My New Essay on Race and American Music

[AllenLowe]

actually, me neither. Thinking about it is not the same thing as feeling insecure. Just a matter of recognizing the factors.

Edited March 25, 2012 by AllenLowe

[Chuck Nessa]

actually, me neither. Thinking about it is not the same thing as feeling insecure. Just a matter of recognizing the factors.

Thinking about it and posting an essay for public consumption are very different things.

[robertoart]

American discussions of race sometimes feel very claustrophobic, or rather, like we are all working with a kind of generally accepted shorthand that probably should not be accepted at all.

Chomp. Chomp. Chomp.

[AllenLowe]

right Chuck, but the essay has a point, purpose, direction. Not necessarily an indication of insecurity. I actually think, as well, that there are points I make it in the essay - about fetishization and mystification, and the contradictions inherent in both protesting such and then expressing such - are points I have never seen anyone make before. So maybe it will open up some needed discussion. It also is a way of my clarifying the purpose of my current musical project; I think jazz critics frequently use "influence" as an intellectual crutch. I was trying to show that "mediation" is a subtle but different concept.

[Face of the Bass]

American discussions of race sometimes feel very claustrophobic, or rather, like we are all working with a kind of generally accepted shorthand that probably should not be accepted at all.

Chomp. Chomp. Chomp.

I don't know what that means, but what I mean is that the discussions usually end up being very, very predictable, with the same fault lines, same rhetoric, etc. I'd like to see someone write a history of jazz with class rather than race as the primary framework.

[AllenLowe]

you need to read That Devilin Tune - the only truly multi-racial look at jazz, if I must say so myself -

[robertoart]

Can you post some of your guitar playing on youtube Allen Lowe. I would like to hear it. I have read some of your posts about your guitar playing before and enjoy some of the things you said. Sorry for the threadcap. Carry on.

Edited March 25, 2012 by freelancer

[Pete C]

I'd like to see someone write a history of jazz with class rather than race as the primary framework.

Once we get beyond the concept in the abstract, just what do you think the contours of a class-based look at jazz would be? Do you see class distinctions, apart from race, as central to the trajectory of jazz history?

[AllenLowe]

freelancer - there's a bunch of my music, with entire cuts, posted at: www.allenlowe.com

[robertoart]

freelancer - there's a bunch of my music, with entire cuts, posted at: www.allenlowe.com

[Big Beat Steve]

I'd like to see someone write a history of jazz with class rather than race as the primary framework.

Once we get beyond the concept in the abstract, just what do you think the contours of a class-based look at jazz would be? Do you see class distinctions, apart from race, as central to the trajectory of jazz history?

Jazz as a working man's music (pre-WWII jazz anyway) with Charlie Barnet and John Hammond et al. being the odd men out?

Edited March 25, 2012 by Big Beat Steve

[Face of the Bass]

I'd like to see someone write a history of jazz with class rather than race as the primary framework.

Once we get beyond the concept in the abstract, just what do you think the contours of a class-based look at jazz would be? Do you see class distinctions, apart from race, as central to the trajectory of jazz history?

I can't say for sure, but I think it's possible. One thing that you see in jazz history--and this is probably an oversimplification--but it seems like the music moves from the streets, and, as it becomes more accepted as an art form, into the academy. At the same time, jazz at its peak was not entirely a working or poor man's music. Miles came from the middle class, etc. And many white jazz musicians came from poor backgrounds or broken homes. So there's something there as well. And then you also have the long-standing reality that many jazz musicians were black but that the audience for the music becomes increasingly white. This would involve a significant class dynamic in and of itself, since during the postwar era the average black person was significantly poorer than the average white person.

There's also a strong argument to be made for a gendered analysis of jazz history, not just because the instrumentalists are overwhelmingly men, but also because of the kind of masculinity they project--especially within the black community. Obviously, the discourses on race, class, and gender all intersect in various ways. And as should be clear from this response I haven't myself fully thought through how these dynamics play themselves out in the history of jazz. But I wish someone would do that, instead of regurgitating the tired arguments about jazz as a black music, about the forgotten white contributions to jazz, etc. That seems like a field that has been played out and I don't think I've heard anything original on jazz and race in a long time.

[Big Beat Steve]

There's also a strong argument to be made for a gendered analysis of jazz history, not just because the instrumentalists are overwhelmingly men, but also because of the kind of masculinity they project--especially within the black community. Obviously, the discourses on race, class, and gender all intersect in various ways. And as should be clear from this response I haven't myself fully thought through how these dynamics play themselves out in the history of jazz. But I wish someone would do that, instead of regurgitating the tired arguments about jazz as a black music, about the forgotten white contributions to jazz, etc. That seems like a field that has been played out and I don't think I've heard anything original on jazz and race in a long time.

