Perception of Jazz

Prior to taking this course and learning about the emergence and development of jazz in different cities, my perception of jazz was that it was an unchanging, boring genre.  Without the knowledge of the African aesthetics that influences the sound, performance, and growth of jazz as a process, I associated jazz with music one hears in their grandparents home and the hold music on the telephone that everyone despises.  Taking this course, “History of Jazz”, has revised my previously negative assumptions and has inspired and interested me into discovering and learning about different styles of music.  My opinions about jazz have transformed from monotonous and dull to exciting and unexpected through the concept and discipline of improvisation. 

According to lecture, jazz is a process, not only a style (March 12, 2013).  It is the process of the growth and evolution of a changing art form.  Over the course of history, jazz has adapted to its community and environment in satisfying the listeners’ cultural needs.  “It is a dialogue with one’s ‘temporal and spatial environment’ by performing European music in an African way” (Improvisation, March 12, 2013).  In order to successfully communicate with their audiences, the musicians needed to improvise.  My idea of improvisation prior to taking this course was a comedian’s ability to spontaneously think of something on the spot, or for a student to improvise a speech that they had not prepared.  However, spontaneity is not the only necessary element to improvisation.  Improvisation involves a dialogue in which the musicians adapt and respond to the audience.  “The Harlem of rent parties and underground economies created music” (Gioia, 94).  In New York, there was a constant competition to get and keep jobs, and a musician’s livelihood depended on it.  This pressure forced the performers to use improvisation to satisfy a diverse crowd (Improvisation, March 12, 2013).  This concept contributed to the development of a new, unique jazz style, Stride, and continued the process and evolution of jazz. 

           

Thelonious Monk

            The community that Thelonius Monk grew up in shaped not only his personal beliefs and attitude, but it also shaped his style and uniqueness as a musician.  San Juan Hill was reputable as a violent community, and the crime and violence was especially dominant by the time Monk and his family settled down there.  “The daily violence young people endured in San Juan Hill haunted Thelonious for many years to come” (Kelley, 18).  Monk responded honestly to the interracial and intraracial violence that pervaded his neighborhood by saying, “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).  The community that Thelonious experienced made him unavoidably subject to racism.  However, instead of becoming more race conscious, he took his frustration and used his unique form of bebop to create a new community.  Like Lionel Hampton and his song “Hey Pa Pa Rebop”, Monk used music as a way out of the self -destructive frustration that the racial community created.

            Monk developed a “Bohemian community bound together by a tolerance for modernity, for dissonance in music and for the avant garde in art and life” (Second Monk, February 28, 2013).  According to lecture, this newly created community was not simply black (February 28, 2013).  In such a racist community, blacks were restricted from dining inside, forced to different areas to get takeout, and were still vulnerable to race riots even though black students outnumbered white (Kelley, 20).  The inequality that Monk and his family inevitably experienced was transcended through Thelonious’ music reflecting the dramatic social and political transformation of the 1950’s and 1960’s. 

            Growing up, Monk was surrounded by cultural diversity and “virtually every kid became a kind of cultural hybrid” (Kelley 23).  His piano teacher, Simon Wolf, was an Austrian- born Jewish man who taught Thelonious works by Chopin, Beethoven, and other classical artists rather than exposing him to jazz (Kelley 26).  However, the neighborhood was full of jazz sounds and Thelonious learned from the many jazz musicians in his area.  In addition, “the church proved to be another critical source of Monk’s musical knowledge” as Barbara Monk, Thelonious’ mother, raised her children religiously (Kelley, 27).  Monk’s music expresses this diversity of influences that shaped his childhood. 

Monk’s music became the epitome of modernism.  It was off beat and angular and there was a certain unpredictability  about how he interacts with his musical environment.  His band member remarked, “You have to be awake all the time.  You never know exactly what’s going to happen.  Rhythmically, for example, Monk creates such tension that it makes horn players think instead of falling into regular patterns” (Kelley, 230). 

