Performing Primitivism: Disarming the Social Threat of Jazz in Narrative Fiction of the Early Twenties

Critics in the popular press presented many reasons for condemning jazz music but these comments in the August 1924 issue of The Etude by Frank Damrosch, director of the Institute of Musical Art, are perhaps the most illuminating. Not only is jazz associated with the broader modernist movement of Primitivism, but also jazz and Primitivism both are defined by racial rather than formal characteristics. Early representations of jazz in narrative fiction demonstrate that the critical contempt for the music was deeply rooted in the ideological conflicts of the time. Here, McCann examines two of the earliest instances of jazz fiction, Julian Street's The Jazz Baby and Octavus Roy Cohen's Music Hath Charms, in order to demonstrate that for many critics jazz represented a threat to an existing social order maintained and legitimized by European cultural traditions. He argues that the delivery and style employed by Cohen differs dramatically from Julian Street's, but the depiction of jazz in both stories varies little.