Question
Steve Solomon
of jazz in the 60's?
There is some direct influence as for example in the album "Speak
Brother Speak" by Max Roach.
Nevertheless I wonder if the music back then would of taken a similar
direction if there was no Civil Rights Movement.
Steve Solomon
The Enunciator
What direction do you have in mind?
Yardbird O'Rooney
wrote:
What if there was no World War II? Would jazz have
taken a different course? These seem to be pretty pointless
speculations.
When you speak of "a similar direction", what do you
mean? Music was taking many directions. Some jazz
musicians interpolated overtly political content into their
performances, some didn't. Same as now, isn't it?
--
YO
j_ns...@msn.com
To the best of my understanding, "hard bop" sounds the way it does
partly because of musicians' interest in mixing
"black"-gospel-associated sounds in with bop (which previously didn't
have much to do musically with "black" gospel), often specifically
because of "black pride."
Joseph Scott
Yardbird O'Rooney
You'll find that the infusion of "gospel" elements into
jazz predated the popular use of the term "black pride".
Aside from that, I don't understand the point of the
question. What is the point of saying, "If the world
weren't what it is, what would it be"? Where does
that get you?
--
YO
j_ns...@msn.com
> On 9 Jan 2005 16:21:18 -0800, j_ns...@msn.com wrote:
>
> >I thought it was a reasonable question.
> >
> >To the best of my understanding, "hard bop" sounds the way it does
> >partly because of musicians' interest in mixing
> >"black"-gospel-associated sounds in with bop (which previously
didn't
> >have much to do musically with "black" gospel), often specifically
> >because of "black pride."
> >
>
>
> jazz predated the popular use of the term "black pride".
There's no contradiction between this statement and my statement above.
(Arguing about what constituted true pride to be a "Negro" was normal
among "black" intellectuals well before the very first jazz recordings.
For instance, Booker T. Washington wrote in 1901 that he was genuinely
"proud" to be a "Negro," and therefore he was tired of others talking
big about being proud to be a "Negro" but then knocking some aspects of
"black" culture. Obviously that subject got a higher and higher profile
among U.S. "blacks" generally decade by decade from the '00s to the
'60s. As of the '40s, gospel still hadn't had all that much effect on
jazz, compared to the '50s on -- we can come up with examples, such as
Rosetta Tharpe making a few secular recordings with jazz guitar and
deep-gospel-style singing during the '40s, but looking at '40s jazz
generally, those examples add up to a drop in the bucket. Part of the
reason '50s-'70s jazz is quite gospel-influenced is that it's quite
soul-influenced, and soul as it arose, basically during the '50s, had
much more gospel influence coming into it than the comparable populist
"black" music that preceded it, such as Louis Jordan.)
>
> Aside from that, I don't understand the point of the
> question. What is the point of saying, "If the world
> weren't what it is, what would it be"? Where does
> that get you?
Steve's interest in understanding how much impact the civil rights
movement had on the character of jazz during the '60s seems no more odd
to me than asking "How much of an impact did classical music have on
the character of modern jazz during the '40s?" or whatever other
historical question may or may not interest some of us.
Best wishes,
Joseph Scott
Marc Sabatella
> question. What is the point of saying, "If the world
> weren't what it is, what would it be"? Where does
> that get you?
Some people find speculative conversation interesting for its own sake.
No one is forcing you to participate if you don't.
--------------
Marc Sabatella
ma...@outsideshore.com
The Outside Shore
Music, art, & educational materials:
http://www.outsideshore.com/
Steve Solomon
movement had on the character of jazz during the '60s seems no more odd
to me than asking "How much of an impact did classical music have on the
character of modern jazz during the '40s?" or whatever other historical
question may or may not interest some of us. Best wishes,
Joseph Scott
Personally I don't see much of a relationship between the music and the
Civil Rights Movement (and the Vietnam War, the assassination of Malcom
X, etc.). In the recent past, I posed the question to two local jazz
musicians (African-American) in their sixties. Both agreed with my
observation. I simply posed the question here to see if there was a
different viewpoint........nothing more, nothing less. What's wrong with
being speculative?
End of thread!
Steve Solomon
Yardbird O'Rooney
> Steve's interest in understanding how much impact the civil rights
> movement had on the character of jazz during the '60s seems no more odd
> to me than asking "How much of an impact did classical music have on
> the character of modern jazz during the '40s?" or whatever other
> historical question may or may not interest some of us.
Okay, if that's what the question was, I withdraw my remark.
But I've gone back a re-read it, and it still does not seem to
me to be the same question as your paraphrase of it.
Cheers,
YO
Yardbird O'Rooney
>> Aside from that, I don't understand the point of the
>> question. What is the point of saying, "If the world
>> weren't what it is, what would it be"? Where does
>> that get you?
>
> Some people find speculative conversation interesting for its own sake.
True. Which is why I asked the question.
--
YO
Gerry
Solomon <Stev...@webtv.net> wrote:
Nothing at all. I talked to others and they don't agree with those you
talked to. The Civil Rights movement made it easier for black folk to
work in all bars and clubs without as much aggravation. I think that's
noteworthy and certainly affected various aspects of music as might be
seen in any venue changes.
The civil rights movement also correlates pretty well with the sales of
popular black musics-as-mainstream to white audiences; Motown among
many others.
> End of thread!
Not so fast, young man!
If such matters were of little concern to the jazz community we
wouldn't find such issues in album titles, jacket notes, and Moslem
name-chages during so the 60's.
The cultural upheaval, wars, impending nuclear doom, the daily
trauma/revelations that were the civil-rights movement and many other
"movements"; these were absorbed and processed as raw material by all
art forms with the *exception* of jazz? I think not.
Did we start playing a different scale in honor for Selma? Of course
not. It's difficult to project what kind of jazz we might have
produced in the 40's had there never been a WWII. By the same token
it's difficult to imagine what jazz folk would produce, particularly
vis-a-vis the "avant garde" had the US social strictures and chafing
never happened.
--
The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers,
immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.
-- Noam Chomsky
Gerry
In article <hq32u0132mf92ja47...@4ax.com>, Yardbird
O'Rooney <M...@Vootie.com> wrote:
> >How much of a impact did the Civil Rights Movement affect the
> >character of jazz in the 60's?
How much? Impossible to quantify. For those who considered it central
to their art, it was critically important. For those who didn't give a
shit; bupkiss.
> >There is some direct influence as for
> >example in the album "Speak Brother Speak" by Max Roach.
> >Nevertheless I wonder if the music back then would of taken a
> >similar direction if there was no Civil Rights Movement.
Sure it would. How? Who knows...
> What if there was no World War II? Would jazz have taken a different
> course? These seem to be pretty pointless speculations.
>
> When you speak of "a similar direction", what do you mean? Music was
> taking many directions. Some jazz musicians interpolated overtly
> political content into their performances, some didn't. Same as now,
> isn't it?
Yup. Particularly for artists (perhaps Mr. Solomon), it becomes a
difficult question to answer: which parts of my world are to be used as
raw material of my art? Are poltics important? Are they critical? Is
it encumbent on me, as a composer, to read the paper? What artists that
I respect embraced such input? Who rejected it?
I think these are important questions. Though it's true you can say
"who cares" and "so what" as a response to any sentence by anyone.
these statements too are a statement of beliefs.
--
Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an
acquaintance or a stranger.
-- Franklin P. Jones
nick...@aol.com
So far, no one seems to have a concrete answer. I suspect most of the
influences were superficial, i.e., we got songs with names like
"Freedom Now" or "Alabama" instead of "The Way You Look Tonight" or
"Summertime." I've seen pictures of bebop players wearing dashikis (you
know, those loose, colorful African-looking shirts) which I suppose
expressed a closer connection to African roots. But their music wasn't
all that different.
Yardbird O'Rooney
To some degree there was after WWII a conscious anti-
academic musical response among some jazz payers (Miles
among them) involved in what you are referring to. Naturally,
any black musicians involved in jazz would have been to some
degree aware of or involved in the social and political struggles
going on at the time as well. That these two impulses were
intertwined cannot be doubted. Exactly * how * and to what
degree they were intertwined, I would say, varies in every single
case. Some black musicians (Miles, again, among them) were
frequently quoted making disparaging remarks about what white
musicians and audiences were doing. Some black musicians
didn't feel the same way. (Not too remarkable, is it?) Some
white musicians and fans * did * feel the same way. (Perhaps
that is only slightly less unremarkable.)
To some extent, as well, the deliberate reaching for "soul" and
"gospel" and "blues" and "roots" elements in post-WWII jazz
was sometimes done simply as a commercial ploy.
Those of us who followed jazz through the 'fifties and 'sixties
(and beyond) were always aware of the extent to which jazz
was a minority music (and, post-Elvis, rapidly becoming moreso) --
in all the various important senses of the word "minority."
We were aware that among the white critics and promoters who
championed jazz were many social progressives dedicated not
just to the music but to the cause of racial equality and social
change. We were aware that among the black musicians (and
some of the white musicians as well) who performed the music,
many were socially aware and politically active. Some were not.
In some cases "Avant-gardism" in jazz was (and still is) closely
connected with political activism, or with social progressivism, or
with black militancy.
But in some cases it wasn't, and isn't, connected with any of those
things. And in still other cases it * may * have been just a pose,
capitalizing on the tenor of the times. (Not referring to the admirable
reed instrument of the same name there, by the way.) I knew people
of both races and both sexes who hung out in jazz bars mainly in
hopes of meeting--shall we say, "exotic" -- sex partners. Not only
did I * know * them ... oh, never mind.
So generalize with caution, if you must generalize at all.
And none of this is necessarily true only of jazz. Think of what
a friend of mine refers to as the Great Folk Music Scare of the
1960's. Similar (extramusical) forces were at work there too.
--
YO
Oh -- please feel free to capitalize all those 'b's and 'w's if you feel
the need. Just don't make a big deal about it.
j_ns...@msn.com
> produced in the 40's had there never been a WWII.[...]
I disagree; I don't think WWII had a significant impact on the way jazz
evolved.
Best wishes,
Joseph Scott
Skip Elliott Bowman
news:1105419158.9...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
In my opinion, WWII had a big impact on music overall and jazz in
particular. Think Rosie the Riveter, for one example. Men were drafted and
women took up the slack all over. But when the war ended, then men came
back and the women lost their gigs quicker than they got them.
Yardbird O'Rooney
> [...]It's difficult to project what kind of jazz we might have
>> produced in the 40's had there never been a WWII.[...]
>
> I disagree; I don't think WWII had a significant impact on the way jazz
> evolved.
Going back to an earlier war, the Feds wouldn't
have closed Storyville when they did if it were not for
WWI. Joe Oliver and his young pupil Louis Armstrong
might have stayed there and faded away into oblivion after
a few years.
As far as WWII is concerned, consider the following for starters:
1. Hundreds of young recruits gained intensive experience and
exposure in Armed Forces bands.
