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negro or the ruthlessly exterminated Indian, who, each in his own manner, did that sort of thing a great deal better than the white man can ever hope to do.

Of course, and contradicters notwithstanding, there never was and never will be an American folk-music, such as for instance Russia, Germany, or Scotland knows. Some people have seen therein the American composer's chief difficulty in obtaining a note of individuality. But the fact that a race inherited a wealth of ancient and traditional tunes does not always make for abundant musical genius of a high order. If it did, why do we not hear more from Greece or Polynesia? No doubt, the Southern negro is responsible for many characteristics in music which have passed for 'American.' There is the genuine bushand-jungle thing, fierce and grand, preserved in a good many negro tunes; and there is the pseudo-darkey song, the kind that Stephen Foster wrote, pretty and domesticated - the amiable, shambling coon in congress-boots and stovepipe.

It has never been established how many of the so-called plantation songs were nothing but Africanized English melodies, popular in the days of the colonists. No sooner did the packet bring from London a consignment of new publications for Messrs. Carr & Co.'s Musical Repository in Philadelphia, than these shilling sheets sped north and south. Floating through the parlor windows of Georgia and Virginia mansions, such snatches of the latest Covent Garden or Royal Circus show must have been quickly seized by the more musical dwellers in the slave quarters. It is not reasonable to believe that 'My heart is devoted, dear Mary, to thee,' one of Hook's Vauxhall songs published by Anne Bland before 1793, and clearly recognizable in the later negrofied 'Darling Nelly Gray,' was an isolated case. Too few of the songs by

Dibdin, Shield, and Storace have been examined from that point of view. Whether real or spurious, these negro elements are beginning to wear away; they are becoming 'bleached' and are taking a newer, indigenous shade. No matter what insistent advocates may say, the plantation songs of the South, the rich store of peculiar, tribal melodies of the Indian, cannot be regarded, or used, as foundation for true American music. They are foreign elements of a dead past.

It would seem that the geometric patterns of New Mexican basket weavers never suggested to Mr. Sargent an elaboration of them into 'native art.' Nor did Mr. Carl Sandburg include in his Chicago Poems one imitating the naïve language of a negro 'spiritual,' which would have been about the same kind of tribute in poetry that musicians are proud to render the Pullman porter.

As a matter of fact, the inflections of negro melody, the provocativeness of Afro-American rhythms, do not lack fascination for us Caucasians. Debussy did not escape it. But no one would call him 'an American composer' because of 'Golliwog's cake-walk' or 'Minstrels.' If, on the other hand, Mr. Henry F. Gilbert-who can be eminently eloquent in Celtic moods-writes a clever and effective comedy overture based on negro themes, the accident of his birth in Somerville, Massachusetts, is made a reason for passing off personal idiosyncrasies as ‘native music.' The overture may be, and probably is, as characteristic of Mr. Gilbert as 'Minstrels' is of Debussy; but it is no more American music than is Debussy's. Dvořák 4 caught the germ in New York, and forthwith set a very bad example. Chaikovsky, bidden to inaugurate Carnegie Hall, was saved. Imagination shrinks from the thought of what the infection could have wrought in him. MacDowell, better than any one else,

succeeded in giving noble musical expression to the spirit of the Red Man. But in spite of his Indian Suites, ethnology and Leipzig could have done as much. Perhaps only hybrid music befits a hybrid people. One native composer and not the least talented imitator of Ravel has written, in all seriousness, a 'Polonaise Américaine.' After that the "Tyrolienne Turque'! But the ties of nationality are weaving ever tighter; the many-colored strands are gathering into cloth of new and single hue. . .

It is the same Volkstümlichkeit, or popular contemporary origin (not ancient folk-song!), that is the root of the real American note in music. It did not make its entry timidly, in peasant skirts; it kicked out brazenly, in tights. Its cradle was the vaudeville stage. The fairies who bestowed their graces on the infant were all the fair ones from the Five Sisters Barrison and Josephine Sabel (was not that the name of her who so inimitably sang "There'll be a hot time in the old town to-night'?) down to the beauty chorus in our own day's 'Ziegfeld Follies.'

Much as polite academicians may decry it, much as the American vassals of musical Europe may turn their heads in haughty disdain, the fact remains that it is Messrs. George M. Cohan, Irving Berlin, Louis M. Hirsch, and Jerome Kern (not very Anglo-Saxon, to be sure), who are to-day making musical history in America. These gentlemen are aided and abetted by sundry bands of lusty 'jazzers' whose blatant noise-producing instruments are shaking up our aural sense into accepting as proved, if it required proving, Dr. Burney's prediction of a 'legitimate' use of noise in music.

