Why does LeRoi Jones (aka Amiri Baraka) hate Hard bop?

[paul secor]

Fell across this blog, which attempts to review various Mosaic reissues. In this case, a review of Cartler/Bradford set takes the view that the new thing replacing hard bop (jealous ensues, yada yada, yada). Thought it was related to the discussion on this thread.

Mosaic Reviews: John Carter and Bobby Bradford

Huh, I wrote that almost two years ago. Not sure if my opinion still holds. I do think, though, that hard bop as a genre was vital to jazz music until the early 1960s, by which point it was largely played out and overly formulaic. Of course, a lot of free jazz is also overly formulaic these days as well. Eventually everything gets played out.

Have just started reading some of your blog posts. Some interesting stuff there - thanks.

[Face of the Bass]

I've been reading Baraka/Jones's Black Music this week and I think in those essays, mainly from the early 1960s, his critique of hard bop comes through rather clearly. He compares it to the swing music of the 1930s, in that the hard bop movement represents a mainstreaming of its more revolutionary predecessor (in the case of swing, that would be the music of the 1920s; obviously in the case of hard bop, that's the bebop revolution). He argues that this mainstreaming, with regard to hard bop, leads to a formulaic smoothing of the music's jagged edges. In the early 1960s he was arguing that the just-emerging free jazz of people like Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry and so forth was in a sense a rejection of hard bop and a return to the revolutionary rhythmic potential of bebop.

FWIW, there's a lot about his analysis that I agree with. One thing I find interesting, reading his stuff from the early 1960s, was his sense that Sonny Rollins was going to be central to the development of free jazz. Certainly there are elements there in the music, but I think that Rollins's subsequent recorded output probably would have been regarded by Jones as something of a letdown.

Reading these essays has reminded me that, for my money, he's one of the best jazz critics ever and a great essayist. I've never been able to enjoy the poetry as much as I do his prose, but I'll give it another try at some point.

[Morganized]

I think it fair to say that Lee Morgan Hard Bop & Wynton Marsalis Hard Bop are two totally different musics reflecting two totally different worlds.

Yes indeed

I think his critique of hard bop is essentially accurate; it's a retrograde music that fits folks like Wynton like a glove, which pretty much indicates why Baraka has a point.

Your handle is "Leeway", you use that album as your avatar and this is how you feel about hard bop? I'm confused.

Yup, it's complicated.

Love it and get it.........

[fasstrack]

I've been reading Baraka/Jones's Black Music this week and I think in those essays, mainly from the early 1960s, his critique of hard bop comes through rather clearly. He compares it to the swing music of the 1930s, in that the hard bop movement represents a mainstreaming of its more revolutionary predecessor (in the case of swing, that would be the music of the 1920s; obviously in the case of hard bop, that's the bebop revolution). He argues that this mainstreaming, with regard to hard bop, leads to a formulaic smoothing of the music's jagged edges. In the early 1960s he was arguing that the just-emerging free jazz of people like Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry and so forth was in a sense a rejection of hard bop and a return to the revolutionary rhythmic potential of bebop.

FWIW, there's a lot about his analysis that I agree with. One thing I find interesting, reading his stuff from the early 1960s, was his sense that Sonny Rollins was going to be central to the development of free jazz. Certainly there are elements there in the music, but I think that Rollins's subsequent recorded output probably would have been regarded by Jones as something of a letdown.

Reading these essays has reminded me that, for my money, he's one of the best jazz critics ever and a great essayist. I've never been able to enjoy the poetry as much as I do his prose, but I'll give it another try at some point.

I think Sonny Rollins's involvement with free jazz may have been two-tiered in its reasons. Part of it seemed to be a genuine desire to expand the artistic pallette, and part not to be left behind by messrs. Coltrane and Coleman. He later stated in interviews that he preferred playing on form and 'so shoot me'. I'm surprised Mr. Baraka didn't focus on Trane more.

Also, Sonny's recorded output since the later sixties is the topic of a whole other discussion.

[Face of the Bass]

I think Sonny Rollins's involvement with free jazz may have been two-tiered in its reasons. Part of it seemed to be a genuine desire to expand the artistic pallette, and part not to be left behind by messrs. Coltrane and Coleman. He later stated in interviews that he preferred playing on form and 'so shoot me'. I'm surprised Mr. Baraka didn't focus on Trane more.

Oh, he does give plenty of love to Coltrane. He says at one point that Coltrane was basically finishing off the song form in jazz, and that Coleman and others like him were picking up where Trane was ending.

[fasstrack]

As an aside, does anybody here know the story Red Garland told about having a drink with Trane and asking him if he believed in the (new) music he was playing. Trane replied 'sort of. But if I stopped a lot of people would think I was a phony'.

