Blog Post 5: Reflections on Jazz

I first encountered jazz in middle school, when I took an improv class so that I would have something to do after school on Thursdays.  (It was an interesting experience, considering the fact that I played the oboe, which is not usually associated with jazz.  There is a very good reason for this.)  My teacher and band director was a short, blond, white lady.  She had a signed poster of Maynard Ferguson on a wall in her classroom.  Despite the general whiteness of these influences on my first few up-close encounters with jazz, I still had the impression of it as a primarily black art form.  I carried this impression with me into this Jazz History course.

The things I have learned have complicated this impression quite a bit.  Jazz got its start in the black community and was influenced by other forms of music, such as blues and work songs, which also originated and were popular within the black community.  Most of the people who laid claim to inventing jazz, including Buddy Bolden and Jelly Roll Morton, were black to at least some degree (Jelly Roll Morton identified more with New Orleans’ Creole population, separating himself from the label “black” because of the lower social status associated with it).  The first group to make a jazz record, however, was exclusively white.  This is where the complications in the racial aspect of jazz lie: even though it began in the black community, it did not stay there.  Through its development, white people have exerted a considerable influence.  When jazz first moved to Chicago from New Orleans, it was altered by the white-owned record companies and clubs who wanted to tailor it to fit a primarily white audience’s tastes.  White musicians, in general, had an easier time getting gigs by virtue of their skin color, even though much of what they played was coopted from black musicians.  Band leaders like Benny Goodman gained popularity over those like Fletcher Henderson.  When bebop started developing in the 1940’s, it was partially an attempt by black musicians to break out of the mainstream white influence and create something that could be considered high art, and because of its complexity was difficult for white musicians to copy.  Who knows if bebop would have veered so far off of the grid if jazz hadn’t been hemmed in by white opinion?  (I’m just speculating here—it’s impossible to actually answer this question.)

Miles Davis certainly had a strong opinion about race relations in his autobiography, which he expresses as follows: “I hate how white people always try to take credit for something after they discover it” (page 54).  There is evidence that this very thing happened quite often throughout jazz’s history: the all-white jazz band who took credit for creating the first jazz recording even though others were playing the “hot” sound before them, the fact that Benny Goodman was called the King of Swing even though swing had roots in Louis Armstrong’s style, especially from his time with Fletcher Henderson’s band, and the white music critics who claimed that having “discovered” bebop meant that they deserved credit for it.  I don’t think it is fair, however, to say that this is always the case.  White musicians, such as Bix Beiderbecke, who were interested in the music for its own sake have been able to make positive contributions to it.  Thus, the most accurate thing that can be said about the race relations revolving around jazz is this: it’s complicated.

Commented on Shadee Barzin.

Blog Post 4: Thelonious Monk, Jazz, and Community

            Thelonious Monk was heavily influenced by the community in which he grew up, a neighborhood in New York known as San Juan Hill.  According to Robin Kelley, San Juan Hill had a reputation for being a dangerous place with rampant violence between different racial groups.  As he states, “a reporter noted that the police in the vicinity ‘expect at least one small riot on the Hill…each week’” (page 17).  Black schoolchildren travelled in groups by necessity, and even at schools with a primarily black population they were bullied by white students and teachers alike.  The need to band together in order to protect themselves from others instilled in black residents “a strong sense of community” (page 20).  Geraldine Smith, another resident of the neighborhood, describes it as “a little village” in which “everybody knew everybody” (page 20).  Finally, music was an important aspect of life in San Juan Hill, so much so that residents “recalled hearing music constantly in the hallways and in the streets” (page 19) and “every household had an instrument” (page 20).  Leimert Park had a similar set of circumstances, from the violence to the tense racial landscape to the strong sense of community and importance of both music and community gatherings to everyday life.

            Monk was influenced by each of these aspects of his community.  From the time he and his family moved to San Juan Hill when he was a very small, he heard the music played by his neighbors, and it is likely that this is what sparked his passion for music.  In addition, he was surrounded by the blended culture of Southerners and West Indians and thus absorbed the musical traditions of both the American South and the Caribbean.  Kelley states, “One can certainly hear explicit Caribbean rhythms in some of Monk’s original compositions” (page 23).  In other words, Monk’s particular musical genius was spawned in part from unique a combination of diverse musical traditions and was informed by his experiences growing up in such a rough environment, which allow him to explore dissonance and more complex harmonies than many mainstream musicians would venture towards.