I've a feeling that this is one area where the discussion can quickly get over-academicised (no idea if this word exists but you get the idea, right? ) to death. Not that this angle would be without interest but somehow I fear there will be too much that will be projected into it from today's point of view to prove a point valid to TODAY'S "scholars" but not necessarily relevant to those who were around back then. I'd hate to see more "Swing Shifts" being written on that subject by more Sherrie Tuckers.

[AllenLowe]

Face of the Bass -

I would say the majority of jazz musicians, black and white, have risen from the middle class; even many of the early black players were from the African American middle class; there were exceptions, course, But it has long been an educated and relatively prosperous group that has produced these musicians.

to me the freshest way to look at jazz history is through the music itself; once again I will recommend my own work, Devilin Tune, which has no particular racial axe to grin.

Edited March 25, 2012 by AllenLowe

[Face of the Bass]

There's also a strong argument to be made for a gendered analysis of jazz history, not just because the instrumentalists are overwhelmingly men, but also because of the kind of masculinity they project--especially within the black community. Obviously, the discourses on race, class, and gender all intersect in various ways. And as should be clear from this response I haven't myself fully thought through how these dynamics play themselves out in the history of jazz. But I wish someone would do that, instead of regurgitating the tired arguments about jazz as a black music, about the forgotten white contributions to jazz, etc. That seems like a field that has been played out and I don't think I've heard anything original on jazz and race in a long time.

I've a feeling that this is one area where the discussion can quickly get over-academicised (no idea if this word exists but you get the idea, right? ) to death. Not that this angle would be without interest but somehow I fear there will be too much that will be projected into it from today's point of view to prove a point valid to TODAY'S "scholars" but not necessarily relevant to those who were around back then. I'd hate to see more "Swing Shifts" being written on that subject by more Sherrie Tuckers.

All scholarship, whether it comes dressed in academic jargon or not, is concerned with the problems of the present. The idea of "objective" history is a fantasy. And Allen, I don't believe it is possible to write a history that "just focuses on the music," as if the music exists independently from the social context within which it emerged. It's not about having an ax to grind, it's about trying to understand the relationship between jazz and the cultures in which it has developed, both American and elsewhere.

Face of the Bass -

I would say the majority of jazz musicians, black and white, have risen from the middle class; even many of the early black players were from the African American middle class; there were exceptions, course, But it has long been an educated and relatively prosperous group that has produced these musicians.

to me the freshest way to look at jazz history is through the music itself; once again I will recommend my own work, Devilin Tune, which has no particular racial axe to grin.

Well I think it would depend on how you define middle class. But even if what you say is true, then certainly a history that looks at the relationship between jazz and the middle class would be very interesting indeed. I would much rather read that than yet another regurgitation of jazz and race.

[Pete C]

The idea of "objective" history is a fantasy. And Allen, I don't believe it is possible to write a history that "just focuses on the music," as if the music exists independently from the social context within which it emerged.

I'd agree on both points, even if I'm not looking for the kind of "theory-driven" analyses that I assume you're more welcoming of. I'm just not convinced that a class-based lens would be fruitful for jazz history. Can I assume you're familiar with Hayden White's excellent work on historiography?

Some of Ted Gioia's earlier essays deal with interesting "extramusical" questions about the cultural reception of jazz, like his piece on Ornette and the myth of primitivism.

Edited March 25, 2012 by Pete C

[Chuck Nessa]

I need a bumper sticker saying WWPS - What would Pops say.

[CJ Shearn]

I'd like to see someone write a history of jazz with class rather than race as the primary framework.

Once we get beyond the concept in the abstract, just what do you think the contours of a class-based look at jazz would be? Do you see class distinctions, apart from race, as central to the trajectory of jazz history?

I can't say for sure, but I think it's possible. One thing that you see in jazz history--and this is probably an oversimplification--but it seems like the music moves from the streets, and, as it becomes more accepted as an art form, into the academy. At the same time, jazz at its peak was not entirely a working or poor man's music. Miles came from the middle class, etc. And many white jazz musicians came from poor backgrounds or broken homes. So there's something there as well. And then you also have the long-standing reality that many jazz musicians were black but that the audience for the music becomes increasingly white. This would involve a significant class dynamic in and of itself, since during the postwar era the average black person was significantly poorer than the average white person.

