Final Blog: How BLST14 Changed My Outlook

Before taking Black Studies 14 this quarter, I was very much a jazz fan already, which prompted me to enroll in the class to begin with. I was interested in the background of one of my favorite genres of music as well as the legacy of some of its greatest players. Prior to this class I had assumed that jazz was an inherently complex art form; one that required a mathematical precision unlike that of other genres of music. This presumption was born out of my listening preferences for the progressive jazz music of today–  artists like Tosin Abasi who utilize extremely precise and mathematical arrangements and time signatures. After taking the course, I realize that nothing could be farther from the truth. Though the jazz artists that I revered the most– Monk, Coltrane, Tatum and the like– did indeed have among them expert musical training, they were more well-known for their attacking force and improvisational capabilities. Artists whom I had never listened to, such as Dizzy Gillespie, startled me with bold improvisations. While I had before considered jazz music akin to classical in the sense that it was structured and dense, I now have a new understanding of jazz; the new concept of improvisation that we have studied has caused me to rethink the concept of a ‘composer’, for each unique take of a single song may have a new inflection or mood.

The amorphic fluidity that is present in the heavy improvisation in jazz is what I believe makes it so special. Almost all of the artists that I admire most in jazz are from the era of extreme improvisation: modern jazz, and bebop. Composers such as Coltrane, Gillespie, Monk and many more create something totally unique during each performance– for with the ability to change at any time comes the ability to direct the mood and flow of a song based on the feel at the time. These improvisers are literally molding their compositions in real time into a new and distinct iteration, making changes where they feel necessary and often letting their emotions dictate the direction of the piece (Gioia). One perfect example of this quality of improvisation is in Thelonious Monk’s quirky stage-dancing, which in fact could be a genius method for augmenting the rhythm to his liking (Kelley 231). Studying jazz changed my definition of improvisation to reflect that it is not so much a ‘tool’ used by musicians, but rather that improvisational music is an utterly different art form altogether. Improvisation allows emotional and melodic possibilities that are simply not possible in non-improvisational forms.

Even more startling to me is how ingrained improvisation is in jazz music. Improvisation seems to be one of the founding characteristics of jazz music, and even farther back into African musics. Although not exclusively African, improvisation is a musical trait distinct to Africa, where music can promote social solidarity and benefit the community. Jazz is no exception to this. Throughout its evolution, jazz has invigorated the community and evolved in response to it; which, ironically, can be seen as improvisation on a larger scale. Studying the tie between improvisation and community participation made me see how improvisation is a reflection of the community’s idea of music. Improvisation reflects the notion that music and art are not static; that they are alive, and ever-changing, at the mercy of those who are bold enough to participate and improvise (Thompson). Improvisation is the ability of the individual or the group to respond without deliberation. Taking this into consideration, it is clear that the jazz players improvised not only in the performance, but in the dialogic creation of a style (Lecture 3/12).

Consequently, I have newfound respect for many the jazz greats and non-jazz musicians alike, as well as new ideas about how my own musical ability can be used. My new definition of improvisations reflects the opinion that improvisation should be an integral part of all musics, because it represents the soulfulness of art.

Monk

Responding to a question regarding his stance on Black Power, Thelonious Monk stated, “‘There’s no reason why I should go through that Black Power shit now. I guess everybody in New York had to do that, right? Because every block is a different town.’” (Kelley 19). Monk’s response is clearly indicative of his upbringing in the divided, diverse, and violent San Juan Hill neighborhood. During Monk’s early life, he witnessed firsthand the ubiquitous racism and violence of the notorious San Juan Hill– not just between whites and blacks, but between members of the black community as well. Black immigrants of the west indies often clashed with southern immigrants or with their northern counterparts. Thelonious refers to this aspect of his community when he says that ‘every block is a different town’. Growing up in San Juan, most young people had to associate with their own kind for solidarity and strength, epitomized by the community center where young Thelonious spent  much of his childhood years. Thelonious certainly gained much from his community at San Juan, including introductions to fellow young musicians and even musical mentors Simon Wolf and Alberta Simmons (Kelley). As well, Thelonious and his family were rare in the fact that they were accepted by both the southern black community and the west indian community. These influences would make quite an impression on Thelonious and his music: his inclusion of Caribbean rhythms and European melodies coupled with the stride and ragtime base, reveal the extent of their influence.  
Thelonious, with his sharp mind and creativity, preferred to transcend the normative racial dialogue in favor of an intense individualism. He crafted his own, extremely unique music and style from various influences, channelling the dissonant cultures of San Juan in both his trademark eccentricism and his music (Lecture 2/28). Monk personified the beauty of this dissonance, identifying as an individual rather than part of a brand or movement. This approach allowed Monk to feel at home with the beatniks and hipsters of the time, who were drawn to his avant-garde charisma. Monk’s music and the style and mentality it embodied became a hip stance to take, and led to the popularity of a certain intellectual attitude (Lecture 2/28). In this way, Monk helped the bohemian culture flourish, a culture which prized individualism and creativity. A new wave of intellectuals identified with Monk’s singular and quirksome behavior. A new persona for blacks and whites alike was emerging, and Monk’s music became an irremovable part of its indentity, evidenced by the nickname the beatniks held for him: The High Priest of Bebop (Kelley 232).
Given his lifelong experience with discrimination, beginning with the San Juan Hill riots and continuing to his 1958 unlawful arrest and beating (and beyond), it would be easy to understand if Monk harbored racial resentment or prejudice. However, it is precisely in his complete lack of doing so that Monk’s true wisdom is revealed. Monk preferred, unlike peers such as Miles Davis, to abstain from the public racial dialogue, focusing instead on his music, his family, and his community (Lecture 2/26). The community which Monk’s music inspired and sustained was the method with which he transcended the racial division, by bringing together in his music the chaotic dissonance reflective of the diversity of his own community, and in the process creating a new one.