            Thelonious Monk did not exist in a vacuum, and neither does jazz.  Art forms such as jazz provide a way for members of a community to express their experiences and emotions, and in doing so connect with others with similar experiences; they a form of communication.  Jazz came out of a community which valued spontaneity, creativity, and originality.  This community was in a constant state of oppression—as it was allowed very few outlets for creative expression, those that it did find it attacked with incredible passion.  For this community, music was an essential part of life; it was integrated into almost every social occasion.  Without this unique condition, jazz never would have been able to blossom and grow in the way that it did.  It is a product of the life experiences of those who make it, on which the community they belong to has a huge influence.  It is also a product of those who listen to it, as they have considerable sway over which trends die and which innovations endure simply by choosing which records they like best.  It is like a conversation, in which the musicians hold their hearts out to the audience saying “how do you like that?”  and if they audience says “hallelujah” they keep on playing that way, but if the audience says “hell no,” they tweak it a bit before throwing it back.  Since every musician and every audience on Earth is different due to the incredible variety of life, every musical conversation will have a different outcome.  Only New York could have produced what eventually came out of Thelonious Monk, and Monk could only have come from New York.

Commented on Mark Samet

The Swing Era and Race (Steenalisa Tilcock)

Race played an important role in jazz history since the advent of the art form in New Orleans due to jazz’s very nature—it was a primarily black form of music that was appropriated by white culture.  However, in the 1930’s, it became especially pertinent for three main reasons.  Firstly, the “Swing Era” saw an upsurge in the number of white musicians playing jazz (Professor Stewart’s lecture).  Benny Goodman, for example, a white man, was crowned by many as the “king of swing” (Gioia 129).  Even though jazz had long been recorded and sold by white producers and bought by white patrons, this was the first time that black musicians saw any serious competition from white musicians (they had of course been present from the 1900’s onward, but there had been far fewer of them).  This created tension, as black musicians were now being edged out of their own art by white musicians.

Secondly, already strenuous race relations were exacerbated by what was probably the worst economic disaster in America’s history, better known as the Great Depression.  If times had been prosperous, there would likely have been room enough for both the white and black musicians to grab a piece of the pie.  As it was, the pie was very small, and musicians who were at a social disadvantage (i.e. because of race) were often excluded from it.  Black musicians now had to compete with more white musicians for fewer jobs, and they often found themselves unemployed.  As Professor Stewart stated in lecture, when times are bad, people who find themselves down on their luck generally try to find others to blame their problems on or to push beneath them.  This is exactly what happened to America’s black population, at the hands of America’s newly poor white population.

Finally, with the dawning of the Swing Era, jazz found a national market for the very first time.  This was incredibly exciting, as it meant the music was being enjoyed and appreciated by more people, extending its importance beyond being a merely regional phenomenon to a national movement.  However, it also meant that there was a lot more pressure on the musicians to produce what an incredibly wide (and white) audience wanted to hear.  If they failed to do this, it was very unlikely that they would be able to find even mildly lucrative gigs, which were offered by white record company owners and club proprietors.  Thus, black musicians were essentially leashed, unable to explore the full potential of their art due to the need to gain popularity among whites.  As Professor Stewart stated, “class dimensions turned artists into just workers.”  This new limited role was extremely inhibiting, and it is easy to imagine that it lead to a considerable amount of racial strain.

It was a combination of these three elements (including many other complex factors) that brought race to the forefront of jazz in the 1930’s.

Commented on Emily Wettleson.

Blog Post 2: Chicago (Steenalisa Tilcock)

            Although both Chicago and New York made significant contributions to jazz in the 1920’s, Chicago’s influence was ultimately more important.  Chicago supplied a stew of cultural conditions without which jazz, including that which would later migrate to New York, would not have been the same.  In the decades before the 1920’s, a large number of African Americans migrated from the Southern states and cities like New Orleans to the Northern states and cities like Chicago in order to escape poverty and discrimination and find new opportunities.  With this diaspora came New Orleans’ jazz musicians, including King Oliver and Louis Armstrong, who were also looking for economic opportunity.  As industry was important to Chicago’s economy, African Americans found jobs in factories and stockyards.  Given, these jobs were low-paying and involved grueling physical labor, but they were generally a step up from the plantation work in the South.  One way for people to break out of these conditions was to play jazz, and play it well.  Chicago’s economic and social environment allowed many opportunities for this.  Record companies were numerous, giving musicians a chance to have their music distributed widely.  In addition, Chicago fostered a thriving club scene, with institutions ranging from smoky speakeasies, to illustrious, high-class ballrooms.  Jazz musicians typically began their careers playing in lower-class clubs for black patrons and worked their way up to the fancier establishments with white patrons.  (This barrier was sometimes hard to break, and some of the top tier clubs remained open only to white musicians).  As control of Chicago’s clubs and recording studios was almost exclusively white, one could argue that it is largely due to the fact that Chicago’s white population enjoyed jazz that it became so popular, even though the people creating it were primarily black.