There's also a strong argument to be made for a gendered analysis of jazz history, not just because the instrumentalists are overwhelmingly men, but also because of the kind of masculinity they project--especially within the black community. Obviously, the discourses on race, class, and gender all intersect in various ways. And as should be clear from this response I haven't myself fully thought through how these dynamics play themselves out in the history of jazz. But I wish someone would do that, instead of regurgitating the tired arguments about jazz as a black music, about the forgotten white contributions to jazz, etc. That seems like a field that has been played out and I don't think I've heard anything original on jazz and race in a long time.

I agree with all of this completely. As jazz got increasingly more complex, the black audience (this can be seen in my own family to a degree, as well as others I've spoken to) moved to soul/R&B, and records like ones made by Grover Washington eventually birthed the smooth jazz genre. I wonder how many members of the black community did buy Blue Note for example after a certain point, such as Wayne Shorter's records, Jackie McLean's records, Bobby Hutcherson, etc. Or was it mostly white jazz fans into those artists? Miles tried to reclaim the black audience, but was that audience buying albums like "Dark Magus" or "Miles Davis in Concert at Philharmonic Hall"? it seems he lost touch with the audience, and Eddie Henderson's notes in the Blackhawk set make mention of that.

Hip hop is the primary form of social expression for the black community, even there you have to look past the mainstream to get content that socially is saying something. I've wondered a lot myself and reading Nicholas Payton's blogs, how can the young black community get interested in jazz again? I think Robert Glasper, Chris Dave are definitely a good start connecting hip hop to jazz. But this raises the larger question how to get my generation and younger into jazz period. I'm unusual in that I grew up with jazz my whole life and took an interest in it when I was a child almost immediately.

[Chuck Nessa]

As someone working in record retail from the early '60s to the early '80s I might have a grip in this.

[fasstrack]

The only flaw I find with all these undoubtedly worthy sociological exegeses (sp?) is not the relative newness of the perspective or study, but the potential for atomization in a world already dangerously isolationist and self-absorbed. I became a musician in the 60s-and am one today-b/c music magically supercedes the 'differences' everyone tells you there are between people. It's a uniter, a leveler. So, yes, study history, enjoy the prides of heritage, ethnicity, gender, etc. They are important. But don't leave out stories like the one Sonny Rollins told about Frank Sinatra and Nat Cole coming and cooling out tensions at his freshly integrated HS. That IMO is the truly important story of American music, which last I looked included jazz.

[AllenLowe]

ah, but to all the above - Devilin Tune does indeed succeed by looking primarily at the music - as even Tom Hull, whom I believe is a Marxistl agrees - here are some quotes from the book, as pulled from Hull's site when he reviewed it: (this shows, I believe, how it CAN be done):

When it comes to the study of jazz and some of the things that have been said about the music, it's tempting, but not really fair, to say that everyone is wrong. Sometimes they're wrong by omission and sometimes by commission, by not only what they say and what they claim, but by what they leave out, what they don't know about or what they think they do know. So when Wynton Marsalis declares, about jazz, in an issue of the magazine of

Jazz Times

, that "the music was always based around melody. Solos didn't come into fashion until Louis Armstrong," one has to wonder where he got his information. The exact origins of jazz are obscure and the original sounds of jazz or jazz-like playing are unknown. Certainly early jazz was about much more than melody, it was about rhythm and sonority, texture, and invention; and the truth is, many of the earliest jazz performances contain solos. And we can guess about other aspects of the music's origins, but we have to understand and acknowledge that we are

guessing

, even if we do so with knowledge and research.

(p. 12):

American popular music is a complex and wonderfully multi-faceted organism. The range of vernacular music which has emerged in the United States is astonishing in its natural and unselfconscious multicultural diversity, in the way it has subsisted on both a folk and commercial realm. Though, once again, the jazz world is fond of saying that its music is America's sole original artistic contribution, they leave out, at their own historic peril, country and hillbilly music, ragtime and show music, minstrelsy and Tin Pan Alley, not to mention gospel, rhythm and blues and rock and roll. This kind of snobbery is endemic to jazz, indicative of attitudes that, ironically, mirror the kind of snobbery and isolation that jazz itself faced in its formative years.

.

(p. 22):

Grossly underestimated (actually, generally unmentioned) in most jazz histories is the tradition of the African American string band. This tradition, though myopically ignored by early record producers, may be, in its merger with the wind ensemble,t he truest key to the development of jazz as both a specific discipline and as an art form. The image of the brass and marching band may have more of a visceral and romantic appeal, but the tempering effect on early dance music of the combination of brass and string sonorities is probably closer, in its aesthetic lineage, to jazz's actual birth.

