Marcus (at Harry's Place)
September 12, 2006
Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got That Swing

Norm doesn't like Ur-Islamist Sayyid Qutb's attitude to one of his favourite types of music - jazz:

... a type of music invented by Blacks to please their primitive tendencies - their desire for noise and their appetite for sexual arousal...

Qutb wasn't the only one not to approve:

Jazz music was offensive to Nazi ideology because it was associated with the American enemy and worse, was often performed by African American (or Jewish) musicians. They called it "nigger music" or "degenerate music"—coined in parallel to "entartete Kunst" (degenerate art).

Perhaps Norm should set up a Manchester branch of the Swingkids:

They organised dance festivals and contests, and invited jazz bands. These events were occasions to mock the Nazis, the military and the Hitlerjugend -- hence the famous "Swing heil!", mocking the infamous "Sieg Heil!". Swings kids wore long hair, hats, umbrellas and met in cafés and clubs. They developed a jargon mostly made of Anglicisms.

Posted by Marcus at September 12, 2006 03:51 PM | TrackBack

[P.S. For some further details on the Nazi analysis of jazz and its links to "The Danger of Americanism", see HERE.]