            The Chicago jazz style grew out of the New Orleans, largely because jazz arrived in Chicago through the players who travelled there from New Orleans, such as Oliver and Armstrong.  The jazz solo as we know it today was born in Chicago, and there musicians explored its vast potential.  Armstrong was a pioneer in this arena.  According to Fletcher Henderson, it was largely thanks to the influence of Armstrong—who during his stint with the Fletcher Henderson band energized its style—that swing became the phenomenon that it was.  Also on the forefront of Chicago jazz were cornetist Bix Beiderbecke and saxophonist Frank Trumbauer.  They developed an aesthetic that we now refer to as “cool jazz,” which, according to Gioia, focused on “attaining a clarity of musical expression” (Gioia 81).  It differed from “hot jazz” in that it foregrounded emotion and expressiveness instead of chord-building and technical skill.  The completive interplay of counterpoint lines is also a characteristic Chicago jazz (Gioia 72).  The playing of a song was a musical battle instead of the harmonious blending together that it was in New Orleans.  This style seems to be unique to Chicago, as in New York the focus lay more on the interplay between sections instead of individual musicians.  In addition, clarinetists in Chicago helped push the instrument past the arpeggios that its style was previously confined within, giving it an aesthetic similar to the cornet, which allowed for experimentation and creative development.  Frank Teschemacher was a key player in this innovation—his daring style would later influence clarinetists such as Benny Goodman (Gioia 75).

            One band that represents the culture and community of Chicago is the Austin High Gang, comprised of students from Austin, west of downtown Chicago (Gioia 74).  They were inspired by recordings of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and Beiderbecke, and their own later recordings were lively and energetic, much like Chicago’s club atmosphere.  The set-up of their band, with one musician to each part, follows the template set by Chicago ensembles, and their enthusiasm and devotion mirrors the attitude of the city.  Whether they loved the music or just loved to dance to it, Chicagoans were excited about jazz.

Commented on Austen Trout

Blog Post 1: New Orleans and the Influences on Jazz (Steenalisa Tilcock)

New Orleans in the late 1800’s provided the perfect conditions for different cultures to collide, intermingle, and ultimately create something completely new.  New Orleans is located at the mouth of the Mississippi River, and trade (including cotton) that flowed from the Caribbean, up the river, and vice versa had to travel through New Orleans, making it an important center of commercial activity in America.  As a consequence, a myriad of peoples from the Caribbean, South America, and beyond arrived along with the trade, and they mixed with the already diverse New Orleans population (including the descendants of slaves brought over from West Africa and French and Spanish influences left over from the time during which New Orleans was owned by France and Spain).  This amalgamation of peoples is crucial to the advent of jazz, because jazz would not exist if not for the influence of an overwhelmingly cosmopolitan environment.

Gioia mentions several musical developments as contributors to New Orleans Jazz.  When Africans were taken to America, they brought their musical traditions with them, which included a focus on rhythmic complexity, call-and-response forms, and improvisation.  These musical traditions not only reappear later in jazz, but occur in some of jazz’s musical predecessors.  The work song, for example, a musical form employed by slaves in the fields, relies heavily on the call and response model.  Spirituals involved the blending together of voices in a harmonious way that figured later in jazz’s focus on the balanced interaction of an ensemble.  Blues was also an important precursor to jazz.  The female leads that performed classic blues mirror somewhat the colorful stage personas that many jazz musicians, including Jelly Roll Morton, later took on, and the blues scale, which differs from the typical scale played by classical musicians, also resurfaces in jazz.  Finally, ragtime had some influence on jazz, especially in the syncopated melodies that is was famous for.

Mexican immigrants, although probably not the principle players in the creation of jazz, were still quite important.  Classically trained musicians came to New Orleans in 1884 to play at the Cotton Exposition, and several of them stayed, offering black musicians a chance at a formal musical education (this had been denied them by American musical institutions on the basis of race).  This probably helped along the development of the complex melodies that jazz is known for.  Besides teaching others, Mexican musicians also introduced new instruments to the New Orleans music scene, including the saxophone and twelve-string guitar, which have become crucial to jazz.

Although different cultural influences were very significant, I think that the single most important factor in the creation of jazz was the people’s attitude towards music in New Orleans.  Gioia states that because of its extremely low elevation, New Orleans was somewhat of a terrible place to live, ravaged by disease, mosquitoes, and short life expectancy.  Thus, inhabitants of New Orleans used revelry and celebration to escape from all of their suffering.  One example of this is the tradition of having a parade for the dead instead of the typical solemn funeral.  Music was intimately intertwined with this celebratory atmosphere.  Brass bands especially were quite popular and played at a huge variety of social events.  As Gioia states, “the birth of this music would have been unthinkable without the extraordinary local passion for brass bands” (page 31).  Thus, it was probably the unique combination of cultural influences along with the importance of music in a culture arguably centered on revelry that led to the birth of jazz in New Orleans.

Commented on Markell Stine's blog