2. Over one million black Americans served, accelerating
their entry into the national consciousness and the social
mainstream (still ongoing of course). Similarly, there
was a significant migration of southern rural peole into the
industrialized North, creating new social matrices in which
new music styles rapidly came and went. The development
of bebop coincided with rising awareness or and sentiment
against racial discrimination and segregation which, although
underway during the 1930's, was given a huge boost by
World War II
3. Among the factors hastening the end of the big-band era
were gas and tire rationing, the draft, and voluntary military enlistment
which depleted bands of their personnel and transportation means.
4. The post-war development of late bop and cool was, as has
been widely observed by social historians, in large part an
expression of the disillusionment and alienation felt by the
younger generation following the upheavals of World War.
Comparable claims have been made for the Bobby soxers and
Jitterbuggers whose taste for simple, repetitive tunes contributed
to the drying up of big band creative music and the evolution of
"real" jazz away from being a popular music toward the status of
an art music, to be replaced in pop culture by twangy guitars,
honking saxophones and pile-driver drumbeats. (Artie Shaw
famously cracked that the jitterbuggers "would dance to a car
windshield wiper -- who needs musicians?")
The Civil War, anyone?
--
YO
Yardbird O'Rooney
Skip Elliott Bowman wrote:
> In my opinion, WWII had a big impact on music overall and jazz in
> particular.
Of course it did. Aside from the social changes induced
or accelerated by the upheavals of the war, think of the
impact of those years and experiences on the psyche. Does
anyone really think peoples inner lives, and, consequently, their
playing styles, would not be affected by the world around them?
Think of Lester Young, among many, many others.
Think of the hundreds of pop songs written during the war
years, reflecting the sentiments or hopes or dreams of the
"ordinary" American. It was these songs that the jazz
repertory was, to a great extent, based upon.
Think of the joys and tragedies experienced by millions
during that conflict. How could you imagine for a moment
that our music, our dress, our language, our customs, our
politics, our ways of relating to ourselves and each other --
that absolutely every aspect of life would be the same if
the War had never happened?
To believe that WWII had no significant impact on the way
music evolved, I would have to believe that jazz is a music
played in a vacuum. And I can't, because if it were I
wouldn't have the slightest interest in it.
--
YO
nick...@aol.com
Yardbird O'Rooney wrote:
> j_ns...@msn.com> wrote:
> >> I don't think WWII had a significant impact on the way jazz
> >> evolved.
>
> Skip Elliott Bowman wrote:
> > In my opinion, WWII had a big impact on music overall and jazz in
> > particular.
>
>
> Of course it did. Aside from the social changes induced
> or accelerated by the upheavals of the war, think of the
> impact of those years and experiences on the psyche. Does
> anyone really think peoples inner lives, and, consequently, their
> playing styles, would not be affected by the world around them?
I think you're wildly overstating it. What *specifically* do you think
changed, in the styles of particular players, before and after the war?
> Think of Lester Young, among many, many others.
I'm sure Young's mental state changed, due to his negative experience,
but did he really *sound* that different? I don't think so. I have a
feeling the bebop that was played at Minton's in 1941 sounded pretty
close to the stuff that was recorded in 1945 and beyond, despite four
years of war.
> Think of the hundreds of pop songs written during the war
> years, reflecting the sentiments or hopes or dreams of the
> "ordinary" American. It was these songs that the jazz
> repertory was, to a great extent, based upon.
Most of the songs that generated jazz standards have lyrics related to
love and romance, not war.
> Think of the joys and tragedies experienced by millions
> during that conflict. How could you imagine for a moment
> that our music, our dress, our language, our customs, our
> politics, our ways of relating to ourselves and each other --
> that absolutely every aspect of life would be the same if
> the War had never happened?
Speaking to jazz improvisation specifically, the ability to play jazz
depends largely on developing good tone, mastering scales, chords, and
a certain jazz "vernacular." These skills do not directly change
because of events happening in some other part of the world. However,
it's entirely possible that a musician could be motivated to develop
certain skills based on external events.
Yardbird O'Rooney
> Yardbird O'Rooney wrote:
>> j_ns...@msn.com> wrote:
>>>> I don't think WWII had a significant impact on the way jazz
>>>> evolved.
>>
>> Skip Elliott Bowman wrote:
>>> In my opinion, WWII had a big impact on music overall and jazz in
>>> particular.
>>
>>
>> Of course it did. Aside from the social changes induced
>> or accelerated by the upheavals of the war, think of the
>> impact of those years and experiences on the psyche. Does
>> anyone really think peoples inner lives, and, consequently, their
>> playing styles, would not be affected by the world around them?
>
> I think you're wildly overstating it. What *specifically* do you think
> changed, in the styles of particular players, before and after the war?
It seems to me that you're thinking that there needs to be
one way of playing before the war and suddenly another way
of playing after the war. No such thing happened. What I'm
saying is that this was a cataclysmic event that people
lived through (or didn't) and that it could not possibly have failed
to affect them, gradually, over a course of time.
>> Think of Lester Young, among many, many others.
>
> I'm sure Young's mental state changed, due to his negative experience,
> but did he really *sound* that different? I don't think so. I have a
> feeling the bebop that was played at Minton's in 1941 sounded pretty
> close to the stuff that was recorded in 1945 and beyond, despite four
> years of war.
Ah, but what made *that* way of playing (which was, after all,
only one of many) the one that attracted the most acolytes
among the young and the talented?
>> Think of the hundreds of pop songs written during the war
>> years, reflecting the sentiments or hopes or dreams of the
>> "ordinary" American. It was these songs that the jazz
>> repertory was, to a great extent, based upon.
>
> Most of the songs that generated jazz standards have lyrics related to
> love and romance, not war.
My point exactly. Who wants to hear songs "about war"?
>> Think of the joys and tragedies experienced by millions
>> during that conflict. How could you imagine for a moment
>> that our music, our dress, our language, our customs, our
>> politics, our ways of relating to ourselves and each other --
>> that absolutely every aspect of life would be the same if
>> the War had never happened?
>
> Speaking to jazz improvisation specifically, the ability to play jazz
> depends largely on developing good tone, mastering scales, chords, and
> a certain jazz "vernacular." These skills do not directly change
> because of events happening in some other part of the world.
I disagree. It depends on those things, but
above all it depends upon having something
interesting to say.
--
YO
j_ns...@msn.com
Hey Skip,
There were definitely plenty of patriotic songs, and top jazz musicians
performed them. What I was responding to was Gerry's wording "It's
difficult to project what kind of jazz we might have produced in the
40's had there never been a WWII." Musically, in North America, I don't
think any of the kinds of jazz that were made during the '40s were
impacted much by WWII at all. "Trends in jazz" is the sort of thing I
have in mind -- the closest thing to a signicant trend I can think of
is that trend for patriotic lyrics that was nothing more or less than
what the non-jazzy pop singers were doing for the same reasons.
Joseph Scott
j_ns...@msn.com
how jazz sounded during the '40s?
What impact did the presence of so many "blacks" in segregated WWII
service have on how jazz sounded during the '40s?
Which new musical styles rapidly came and went in the industrialized
North because of WWII?
Did the development of bebop just _coincide_ with rising awareness of
(anything), or did that rising awareness impact on how bebop developed?
Did any stylistic changes result from war restrictions (such as
rationing)?
Imo, social historians tend to be b.s.ers when it comes to
understanding the evolution of jazz. What would be some examples of
jazz musicians who were expressing alienation or disillusionment
related to WWII as they helped in the actual development of bop or cool
during the late '40s?
Joseph Scott
j_ns...@msn.com
all _that_ similar to bebop of '45 and beyond imo, but anyway what does
WWII have to do with any of it?
Joseph Scott
j_ns...@msn.com
If I understand your rhetorical question right, you think WWII had a
significant impact on young jazz musicians getting interested in bebop.
How so?
How much did the existence of new love songs played by jazz musicians
during WWII impact on how jazz sounded? Jazz musicians had been playing
love songs for a long time.
Joseph Scott
Yardbird O'Rooney
> Imo, social historians tend to be b.s.ers when it comes to
> understanding the evolution of jazz.
I look forward to your contribution to the literature
on the subject. Of course, it is scientifically impossible
to prove how, if such-and-such had or had not happened,
the world would or would not have been a different place.
But to me, and to the majority of historians and artists
who have written about such things, the notion that
a cataclysm like WWII would not have had a significant
effect upon American popular culture (of which jazz music
was an important part) is simply preposterous. It requires
one to believe that jazz exists in some sort of time warp
with no connection to the social fabric.
--
YO
j_ns...@msn.com
Do you notice that you didn't answer any of my six questions? If you're
going to be convincing about this theory, you need to present specific
evidence in favor of it, e.g. by answering that sixth question.
Historical research should be about collecting historical data about a
particular period and _then_ putting it all together. It shouldn't be
about being sure how the data's going to fit together before you
collect it.
Joseph Scott
Gerry
<j_ns...@msn.com> wrote:
> [...]It's difficult to project what kind of jazz we might have
> > produced in the 40's had there never been a WWII.[...]
>
> I disagree; I don't think WWII had a significant impact on the way jazz
> evolved.
Our views are balanced then. We're both viewing the same thing, with
different conclusions and an utter lack of substantive proof.
Gerry
Elliott Bowman <skip...@teleport.com> wrote:
> In my opinion, WWII had a big impact on music overall and jazz in
> particular. Think Rosie the Riveter, for one example. Men were drafted and
> women took up the slack all over. But when the war ended, then men came
> back and the women lost their gigs quicker than they got them.
Most of the arts had vast upheavals after both the first and 2nd World
wars. I don't think jazz or popular music is any differen from "the
arts".
--
Better a bleeding heart than none at all.
Gerry
<nick...@aol.com> wrote:
> So far, no one seems to have a concrete answer. I suspect most of the
> influences were superficial, i.e., we got songs with names like
> "Freedom Now" or "Alabama" instead of "The Way You Look Tonight" or
> "Summertime." I've seen pictures of bebop players wearing dashikis (you
> know, those loose, colorful African-looking shirts) which I suppose
> expressed a closer connection to African roots. But their music wasn't
> all that different.
Your perspective, if I have this right, is that the context in which an
artist produces his work is irrelevant. If he doesn't play
new-even-more-improved scales or chord structures (both of which
morphed throughout the 60's I might add) then it can't be proven that
their thinking affects their music in anyway.
By the same token we can say that recordings of a player in his 30's
and 50's haven't changed if we can't identify the change. What they
were thinking or how they pursued their art doesn't matter. If they
added a string section I suppose that counts.
I think you can take the same route with many abstract art forms and
just decide no one is influenced unless you can ascertain a clear
trajectory. I'm not sure you can. But you're one of many people.
Jazz changed pretty dramatically from 1958 to 1970. We can all assume
that none of these changes had anything to do with the Civil Rights
movement or any other social or political aspects of the world that
jazz players inhabited. But I don't think that way.
After WWII jazz became a brain music, not a dance music. I think
that's noteworthy, but we can blame something else. After/during the
Civil Rights movement the avant garde was born and thrived for quite a
while. But maybe that was the fault of the Beatles.
--
"For progress to occur, it is essential to have a forum where changing one's
opinion is seen as making progress towards a better solution, rather than as
losing face"
-- Bjarne Stroustrup
j_ns...@msn.com
"Jazz changed pretty dramatically from 1958 to 1970. We can all assume
that none of these changes had anything to do with the Civil Rights
movement or any other social or political aspects of the world that
jazz players inhabited. But I don't think that way."