I wonder about the veracity of that story......

[Steve Reynolds]

oh how some just wish that Coltrane himself thought his later playing was just jiving

[fasstrack]

oh how some just wish that Coltrane himself thought his later playing was just jiving

? Clarify please.

[Steve Reynolds]

then those who really don't like the changes and advances (yes - advances) in jazz that were in some part due to Coltrane pushing the limits - no doubt in some cases to an extreme point - especially in relation to length, then they can say that *even* Coltrane didn't believe in free jazz.

even the grand master who was respected by all didn't really like free jazz.

so the only ones who pushed forward and beyond were mostly those un-moored from the *tradition*

a faccy, of course, but it makes the staunch conservatives feel better continuing to ignore 40 years of quote, un-quote "Post-Coltrane" jazz.

[fasstrack]

then those who really don't like the changes and advances (yes - advances) in jazz that were in some part due to Coltrane pushing the limits - no doubt in some cases to an extreme point - especially in relation to length, then they can say that *even* Coltrane didn't believe in free jazz.

even the grand master who was respected by all didn't really like free jazz.

so the only ones who pushed forward and beyond were mostly those un-moored from the *tradition*

a faccy, of course, but it makes the staunch conservatives feel better continuing to ignore 40 years of quote, un-quote "Post-Coltrane" jazz.

'Post-Coltrane' jazz includes a lot more than 'free', don't you think?

With that 40 year designation we're almost (yikes) back to the deaded Ken Burns Jazz imbroglio.

I get your point, though. Still, I'd love to have been a fly on the wall for that Garland-Coltrane conversation.......

[Steve Reynolds]

of course "Post-Coltrane" jazz includes the whole gamut.

Would have loved to know how Coltrane dealt with musicians like Red Garland who couldn't or didn't or wouldn't hear what he was laying.

And this is not a volue judgement on musicians who gre up with music in the 40's through the early 60's and then there was what happened and the bifurcation of jazz - how can we say what the music being made by the insurgents sounded like to ears trained to hear music and play music within certain confines?

fascinating that Coltrane was the one guys from the pack of reknowned musicians who pushed as hard and as far as he did against the status quo

[fasstrack]

of course "Post-Coltrane" jazz includes the whole gamut.

Would have loved to know how Coltrane dealt with musicians like Red Garland who couldn't or didn't or wouldn't hear what he was laying.

And this is not a volue judgement on musicians who gre up with music in the 40's through the early 60's and then there was what happened and the bifurcation of jazz - how can we say what the music being made by the insurgents sounded like to ears trained to hear music and play music within certain confines?

fascinating that Coltrane was the one guys from the pack of reknowned musicians who pushed as hard and as far as he did against the status quo

There are 'revolutuionaries' in every era----just as there are fakes. The old test of time sorts it out.

As far as people resistant to change of all kinds, well, I can point fingers but I'd only be denying what I Luddite I am.

[xybert]

It's endlessly, frustratingly fascinating to wonder about where Coltrane's music would have gone had he lived, and what he would have to say about his 'late' music had he lived. We will never know. I think his later work gets framed in a certain way that would not be the case if his story didn't end where it did. Some people make out like Coltrane was on a trajectory that would have lead him to go deeper and deeper, further and further out until he transmorgafied himself into a holy beam of pure sound beyond human comprehension. The reality probably would have been more mundane. I think it is perfectly possible that Coltrane might have buttoned off and gone in a more conservative direction. It's perfectly possible that he was less than satisfied with the music of his late period. We will never know. It's not really necessary to make stuff up about what Coltrane thought or said in order to back up an agenda; there are a huge number of great's careers to cite, on either side of the fence, to suit your preferred point of view.

[AllenLowe]

I'm sure Trane had doubts - but think of all the opposition he faced, the charges of ANTI-Jazz. Of course he's going to speculate about things like that; geez, I'm nowhere near his level, and every time I play or record I wonder whether I'm full of shit. It's natural on any level, much less at the heights he was dealing.

and remember that half of his peers thought he had ruined jazz; I got many an earful from guys of that generation who were convinced Coltrane had killed the music, scared off the audiences, and ruined the business.

Edited November 14, 2013 by AllenLowe

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I'm sure Trane had doubts - but think of all the opposition he faced, the charges of ANTI-Jazz. Of course he's going to speculate about things like that; geez, I'm nowhere near his level, and every time I play or record I wonder whether I'm full of shit. It's natural on any level, much less at the heights he was dealing.

and remember that half of his peers thought he had ruined jazz; I got many an earful from guys of that generation who were convinced Coltrane had killed the music, scared off the audiences, and ruined the business.