This yin-yang combination of string and brass is evident all over the African Diaspora, particularly in the Caribbean and other parts of the Americas, where American companies recorded black performers well before 1920. Early combos made up of black musicians in Puerto Rico, in Cuba, Trinidad, and Brazil and recorded in the first part of the 20th century offer fascinating glimpses of the African method in both collision with and in isolation from Euro forces, in the throes of publicly issued declarations of cultural independence. These groups may lack the particular and peculiar influence of ragtime (and, thus, a specifically jazz-like lineage), but they do not show that the musical idea of tempered steel and brass was far from new.

(p. 33):

One early type of song included in the general ragtime category was the cakewalk. The cakewalk had legitimate slave/plantation origins, as an early form of black dance that parodied the ruling class. It was a lowbrow corruption of highbrow ambition, a cynical take on the false Southern aristocracy's idea of cultivated posturing in pseudo-European dances. These stiff-backed steps were grist for the mill of slave satire, though, in creating a caricature of the master's pretensions, slaves turned white laughter upon both whites and upon themselves. On the one hand the cakewalk was a sharp depiction of white vanity, of the absurdity of people trying to develop cultivated sensibilities in the midst of something as depraved as slavery; on the other hand whites, who loved watching blacks assume high-falutin' poses while wearing raggedy-fancy clothes, saw in these slave shows not themselves but something which would become a minstrel prototype: the hopelessly and hilariously deluded Negro with designs upon a class status he could never, by his very nature, achieve. Late in the 19th century the cakewalk became another Tin Pan Alley spinoff of ragtime, a form of instrumental ragtime song. No longer a plantation phenomenon, it was now just another commercial hook, one held in some contempt by today's more formalist critics of ragtime. It may, however, have greater significance, as not only an early type of American popular song but as a route to the development of jazz.

(p. 111):

Though the phrase would not be applied to a jazz movement for over twenty years, the first real birth of the cool took place in the 1920s, among a very select group of white musicians. It may be an exaggeration to call this a movement; the titular leader of these sometimes only loosely connected musicians was cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, who was unsuited by habit and temperament to actually lead. But lead he did, however inadvertently, becoming a spiritual medium through which a number of very young white men found artistic deliverance.

(p. 131):

White country musicians like John Dilleshaw or the groups of H. M. Barnes shared with blacks a great wealth of musical tradition. Though not always apparent on recordings, the truth of this common musical heritage has emerged through the years, leaked by personal testimony and non-commercial field recordings and shown by the work of black hillbillies. The racial twain certainly did meet, if not always for public consumption, and not all historians, white or black, are comfortable with the evidence. Left to their own devices white and black instrumentalists could sound eerily alike, non-ideological participants in the first, if unofficial, New South movement.

(p. 143):

For inspiration [benny] Goodman may have looked, if he looked at all, to Coleman Hawkins, whose vertical harmonic dodges were mapped in increasingly coherent and horizontal ways, and in more and less abstract ways, a song's harmony. But that influence, if it really ever existed with Goodman, was probably only peripheral. In truth he was one of the freest and most advanced improvisers of the 1920s, whose innovative ideas involved the development of an increasingly broken-field style of running chord changes and an elongation and smoothing out of the natural properties of the jazz melodic line. Like their contemporaries in various European modernist movements and like advocates of free verse (think of William Carlos Williams and "the variable foot") all of these musicians sought (if more intuitively, with less need of manifestoes, and less intellectual rationalization) techniques to fight their way out of the narrow boxes of hitherto acceptable form.

(p. 149):

The jazz soloist of the new age was a grappler, a wrestler with those elements -- melody, harmony, and rhythm -- that defined his musical universe. Jazz, always an intensely inter-active music, became even more so as the normally subordinate roles of bassist, drummer, and accompanying pianist or guitarist began to change, to become, increasingly, harmonically and rhythmically pro-active. [Louis] Armstrong was never really part of these changes. He reigned as Babe Ruth in an age of Ty Cobb, circling the bases with a smile and a gracious nod as others sweated and slid their way around them. Things might have been different had he not achieved the kind of fame which made his accompanists afterthoughts in the minds of both his manager and his public. It's difficult, however, to imagine how a talent of his kind -- magnetic, electrically charged, infinitely expansive -- could ever have been contained in the confines of work-a-day group jazz. Instead he became a model for a new jazz star system, for the incoming of that developing pre-war generation, like Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Tommy Dorsey.