Neither does anyone else in this thread, judging from the way their
posts are worded.
Joseph Scott
j_ns...@msn.com
> I disagree; I don't think WWII had a significant impact on the way
jazz
> evolved.
and you responded:
"Our views are balanced then. We're both viewing the same thing, with
different conclusions and an utter lack of substantive proof."
Well, in practice "proving a positive" and "proving a negative" aren't
balanced. If you can give two or three plausible specific examples of a
significant impact of WWII on the way jazz evolved during the '40s,
you'll be accomplishing a lot. In contrast, if I gave a dozen examples
of "lacks of impact," all you'd have to say is it must have happened
though, some other way.
Where we stand right now imo is that there are no plausible significant
connections between WWII and evolution of jazz style on the table.
Which doesn't surprise me too much considering that the war was not
being fought on the continent where most jazz progress was going on.
Joseph Scott
Tom K
<j_ns...@msn.com> skrev i en meddelelse
news:1105493502....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
Josef,
while I can appreciate you reluctance to just accept anything from social
historians, it seems to me that you focus too much on the scientific
historians. IMO their modus operandi and results are no more correct or
proveable.
To me it's all in the mix, and it seems logical to me that WW2 had an
impact, not all of directly, but not less real.
You write: "What impact did the experience recruits got in military bands
have on how jazz sounded during the '40s?". Well, they for one thing they
got exposed to the rest of the world, which also takes care of your
statement: "the war was not being fought on the continent where most jazz
progress was going on.", No it wasn't, but people were sent to all corners
of the earth to fight in it, and while there, they exprienced what a few
jazzplayers, Louis A., Sidney B. and Coleman H. to name a few, discovered
before the war, they got treated with a level of respect, love and
understanding of their music, not usually bestowed upon them Stateside. I
don't know if it was there that they first got exposed to European music
first, but a known fact is that the boppers had more than just a working
knowlegde of, and love for Stravinsky "and those kinda cats".
Also, war intensifies everything, like soldiers back in US on R&R, going
crazy out on the town, looking for some action, as much as possible in a
very short time, would intensify the scene in places like NY, affecting the
music as well. At least in my book, be bop is also a musical intensification
(sp ?), harmonically as well as in tempo.
Plus the experience of various actual waractivities can some times translate
into musical feelings and ideas. One example, although from another time:
Jimi H. was a paratrooper, Screaming Eagles 104 IIRC, and he stated that
some of the things he tried to create in sounds, could be things like
sitting in an extremly noisy aeroplaine waiting for the order to jump. Or
the actual jump, the swirling sensations, the sudden jerk from the unfolding
parachute, the silence and floting feeling in midair, the landing ect.
You write: "Did the development of bebop just _coincide_ with rising
awareness of (anything), or did that rising awareness impact on how bebop
developed?". I think it's a back and forth situation, be bop attracted most
of the best and brightest young musicians, and in some of the same circles
you'd find a lot of the first civil rights activists. And for the
disillusioned there'd be the dopedealers to numb the pain of facing
realities of being black Americans, and their supplysystem AFAIK was also
established during the war as a sideproduct of the unholy alliance between
US and the mafia, and this certainly had an impact on the scene.
Well, enough for now, local time is 04.45 am, I'm beat.
Tom
Yardbird O'Rooney
> Yardbird,
>
> Do you notice that you didn't answer any of my six questions? If you're
> going to be convincing about this theory, you need to present specific
> evidence in favor of it, e.g. by answering that sixth question.
The one about rationing? It cannot be answered. I consider it
an absurd question. How could any possibly amass enough
data to answer that question with any certainty?
> Historical research should be about collecting historical data about a
> particular period and _then_ putting it all together. It shouldn't be
> about being sure how the data's going to fit together before you
> collect it.
Thanks for the tip. Looking forward to your revisionist history
when it gets published. Then we can discuss issues like
"evidence" and "research".
--
YO
j_ns...@msn.com
"What impact did the experience recruits got in military bands have on
how jazz sounded during the '40s?"
and you responded,
"Well, they for one thing they got exposed to the rest of the
world...."
Some did, and some just entertained within the U.S. during the war, but
anyway, the question remains, how did that impact on how jazz sounded
during the '40s? Take the influx of Cuban percussion into jazz during
the '40s, for instance. Diz and Bird encountered Cuban percussion in
New York and got thinking. Didn't need a war for that.
I agree that Europe was generally more welcoming to "black" jazz
musicians during the '40s (and '30s and '50s) than the U.S. was
(although I think in general that usually had to do with being offered
a gig over there, not serving there). But how did that impact on how
'40s jazz sounded?
European classical music was accepted as some of the "highest" art on
Earth by people in the U.S. in the '40s and long before, and jazz
pianists during the '40s and earlier routinely knew how to play some
European classical music. Boppers didn't have to travel overseas to
encounter European classical music.
You wrote: "be bop attracted most of the best and brightest young
musicians, and in some of the same circles you'd find a lot of the
first civil rights activists."
Civil rights activism goes back way before the '40s.
Were boppers more into actual civil-rights activism in the late '40s
than swing musicians or blues musicians were? In order to believe that,
examples are in order. (I realize people often like to assume that they
were, but I never seem to see good evidence supporting the assumption.)
That's an interesting thought about heroin use having to do with the
existence of the war. Assuming that connection is valid, next we could
ask, how much impact did heroin use have on evolution of jazz during
the late '40s? For instance, how much was the emergence of the "cool"
style as we know it impacted by heroin use (as opposed to all the other
drugs musicians were already using before WWII, and whatever else)?
Best wishes,
Joseph Scott
Yardbird O'Rooney
Gerry wrote:
> In article <1105419158.9...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
> <j_ns...@msn.com> wrote:
>
>> [...]It's difficult to project what kind of jazz we might have
>>> produced in the 40's had there never been a WWII.[...]
>>
>> I disagree; I don't think WWII had a significant impact on the way jazz
>> evolved.
>
> Our views are balanced then. We're both viewing the same thing, with
> different conclusions and an utter lack of substantive proof.
No substantive proof is possible to a hypothetical question.
Would Beethoven's music have been different had there been
no French Revolution and no Napoleon? I'd wager there hasn't
a serious musicologist who could believe otherwise. But none
can prove it.
I thought someone said this whole question was idle speculation
for its own sake -- not to "prove" anything.
--
YO
j_ns...@msn.com
Joseph Scott
Tom K
> Hi Tom, I wrote,
>
> "What impact did the experience recruits got in military bands have on
> how jazz sounded during the '40s?"
>
> and you responded,
>
> "Well, they for one thing they got exposed to the rest of the
> world...."
>
> Some did, and some just entertained within the U.S. during the war, but
> anyway, the question remains, how did that impact on how jazz sounded
> during the '40s? Take the influx of Cuban percussion into jazz during
> the '40s, for instance. Diz and Bird encountered Cuban percussion in
> New York and got thinking. Didn't need a war for that.
True, but that does not mean that travelling outside US didn't have an
impact on how they felt about that world and their place in it, but the most
important aspect relating to the music is in the part you do not adress, see
next writing below
>
> I agree that Europe was generally more welcoming to "black" jazz
> musicians during the '40s (and '30s and '50s) than the U.S. was
> (although I think in general that usually had to do with being offered
> a gig over there, not serving there). But how did that impact on how
> '40s jazz sounded?
The whole intensity-bit that you have not adressed, and also the actual
experience as in the Hendrix-example, which I used because that is the one
example I right now can remember, where a musician tells about directly
trying to translate his army-experiences into music
>
> European classical music was accepted as some of the "highest" art on
> Earth by people in the U.S. in the '40s and long before, and jazz
> pianists during the '40s and earlier routinely knew how to play some
> European classical music. Boppers didn't have to travel overseas to
> encounter European classical music.
I know, but it gave those that went a chance to be in direct contact with
that sphere, and reaffirm the connection on an equal level, instead of just
showing that you can play it, actually incorporating some of the ideas into
a jazzcontext.
>
> You wrote: "be bop attracted most of the best and brightest young
> musicians, and in some of the same circles you'd find a lot of the
> first civil rights activists."
>
> Civil rights activism goes back way before the '40s.
I would be intersted if you can set up a short timeline on that. Are we
talking 20's, 10's or before that like the underground railroad or Nat
Turner?
>
> Were boppers more into actual civil-rights activism in the late '40s
> than swing musicians or blues musicians were? In order to believe that,
> examples are in order. (I realize people often like to assume that they
> were, but I never seem to see good evidence supporting the assumption.)
Well, I'll admit that on this one I may be guilty of just asumming the
popular conception, OTOH, can you prove that there weren't?
>
> That's an interesting thought about heroin use having to do with the
> existence of the war.
Not the use itself, but as one of the aftereffect from the mafias role in
the invasion of Sicily, making it much more readily available. And I don't
think the attitude shown in "The Godfather" is far off the mark.
Assuming that connection is valid, next we could
> ask, how much impact did heroin use have on evolution of jazz during
> the late '40s? For instance, how much was the emergence of the "cool"
> style as we know it impacted by heroin use (as opposed to all the other
> drugs musicians were already using before WWII, and whatever else)?
Don't know if I'll buy the smack/cool thing, AFAIK people were nodding out
in bop, cool, modal ect. But, without having the statistics I feel quite
shure that the % of hard drugs; heroin and coke, exploded during the latter
stages of the war, or at least after.
> Best wishes,
>
> Joseph Scott
>
All said, I think I *do* understand why you take the stance that you do, and
I respect the fact that you know a lot of jazzrelated, and otherwise,
history, and will not buy blindly into any old tale, but it really puzles me
that you don't see WW2 as having any influence on the music, seing as it
affected the world in so many other ways and areas.
Take care,
Tom
nick...@aol.com
Yardbird O'Rooney wrote:
> nick...@aol.com wrote:
> > Yardbird O'Rooney wrote:
> >> j_ns...@msn.com> wrote:
> >>>> I don't think WWII had a significant impact on the way jazz
> >>>> evolved.
> >>
> >> Skip Elliott Bowman wrote:
> >>> In my opinion, WWII had a big impact on music overall and jazz in
> >>> particular.
> >>
> >>
> >> Of course it did. Aside from the social changes induced
> >> or accelerated by the upheavals of the war, think of the
> >> impact of those years and experiences on the psyche. Does
> >> anyone really think peoples inner lives, and, consequently, their
> >> playing styles, would not be affected by the world around them?
> >
> > I think you're wildly overstating it. What *specifically* do you
think
> > changed, in the styles of particular players, before and after the
war?
>
>
> It seems to me that you're thinking that there needs to be
> one way of playing before the war and suddenly another way
> of playing after the war. No such thing happened.
I thought that's what we were talking about -- WWII changing the way
*jazz evolved,* meaning the way people made sounds generally known as
"jazz." Apparently, we agree that little, if any, such change occurred.
What I'm
> saying is that this was a cataclysmic event that people
> lived through (or didn't) and that it could not possibly have failed
> to affect them, gradually, over a course of time.
Sure, but not in a direct way so as to change how musical instruments
were played.