Race in Jazz: The Swing Era and Depression Era

Jazz has been a music rooted in racial dialogue since the time of its inception in New Orleans’s Congo Square through its evolution in the cities of Chicago and New York. However, in the 1930s, as the country plunged into economic depression and swing music dominated the commercial and popular music scenes, the racial role played in the evolution of jazz was more explicitly scrutinized and discussed than ever before.
Two major changes occurred at the turn of the decade that transformed the dialogue of jazz music and the industry as a whole: the mainstream popularization of the radio, and the Great Depression. Radio gave performers a certain level of racial anonymity, giving black artists the opportunity for more mainstream success and a wider listening base; This new economic opportunity became a source of racial competition between blacks and whites. Although blacks could make their way onto the integrated channels of radio, they were still unable to find as much work, respect, and success as their equally talented white counterparts (Gioia Ch.4). Black musicians had to suffer the injustices of racism and were subjected to having their music unwillingly “borrowed–or sometimes stolen outright–by other performers” (Gioia 133). The habit that white performers had of appropriating black music and its style was an old tradition, exemplified by the Austin High Gang and other North Chicago white musicians. However, in the economic downturn of the early 1930s, this process could have much more severe consequences for black musicians, greatly impacting their ability to make a living (Gioia Ch.5).
In many ways, the dire economic situation during the swing era of the 1930s produced the racial competition that bred open discussion of race in jazz. The “race records”, or labels that focused on black artists, were “especially hard-hit” by the Depression, and due to the ever-declining music industry and the growing popularity of big band music, musicians–especially black ones– found jobs at the time to be scarce. Because of the de facto racism of the 1930s, black musicians had a much harder time finding bookings for shows, radio promotions, and studio hirings than did white musicians (Gioia). This is best embodied by the contrast of two leading big band frontmen of the era– Fletcher Henderson and Benny Goodman. While it is true that Goodman was perhaps the more aggressive and driven band leader, his success in the jazz scene can also be partly attributed to race– the ease with which Goodman could book venues could not be matched by a black musician like Henderson. And although it was Goodman who was emulating Henderson’s ‘hot’ style– not the other way around– Goodman was able to project his music to a mass market larger than that which was probable for a black musician such as Henderson to reach (Gioia 132-133).
This racial divide had ill consequences not only for the black musicians who could not reach mainstream success, but also for those that could. Specifically, Duke Ellington was targeted by many for his success and, in their opinion, his abandonment of his own race in pursuit of that success. John Hammond, one of the most respected black producers of swing, “castigated Ellington for distancing himself and his music from the troubles of his people” (Swing Changes 51). These critiques were not without a racial founding: Ellington, by associating with white Jewish manager Irving Mills (and offering him a large portion of the royalty payments), was able to book radio appearances and shows at venues that other black musicians could never attain. But, as was stated, this commercial success came at the price of being vilified or ridiculed by other black musicians and critics (Swing Changes 50-51). This illustrates how the issue of race became a complex dialogue for blacks as well as whites, as both races endeavored to succeed commercially and innovatively while staying true to their roots and heritage.

