Jazz and Racial Politics
Mophandl
person I was chatting live with last night:
Dear [delted]:
After our interesting (and lively) discussion last night on [deleted], I
feel motivated to Email you with some of my extended thoughts about some
of the issues you raised.
I will assume for the moment that you are an African American male jazz
musician (drummer perhaps?). I am a white bass player of Jewish
extraction, 44 years old. I have made jazz my life's work since age 21. I
have been lucky enough to have worked with people like Paul Jeffery,
Rosemary Clooney, Freddie & Ike Cole (Nat's brothers), Mose Allison,
Nathen Page, Buddy DeFranco, Clark Terry, Red Rodney, Ira Sullivan, Flip
Phillips, etc.
In 1991 I was recruited to take a job with the Jim Cullum Jazz Band, a
traditional band out of San Antonio featured on their own Public Radio
series, "Riverwalk, Live from the Landing." On this show we have featured
a rainbow of jazz greats including Milt Hinton, Sweets Edison, Warren
Vache, Benny Carter, Clark Terry, Bob Wilbur, Joe Williams, Bob Barnard
(Australian cornetist), Linda Hopkins, Topsy Chapman, Marty Grosz,
William Warfield, Dick Hyman, Terry Burrell, Vernel Bagneris, Kenny
Daverne, Lionel Hampton, Bob Haggart, etc.
Since taking this job I have done a lot of thinking and learning about the
history of jazz and the issue of the linkage between jazz and racial
politics in particular.
Before the JCJB job, I had always been interested in jazz from both the
pre- and post-WWII perspective. When I would play a bebop job, I was well
aware of the scornful attitudes of both black and white boppers toward
trad jazz. The attitude is that traditional jazz is a compromised art
produced for the consumption of a white racist audience by black
originators and pale white imitators (rip-off artists). Thus the music of
Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, King Oliver, Fats
Waller, etc. was dismissed as "Tomming" crap, while that of Bob Crosby,
Benny Goodman, Bix Beiderbecke, Eddie Condon, etc. was dismissed out of
hand as having no musical validity. True jazz began with Diz, Bird, and
Monk, although Duke and Count were deemed acceptable anscestors.
When I would work with tradders, the attitude toward boppers was that they
were unnecessarily serious and complex and even racist (Crow-Jim). True
jazz is a simple African American folk music and requires no formal
musical training. Everything post WWII is a mere corruption of the pure
form.
Later I found out that this "war" had been going on since bop first
appeared in the late 40's. Louis and Diz had a war of words going in the
jazz press until they decided to make peace with each other in the 50's.
After reading a lot of books, talking to a lot of the musicians involved,
and playing a lot of the music myself, I have come to certain conclusions
regarding these issues:
1. The audience for jazz today is overwhelmingly white. It seems that the
black audience abandoned jazz when bebop took over, preferring instead R
& B, Soul, and later Mowtown.
2. White musicians have always had a very significant input into the
evolution of jazz from the very beginning. While it is true that jazz is
unthinkable without New Orleanians King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, and
especially Louis Armstrong, one cannot deny the contributions of Bix,
Frank Trumbauer (cited by Benny Carter as his major influence on
saxophone), Benny Goodman, etc. The fact that jazz and blues are *not*
African music per se means that they had to have been molded within the
crucible of white musical forms recognizable by white audiences. I offer
this thought to you without a judgement of any kind as to the merits of
either "black" or "white" music. As Richard Sudhalter points out, jazz as
we know it resulted from events that "simply happened in the American
Experience."
3. Because bop grew up in part as a protest against the established jazz
culture of the swing era, the political myth began to grow that valid jazz
can only be produced by black players and understood by black audiences.
Later in the 60's, as the real audience for jazz began to dwindle
alarmingly, colleges, universities, and granting instititions began
supporting the myth by exclusively hiring and granting to black jazz
musicians, more often than not of the "free" school considered by white
grantors more artistically "creative" and therefore valid. (Again, I am
not making a judgement here, it's simply what happened).
4. The public perception of jazz in the 90's is therefore hopelessly
confused. We in the JCJB see evidence of this regularly. After playing a
pops concert with a symphony, one of the white symphony players came up to
me and asked, "I love your music, but shouldn't you be black?" One night
at the Landing, in between tunes, a white man about 50 or so came striding
up to the bandstand shouting, "White men playing the black man's music,
this is bullshit!" and, "Why don't you play some progressive jazz like
Dizzy Gillespie?" Jim Cullum said to the man, "You sound like a racist to
me." The man replied, "You're the fucking racist!"
For reasons outlined above, it appears today that there are very few black
players of trad jazz. When Jim was in the process of hiring a new bass
player (before coming across me), he says he gave serious thought to
hiring a black player. After a difficult search, he auditioned several and
found only one who could really swing the way he wanted. (He didn't take
the job because of other reasons).