(pp. 165-166):

The five or so years previous to [benny] Goodman's success seem, in hindsight, like the years of a ripening big band conspiracy, as though the building of the jazz-band edifice and the establishment of its stylistic hegemony in the public psyche were part of a plan which, with Benny's 1935 broadcasts, came suddenly and overwhelmingly to fruition. Listen to Ben Pollack (

Two Tickets To Georgia

) in 1933, to Bennie Moten's 1930s band, some of Red Nichols' 1931 ensembles, Arthur Schutt's arrangements for Goodman's "Bill Dodge" sessions from 1934, Fletcher Henderson's 1930-31 band, [Jack] Teagarden's 1933

Plantation Moods

, or Sy Oliver's [Jimmie] Lunceford pieces, and you have the swing era in much more than just embryo. Listen to bands after 1935 and you experience an odd consistency, a series of jazz likenesses which have to do not only with commercial copycatting but with jazz reaching, and starting to tentatively cross, a new musical bridge. It was now officially out of the margins of popular entertainment. The new move to the commercial center stimulated not only a rush of artistic advance but a trend toward artistic stasis, thereby planting with repetition and formulaic redundancy, the seeds of the next (bebop) revolution.

(pp. 175-176):

We sometimes forget that music of nearly any form responds, at its root, to factors that are beyond the reach of history, that are much more than just reflections of such things as class and race and economics, or shifting demographics and migratory habits. Musical form and content change because they have to, because the process of making music of any kind is so all consuming of both the musician and the music. A style alters or modifies itself when its characteristic gestures become cliché, when it begins to repeat itself, to show signs that it has worn out its aesthetic welcome; such is the one of the most basic of human artistic impulses, to challenge prior assumptions of form and idea. Just as the Delta blues changed at the hands of Robert Johnson, who knew instinctively that the original form begged for change and redirection and that it had gone, stylistically, almost as far as it could go, so did jazz react to the need for the expansion of formats and styles that had nearly exhausted themselves: Louis Armstrong found a way out of the narrow confines of New Orleans polyphony; Coleman Hawkins, with Armstrong's help, freed the saxophone from its slap-happy, circus past; Lester Young, facing a generation of Hawkins disciples, showed that there were aesthetic alternatives for the playing of the saxophone; Bix Beiderbecke, admiring early white trumpeters who had reached something of a stylistic dead end, showed everyone that there was another way to hear the music, that one had neither to remain entrapped in a neo-Dixieland desert or simply emulate Louis Armstrong. Large aspects of white jazz in the 1920s were the product of an aesthetic counterculture, and there are many more examples, black and white. Each illustrates, as critic Richard Gilman has said, that the act of artistic creation, at its best, constitutes a counter-history, the generation of a psychological and aesthetic alternative to the prevailing artistic and social order.

(p. 194):

As we've pointed out, change was in the air in those years [early 1940s], in the atmosphere of recording studios and some of the after-hours Harlem clubs like Minton's or Monroe's Uptown House. Musicians were feeling their way toward new means of expression, into a harmonic system that incorporated seemingly odd and difficult intervals as well as clashing dissonances, that integrated these changing tonal elements into more irregular patterns of rhythm and that placed accents in less predictable places, on less predictable beats. [Thelonious] Monk was very much in the center of all this. If he didn't have the same kind of fleet, right-hand-emphasizing solo style that some of the new generation had, he had the requisite harmonic acumen, the ability to substitute chords of sometimes remote relationship to the original harmony, and a rhythmic mastery that allowed him to accent in all of what seemed like the wrong places while maintaining complete equilibrium. If this threw some late night jammers for a loop, if it confused them and forced them from the stage, well, then, that was just to bad -- no, actually, that was the point and purpose, to separate the new from the old, or at least, the older.

(p. 195):

All that, however, puts the cart somewhat before the horse. 1940s modernism came from many directions and led not just to bebop but to a whole post-War smorgasbord of musical styles. Another new sound was emerging from the big band and blues echoes of the Swing Era, and though it appealed, at first, largely to African American audiences, the long-term commercial implications for both black and white musicians and audiences were great. Louis Jordan, preceded and strongly influenced by groups like the Harlem Hamfats, was one of the first to appreciate its possibilities, as it appropriated basic swing and shuffle rhythms in the service of relatively simple chord progression -- sometimes the blues, sometimes the old standby

I Got Rhythm

, sometimes even the old ragtime changes -- and lyrics that found hooks in often humorous and leering ways. When Louis Jordan sang, as he made love to a [woman] in secret, "there ain't nobody here but us chickens," and Wynonie Harris, with Lucky Millinder's band, wondered "who put the whiskey in the well?," it became clear that something different was coming into popular focus, and with it a new music of novelty and irresistible swing.

