Page:The International Jew - Volume 3.djvu/84

 78 THE INTERNATIONAL JEW

on My Pony" ; "Ara wanna" ; "Trail of the Lonesome Pine."

Then came the African period, being the entrance of the jungle motif, the so-called "Congo" stuff into popular pieces. "High Up in the Cocoanut Tree," "Under the Bamboo Tree," and other compositions which swiftly degenerated into a rather more bestial type than the beasts themselves arrive at.

Running alongside all this was the "ragtime" style of music which was a legitimate development of Negro minstrelsy. Lyrics practically disappeared before the numerous "cake walk" songs that deluged the public ear. "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight" the marching song of the Spanish-American War, belongs to that period. The "black and tan" resorts of the South began to reign over the nation's music both North and South. Seductive syncopation captured the public ear. The term, "ma baby," brought in on the flood of Negro melody has remained in uncultivated musical speech ever since. Minstrelsy took on new life. "Piano acts" made their appearance. "Jazz bands" were the rage.

By insensible gradations, now easily traceable through the litter of songs with which recent decades are strewn, we have been able to see the gradual decline in the popular song supply. Sentiment has been turned into sensuous suggestion. Romance ha's been turned into eroticism. The popular lilt slid into ragtime, and ragtime has been superseded by jazz. Song topics became lower and lower until at last they were dredges of the slimy bottom of the underworld.

The first self-styled "King of Jazz" was a Jew named "Frisco." The general directors of the whole downward trend have been Jews. It needed just their touch of cleverness to camouflage the moral filth and raise it half a degree above that natural stage where it begets nothing but disgust. They cannot gild the lily, but they can veil the skunkcabbage, and that is exactly what has been done. The modern popular song is a whited sepulcher.