>
> >> Think of Lester Young, among many, many others.
> >
> > I'm sure Young's mental state changed, due to his negative
experience,
> > but did he really *sound* that different? I don't think so. I have
a
> > feeling the bebop that was played at Minton's in 1941 sounded
pretty
> > close to the stuff that was recorded in 1945 and beyond, despite
four
> > years of war.
>
> Ah, but what made *that* way of playing (which was, after all,
> only one of many) the one that attracted the most acolytes
> among the young and the talented?
More varied rhythms, interesting harmonies, a level of speed and
ingenuity previously unheard.
>
> >> Think of the hundreds of pop songs written during the war
> >> years, reflecting the sentiments or hopes or dreams of the
> >> "ordinary" American. It was these songs that the jazz
> >> repertory was, to a great extent, based upon.
> >
> > Most of the songs that generated jazz standards have lyrics related
to
> > love and romance, not war.
>
> My point exactly. Who wants to hear songs "about war"?
Then I don't get your point about all the songs written during the war
years, since they seem to follow the same love-and-romance pop themes
as songs written before the war and ever since.
> >> Think of the joys and tragedies experienced by millions
> >> during that conflict. How could you imagine for a moment
> >> that our music, our dress, our language, our customs, our
> >> politics, our ways of relating to ourselves and each other --
> >> that absolutely every aspect of life would be the same if
> >> the War had never happened?
> >
> > Speaking to jazz improvisation specifically, the ability to play
jazz
> > depends largely on developing good tone, mastering scales, chords,
and
> > a certain jazz "vernacular." These skills do not directly change
> > because of events happening in some other part of the world.
>
> I disagree. It depends on those things, but
> above all it depends upon having something
> interesting to say.
Which, in mainstream jazz, is usually defined by the ability to play
pleasing and/or provocative melodies over chord changes in a virtuosic
manner (on upbeat tunes) or lyrical manner (on ballads). No one ever
developed the ability to play a burning solo on "Giant Steps" because
his woman left him, or his dog died, or someone dropped an A-bomb on
Hiroshima. These skills come about as a result of study and practice.
But again, it's feasible that external events can influence how and
what you choose to study, practice and present to the world.
nick...@aol.com
Joseph, I'm sure you know a lot more about this than I do. But do you
think it's fair to say that changes in bebop from '41 through '45 have
to do with learning/experimentation/evolution focused on musical
concepts rather than influence from world events?
nick...@aol.com
Gerry wrote:
> In article <1105411847.3...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
> <nick...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > So far, no one seems to have a concrete answer. I suspect most of
the
> > influences were superficial, i.e., we got songs with names like
> > "Freedom Now" or "Alabama" instead of "The Way You Look Tonight" or
> > "Summertime." I've seen pictures of bebop players wearing dashikis
(you
> > know, those loose, colorful African-looking shirts) which I suppose
> > expressed a closer connection to African roots. But their music
wasn't
> > all that different.
>
> Your perspective, if I have this right, is that the context in which
an
> artist produces his work is irrelevant.
As I stated elsewhere, it's not completely irrelevant, just much less
direct than you're stating (IMO).
If he doesn't play
> new-even-more-improved scales or chord structures (both of which
> morphed throughout the 60's I might add) then it can't be proven that
> their thinking affects their music in anyway.
I generally focus more on how something sounds than what thinking takes
place. That said, it's fun from time to time to learn about an artist
and ponder what he/she produced and why.
> By the same token we can say that recordings of a player in his 30's
> and 50's haven't changed if we can't identify the change.
That's right.
> What they
> were thinking or how they pursued their art doesn't matter. If they
> added a string section I suppose that counts.
>
> I think you can take the same route with many abstract art forms and
> just decide no one is influenced unless you can ascertain a clear
> trajectory. I'm not sure you can. But you're one of many people.
If I see a painting of drippings, I either like it or I don't, and my
opinion doesn't change because I discover how tortured the artist may
or may not have been.
>
> Jazz changed pretty dramatically from 1958 to 1970. We can all
assume
> that none of these changes had anything to do with the Civil Rights
> movement or any other social or political aspects of the world that
> jazz players inhabited. But I don't think that way.
We're all free to enjoy art in any way we choose. I admit, it's a lot
more intriguing to ponder how a player may have been affected by Civil
Rights than by the many hours he spent in his bedroom playing
repetitious scales and patterns, even though the latter had a more
direct influence on his playing.
> After WWII jazz became a brain music, not a dance music. I think
> that's noteworthy, but we can blame something else. After/during the
> Civil Rights movement the avant garde was born and thrived for quite
a
> while. But maybe that was the fault of the Beatles.
I think avant garde was already in full swing pre-Beatles. It may very
well be that Civil Rights influenced avant garde jazz by motivating an
"angry" sound among many players. But the techniques involved in
projecting "angry" still have to be developed in the woodshed.
Gerry
<j_ns...@msn.com> wrote:
> If you can give two or three plausible specific examples of a
> significant impact of WWII on the way jazz evolved during the '40s,
> you'll be accomplishing a lot.
Preposterous! You don't believe it and so will argue
anything/everything. I'll make it easier for you.
> In contrast, if I gave a dozen examples of "lacks of impact," all
> you'd have to say is it must have happened though, some other way.
Fascinating to think you can give dozens of examples of "no effective
change" in the discreet aspects of an abstract art over a 15 year
period of time. It seems there would be just one example of no effect.
--
Often we have no time for our friends but all the time in the world for our
enemies.
-- Leon Uris
Alan David Mills
from Stev...@webtv.net (Steve Solomon) contains these words:
> How much of a impact did the Civil Rights Movement affect the character
> of jazz in the 60's?
> There is some direct influence as for example in the album "Speak
> Brother Speak" by Max Roach.
> Nevertheless I wonder if the music back then would of taken a similar
> direction if there was no Civil Rights Movement.
I don't have an answer to the OP but the topic struck a chord with me
inasmuch as I was thinking only a few days ago that I would like to know
more about the Civil Rights Movement in the USA. Can anybody suggest a
reading list, please? My interest was prompted by a TV documentary
about Joe Louis and his position as a role model for African Americans
in the 1940s.
--
Alan Mills (in Devon, England)
Tom K
<nick...@aol.com> skrev i en meddelelse
news:1105513422....@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>
"... usually defined by the ability to play
pleasing and/or provocative melodies over chord changes in a virtuosic
manner (on upbeat tunes) or lyrical manner (on ballads). No one ever
developed the ability to play a burning solo on "Giant Steps" because
his woman left him, or his dog died, or someone dropped an A-bomb on
Hiroshima. These skills come about as a result of study and practice.
But again, it's feasible that external events can influence how and
what you choose to study, practice and present to the world."
This is very well put, especially because of the last sentence, thusly
allowing for context having importance.
Phil Wilson
> I think avant garde was already in full swing pre-Beatles. It may
> very
> well be that Civil Rights influenced avant garde jazz by motivating
> an
> "angry" sound among many players. But the techniques involved in
> projecting "angry" still have to be developed in the woodshed.
Try listening to the works of Charlie Parker and noting down where he
is 'angry', 'fearful', 'political'. It can't be done. Music is neither
an expressive device nor a language. Anyway, if you get politically
angry, why on earth would you pick up a saxophone or write a 'suite',
rather than writing an article, giving a speech or punching a
politician?
Cheers,
Phil
TODD TAMANEND CLARK
> I would like to know more about the Civil Rights Movement in
> the USA. Can anybody suggest a reading list, please?
These two books by John Szwed deal quite well with jazz and the African
American experience:
Space Is The Place: The Lives And Times Of Sun Ra (1997)
So What: The Life Of Miles Davis (2002)
And these books cover the Native American civil rights movement:
A Little Matter Of Genocide: Holocaust And Denial In The Americas 1492
To The Present
(Ward Churchill, 1997)
All Our Relations: Native Struggles For Land And Life
(Winona LaDuke, 1999)
American Holocaust: Columbus And The Conquest Of The New World
(David Stannard, 1992)
American Indian Activism: Alcatraz To The Longest Walk
(Troy Johnson, 1997)
American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Red Power And The Resurgence Of
Identity And Culture
(Joane Nagel, 1997)
Conversations With Leslie Marmon Silko
(Ellen Arnold, 2000)
Encyclopedia Of American Indian Civil Rights
(James Stuart Olson & Others, 1997)
Exiled In The Land Of The Free: Democracy, Indian Nations, And The
United States Constitution (Oren Lyons & Others, 1992)
Genocide Of The Mind: New Native American Writing
(Marijo Moore & Others, 2003)
Ghost Dancing The Law: The Wounded Knee Trials
(John Sayer, 1997)
In The Spirit Of Crazy Horse
(Peter Matthiessen, 1983)
Like A Hurricane: The Indian Movement From Alcatraz To Wounded Knee
(Paul Chaat Smith & Robert Allen Warrior, 1996)
Loud Hawk: The United States Versus The American Indian Movement
(Kenneth Stern, 1994)
Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks And The Rise Of The American Indian
Movement
(Dennis Banks & Richard Erdoes, 2004)
Our Word Is Our Weapon
(Subcomandante Marcos, 2001)
Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto
(Taiaiake Alfred, 1999)
Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sundance
(Leonard Peltier, 1999)
Red Power: The American Indians' Fight For Freedom [Second Edition]
(Alvin Josephy & Others, 1999)
Reinventing The Enemy's Language: Contemporary Native Women's Writings
Of North America
(Joy Harjo & Others, 1997)
Shaking The Rattle: Healing The Trauma Of Colonization
(Barbara-Helen Hill, 1996)
Speaking Truth In The Teeth Of Power: Lectures On Globalization,
Colonialism, And Native North America
(Ward Churchill, 2004)
The Columbian Exchange: Biological And Cultural Consequences Of 1492
(Alfred Crosby, 1973)
Where White Men Fear To Tread: The Autobiography Of Russell Means
(Russell Means & Martin Wolf, 1995)
Year 501: The Conquest Continues
(Noam Chomsky, 1993)
====
TODD TAMANEND CLARK
Poet/Composer/Multi-Instrumentalist/Cultural Historian
Current Release: Monongahela Riverrun
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/ttc3
Yardbird O'Rooney
> Try listening to the works of Charlie Parker and noting down where he
> is 'angry', 'fearful', 'political'. It can't be done. Music is neither
> an expressive device nor a language.
I think music is *both* an expressive device *and* a
language. But what can be expressed in music has no
exact verbal equivalent. If it did -- who would bother?
> Anyway, if you get politically
> angry, why on earth would you pick up a saxophone or write a 'suite',
> rather than writing an article, giving a speech or punching a
> politician?
Because playing the saxophone is what you *do*.
As you suggest, it isn't an overtly 'political'
statement that you make on your horn. It is a
*personal* statement rather than a declamation.
Yet there is a sort of an existential sense in which
every personal statement is a political statement.
In some ways, jazz, taken in its social context,
is a highly politically-charged art form. But I don't
know if we want to go there.
I do know that every serious musician I've known
turns to his instrument in times of personal crisis,
and tries to work through it that way. But there is
never a direct correlation, to an outside observer,
between what the internal conflict might be and what
is coming out of the horn.