Nicholas Payton seems to be the first new black musician (nineteen years
old) to seriously be interested in the playing of Louis Armstrong (I say
seriously because unlike his mentor, Wynton Marsalis, he really does play
like Louis). He was featured with us at the San Francisco Jazz Festival
last year and blew everybody away. Next month, he will be featured in a
new Riverwalk show called "Louis II."
We in the JCJB sincerely hope that more African American youngsters will
take up their own traditional musical heritage for what it is: a living
legacy of timeless, classic, and immortal American music.
But at the same time we all must try harder to look at the historical
record dispassionately, listening with our ears and not our politics.
Don Mopsick
Matthew Snyder
Matt Snyder
hsn...@crab.rutgers.edu
Lester Kenyatta Spence
Snyder's comments (my newsreader wouldn't have allowed me to post if
it wasn't).
Before I ask the following questions, I wanted to give my thoughts
on the matter, so my "biases" would be known. When I think of jazz, I
think of be-bop, and to a lesser extent Big Band, because I prefer the
former.
I also think that jazz is a unique form of African music--unique
in the fact that it wasn't produced on the Continent, but rather by a
diasporal group still linked to the Continent through culture. As far as
playing the music goes, the music doesn't know melanin, anybody with the
proper training can play the music.
However there is a catch. I mentioned that, to me, jazz is
African. From what I know about the music I have also inferred that
the innovators of the music have been Black. By innovation I am referring
to changes in the music itself (big band to be-bop to cool to free) as
well as changes in individual instruments. I don't think this is a melanin
thing, but rather a matter of cultural immersion.
With this said I have 4 questions.
1) When you say "trad jazz," are you referring to Big Band?
2) Were Armstrong et.al., critiqued for WHAT they played, or
for the acting they had to do when they played? (Miles mentioned this
in his biography--that he loved Armstrong's sound but hated the way he
had to act.)
3) "Black audiences abandoned jazz." With this statement, the
image I get is of jazz staying in one place, and the "Black audience"
leaving. Is it this simple? You mentioned that jazz audiences PERIOD
fell off during the sixties. Is this action related to the earlier action
of Black audiences? Are the choices of recording studios and radio stations
important here?
4) What exactly are the contributions of the white artists you
mention? I don't deny that there have been some white artists with skills
but I am not familiar with white INNOVATORS in the music.
I guess this is more than four, but I hope that these questions can
not only promote understanding, but also critical thinking about the nature
of music, culture, and politics.
peace
lks
Carlos May
: In Article <3g21it$o...@crab.rutgers.edu> "hsn...@crab.rutgers.edu (Matthew Snyder)" says:
: > That was a very nicely written and thought-out article. Good job.
[snip] Ditto on that from me.
: yes it was very good. I would just add that when i read the paragraph
: about no blacks today being interested in jobs playing trad, my mind went
: back to an assertion that Buck Clayton made in his autobiography: that
: black musicians who weren't from New Orleans _never_ played that style.
: FWIW.
Boy, I hardly know how to begin to answer that assersion other than by
saying I have a whole wall full of records of those non New Orleans black
artists showing their mastery of that style they supposedly never played
in.
I haven't read Clayton's autobiography, so I don't know what that
assersion is supposed to mean. No, back in the mid-teens,
musicians Black or White (or anything else) didn't play in the
New Orleans style except in the area around New Orleans. A
fair amount of pre-jazz hot music was recorded, though not much
of it has ever been reissued. As pre-jazz Black music, check out
such groups as Borbee's Orch and Jim Europe's 1st recording
session, and to some extent W.C. Handy's early records (although
Columbia records was specifically marketing Handy to compete with
the Original Dixieland Jass Band, but that's another topic, perhaps).
Vess Ossman or the 6 Brown Brothers are examples of pre-jazz hot
White musicians you might find on reissue. By the end of the teens
the Jazz music which spread out of New Orleans was catching on
nation wide, being sometimes imitated and emulated, or hybread
with other hot and pop musical traditions. Doc Cheatham can
remember, he says, that there was no jazz whatsoever when he was
growing up in Nashville. But he was one of the many African-
American musicians embracing it heartily by the early 1920s.
Well, I could probably talk about this subject for hours.
Perhaps Mop's article will raise some more discussion.
As a pasionate lover of Classic Jazz, which I concider one
of the great artistic achievments of human history, I'm still
dismayed anew each time I hear some African-Americans dismiss
the music as "Tomming". It seems to me as if Italians were
objecting to Bel Canto Opera or Renessaince Painting as being
somehow anti-Italian.
fro...@neosoft.com
jfka
about no blacks today being interested in jobs playing trad, my mind went
back to an assertion that Buck Clayton made in his autobiography: that
black musicians who weren't from New Orleans _never_ played that style.