(p. 212):

Bebop was not an avant garde movement in the same deep cultural sense as the European rebellions of the 1910s and 1920s, but this may have been so because it lacked an effective propagandist, a social theorist to place it in an appropriately revolutionary context. That would come much later, in the revisionist historical battles waged by some jazz critics in the post-1960s era. But it

was

an avant garde movement in the sense that it now placed jazz in the

theoretical

running; it made allowances, for the first time in any systematic way in jazz, for new kinds of dissonance based on either intervals or stacked intervals, for methods that seemed, musically, non-representational by virtue of their sometimes surprising and sometimes even shocking juxtapositions of harmony, scale, and rhythm. Bebop was, in other words, a challenge to the established musical order, and [through] it, like nearly all modernist movements, eventually settled into routine predictability, for a time it had the same powerful impetus as the earlier European avant garde, becoming, by virtue of its challenge to basic notions of tonal and rhythmic consonance, a truly revolutionary phenomenon.

Charlie Parker was its leader and most potent symbol. Though Dizzy Gillespie, possibly because of both his longevity and relative accessibility, has suffered some historical neglect, the truth is that, brilliant as he was, he didn't inspire the same kind of reverence and awe in fellow musicians as did Parker. Dizzy was

the

trumpeter of the era, however, and a sign of his greatness is the dearth of other trumpet players who have worked directly in the Gillespie style, who are able to come anywhere near not only his amazing facility in the upper register but his complete mastery of the instrument. He inspired many others, but inspiration was not enough to permit any kind of real or accurate imitation.

(p. 250):

As much as some people struggled, the musical Luddites, against the radical changes (both technical and commercial) in jazz, the music continued to advance with the momentum of artistic inevitability -- and jazz, despite some protestations, was now a full-fledged art music, albeit one with a typically ambiguous relationship to the pressures of marketing and sales. The descriptive cliché of jazz's origins -- that it represented a collision of European and African aesthetics and techniques -- was finally an apt one, as new musicians stealthily adapted more formal aspects of their musical training to jazz's sometimes ephemeral and spontaneous purposes. Still, this idea of a Euro-African fusion made more sense when applied to places other than America, like, for instance, Argentina, in which the traditional tango was undergoing the kind of radical transformation that swing had undergone in the middle 1940s. Bandoneon player Astor Piazzolla, who would, in later years, rise to a level of international fame and find himself admired by more than one jazz musician, was already, by the late 1940s, composing in a way that, intentionally or not, paralleled jazz's orchestral expansion and integration of planned and spontaneous moments. His was a very different kind of annexation of Latino rhythms to jazz ends, too subtle in its implications to have, like Chano Pozo, a broad and multicultural effect, but too musically significant and far ranging to ignore.

(p. 257):

Before he died (in 1955) Charlie Parker left some tantalizing hints of not just what the future would bring, but what the future

was

. In many respects the future was everywhere in jazz of the late 1940s, in things like the pulsing, lined-out improvisations of Lennie Tristano and in the curt harmonic frisking of standard chord progressions by Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh; it was there in the densely layered compositions of George Russell and Charles Mingus, the "tone paintings" of Dodo Marmarosa, the uncannily sensitive stage-whispers (both individual and collaborative) of Miles Davis and Gil Evans, in Johnny Carisi's carefully organized use of dissonance, even in Bud Powell's harrowingly personal reassessments of triadic harmony. There was even evidence of the future in Stan Kenton's increasingly self-righteous, self-conscious and somewhat desperate midwifing of it, in his attempts to compress in time events that, like nature, would just have to take their course.

But Charlie Parker, who had warned his disciples to keep open minds about the musical world around them, was already there, in some of his more eccentrically designed harmonic and rhythmic excursions, in his exploration of more distantly and ingeniously related harmonic cycles. He was there in solos like one on

My Old Flame

which he recorded live in a club in 1948, in which he appears ready and willing to break sonic barriers, to be chomping at a musical bit that, had he lived longer, he would likely have broken. His ability to serve, even as he conspired in his own self destruction, as such a broad source of inspiration (all of the above-named futurists idolized him) and enough to insure his statues [stature?] as a musical prophet and predict his eventual martyrdom, and he was one musical Messiah who not only walked, musically speaking, on water for his disciples, but who warned them, with great prescience, not to close their eyes to the increasingly complicated musical world in which they lived.

(p. 259):

Though I might argue that one treatment for what ails those of us who observe, fight about, and write about jazz might be detailed study of its complicated history, I don't really believe this will help. Everyone has their own uses for history, and mine, if more inclusive than the average, are no more objective nor less combative. My hope in writing all this is (that is, these last three hundred or so pages) is only that the occasional name will catch the occasional eye of the occasional reader, and deliver one more musician, dead

or

alive, from the humiliations of obscurity.

Edited March 26, 2012 by AllenLowe

[robertoart]

Face of the Bass -

I would say the majority of jazz musicians, black and white, have risen from the middle class; even many of the early black players were from the African American middle class; there were exceptions, course, But it has long been an educated and relatively prosperous group that has produced these musicians.

to me the freshest way to look at jazz history is through the music itself; once again I will recommend my own work, Devilin Tune, which has no particular racial axe to grin.