This is one of the many places where real life differs
significantly from Hollywood movies, where the hero
lets the audience know he is all broken up about
his deteriorating relationship by playing a freaky thing
on his horn, or, conversely, playing "happy" music when
things are going "really swell" between him and his "girl."
That's not how real life works (in case anyone hadn't
noticed).
--
YO
Yardbird O'Rooney
> manner (on upbeat tunes) or lyrical manner (on ballads). [...]
> These skills come about as a result of study and practice.
In part. And the other part is about how you live and
how deeply you feel and what kind of person you are,
as expressed in your art.
Because there are a lot of "virtuosi" out there that
ain't saying nothing.
--
YO
j_ns...@msn.com
Hey Nick,
I think they had far more to do with the first than with the second.
Here's an experiment any of us could do: Make a list of 20-30 musicians
who you figure were important to the rise of bop during '41 to '45, and
try to find quotes from any of them saying WWII affected the _content_
of their music during '41-'45 in such-and-such a way. I really doubt
we'd come up with much, relative to solid reading musicians with
big-band experience who were fascinated by _music_, and by jamming with
each other, and with achieving some kind of success or another in the
U.S. entertainment field, and were relatively uninterested in politics,
all inspiring _each other_ as they crossed paths as various big bands
traveled around, as each other's records came out, etc. (It wasn't all
about jam sessions -- e.g. Dexter Gordon and Miles Davis, who both
happened to be from families with money, bought records by their
favorite fellow adventurous modernists and were inspired by sitting
around listening to those records, in a different city from the person
who made the record. I think the idea that bop was ever centralized
anywhere tends to get exaggerated.)
There is a tradition of social commentators making art about politics,
in their analyses, and I think you have to be very careful about taking
that seriously (even when they crib each other's ideas and the analyses
become accepted from book to book), because many social commentators
are more interested in politics than art, and have relatively little
knowledge about music, and rather than learning enough about the
details of the musical subject matter, they go on about politics,
because it's easier and it's not too hard to fool some of the people
some of the time.
That said, I think every time there was a connection, such as "black
pride" inspiring "black" musicians to put a lot more "black" gospel
influence in jazz during a particular period (because "black" gospel
really sounded quite different from "white" gospel, and interest in
"black" culture _generally_ was more fashionable among "black" jazz
musicians than in the past*), we should acknowledge it, naturally --
nothing we need to be shy about on either side of the argument.
Joseph Scott
*Hmm, Booker T. would have liked that!
JC Martin
The attempt to separate the two is beyond illogical.
-JC
j_ns...@msn.com
Why do you think it's beyond illogical to try to "separate"
"learning/experimentation/evolution focused on musical concepts" from
"influence from world events"?
Joseph Scott
Phil Wilson
> Phil Wilson wrote:
>
>> Try listening to the works of Charlie Parker and noting down where
>> he
>> is 'angry', 'fearful', 'political'. It can't be done. Music is
>> neither an expressive device nor a language.
>
> I think music is *both* an expressive device *and* a
> language. But what can be expressed in music has no
> exact verbal equivalent. If it did -- who would bother?
Well yes, music does something for us that is beyond words. Which is
why its effects can't really be described (as has been noted by
sociologists) in anything but vague superlatives.
>> Anyway, if you get politically
>> angry, why on earth would you pick up a saxophone or write a
>> 'suite',
>> rather than writing an article, giving a speech or punching a
>> politician?
>
>
> Because playing the saxophone is what you *do*.
> As you suggest, it isn't an overtly 'political'
> statement that you make on your horn. It is a
> *personal* statement rather than a declamation.
>
> Yet there is a sort of an existential sense in which
> every personal statement is a political statement.
> In some ways, jazz, taken in its social context,
> is a highly politically-charged art form. But I don't
> know if we want to go there.
I see your drift, but I still can't see what relevance music has to
politics or vice versa (the notorious case of Wagner comes to mind -
did his personal anti-semitism have anything to do with the music?)
How can anyone interpret a piece of music per se (that hasn't been
signposted in some way - and do we believe the signposts?) as stating
any particular position? What we normally have is a piece that,
stripped of all the irrelevant surrounding associations, is just that.
A piece of music. It stimulates you or it doesn't.
> I do know that every serious musician I've known
> turns to his instrument in times of personal crisis,
> and tries to work through it that way. But there is
> never a direct correlation, to an outside observer,
> between what the internal conflict might be and what
> is coming out of the horn.
>
> This is one of the many places where real life differs
> significantly from Hollywood movies, where the hero
> lets the audience know he is all broken up about
> his deteriorating relationship by playing a freaky thing
> on his horn, or, conversely, playing "happy" music when
> things are going "really swell" between him and his "girl."
> That's not how real life works (in case anyone hadn't
> noticed).
Well quite a lot of music criticism is founded on just that idea.
Example: Tchaikovsky's 6th has been (recently) interpreted by a
'cultural critic' as exemplifying his suicidal gayness (just the
latest in a long line of such interpretations). But a moment's thought
would tell you that if you hadn't known the biographical details, you
would not have been able to deduce much more than that, for this
piece, Tchaikovsky wrote music that is 'downbeat' or 'sad' or 'moody',
It's interesting that where biographical detail is minimal or lacking,
as in the case of early classical music, fanciful romantic or
tendentious interpretation of the 'meaning' of music hardly exists.
Unfortunately most people spend their time devising hypothetical
psychological scenarios for any piece they listen to. For the life of
me I can't see the point.
What I want from music is erotic and rhythmic stimulation (which is
its role in nearly every culture). If I want a manifesto, I'll go to
books.
Cheers,
Phil
j_ns...@msn.com
Can anyone here think of some examples of jazz musicians "trying to
translate [their own military, non-musical] experiences into music"
during the '40s?
How about U.S. jazz musicians who said they had direct contact with
European classical musicians while they were serving in Europe, on an
equal level, and that influenced the way their jazz sounded in
such-and-such a way?
Regarding civil rights interest among bop musicians vs. other musicians
in the late '40s, I think it deserves its own thread (which I may or
may not find the time to start soon).
An example of an organization whose entire purpose was civil rights
progress, well before the '40s, is the NAACP. (Do some googling on
W.E.B. DeBois and you can spend a week if you want reading about how
progressive civil rights ideas had a good foothold in the North decades
before the North forced the South to come along. Don't let all the
squabbling between DeBois and his peers distract you -- they were all
on the same team even if sometimes they didn't act like it, and they
won.)
Regarding smack, agree with you on both counts. God, look at Herman's
band -- the heroin suddenly came in _fast_. (And then how that
influenced the music is another question. Bix and Lester did a lot to
start "cool" in the first place on alcohol and pot.)
I haven't said I "don't see WW2 as having influence on the music." What
some of us have said is that it had little influence, as far as we can
tell.
Best,
Joseph Scott
j_ns...@msn.com
Obviously, if this claim of yours that I will argue with anything were
true, then I wouldn't, e.g., agree with Tom that he may be onto
something with the WWII --> heroin --> jazz thing.
What I meant by "examples of 'lacks of impact'" was this: suppose you
make a list of ways jazz changed during the '40s. Then you could go
down the list and look at whether WWII did or didn't have a significant
impact on _each of_ those "ways," best you could figure out. To give
one example: the first free jazz recordings were made in '49. Did WWII
impact significantly on the way they sounded? I doubt it, and I
wouldn't want to believe it unless anyone could come up with plausible
reasoning in favor of it, based on historical evidence.
Best wishes,
Joseph Scott
j_ns...@msn.com
But we reason this way all the time. For instance, asking how much
Louis Armstrong personally influenced jazz is kosher, right? How
different is that from looking into how jazz _would have_ been
different if not for Louis?
Joseph Scott
Tom Walls
j_ns...@msn.com says...
> [...]It's difficult to project what kind of jazz we might have
> > produced in the 40's had there never been a WWII.[...]
>
> evolved.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Joseph Scott
>
>
I have heard the notion expressed that the WWII recording ban disavailed
the public from exposure to the early development of bebop; thereby
limiting the appreciation of the form to a more narrow audience. Billy
Eckstein's band, for instance, might have survived longer and won a much
larger audience if they'd had the opportunity to record.
--
Tom Walls
the guy at the Temple of Zeus
j_ns...@msn.com
We've discussed the two AFM bans in relation to jazz here before; my
thinking on that is that they had very little to do with the way jazz
sounded. Two of the main points I'd make on that would be
-- the public were listening to radio, most of which was still "live"
then, _a ton_, and going to see musicians "live" quite a bit, so
whatever was really going on among musicians the public would have been
quite in contact with
-- there are lots of record companies that recorded a lot of jazz
during late '43 to late '44 (more companies than were recording jazz in
'41-'42), plus there are other recordings from that period, e.g. radio,
and only a _tiny_ proportion of those late '43 to late '44 recordings
are very boppish, which leads me to seriusly doubt that more than a
tiny proportion of the recordings the ban prevented from happening
would have been very boppish either.
Eckstine recorded. You might me thinking of a lineup Hines had briefly
in '43. Many like to describe that as the first bebop big band,
although that's arbitrary on available evidence -- it's not as if they
weren't the first to play modern jazz (e.g. to play arrangements by
Dizzy), or the first to throw their big-band careers away by "too"
heavily emphasizing modern jazz. (Hines didn't, always played tons of
swing. Raeburn and Eckstine did.) The main reason people talk about it
so much, I'd guess, is that the two "great men" bop figureheads, Diz
and Bird, sat in the same band for some months. Hines made plenty of
recordings with sidemen who could play bop during the '40s, and judging
from them, Hines probably had no more personal interest in post-swing
"modern jazz" as such than Jimmy Dorsey did.
Best,
Joseph Scott
JC Martin
Because they go hand in hand. Jazz was about freedom and individuality.
In America you couldn't *not* be influenced by world events,
especially post-WW2. This goes for any field of human relations.
Evolution wouldn't occur if life were completely static. To simply
provide some specific anecdote about a jazz musician would hardly stand
to legitimize what sociologists have studied and known for years. As
far as technique, a lot of these musicians created the technique that
jazz musicians study today. I think you could make a better argument
that jazz music today is less influenced by world events simply because
many jazz musicians today focus less on artistry than studying the
technique of and paying tribute to other musicians. Nick is the perfect
example of that mind set. Jazz to him is all about study and technique
and he will use any thread in this newsgroup to point that out time and
time again, as if he's some scientist who has observed these imagined
objective truths. Jazz is first and foremost an art form...expression.
The urge to express comes before the need for technique. Variably,
technique is the persistence of that art form.
I should note of course, there are smaller scenes within the jazz
community who are indeed influenced by world events...musicians like
John Zorn and Dave Douglas for instance.
-JC
j_ns...@msn.com
can, for the purposes of a discussion. Coleman Hawkins, e.g., was a
well-read man and he cared about world events, and that it doesn't
necessarily follow from that that his music was inspired significantly
by any of those world events.
Imo, the freedom most jazz musicians had included the freedom to not
have their musical interests impacted by a war on another continent
much.
Joseph Scott
muhal
>>>In my opinion, WWII had a big impact on music overall and jazz in
>>>particular.