You're too honest for your own good, Allen

There is a sense in which Coltrane DID scare off the audiences and ruin the business (though whether that would have happened anyway is a question I can't guess at). I recently read Val WIlmer's 'As serious as your life' and was really pissed off at the whingeing from lots of the people she wrote about to the effect that the animosity towards them was because they were black - but the same people were proudly aware that their music was NOT the sort that one would enjoy going out of an evening and enjoying a convivial time boozing with one's mates, thus maintaining the profit levels of the venues. (The only people who didn't complain were the members of the Arkestra, possibly because Sun Ra created his own venues.)

In each generation, there are really only a handful of people, and Coltrane was one of them, (also Rahsaan, Mingus, Cecil Taylor) whose music captures the audience willy-nilly. The others, good as they often are, great even, the audience has to meet a lot more than halfway.

MG

[David Ayers]

We've got AB coming to London for his birthday so come and see him/us and ask him about this in person!

http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/baraka/

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

We've got AB coming to London for his birthday so come and see him/us and ask him about this in person!

http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/baraka/

His birthday's 6 October, same as mine. Do you mean 2014?

MG

[Leeway]

What an individual would have done is of course impossible to say, but there are some clues out there that might help make an estimate. Coltrane was part of a certain zeitgeist that was fueled by the turbulence of the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, feminism, ecology, etc. Indeed, Coltrane was the perfect avatar for these turbulent events and his music a powerful representation of them.

With the end of the Vietnam war and the codification of key civil rights legislation, the steam went out of the American counter-culture. The free jazz movement dissipated. Its key leaders, Coltrane and Ayler were dead (almost symbolic deaths), and those that remained, even those close to Coltrane, like Pharoah Sanders, could not sustain "energy music" and moved towards less challenging or less confrontational musical expressions. The mid-70s saw the ride of the yuppie and the 80s the rise of Reaganism (I'll leave it there, not interested in getting into politics). That sort of put paid to what Coltrane was doing in the 60s. I don't think Coltrane could have bucked the trend of the times.

If one wants to see how it might have gone, one looks towards Europe: Peter Brotzmann and the German free jazz movement, and Derek Bailey and Evan Parker (among others) in England. They sort of picked up the ball and carried it forward. Their playing might show you the direction Coltrane might have taken, but I don't think he could have done that himself. Anyway, just some thoughts.

[Chuck Nessa]

Hmmmm.

[fasstrack]

Leeway: Coltrane may have been caught up in the zeitgeist of the times, but it was others that made him a symbol. He would've said, if asked, that he was only searching for beauty.

[Leeway]

Leeway: Coltrane may have been caught up in the zeitgeist of the times, but it was others that made him a symbol. He would've said, if asked, that he was only searching for beauty.

Yes, I agree with that, fasstrack. But what he meant to others may have been more important, from a social-cultural consideration, than what he thought of himself.

[Larry Kart]

That sort of put paid to what Coltrane was doing in the 60s.

"...put paid to"? Even if you're referring only to what Coltrane was doing, "Interstellar Space," for one, suggests otherwise.

[AllenLowe]

MG is correct, I think, on some of the racial confusion; I was a reading a book a while back about Braxton, and it advocated the position that he was rejected because what he was doing did not fit the image of how the black jazz musician should play; and the writer (can't think of his name, British) expressed the belief that this was a white, racist point of view. But geez, I remember the night Jamil Nasser gave me an earful of how he knew that that Braxon et al had killed the music; Percy France was more polite about this, but he clearly felt the same way, as did probably hundreds of black musicians from that generation.

Edited November 15, 2013 by AllenLowe

[Uncle Skid]

I am so confused by all of this sometimes.

Perhaps naive, but I like to think that Braxton has always played exactly what he wanted to play. What he needed to play. Some read far too much into it.

Maybe it really is that simple. And that's one reason why I like his music. Coltrane, too.

[Face of the Bass]

Leeway: Coltrane may have been caught up in the zeitgeist of the times, but it was others that made him a symbol. He would've said, if asked, that he was only searching for beauty.

I think his music was a bit more political than that, not in an overly-reductive way, but it's there. I think free jazz is the most vibrant sub-genre of jazz that ever existed. The free jazz movement is now 50 years old, basically half the life of all of recorded jazz. While much of it fizzled in the 1970s, I think Leeway is right that it reemerged in other contexts, and can still be heard in the American context in the music of, for instance, William Parker.

Without the post-Ornette musical legacy, jazz would be pretty boring, IMO. Economically perhaps it hurt the music, but in terms of extending the vitality of the genre, I think it played a very important role in keeping jazz culturally relevant after the emergence of rock and roll.