" This went on the whole
of the meal, and it made connected conversation quite difficult. For my own
part I went on eating, and when I had properly digested I went out and
looked at the little victims getting their money's worth.
From the door of the room where the dancing was done a confused uproar
overflowed, as if several men of powerful physique were banging a number of
pokers against a number of saucepans, and blowing whistles, and occasional
catcalls, and now and then beating a drum and several sets of huge cymbals,
and ceaselessly twanging at innumerable banjoes, and at the same time
singing in a foreign language, and shouting curses or exhortations or
street cries, or imitating hunting-calls and the cry of the hyena, or
uniting suddenly in the war-whoop of some pitiless Sudan tribe.
It was a really terrible noise. It hit you like the back-blast of an
explosion as you entered the room. There was no distinguishable tune. It
was simply an enormous noise. But there was a kind of savage rhythm about
it which made one think immediately of Indians and fierce men and the
native camps one used to visit at the Earl's Court Exhibition. And this was
not surprising. For the musicians included one genuine negro and three men
with their faces blacked; and the noise and the rhythm were the authentic
music of a negro village in South America, and the words which some genius
had once set to the noise were an exhortation to go to the place where the
negroes dwelt.
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