>>Yardbird O'Rooney wrote:
>>Of course it did. [deletia]
> nick...@aol.com wrote:
> I think you're wildly overstating it. What *specifically* do you think
> changed, in the styles of particular players, before and after the war?
For one thing the wartime tax on entertainment dramatically changed the
economics of jazz. It became extremely difficult for any but the most
successful bandleaders to sustain a big band. So the nexus of the music
shifted to small combos, and has remained there to this day. The impact
on the shape and form of the music is enormous:
- An even larger emphasis on solos rather than arrangement
- Longer solos taking the place of the arrangement, a trend supported by
technological developments (EPs, then LPs, then CDs)
- A so-far irrevocable shift in the way perceived the music, from
jazz-as-entertainment to jazz-as-art
- More space and freedom for drummers to push their way forward, with
commentary, interjections, cross-rhythms and other rhythm-a-nings that
would have done nothing but piss off and drive away dancers
- A de-emphasis of smoothly-swinging elegance as the ideal approach to
the presentation of the music, and a corresponding tolerance for
harsher- (or if you prefer, more-like-human-voice) sounding personal
sounds, leading us to Coltrane et.al. split tones and vocalizations
And so on
muhal
--
Email "muhal" using <same> in the "comcast" sub-domain, within the "net"
TLD
muhal
the degree to which it enabled musicians from different parts of the
country to come together in this or that military unit, where they
whiled away whatever down time they had jamming or listening to this or
that record.
Frex, Howard McGhee (I believe) spoke at some lengh in interviews about
being stationed on Guam with a veritable who's who of top musicians and
jamming as close to 24x7 as his body and Army duties would allow.
Which may explain a bit how, frex, the 1946 Bird-Diz quintet was so
eagerly awaited when they left for California.
muhal
> What impact did the experience recruits got in military bands have on
> how jazz sounded during the '40s?
>
> service have on how jazz sounded during the '40s?
>
> Which new musical styles rapidly came and went in the industrialized
> North because of WWII?
>
> Did the development of bebop just _coincide_ with rising awareness of
> (anything), or did that rising awareness impact on how bebop developed?
>
> Did any stylistic changes result from war restrictions (such as
> rationing)?
>
> Imo, social historians tend to be b.s.ers when it comes to
> understanding the evolution of jazz. What would be some examples of
> jazz musicians who were expressing alienation or disillusionment
> related to WWII as they helped in the actual development of bop or cool
> during the late '40s?
I don't understand why you are only want to consider direct influences
of this sort. Surely, a global event such as war would not influence a
particular musician into developing this or that tone. And even if it
did, it would be virtually impossible to separate the specific influence
of the war from that of some other cultural or personal factor.
But certainly, the emergence of a large population in Northern
industrial cities of black people with good jobs and consequently a
couple dollars in their pocket, both of which are direct byproducts of
wartime production, had something to do with the focus of entertainment
switching from the ballroom to the nightclub, wouldn't you say?
Similarly, don't you think the fact that thousands of black people went
overseas to get shot at and possibly die defending freedom against
fascism, had something to do with their refusal, upon returning home, to
accept Jim Crow? And consequently, for those black people who were
musicians, to gain an "in-your-face (to use contemporary vernacular)
edge in their playing?
muhal
> Our views are balanced then. We're both viewing the same thing, with
> different conclusions and an utter lack of substantive proof.
What's with this demand for proof? This is Usenet, the place where fans
can find each other and argue. You need to think of this virtual place
as an large bar-room with many people arguing for this or that.
muhal
> Some did, and some just entertained within the U.S. during the war, but
> anyway, the question remains, how did that impact on how jazz sounded
> during the '40s? Take the influx of Cuban percussion into jazz during
> the '40s, for instance. Diz and Bird encountered Cuban percussion in
> New York and got thinking. Didn't need a war for that.
That influx started from the 1930s, before the war. Frex, Juan Tizol,
Machito, Mario Bauza, ...
muhal
j_ns...@msn.com
muhal wrote:
> j_ns...@msn.com wrote:
> > Some did, and some just entertained within the U.S. during the war,
but
> > anyway, the question remains, how did that impact on how jazz
sounded
> > during the '40s? Take the influx of Cuban percussion into jazz
during
> > the '40s, for instance. Diz and Bird encountered Cuban percussion
in
> > New York and got thinking. Didn't need a war for that.
>
> That influx started from the 1930s, before the war. Frex, Juan Tizol,
> Machito, Mario Bauza, ...
There was some influence of Cuban percussion on jazz well prior to '47,
agreed. But if you look at, say, '44, at that time there are very few
jazz artists using it or imitations of it. Off the top of my head, I
don't think there's a single bop recording from '45 that uses authentic
Cuban percussion. Dizzy popularized the heck out of Cuban percussion in
jazz during '47-'49.
Best,
Joseph Scott
Yardbird O'Rooney
> In article <1105493502....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>,
> <j_ns...@msn.com> wrote:
>
>> If you can give two or three plausible specific examples of a
>> significant impact of WWII on the way jazz evolved during the '40s,
>> you'll be accomplishing a lot.
>
> Preposterous! You don't believe it and so will argue
> anything/everything. I'll make it easier for you.
>
>> In contrast, if I gave a dozen examples of "lacks of impact," all
>> you'd have to say is it must have happened though, some other way.
>
> Fascinating to think you can give dozens of examples of "no effective
> change" in the discreet aspects of an abstract art over a 15 year
> period of time. It seems there would be just one example of no effect.
The difficulty I have keeping a straight face in this
whole thread is that the question is hopelessly flawed.
A world in which there was no WWII (or, if you prefer,
no American Civil Rights movement, whatever someone
meant by that) would not be the world we live in.
Why would we suppose that there would even be
such a thing as jazz, or music of any sort, in such
an alien world?
Unless you believe in direct and purposeful intervention
by a divine hand, you can't assume a different history
without also assuming a different set of laws of physics.
Every second is the net result of every previous second.
Causality is what it is, and that fact that its webs are
far too complex for humans to untangle doesn't, I think,
give us license to pretend otherwise.
Of course, this is how "science fiction" scriptwriters,
I realize, make their living. And it's fine, I suppose,
over drinks, to speculate one's arse off about how
things might be if they were not what they are. It's
just that when people start demanding "proof" and
"evidence", the absurdity becomes unbearably heavy.
So pardon me while I duck out for some fresh air.
--
YO
Tom Walls
control.org says...
>
> But certainly, the emergence of a large population in Northern
> industrial cities of black people with good jobs and consequently a
> couple dollars in their pocket, both of which are direct byproducts of
> wartime production, had something to do with the focus of entertainment
> switching from the ballroom to the nightclub, wouldn't you say?
>
It's been my understanding that the whole Central Avenue jazz scene in
Los Angeles was the result of the large number emigrants from the south
arriving to work in the wartime airline industry. Nevertheless I would
be hard put to pinpoint the significance of the LA scene on the
evolution of jazz as a whole.
Frankly I think it unlikely that someone could concoct an comprehensive
and insightful analysis of the evolution of jazz.
Gary Hogan
just as badly afterward as I was before.
Gerry
<j_ns...@msn.com> wrote:
> What I meant by "examples of 'lacks of impact'" was this: suppose you
> make a list of ways jazz changed during the '40s. Then you could go
> down the list and look at whether WWII did or didn't have a
> significant impact on _each of_ those "ways," best you could figure
> out.
Okay. I did that. Many influenced jazz. You wouldn't agree. But it
doesn't make any difference really: As with another previous unending
thread it comes down to whose veiwpoint of a non-quantifiable milieu.
> To give one example: the first free jazz recordings were made in '49.
> Did WWII impact significantly on the way they sounded? I doubt it,
Okay, I'll assume it was directly connected to the angst of the times
brought on by the perseption that chaos, post WWII better represented
the artistic mindset best.
> ...and I wouldn't want to believe it unless anyone could come up with
> plausible reasoning in favor of it, based on historical evidence.
Let me guess: I didn't convince you. Project for me: what historical
evidence could possibly exist that would explain the mindset of anyone
in a particularly idiom as it transitioned? None. And surely some
idioms have changed.
--
The devil can cite scripture for his purpose.
-- Shakespeare
Gerry
Hogan <Gary...@webtv.net> wrote:
> The Civil Rights Movement had very little effect on jazz. I was playing
> just as badly afterward as I was before.
Finally, some definitive proof!
--
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will be
content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
-- Francis Bacon
Gerry
<no-...@spam-control.org> wrote:
> > Our views are balanced then. We're both viewing the same thing,
> > with different conclusions and an utter lack of substantive proof.
>
> What's with this demand for proof?
Don't ask me, I don't need any for the exchange of highly personal
opinion. Actually when we get into anemic attempts to provide these we
take away from what the utility of these threads anyway: highly
subjective musing some of them quite interesting.
> This is Usenet, the place where fans can find each other and argue.
> You need to think of this virtual place as an large bar-room with
> many people arguing for this or that.
True enough. Some feel that their trump card validating their personal
view, is that you can't prove them wrong with verifiable quantitative
unassailable proof. Hell I can't prove I had lunch...
--
It gets late early out there.
-- Yogi Berra
nick...@aol.com
Phil Wilson wrote:
> nick...@aol.com wrote:
>
> > I think avant garde was already in full swing pre-Beatles. It may
> > very
> > well be that Civil Rights influenced avant garde jazz by motivating
> > an
> > "angry" sound among many players. But the techniques involved in
> > projecting "angry" still have to be developed in the woodshed.
>
> Try listening to the works of Charlie Parker and noting down where he
> is 'angry', 'fearful', 'political'. It can't be done. Music is
neither
> an expressive device nor a language.
I agree. But listeners generally associate certain sounds and devices
with certain emotions; e.g., a saxophonist who screeches, growls and
plays flurries of notes arrhythmically is generally considered more
provocative (sometimes labelled as "angry") than someone playing nice
simple melodies over a latin/funk groove.
Anyway, if you get politically
> angry, why on earth would you pick up a saxophone or write a 'suite',
> rather than writing an article, giving a speech or punching a
> politician?
I suspect it's a matter of practicality. Someone who already has some
public attention as a jazz musician is likely to be taken more
seriously in his established domain.
nick...@aol.com
nick...@aol.com
nick...@aol.com
muhal wrote:
> >>>Skip Elliott Bowman wrote:
> >>>In my opinion, WWII had a big impact on music overall and jazz in
> >>>particular.
>
> >>Yardbird O'Rooney wrote:
> >>Of course it did. [deletia]
>
> > nick...@aol.com wrote:
> > I think you're wildly overstating it. What *specifically* do you
think
> > changed, in the styles of particular players, before and after the
war?
>
> For one thing the wartime tax on entertainment dramatically changed
the
> economics of jazz. It became extremely difficult for any but the most
> successful bandleaders to sustain a big band.
That's not exactly addressing the question, but I see your point. I
don't disagree that certain conditions, such as economic climate, can
affect jazz or any other aspect of society.
But that's different than what I think many here are talking about.