The development of popular music in America, during the last fifteen years, has been astounding. While Vienna, Paris, and London have succeeded only

in repeating, over and over again, the formulas of Johann Strauss, Offenbach, and Sullivan, New York has set the pace with tunes that have captured the world. Why not acknowledge that the war has produced in music nothing more typical of the spirit that won it, than the extraordinary Mr. Cohan's superbly confident 'Over There'? Is it indeed so trivial and trite that it may not take rank with the immortal 'Ça ira'? Compare with it the senile war-ditties of Messrs. Saint-Saëns and Widor, wellintentioned but inadequate, with the pathetically impotent 'Berceuse Héroique' of the dying Debussy, or the spineless 'Madelon.' There was the American-made 'Tipperary' and the British admonition to 'Keep the Home Fires Burning.' But nothing really expressed the Allies' final go-to-it-iveness as did 'Over There.'

The key-note of American popular music is optimism, is 'punch.' The nation which, since the advent of prohibition, is all the more enthusiastically given over to the pursuit of 'Gold, Woman, and Song,' is a mixture. Hence you may find in its so-called 'street tunes' traces of Russian lugubriousness, German sentimentality, Italian syrupiness, and French vulgarity. But the true American note is that happy affirmation of the joy of living, the delight in bold and sensuous harmonies, the predilection for snappy and suggestive rhythms. In other words, it is the healthy negation of misery, murder, and metaphysics. Therefore it is not unessential to the white race, which is clearly put on its defense. History being dotted all over with dal segno marks, we see the whole of Europe seeking oblivion and relief in the panacea of the dance; this time the piper is American, being the only one left with breath enough to pipe.

Shall speculation be ruled out of musical criticism because, generally, 'it

comes the other way'? What fun posterity would lose! Let us then speculate what a composer might accomplish, who, in a day when we shall have forgotten how to dance the fox-trot (along with the pavane and gigue), should succeed in idealizing, not the actual dance, but the spirit that animates it. Perhaps in that direction lies the unique opportunity which belongs to American composers. Not all of them have blindly passed it by. It is difficult to say who was the first to see it.

Some ten or twelve years ago, Mr. Arthur Shepherd, one of America's most independent composers, wrote a piano sonata, quite remarkable considering its date. It contains no trace of negro or Indian. It is interesting because its last movement is based on a cowboy tune that Mr. Shepherd had learned to know while, as a young man, he conducted a vaudeville orchestra in his home town, Salt Lake City. That tune is autochthonal, it has the 'punch.' A more recent specimen is the trio for flute, viola, and piano by the young Chicagoan, Leo Sowerby. The scherzo of that work is obviously something that can be described only as American. It has no counterpart in music. Neither Dvořák nor Debussy could have written it; not even Mr. Gilbert. Reports have it that Mr. Sowerby's piano concerto has the same ring. Both Mr.Shepherd and Mr. Sowerby know Europe only by having served in the Expedi

tionary Force of their country. They studied music in America.

There are other and smaller works which, for all their relative unimportance, are none the less characteristic of the trend. Whatever may be said of it, there is this advantage in the tendency, that music may derive from it a contribution, positive and universally applicable by white musicians. It is no longer the attempted infusion of elements forever alien and irrelevant, such as the Afro-American and AmericanIndian motives. It remains to be seen whether more will come of these meagre beginnings. The American note is there. Even Europe seems to have caught a faint echo. Stravinsky and Satie, among others, have not neglected the manner and the label. Not quite at ease with the newcomer, those who would cultivate the acquaintance persist in erroneously calling it 'rag-time.' The 'colored' ingredient is no longer the strongest, however much the rhythm may occasionally smack of the minstrel band.

Transformed by the touch of white hands, it has gained in variety, elasticity, and a certain impudent swing. The stuff is Aryan, in the main, with perhaps a dash of Semitic effervescence and over-emphasis. It is happy, and at its best, supremely virile. For the present, the mad racket of the 'traps' is still deafening our ears to its finer properties.

BY M. FENECH MUÑOZ

From La Vanguardia, January 29 (BARCELONA CLERICAL AND FINANCIAL Daily)

THE lofty and precipitous summits of the Sierra of Beni-Hassan are still lost in low-lying clouds that pour through the passages between the peaks like gigantic cataracts of billowy foam. A ribbon of mist marks the course of the rivers through the valleys. The rising sun has not yet driven the night-fog to its day retreats.

Herds of gentle cattle here and there block the way. They are being driven to the green upland pastures. Fat milch-cows and sleek oxen refuse to hasten their pace as we approach, but the calves dart aside and make off in an ecstasy of leaps and bounds, as if they welcomed a chance to exercise after the night's confinement in the stable.