Obviously the Black middle class and the White middle class are two different things.

Now 'educated' in what context. Has anyone also focused on the role military education supported the musicians ability to be fed and sheltered and concentrate on 'music'.

Maybe this is marginal, but a lot of musicians "especially' African American musicians seem to have made that choice to join the services.

Also a constant thread of Black musicians stories (historically) seems to be their struggle to move from playing rhythm and blues to (playing and learning) jazz.

Edited March 26, 2012 by freelancer

[robertoart]

I'd like to see someone write a history of jazz with class rather than race as the primary framework.

Once we get beyond the concept in the abstract, just what do you think the contours of a class-based look at jazz would be? Do you see class distinctions, apart from race, as central to the trajectory of jazz history?

I can't say for sure, but I think it's possible. One thing that you see in jazz history--and this is probably an oversimplification--but it seems like the music moves from the streets, and, as it becomes more accepted as an art form, into the academy. At the same time, jazz at its peak was not entirely a working or poor man's music. Miles came from the middle class, etc. And many white jazz musicians came from poor backgrounds or broken homes. So there's something there as well. And then you also have the long-standing reality that many jazz musicians were black but that the audience for the music becomes increasingly white. This would involve a significant class dynamic in and of itself, since during the postwar era the average black person was significantly poorer than the average white person.

There's also a strong argument to be made for a gendered analysis of jazz history, not just because the instrumentalists are overwhelmingly men, but also because of the kind of masculinity they project--especially within the black community. Obviously, the discourses on race, class, and gender all intersect in various ways. And as should be clear from this response I haven't myself fully thought through how these dynamics play themselves out in the history of jazz. But I wish someone would do that, instead of regurgitating the tired arguments about jazz as a black music, about the forgotten white contributions to jazz, etc. That seems like a field that has been played out and I don't think I've heard anything original on jazz and race in a long time.

I agree with all of this completely. As jazz got increasingly more complex, the black audience (this can be seen in my own family to a degree, as well as others I've spoken to) moved to soul/R&B, and records like ones made by Grover Washington eventually birthed the smooth jazz genre. I wonder how many members of the black community did buy Blue Note for example after a certain point, such as Wayne Shorter's records, Jackie McLean's records, Bobby Hutcherson, etc. Or was it mostly white jazz fans into those artists? Miles tried to reclaim the black audience, but was that audience buying albums like "Dark Magus" or "Miles Davis in Concert at Philharmonic Hall"? it seems he lost touch with the audience, and Eddie Henderson's notes in the Blackhawk set make mention of that.

Hip hop is the primary form of social expression for the black community, even there you have to look past the mainstream to get content that socially is saying something. I've wondered a lot myself and reading Nicholas Payton's blogs, how can the young black community get interested in jazz again? I think Robert Glasper, Chris Dave are definitely a good start connecting hip hop to jazz. But this raises the larger question how to get my generation and younger into jazz period. I'm unusual in that I grew up with jazz my whole life and took an interest in it when I was a child almost immediately.

Do you think 1980's Miles Davis reconnected somewhat to a Black audience? Even if it wasn't a youthful one. I recently read that Miles Davis said some disparaging things about John Scofield. Scofield in response had a bit of a dig at Davis by saying that Miles Davis was obsessed with getting a 'hit', the inference being that it was more important to Miles to be popular, than the actual music he made. In light of what you are saying, could it be thought that perhaps the significance of having a hit record meant more to Miles than just mainstream success.

[David Ayers]

I recently read that Miles Davis said some disparaging things about John Scofield. Scofield in response had a bit of a dig at Davis by saying that Miles Davis was obsessed with getting a 'hit', the inference being that it was more important to Miles to be popular, than the actual music he made. In light of what you are saying, could it be thought that perhaps the significance of having a hit record meant more to Miles than just mainstream success.

Off topic but thanks for mentioning that. When I said in a recent thread that Miles attended too much to audience no-one took me seriously.

Allen, stop cutting and pasting your books into the thread -it's poor form!!

[CJ Shearn]

I'd like to see someone write a history of jazz with class rather than race as the primary framework.

Once we get beyond the concept in the abstract, just what do you think the contours of a class-based look at jazz would be? Do you see class distinctions, apart from race, as central to the trajectory of jazz history?