Namely, that WWII had an *emotional* impact that somehow caused people
to change their style or musical direction. This is implied in
statements like "jazz is about freedom and expression." In other words,
the cataclysm of World War II had a negative effect on players
emotionally such as to cause them to feel differently about freedom and
therefore choose different notes, scales, chords, rhythms, or whatever
it is that makes up their style. Or maybe it had a positive effect; I'm
really not sure, since there are still no concrete examples offered of
players who changed the above-mentioned aspects of their playing due to
the *emotional* or *psychic* impact of WWII.
Phil Wilson
> Phil Wilson wrote:
> Anyway, if you get politically
>> angry, why on earth would you pick up a saxophone or write a
>> 'suite',
>
>> rather than writing an article, giving a speech or punching a
>> politician?
>
> I suspect it's a matter of practicality. Someone who already has
> some
> public attention as a jazz musician is likely to be taken more
> seriously in his established domain.
Why? (I'm not questioning you're conclusion, with which I agree. What
I'm wondering is why celebrity in one limited irrelevant field makes
people think that they have some general authority.)
Cheers,
Phil
Phil Wilson
< 'you're'
Tssk. I've just got up. Even so...
j_ns...@msn.com
the
> economics of jazz. It became extremely difficult for any but the most
> successful bandleaders to sustain a big band.
But that didn't become extremely difficult during the war. It became
extremely difficult right about '47. Let's take a look at the c. Sep.
'45- Dec. '45 period, right after the war is over:
The big band is still normal and accepted. Tommy Dorsey's popular
drummer Buddy Rich is just starting his own big band, which will make
it into '47. Cootie Williams' popular singer Eddie Vinson is just
starting his own big band, which will make it into '47. Sy Oliver has
been discharged and is getting ready to lead big bands during '46 on.
Roy Eldridge is leaving Shaw's big band to start his own big band,
which will make it into about late '46 or early '47. Elliott Lawrence's
big band is getting going. Calloway is still going strong with a big
band he won't have to break up until '47. Basie with one he won't break
up until '49. Hampton is going strong and still will be in '47.
Lunceford, ditto. Ellington of course ditto. Buddy Johnson, Benny
Carter, Erskine Hawkins, Earl Hines, Don Redman, Gerald Wilson, Gene
Krupa, Johnny Otis, Cootie Williams, similar. Bands like Charlie
Spivak's, Hal McIntyre's, Frankie Carle's, Jimmy Dorsey's, Sam
Donahue's, Les Brown's, Randy Brooks', Billy Butterfield's, still going
strong. Pop singer Vaughn Monroe is leading his own big band. Wardell
Gray is a member of Hines' big band, Miles Davis and J.J. Johnson are
members of Benny Carter's big band, Haig is a member of Barnet's big
band, Roy Haynes is a member of Luis Russell's big band, Navarro,
Ammons, and Blakey are members of Eckstine's big band, Marmarosa moves
from Shaw's big band to Raeburn's big band but will keep playing
big-band sessions for Shaw on the side. Kenton's big band is on the
rise. Two labels are recording Millinder's big band in competition with
each other. Glenn Miller's band is still big-sized, a year after his
death -- it'll be succeeded by Ray McKinley's big band _and_ Tex
Beneke's big band, which will both do well. Andy Kirk's big band has
had one of the biggest hits of the year on the "black" chart, and his
last big-band session for Decca won't be until Dec. '46. Herman can
look forward to just as successful a big-band '46 as he had in '45.
Thornhill can look forward to a high-profile big-band '46-'47.
Raeburn's big band is at its peak. Eckstine's big band has about as
high a profile as it'll ever have; it'll last until '47. Armstrong is
still habitually using big-band backing, which he'll drop about '47.
Howard McGhee, Earl Bostic, Walter Brown, Russell Jacquet, Hot Lips
Page, and Jimmy Mundy make recordings with pickup big bands during this
period (something Pettiford, Dud Bascomb, and Johnny Bothwell also did
earlier in the year when each got his first opportunity to lead a
session). Dizzy has just given up on one big band and is about to start
another that'll last years. Judging on available evidence, during this
period, just after the war has ended, the big band is still the gold
standard in the minds of almost all ambitious jazz musicians.
However much the big gradual drop-off of popularity of big bands during
the '46-'48 period as a whole may (or may _not_, significantly) have
been influenced indirectly by the fact that World War II happened
(compared to a hypothetical world in which World War II never
happened), it would be a mistake to think the big drop-off happened
_during_ World War II.
Best,
Joseph Scott
Yardbird O'Rooney
> Imo, the freedom most jazz musicians had included the freedom to not
> have their musical interests impacted by a war on another continent
> much.
The war affected everyone in the US. Every
aspect of life changed. This was a very different
kind of national experience than, say, Viet Nam
or Iraq, which we can easily ignore if we chose to.
Musicians have the same freedoms as anyone else,
but I find it hard to imagine that a jazz musician
(especially) would desire to consign himself to
oblivion by refusing to engage with the times in
which he lives.
It wouldn't surprise me much to hear of an
academic sort of musician, dwelling in some
sort of Parnassus or ivory tower, believing that
his "gift" was too precious to squander by sharing
the experiences of his contemporaries. But jazz
by its nature was a socially-engaged music, whether
joyous and extroverted, like trad and swing, or
ironic and introverted, like (some) bop and cool.
--
YO
j_ns...@msn.com
"> ...and I wouldn't want to believe it unless anyone could come up
with
> plausible reasoning in favor of it, based on historical evidence."
and you responded:
"[...]what historical
evidence could possibly exist that would explain the mindset of anyone
in a particularly idiom as it transitioned? None.[...]"
Accounts by musicians of what their mindsets were at the time. I don't
collect Dizzy Gillespie interviews, but if you wanted, you could find
someone who does, find all the times (it'll be _many_) that Dizzy's
asked what he intended or what he was thinking about or what inspired
him as he did such-and-such musically during the development of his
music, and count up how many times he brings up World War II. And so on
with other musicians. My impression, based on a far more random
approach but lots of total reading, is that the war very rarely gets
brought up.
However much evidence we currently have is however much we currently
have. (Our "proofs" are never ever transcendentally magestically
perfect and that's okay.) Whenever we're actually curious enough we go
looking for more evidence.
Something I forgot to mention to someone else in this thread (not
Gerry): the first AFM ban, however much it influenced musical
developments (not much I don't think), isn't relevant to the war
discussion because it didn't have anything to do with the existence of
the war anyway. Petrillo, one of the most powerful union leaders in the
country, thought his workers weren't getting enough, decided to order
the strike, FDR personally asked him not to to support his country
during wartime, he ordered the strike anyway.
Joseph Scott
j_ns...@msn.com
muhal wrote:
Surely, a global event such as war would not influence a
> particular musician into developing this or that tone.
I don't see how we could be sure of that. As I see it, it's the sort of
thing that easily could have happened. And I think in practice "the
sort of thing that easily could have happened" counts for very little
as reliable evidence about what happened.
And even if it
> did, it would be virtually impossible to separate the specific
influence
> of the war from that of some other cultural or personal factor.
I'm not a big believer in this (virtually-)impossible-to-separate thing
that people seem to bring up pretty often. To whatever extent you're
going to try to understand history based on what clues were left
behind, get in there and just do your best to separate one thing from
another and accept that that's all anyone can do, or another option is
don't do it at all.
>
> But certainly, the emergence of a large population in Northern
> industrial cities of black people with good jobs and consequently a
> couple dollars in their pocket, both of which are direct byproducts
of
> wartime production, had something to do with the focus of
entertainment
> switching from the ballroom to the nightclub, wouldn't you say?
Why wouldn't the large venues benefit from the wartime boom economy
too?
>
> Similarly, don't you think the fact that thousands of black people
went
> overseas to get shot at and possibly die defending freedom against
> fascism, had something to do with their refusal, upon returning home,
to
> accept Jim Crow?
Yes.
And consequently, for those black people who were
> musicians, to gain an "in-your-face (to use contemporary vernacular)
> edge in their playing?
If you go through as many musicians as you want, look at their musical
style and look up whether they served -- when I do it I really don't
see much relationship between making adventurous music and having been
in the military, one way or the other. Sometimes it's the 4-F frantic
freaks making the freakier music, sometimes not.
Joseph Scott
Gerry
<j_ns...@msn.com> wrote:
> "> ...and I wouldn't want to believe it unless anyone could come up
> with > plausible reasoning in favor of it, based on historical
> evidence."
>
> and you responded:
>
> "[...]what historical evidence could possibly exist that would
> explain the mindset of anyone in a particularly idiom as it
> transitioned? None.[...]"
You make excellent points as regards your vast experience and opinion.
I don't think I can change your mind about anything you have ever said
on any topic.
Expressing my viewpoint, for the very reason that it differs with
yours, is enjoyable for me. Getting into "proving" the unprovable
things (whether a vast stripe of artistry was demonstrably effected by
cultural events or wholly devoid of effect, for instance), is a waste
of my time.
Firstly, I'm a musician, not a lawyer or bill collector, so have little
interest in the minutae of (truly!) contentious rhetoric. Additionally
I assume your worldview is not predicated on hapless dice-throws, and
having reached your conclusions as a result of explicit volition, I
doubt I could shake your belief in anything whatsoever. Whether on this
or any other topic.
About the later, I could be wrong. I've been wrong many times before,
and that doesn't bother me in the least.
--
History is a set of lies agreed upon.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte
Gerry
<j_ns...@msn.com> wrote:
> Sorry for being behind on my reading friends -- I've had the flu.
Right. Bring a note from your doctor next time... :-)
--
A computer without a Microsoft operating system is like a dog without a
bunch of bricks tied to its head.
muhal
>>For one thing the wartime tax on entertainment dramatically changed
>
> the
>
>>economics of jazz. It became extremely difficult for any but the most
>
>
>>successful bandleaders to sustain a big band.
>
> nick...@aol.com wrote:
> That's not exactly addressing the question, but I see your point. I
> don't disagree that certain conditions, such as economic climate, can
> affect jazz or any other aspect of society.
>
> But that's different than what I think many here are talking about.
> Namely, that WWII had an *emotional* impact that somehow caused people
> to change their style or musical direction.
Ah, I see. Well then, I have to agree with Joseph Scott: WWII *may* have
had an impact that caused players to change musically, but none of us
can *show* that, for any given musician who shows evidence of a dramatic
stylistic change, that the war and nothing else was the dominant factor.
Frex, the Lester Young example you or someone else mentioned earlier in
this thread, fails the test: Lester's problems were not with the war,
but with the Army, and more specifically with racists in the Army who
were in a position of power over him.
muhal
>>For one thing the wartime tax on entertainment dramatically changed
>
> the
>
>>economics of jazz. It became extremely difficult for any but the most
>
>
>>successful bandleaders to sustain a big band.
>
>
> But that didn't become extremely difficult during the war. It became
> extremely difficult right about '47. Let's take a look at the c. Sep.
> '45- Dec. '45 period, right after the war is over:
You are not considering that macro-economic changes usually take a
couple years to affect as large and complex an economy as America's
(even the American economy of the 1940s) significantly enough to be
obvious and visible.
For example, the inflationary effects of combined Great Society and
Vietnam War spending did not really bite hard until 1978-9 -- and even
then one must consider the effect of the two oil price shocks in 1974
and again in 1979.