Our trail, as we advance inland, runs close to numerous gardens, mostly cultivated, though here and there we pass one that has been abandoned. These gardens and the open country are fertile and attractive. I do not know who planted the beautiful flowers which dot the fields in all directions. Sweet-scented narcissus, bright geraniums, and dwarf acacias with their spikes of white blossoms, are growing everywhere, in both cultivated lands and pastures. They are never out of sight, from the moment we leave the city until we reach the village that is our destination.

As we draw near the latter, we pass parties of laborers at their daily toil. They have left their hooded cloaks beneath a tree, and are working in shirts and baggy trousers of white cotton. Others are sitting on their heels, quietly watching their flocks. Little whitebirds

-pica-bueyes are constantly flitting and hopping about the cattle, or perching on their backs, where they rid them of parasites. As we approach, these birds desert their charges and take temporary refuge in the leafless trees, making them look like almond trees in blossom. Two Moorish mountebanks pass us. Contrary to the usual custom of their people, they travel with their heads unshaven and uncovered. One of them is playing a kind of flute and leading by a cord a reluctant goat. Each carries a well-filled haversack. They stop and salute us, and beg a coin, 'Perra gorda, sinior,' — stretching out their hands. These native acrobats live constantly on the road. They are welcome guests at the Moorish camps and villages, where they are well entertained in repayment for their feats of strength and agility. Wealthy people present them with goats, which they sell later in the market. The less wellto-do often give them eggs and chickens. Others provide them with meals and lodge them during their stay at the village. Thus they live, constantly journeying from one place to another, contributing their mite of entertainment to the monotonous life of the mountaineers, who, though savage in war, are as easily amused as children.

The Moorish settlements are scattered haphazard along the sides of the mountains, and are separated into districts bounded by streams and gulleys. Their villages are always near running water, and consist, for the most part, of miserable, thatched adobe huts. How

ever, two or three masonry houses, carefully whitewashed, generally stand a little apart from the main settlement as if they feared contamination from its dirt, together with a pretentious and, if possible, still whiter zania-half-school, half-mosque.

Each village is surrounded by a thicket of prickly pears ten or twelve feet in height. These are interspersed with agaves, whose great spiny leaves make this vegetable rampart a formidable obstruction. The tall central shoot of the agave, with its crown of yellow flowers, rises high above the surrounding thicket. These stems are dried by the mountaineers and used as roof-beams for their houses. From the leaves they make a kind of paper, and they spin the fibre into yarn, which they weave into cloth.

Between the hedge surrounding the village and the village proper, one generally finds a number of olive, orange, and pomegranate trees. Pomegranates are very common in Morocco. Their bright-red flowers, when they open in April and May, stand out in striking relief against the dull-green background of the agaves and prickly pears. The fruit ripens in August, and is not only eaten, but also largely used for tanning leather. As soon as one enters the enclosure formed by the village hedge, he is sure to encounter flocks of chickens. These are smaller than those with which we are familiar in Spain, but are much esteemed in this country. Pigeons also abound, because the natives believe they bring the blessing of Heaven to the home that feeds them. Besides chickens and pigeons, each village also supports a number of long, lean, sharp-nosed dogs of a paleyellow hue. When the latter saw us, dogs of infidels, courteously greeted by their masters, they incontinently fled, meanwhile howling, in a peculiarly melancholy way as if the world must be as if the world must be going to ruin when strangers like us, in

foreign costumes, received a ready welcome in their homes.

At the entrance of the village, we were surrounded by a horde of little children, who deafened us with their requests for 'parras' (that is perros, copper coins). They escorted us through several of the narrow streets. When we approached, many doors and windows were opened, for the women were curious to learn the cause of the commotion that announced our arrival, and to see with their own eyes the strangers who had thus disturbed the drowsy village routine. Their henna-stained hands drew their veils more closely around them as we approached; so that all we saw were some white-clad figures surmounted by an oval patch of dusky forehead and a bright-colored kerchief, from beneath which escaped, here and there, a few locks of short black hair.

We noticed in front of many of the houses a little mud structure looking. like a large beehive. These were household ovens where the women of the family bake bread.

One of our Moor companions invited us to enter his house. This was a modest masonry building, standing somewhat apart from its neighbors. He courteously served us with the universal tea. Between our cups he left us a moment, to light a big box-wood pipe, carved and decorated with bright colors, and fitted with a diminutive bowl of clay. The pipe was filled with kif, a narcotic seed, lighted and passed from one to the other. We avoided this disagreeable ceremony under the pretext that kif irritated our throat.

After leaving the house, we were taken to a rustic café, with divans consisting of high brick ledges covered with mats, which were also hung against the wall half-way to the ceiling. Several Moors were reclining lazily on these benches, drinking tea and smoking. The proprietor prepared the beverage

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