Birth of Harlem Jazz and its Significance

M.M. Bakhtin states, “The third party is a constitutive aspect of the whole utterance, who, under deeper analysis, can be revealed in it”. This notion of dialogue, not between the artist and the art, but of the role that the third party–audience– plays in the conversation, is why I believe New York jazz was more important to jazz than Chicago. The jazz birthed in 1920s Harlem is more directly a product of the human conditions at the time– social, economic, and racial.
Economically, at a time when “Harlem was becoming a slum” (Gioia 90), rent parties created both demand and environment for jazz development. The need of lower-class blacks to pay rent created a new type of social gathering, one requiring music to dance to. In this way, economic conditions invoked a social climate which influenced jazz. Socially, jazz developed primarily as dancing music. The popular dances and musics of the Northeast were augmented by the migration of Southern blacks to Harlem. These ‘Gullahs’, preferential to gospel-style piano and ring-shouts popular in the south, created a demand for a new type of dance music, one that would developed a new Harlem style. Rent parties also provided the stage for “cutting contests”, a social form of performance where jazz pianists tried to outplay one another which became an important part of “jazz pedagogy and practice” (Gioia, 93).

These contests had a profound effect on jazz style, most notably in the standard of technique: “It was the stress of competition from their peers, rather than any highbrow demands... that encouraged the [inclusion] of several classical selections” (Best of Jazz 25). As well, racial divides in music provided other incentives for pianists to develop technique, as white demand for European-style technical mastery exerted its influence on jazz. James P. Johnson states, “The reason the New York boys became such high class musicians was because the New York piano was developed by the European method, system, and style” (Gioia 92). Differences of race inevitably affected jazz negatively, marginalizing the music, denigrating it as low art. In clubs such as the Cotton Club, blacks were allowed in only as performers, never patrons.  

However, jazz faced its most serious marginalization by black Harlemites who considered the music too lowbrow– more at home in rent parties than “in the ‘other’ Harlem of high culture” (Gioia 90).  But it was in those rent parties that the quintessential New York styles of jazz– stride piano, boogie-woogie– were created. Players such as Willie Smith, Art Tatum, and Fats Waller extended the stride formula to a new level of technical jazz not previously heard in Chicago or elsewhere. Its distinctive rhythm and style were hard to pin down: “...like the word ‘shout’ in the same context, ‘stride’ simply exists to confuse the layman” (Best of Jazz 31).  However, what can be confirmed about stride is its massive impact on the Harlem music scene and subsequent jazz styles such as swing. 

No player of the era better represents the culture and ‘third-party’ dialogue of Harlem jazz than James P. Johnson. Considered the “Father of Harlem stride” (Best of Jazz 27), Johnson’s work is not derivative; it is original. As a participant of the cutting contests and rent party dances, Johnson’s music is directly representative of the array of social, economic and musical elements which formulated Harlem jazz– even the marginalization of the art form is exemplified by Johnson’s multiple rejections from conductors and benefactors (Gioia). By adapting to the desires for ring-shouts and gospel, for European melodies over ragtime rhythms, Johnson intertwined different musical ethos into a style which was directly birthed from the reality around him; a style which to its core responded to and represented the climate of Harlem.

New Orleans, birthplace of Jazz

New Orleans is considered to be the birthplace of jazz. A melting pot of myriad ethnicities and nationalities, New Orleans during the 1800s was the breeding ground for more diverse incarnations of music and culture than anywhere in the United States, and perhaps the world. Asking what New Orleans contributed to jazz is somewhat like asking a mother what she contributed to her child. The unique blend of cultures and ideas, of free and enslaved peoples, was what ultimately led New Orleans to create a new, American style, heavily influenced by African rhythms, European technique, and a freedom of improvisation that was unique amongst respected artforms. This blending of styles, influence, and the freedom to improvise could only have come from New Orleans. At the time, the diversity in culture in New Orleans was unparalleled, and it is precisely this melting-pot environment which stimulated the growth of Jazz: the European influence of the Creoles, the French and Spanish music that abounded, and the fierce African rhythm and improvisation of the slaves.
According to Gioia, the rise of "hot music" in New Orleans has been widely attributed the moral decay of the society there– but a more accurate source of inspiration for jazz may have been in the music of the church. Even this seems a bit narrow– Gioia attributes more of jazz's evolution to the "broad musical panorama of turn of the century New Orleans", describing groups composed of "Mandolin, guitar, bass, sometimes joined by banjo and violin", and the lawn parties and stable dances that contributed to an ever-expanding music scene that seemed to permeate all corners of the city. To me, however, these factors seem secondary to the fact that I find most intriguing about New Orleans, which is the unique form of segregation employed by New Orleans at the time. Free blacks, Creoles, slaves, white men, Europeans, and many others mingled together in a cohesive yet segregated environment. This is what I believe transformed the separate forms of art co-mingling in New Orleans into a single, unique style; the special sense of freedom that many in New Orleans felt. The freedom to improvise, the freedom to play off-key notes, the freedom to change rhythm and melody in unheard ways and forms. And this special freedom birthed an entire genre, embellished by the European flourish and grounded in the fine form and movement ("hot sound") of African art.