Similarly, the Kennedy tax cut (his remedy to kick a slow-starting
recovery following the recession of 1958-59) did not really put wind in
the economic sails until 1963 and especially 1964.
As a final example, the series of interest-rate increases engineered by
the Federal Reserve in 1998-99, did not suceed in clearly bursting the
Internet bubble until 2001 (might even have taken longer had it not been
for the deepening effect of 9/11)
So if we accept that it's going to take 2-3 years for the entertainment
tax to show its bite, we'd expect its macro-economic effects to show up
visibly as 1945 turns into 1946, and then accelerate. Which, per your
own data, is what we see. No?
With respect to your long list of examples, you ought to also consider
not just the rate of band launches (due to overoptimistic leaders
failing to detect the incoming change) but also the rate of band
failures (which also increases compared to say 1938, and balances the
increase in launches), and the volume of combo activity (as musicians
between jobs come off the road and get together to jam.)
> Judging on available evidence, during this
> period, just after the war has ended, the big band is still the gold
> standard in the minds of almost all ambitious jazz musicians.
This has nothing to do with the economic viability of the big band. It
just proves that musical genius does not necessarily confer economic
acuity. Dizzy spent the rest of his life alternately launching big bands
and losing his or other people's money on them. After a while he got the
point and stopped trying to take them on the road, instead making them
one-concert or one-tour events. Ellington was able to keep going only
because of his royalties income.
> However much the big gradual drop-off of popularity of big bands during
> the '46-'48 period as a whole may (or may _not_, significantly) have
> been influenced indirectly by the fact that World War II happened
Well, the war is the direct reason for the tax, which is the direct
reason for the loss of viability of big bands. I don't see where the
'may' comes in.
> (compared to a hypothetical world in which World War II never
> happened), it would be a mistake to think the big drop-off happened
> _during_ World War II.
Straw-man; I never said, never mind _stressed_ that the drop-off
happened during the war, only that it happened as a result of the war.
muhal
> Surely, a global event such as war would not influence a
>
>>particular musician into developing this or that tone.
>
>
> I don't see how we could be sure of that. As I see it, it's the sort of
> thing that easily could have happened. And I think in practice "the
> sort of thing that easily could have happened" counts for very little
> as reliable evidence about what happened.
True. My point is only that local people or events tend to have greater
direct influence on people than distant events. So, a personal change
such as the development of an individual tone, is likely more due to the
influence of local events or people (teachers, mentors, idols, idea
exchange, personal circumstances, ...) than a global event such as WWII,
especially since the war was not fought on American soil.
> I'm not a big believer in this (virtually-)impossible-to-separate thing
> that people seem to bring up pretty often. To whatever extent you're
> going to try to understand history based on what clues were left
> behind, get in there and just do your best to separate one thing from
> another and accept that that's all anyone can do, or another option is
> don't do it at all.
So, do you accept that the war tax on entertainment was an influence on
the demise of the big bands, or do you have another theory :-)?
>>But certainly, the emergence of a large population in Northern
>>industrial cities of black people with good jobs and consequently a
>>couple dollars in their pocket, both of which are direct byproducts
>
> of
>
>>wartime production, had something to do with the focus of
>
> entertainment
>
>>switching from the ballroom to the nightclub, wouldn't you say?
>
>
> Why wouldn't the large venues benefit from the wartime boom economy
> too?
Because ballrooms paid the tax, nightclubs did not (or not right away.)
> And consequently, for those black people who were
>
>>musicians, to gain an "in-your-face (to use contemporary vernacular)
>>edge in their playing?
>
>
> If you go through as many musicians as you want, look at their musical
> style and look up whether they served -- when I do it I really don't
> see much relationship between making adventurous music and having been
> in the military, one way or the other. Sometimes it's the 4-F frantic
> freaks making the freakier music, sometimes not.
I did not say that black people *who had been in the military* gained an
in-your-face edge, so your counter is a straw-man. My point is to trace
the (widely accepted, and uncontested by you) post-war change in black
attitudes and behavior toward Jim Crow, to the contemporary change in
black mainstream taste toward rougher and more emotional sound (or edge,
if you prefer.) We see this change across instruments: Charlie Parker,
Charles Mingus, Max Roach, Bud Powell, Roy Haynes, Sonny Rollins, even
Jackie McLean (who I cite *because* he was too young to have fought the
war, so that his acidic tone could not be due to any personal wartime
experience)...
muhal
> I'm wondering ... why celebrity in one limited irrelevant field makes
I'm astonished anyone would ask that question in a world in which
magazines seek out and publish, in all seriousness, what supermodels
think of world events and trends.
Phil Wilson
> Phil Wilson wrote:
>> I'm wondering ... why celebrity in one limited irrelevant field
>> makes
>> people think that they have some general authority.)
>
> I'm astonished anyone would ask that question in a world in which
> magazines seek out and publish, in all seriousness, what supermodels
> think of world events and trends.
Haha! Yes. What creates the popular demand for this, though? Why
should the 'man in the street' who used to try and listen to (or argue
with) the 'expert', now be more interested in the airhead? Why has
lusting after a starlets curves transformed into being beguiled by her
views on social issues? Is it a lack of faith in the 'expert'? Or does
it just save time?
Here in Britain we suffer from a surfeit of opinionated celebrities,
who get air time to harangue the population over what needs to happen
in Africa, with the Tsunami, with morals, marriage etc. etc.
heers,
Phil
j_ns...@msn.com
> j_ns...@msn.com wrote:
>
> >>For one thing the wartime tax on entertainment dramatically changed
> >
> > the
> >
> >>economics of jazz. It became extremely difficult for any but the
most
> >
> >
> >>successful bandleaders to sustain a big band.
> >
> >
> > But that didn't become extremely difficult during the war. It
became
> > extremely difficult right about '47. Let's take a look at the c.
Sep.
> > '45- Dec. '45 period, right after the war is over:
>
> You are not considering that macro-economic changes usually take a
> couple years to affect as large and complex an economy as America's
> (even the American economy of the 1940s) significantly enough to be
> obvious and visible.
I'm not sure whether the impact of a tax on a subset of the
entertainment business would be considered macro-economic, but in any
case...
If I understand correctly, what you were trying to say was "For one
thing the wartime tax on entertainment dramatically changed the
economics of jazz. Because of that tax, later, after wartime, it became
extremely difficult for any but the most successful bandleaders to
sustain a big band."
One thing we've got to keep in mind with all this hypothetical
what-if-there-had-been-no-WWII thinking is that if there had been no
war, there might well have been a recession in the U.S. during the Dec.
'41 to Aug. '45 period rather than not until after the war -- it may be
that the economic boom associated with involvement in the war all in
all kept the big bands going **longer** (to c. '47) than they would
have kept going if there had been no war (such as to c. '45, say). Or,
that there would have been a recession anyway around the _same_ time,
if the war hadn't happened -- for all we know.
[...]
>
> With respect to your long list of examples, you ought to also
consider
> not just the rate of band launches (due to overoptimistic leaders
> failing to detect the incoming change) but also the rate of band
> failures[...]
I was considering that. I can't think of many big bands that failed
during late '45, can you?
, and the volume of combo activity (as musicians
> between jobs come off the road and get together to jam.)
The volume of combo activity was large just before the U.S. got
involved in the war too, Minton and Monroe's being famous examples.
[...]
>
> > However much the big gradual drop-off of popularity of big bands
during
> > the '46-'48 period as a whole may (or may _not_, significantly)
have
> > been influenced indirectly by the fact that World War II happened
>
> Well, the war is the direct reason for the tax, which is the direct
> reason for the loss of viability of big bands. I don't see where the
> 'may' comes in.
I don't think the _various_ reasons for the loss of viability of big
bands during the late '40s are obvious and clear-cut. If someone's
going to convince me that such-and-such tax was a major culprit in
that, I need to know which tax, and have some plausible details about
the situation explained to me. Wouldn't a national recession in
general, in of itself, be adequate, along with whatever changing tastes
are going on among consumers (e.g. rise of interest in vocalists), to
kill off a particular high-overhead kind of entertainment, with or
without the existence of a particular tax a few years before?
Best,
Joseph Scott
j_ns...@msn.com
"[...] local people or events tend to have greater
direct influence on people than distant events. So, a personal change
such as the development of an individual tone, is likely more due to
the
influence of local events or people (teachers, mentors, idols, idea
exchange, personal circumstances, ...) than a global event such as
WWII,
especially since the war was not fought on American soil."
Agreed.
[muhal:] "But certainly, the emergence of a large population in
Northern
>>industrial cities of black people with good jobs and consequently a
>>couple dollars in their pocket, both of which are direct byproducts
> of
>>wartime production, had something to do with the focus of
> entertainment
>>switching from the ballroom to the nightclub, wouldn't you say?
[js:] > Why wouldn't the large venues benefit from the wartime boom
economy
> too?
[muhal:] Because ballrooms paid the tax, nightclubs did not (or not
right away.)"
I don't understand what "the tax" (whichever one you're referring to)
has to do with impact of "the emergence of a large population in
Northern industrial cities of black people with good jobs and
consequently a couple dollars in their pocket" on venue size.
muhal wrote:
"[...] I did not say that black people *who had been in the military*
gained an
in-your-face edge[....]"
Okay, your position if I understand it correctly is something close to:
One way WWII significantly altered the sound of jazz is that a
significant number of "black" musicians who didn't serve in the
military became more angry about Jim Crow as a result of the existence
of WWII than they would have been if the war hadn't existed, and they
expressed that anger in their music, resulting in (much) jazz changing
in sound from less rough and emotional to more rough and emotional.
For one thing, if Jim Crow was WORSE during the '10-'30s than during
the '50s-'60s, which it was, why wouldn't it be the '10s-'30s "black"
U.S. jazz musicians expressing "more emotion" (or however we want to
put it) than the '50s-'60s "black" U.S. jazz musicians? Do we know that
the Sidney Bechets and Hot Lips Pages and so on weren't angry? Weren't
expressing that anger in their music? How about Lester? Tristano? Did
Dizzy have _more_ to be angry about than Roy did? Ornette more to be
angry about than Armstrong had?
Joseph Scott
j_ns...@msn.com
As long as you remain uninterested in proving your points*, there's not
much danger you'll be convincing me of them.** That's pretty simple and
straightforward. To each their own.
Peace,
Joseph Scott
*"Expressing my viewpoint, for the very reason that it differs with
yours, is enjoyable for me. Getting into 'proving' the unprovable
things (whether a vast stripe of artistry was demonstrably effected by
cultural events or wholly devoid of effect, for instance), is a waste
of my time." -- Gerry
**"I don't think I can change your mind[....]" -- Gerry
Gerry
<j_ns...@msn.com> wrote:
> As long as you remain uninterested in proving your points*, there's
> not much danger you'll be convincing me of them.**
You've inverted my statement but if that's what you need to do, have
fun. If you're intransigent on everything you say and feel, which I
believe is true, then pissing my time away trotting out "proofs" for
you to disregard one after another is an obscene waste of my time.
> That's pretty simple and straightforward.
It is now, yes.
--
Better a bleeding heart than none at all.