It’s a very special moment, in any young nerd’s life, when they learn for the first time that the jazzy music heard so frequently in the Star Wars universe is called “jizz.” How many friendships have formed from these moments, one older nerd looking at a younger one and intoning those magic words: “Hey, I bet you don’t know what the genre of music the cantina band is playing is called.” Originally sourced from the junior novelization of Return Of The Jedi in the 1980s, it’s become a sort of pop culture shibboleth for the joyfully immature, a little nugget of perversity buried inside the often-sterile heart of Star Wars.
But now we have to ask: Is our way of life being threatened? Is jizz music under attack?
This is per excerpts that have been circulating online this week, taken from the recent official Star Wars short story collection From A Certain Point Of View: Return Of The Jedi. The story in question, “Fancy Man,” by Star Wars creative art manager Phil Szostak, tells the story of how blue elephant guy Max Rebo ended up playing in Jabba The Hutt’s palace the day Luke Skywalker came for that fatal/fateful visit. The tale involves Rebo flashing back to improvising a new tune unlike “one of any number of jatz standards he knew by heart,” and yeah, that’s right, jatz standards. Although the story notes that the music form “came to be known by many names, some less palatable than others,” at no point does the word “jizz” appear in the story’s text—causing an outcry from people worried that jizz and jizz-wail alike are being drained out of the Star Wars universe.
To be fair, “jatz” as a Star Wars musical form has its own long history—the name dates back to a piece in a Star Wars fiction magazine from 1993. In fact, it actually pre-dates jizz as a genre name; although the Return Of The Jedi novelization describes a musician as a “jizz-wailer,” it wasn’t until 1995’s Tales From The Mos Eisley Cantina that jizz itself was mentioned by name. (The A.V. Club: In-depth research in the Star Wars/jizz sciences.) Jatz and jizz have both appeared periodically since then, although, notably, only jatz has made the jump a few times from the non-canonical “Legends” material into official canon over the last few years—including a reference in 2023 novel Inquisitor: Rise Of The Red Blade, and now From A Certain Point Of View. Jizz, meanwhile, must toil in obscurity as part of the franchise’s post-Disney life—with the implication being that the company would dearly like us to all stop writing articles exactly like this one, and let jizz fade, instead, into the dustbin of galactic history.