I can't say for sure, but I think it's possible. One thing that you see in jazz history--and this is probably an oversimplification--but it seems like the music moves from the streets, and, as it becomes more accepted as an art form, into the academy. At the same time, jazz at its peak was not entirely a working or poor man's music. Miles came from the middle class, etc. And many white jazz musicians came from poor backgrounds or broken homes. So there's something there as well. And then you also have the long-standing reality that many jazz musicians were black but that the audience for the music becomes increasingly white. This would involve a significant class dynamic in and of itself, since during the postwar era the average black person was significantly poorer than the average white person.

There's also a strong argument to be made for a gendered analysis of jazz history, not just because the instrumentalists are overwhelmingly men, but also because of the kind of masculinity they project--especially within the black community. Obviously, the discourses on race, class, and gender all intersect in various ways. And as should be clear from this response I haven't myself fully thought through how these dynamics play themselves out in the history of jazz. But I wish someone would do that, instead of regurgitating the tired arguments about jazz as a black music, about the forgotten white contributions to jazz, etc. That seems like a field that has been played out and I don't think I've heard anything original on jazz and race in a long time.

I agree with all of this completely. As jazz got increasingly more complex, the black audience (this can be seen in my own family to a degree, as well as others I've spoken to) moved to soul/R&B, and records like ones made by Grover Washington eventually birthed the smooth jazz genre. I wonder how many members of the black community did buy Blue Note for example after a certain point, such as Wayne Shorter's records, Jackie McLean's records, Bobby Hutcherson, etc. Or was it mostly white jazz fans into those artists? Miles tried to reclaim the black audience, but was that audience buying albums like "Dark Magus" or "Miles Davis in Concert at Philharmonic Hall"? it seems he lost touch with the audience, and Eddie Henderson's notes in the Blackhawk set make mention of that.

Hip hop is the primary form of social expression for the black community, even there you have to look past the mainstream to get content that socially is saying something. I've wondered a lot myself and reading Nicholas Payton's blogs, how can the young black community get interested in jazz again? I think Robert Glasper, Chris Dave are definitely a good start connecting hip hop to jazz. But this raises the larger question how to get my generation and younger into jazz period. I'm unusual in that I grew up with jazz my whole life and took an interest in it when I was a child almost immediately.

Do you think 1980's Miles Davis reconnected somewhat to a Black audience? Even if it wasn't a youthful one. I recently read that Miles Davis said some disparaging things about John Scofield. Scofield in response had a bit of a dig at Davis by saying that Miles Davis was obsessed with getting a 'hit', the inference being that it was more important to Miles to be popular, than the actual music he made. In light of what you are saying, could it be thought that perhaps the significance of having a hit record meant more to Miles than just mainstream success.

I know my dad was somewhat reconnected with Miles as far as the music he made in the 80's but for the community in general, I am not sure. I'm mixed race but both sides of my family really love music. I know that my uncle (who's white) on my mom's side probably lost touch with Miles after Bitches Brew because he never got that, he says the album is "ok". He was much more into the prog scene and fusion like RTF and Mahavishnu. I think talking to people in the black community my age, they seem to be aware of jazz as their parents' music but have little to no connection, which is expected I guess. Jazz functions to me as a living, breathing thing so I never see it as "outdated". I asked a guy if his parents had Lee Morgan records, Miles records, CTI records, etc but he had no idea; he posted a Bob James thing on FB incidentally so that began a conversation on my part about that. Most of this generation have no idea about records unless they heard it as a sample. He posted a Bob James thing on FB incidentally so that began a conversation on my part about that and what that scene was in the 70's as far as the black community. Amongst the older generation, my dad and that side included, the cut off for jazz with more "adventurous" records seems to be the early 70's I found. My dad's brother, my other uncle listens to a wide variety of music, all jazz, including smooth, but as for Miles I don't know if he got all that into the Second Quintet stuff. From there it seems there were heavier rotations of Grover Washington, the Clarke/Duke band, funkier things like that, Weather Report, in what they bought/listened to for records on that side of the family. I totally agree that point about Miles also, the merits of that 80's music not really showing itself unless heard live or on the live records. Miles worried a lot of what people thought of him, I think and it led to his direction. I think even that '73-5 period, which truthfully I really need to dive into myself, he totally lost touch with the audience completely and that really extended into his final period. Although the choice of songs, covering pop hits was really at least to me, no different than what he did in the 50's. Now, we can definitely say that perhaps "Perfect Way" is not in the same league as "All of You", "I Could Write a Book", "My Funny Valentine", but the practice of taking popular material was the same.

It's sort of funny, as an aside how so many jazz fans like to diss pop covers when really many of the fav records we have from the 50's, 60's have pop tunes. I think really, when jazz fans complain about pop tunes, they really are describing a preference that musically, content wise sone pop tunes from the 80's till now don't hold up for them.