            Although Thelonious was able to grapple with San Juan Hill’s racial tension by turning it into emotional expression in his music, he failed to do so in his arrest in 1958.  While Monk and Nica were in Delaware, he was refused water at a motel and was told to leave immediately.  Later, after being told by an officer to get out of his car, he responded by saying “Why the hell should I?”.  “…one cop started beating on his hands with a billy club, his pianist’s hands” (Kelley, 254).  This incident, in which he was punished for a crime he didn’t commit, had a lasting effect on Monk’s psychological health.  It proves that Thelonious Monk was also a victim of racial injustice, and even though bebop was way to express emotions, it was impossible to eradicate racism entirely.  

Race in the 1930's

From the beginning, when jazz emerged in New Orleans, racial discrimination and inequality has played a significant role in the development of jazz.  The tension between blacks and whites was apparent in the African dancing in Congo Square, the assimilation of a black-originated art form into the mainstream of white culture, and most prominently, in the Swing Era of the 1930’s (Swing Changes, February 14, 2013).  The 1930’s were a decade of competition, and musicians strategically prevented other people from profiting economically from their creativity. However, in addition to the competitive nature of the era, jazz simultaneously brought races together to perform and collaborate dialogically. 

Duke Ellington made his mark in the jazz world by not only bringing an unprecedented sense of style and sophistication to jazz, but by understanding how to tactically attain popularity during the harsh times of the Great Depression while staying in his respectful place in a segregated music community.  To do so, Ellington hired a Jewish agent, Irving Mills, to collaborate with and help him popularize his music and get on the radio in return for some of his earnings.  The radio was responsible for a transformation in the musical world as it allowed a passage through segregated barriers and the expansion of the audiences of black musicians.  Ellington recognized the opportunities that the radio brought as listeners couldn’t hear the color of the musician.   

The roles of black performers and white jazz critics played an important part in the racial discourse of the 1930’s.  According to lecture, the white, radical audience represented the “true” fan of jazz (February 14, 2013).  The integration of Swing included this audience critically commenting on the performances and music of the colored musicians. John Hammond, a white jazz critic, publicly attacked Duke Ellington’s musical appeal to the white audience writing, “Ellington’s tact and suave manner disguised a willingness to tolerate racial indignities for the sake of commercial success” (Swing Changes, February 14, 2013). 

Historical collaborations of races in the Swing Era included two different events at Carnegie Hall and The Savoy.  Carnegie Hall contained high culture concerts with sophisticated people watching and listening to performers play European music.  In 1937, Benny Goodman performed with three black musicians.  Although some people walked out viewing the musical integration as inappropriate, the event was largely a success.  In addition, at The Savoy, Benny Goodman performed a musical battle with the black musician, Chick Webb.  These historical events ultimately broke the musical race barrier and experimented with integration. 

Racial discourse has always been apparent in the history and development of jazz.  However, it was in the 1930’s when integration, competition, the radio, and musical relationships developed making race become explicit.  

New York Jazz

            New York city was a heterogeneous race capital in the 1920’s.  The forced community of inter- race, a product of the migration of a myriad of nationalities, created a distinctive form of New York jazz, different from the traditions and style of New Orleans or Chicago.  The modernity of New York had a great significance on the status and opportunity of the black man.  “…in the Negro’s case a deliberate flight not only from countryside to city, but from mediaeval America to modern” (Harlem, 630).  The diversity of the city is reflected in the music as individuals emerge and shape the community.  A new vision of opportunity, social and economic liberty, and improvement of conditions explain New York City’s attraction and uniqueness. 

            In addition to this “great race welding”, Harlem had two separate and different parts.  The first, called the Harlem Renaissance, “was a promised land for a downtrodden race” and focused “on the full range of human expression” (Gioia, 93,94).  This Harlem advocated and supported the black cultural and intellectual life while the other Harlem reflected a harsher reality and a less hopeful future by its poor economics, salaries, and rent payments.  Although these two Harlems seem very different and extreme, they shared a common musical context for jazz and piano.  According to Gioia, “… the Harlem Renaissance created an ideology, a cultural context for jazz, but the Harlem of rent parties and underground economies created music” (94).  With the popularity of the piano, stride became a unique style to New York City. 

