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It sounds odd, but it's true. When it comes to music, many of the self-styled political "progressives" are the most reactionary people! Progressive music, which in the jazz field means the music of such men as Dizzy Gillespie, Boyd Raeburn, Stan Kenton, Tadd Dameron and the great, young people who are trying to advance, has had little or no support from the left-wing press, On the other hand, reactionary music, which to the young jazz men means the crude primitive work of old musicians of the New Orleans and Dixieland schools, has had constant support form the supposedly progressive press.

The New Masses recently sponsored a session called "Duels in Jazz," yet both teams of musicians represented styles that are twenty years out of date. PV itself, attracted by such slick slogans as "people's music," "hootenanny," "folksay" and "worker's songs," had often tooted the horn for reactionary music.

One musician I know, who joined the Communist party, is becoming disgusted with what she now calls "a bunch of [illegible] cultists" who, failing to understand her progressive musical attitude, are constantly roping her in on benefits alongside of some of the world's worst musicians.
Even PM has a shocking record. For example, it once devoted a big Sunday spread to a sixty-seven-year-old trumpet player who is admired by the cultists but not by other musicians: on the other hand, PM has never run a story on Dizzy Gillespie or any of the young progressives of jazz.

Duke Ellington made this point clear when PM extended itself by running an interview with him two weeks ago. The interviewer asked a leading question: Don't most jazz "purists" today consider the abandoned or "improvised" playing of the 20's the only authentic jazz?
Said Duke: "If that's the thing they like, they're entitled to it...Dixieland is period music. And they're very important... But I don't think you can set it up as the standard for today. Hell, you've got to keep moving. "This is 1947 and you have all these wonderful musical minds like bandleaders Dizzy Gillespie and Boyd Raeburn to represent this period; young minds, progressive minds, active minds that have to be respected...why should music stand still?... you look at a 1913 car and then look at a 1947 car. It's the same thing with music."

That's the way Duke and every progressive musician feels; yet most of the critics, and both the liberal and Communist press, are lined up against his attitude. As Mike Levin recently wrote in Down Beat, by championing reactionary music they "also implicitly foster a canard...:Jazz is a primitive music. Only Negroes can make it, Therefore insofar as Negroes continue to play good jazz, they prove that they can never be anything but a primitive people."

Yet this canard has, unwittingly, been fostered by people who think they are helping interracial understanding! The extreme left-wingers are confused in their music thinking, It's about time for them to wake up!