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.