            Ragtime was very popular in New York in the 1920’s.  During this time of Harlem rent parties, the sped up, intricate sound of ragtime innovated the form of the stride piano style.  Piano players had to be virtuosic and able to adapt to the tastes of different northern and southern audience members to keep their jobs (James P. Johnson, February 5, 2013).  In order to communicate with their diverse audience and community, a dialogue needed to be present.  Bakhtin emphasizes that every story has someone in mind.  Similarly, jazz is a conversational interaction in which the performers communicate musically to the audience. 

            Jazz was originally rooted in New York before the migration, construction, and change.  According to lecture, New York had an indigenous tradition of both ragtime and jazz before the migration of musicians and bands such as the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, Oliver or Armstrong (February 5, 2013).  James P. Johnson held this tradition as he was playing music before New Orleans jazz was even recorded.  Gioia states that, “…no other player of his day sensed so clearly the latent potential of African American music or worked so vigorously to bring it into reality” (98).  Although New Orleans and Chicago carried on the traditions of the African aesthetics, New York’s style of improvisation and vital aliveness creates both art and community. 

            Each Negro and individual from different nationalities came to New York with their own unique motives and desires.  The integration of the people and forced community, the combination of different past and futuristic styles, and the dialogic world of music created a jazz era in New York that’s unique from all others. 

           

Jazz in New Orleans

Jazz is a musical symbol for freedom and liberation.  It’s fusion of uniquely different cultures, styles, and musical elements created an authentic art form that emerged out of the vital aliveness of New Orleans.

In the 18^th and early 19^th centuries, New Orleans was the cosmopolitan trading center of the South.  The constant exchanges and trade allowed New Orleans to expand tremendously as a port city.  “…the most seething ethnic melting pot that the nineteenth century world could produce” (Gioia, 7). The city consisted of people of all nationalities and colors, which many other cities did not have, and was the place into which newly freed people of color from France and the Caribbean settled down in.

Because of the French and Spanish culture that was implanted in New Orleans in the early 18^th century, the city adopted a more liberal approach to slavery than the English had in the past.  Unlike other places, this Latin version of slavery allowed intermarriage, and acknowledged the rights of freedom that the slave had (The Age of the Soloist, Jan. 24).  This sense of liberty allowed more slaves to be free, and a Creole class was formed.  The Creoles identified with the European traditions, looking down on black people with an expression of superiority.  This separates New Orleans from any other city, because with an English system of slavery elsewhere, Creoles would be considered slaves.  However, this separation and freedom came to an end with the Jim Crow Era, segregating anyone with African descent from the white population (The Age of the Soloist, Jan. 24).  “Creoles of color were pushed into closer and closer contact with the black underclass they had strenuously avoided for so long” (Gioia, 34).  This change forced the Creole musicians to mix and play with black performers, emerging as jazz.

            The late 19^th century fused together two types of music known as ragtime and blues. At the turn of the century, ragtime was a fad that swept the country and was frequently played in brass bands (Gioia 33).  Brass bands were small ensembles that blended ragtime and blues, and permeated social life.  Blues emerged from the African desire for freedom, and was about sculpting something meaningful out of a difficult situation.  This syncretism of lively, African rooted ragtime and emotional blues played by the black community transformed music in New Orleans. 

            According to Gioia, Buddy Bolden is considered the “Elusive Father of Jazz” (34).  I think he is credited with this honor because of his innovativeness, intense energy, and outspokenness that he fused into his songs.  Bolden “can be viewed as symbolic of the more outspoken attitudes of the younger black men of his day” (Gioia, 36).  The evidence of his influence as a both a public voice of opinion and a musician makes me think that Buddy Bolden was a key figure in spurring the transformation to jazz music. 

            From the liberty of the Latin slave system to the integration of a myriad of cultures, ragtime and blues united under one musical identity known as jazz.  Although these historical events were significant and key to the development of jazz in New Orleans, I think that the most important factor is the tolerance of the happenings at Congo Square.  Congo Square was an official location where slaves could dance and sing with white supervision.  The tolerance of this event allowed slaves to continue dancing their African traditions, and the music provided an authentic glimpse of Africa.  Without these African aesthetics and traditions, jazz music wouldn’t be what it is today.