FWIW.
JHarri6504
> 4) What exactly are the contributions of the white artists you
>mention? I don't deny that there have been some white artists with
skills
>but I am not familiar with white INNOVATORS in the music.
An excellent point, but I think there is one significant (and fairly
non-controversial?) exception: Bill Evans.
My own slogan-sized summary of how I think about this issue is: Jazz
is an African-American art form that is played by people of all races and
nationalities.
- James Harrigan
harr...@vms.cis.pitt.edu
AFC PeterS
> I mentioned that, to me, jazz is African. From what I know
> about the music I have also inferred that the innovators of the
> music have been Black. By innovation I am referring to changes
> in the music itself (big band to be-bop to cool to free) as
> well as changes in individual instruments. I don't think this
> is a melanin thing, but rather a matter of cultural immersion.
Most, though by no means all, of the important innovators in Jazz (at
least in its earliest days) were black, this is true. However, to call it
African music is a mistake. Jazz arose in the US, and was created by
Americans. Though the musicians were of African descent, the culture that
gave birth to Jazz was distinctly American. Louis Armstrong is no more an
African musician than I am a Russian or Austrian one.
Of course, now, there is genuine African jazz. But there's also genuine
Russian jazz...and Swedish, and Brazilian, and Japanese, and...you get the
idea. Even the idea of overt African conciousness as a part of American
Jazz came later in the history of the music. Jazz, like Blues and Rock &
Roll, is an indigenous product of (predominantly black) US culture.
Without a doubt, there are deep cultural roots in African musics that came
over on slave ships with the people, but that is vastly different from
saying Jazz and Blues originated in Africa!
Peter Stoller
Lester Kenyatta Spence
-Charles,A. <ac...@intgp5.ih.att.com> wrote:
>In article <3ga7rb$c...@lastactionhero.rs.itd.umich.edu>,
>To me this begs the question. What is nationality? If birth and citizenship
>are not sufficient, what is? How many of the jazz innovators (mentioned
>in the previous post) thought of themselves as being something other
>than Americans? It seems to me that "African Americans" are still American
>first (and "American Africans" would be African first...despite the order
>of the words). The above paragraph seems to equate being black with being
>African. Was that the intent?
I think I see. "It ain't where you're from, it's where you're
AT." I understand this position, but it's not that simple. For one thing,
where you are from can determine where you are at. For another thing the
"where you're at" can change WHILE YOU STILL REMAIN IN THE SMAE PLACE.
For an example of this look at much of Eastern Europe. In many cases,
the "nationalities" that you refer to changed OVERNIGHT. I posit that
although the nation-state does play an important role in defining identity,
there are other factors that may supersede it--it might be religion, it
might be cultural affiliation, it might be any number of things.
You talk aboutthe term "African American" and where the emphasis
should be. When US troops were in Somalia, I remember an article being
written about the experience of Black soldiers in Somalia. One of them
told the story of a Somali child coming up to him and saying, "You Somali."
"No I'm not," he replied, "I'm American."
"No," the child replied, "you Somali, like me." The soldier didn't
get it. I tell this tale because it represents the two positions that we
seem to be taking. In my case, yes his passport says he is "American,"
but the soldier probably has more in common with the child than he realizes.
>The "diasporal group" mentioned above also used various aspects of European
>culture to survive *in the only environment they knew*. I can't think of
>any examples of Jazz innovators who grew up in an "African" culture and
>then moved on to a new one. My guess is they grew up dealing with different
>cultures in different contexts.
I am not disputing this, but give me some examples of what you are
referring to here. When I refer to cultural retentions, I am referring to
language (words as well as linguistical structure), religious practices
(such as "catching the Holy Ghost" as a means of spiritual enlightenment),
as well as various other structures including music (here I refer to the
improvisation, the polyrhythms, as well as the call-and-response, and
allegedly the use of the "blue note," that is apparent in jazz). This is
not something they learned BECAUSE it was African, but it was passed down
from generation to generation nonetheless.
You say that your guess is that the early African Americans grew
up dealing with different cultures in different contexts. What does this
mean exactly? I ask this question, because it seems to be common sensical.
Everyone deals with different people differently, and I recognize that in
many situations people may take on mannerisms that are not "their own,"
so to speak in dealing with others. This doesn't mean though that each
individual is like a clean slate, who changes colors depending on the
environment (I use "color" here metaphorically). Each individual STARTS
with something, THEN changes it if he/she needs to.
>None of this is intended to ignore the role that the African roots of
>the jazz innovators played. But I think it would be a mistake to imply
>that jazz would exist (at least as we know it) without the influence of
>European culture as well. If I were at home I could probably provide some
>references for this.
I said this in my first post, while retaining my belief that jazz
is an African music form. In my eyes the two are not mutually exclusive.
I guess my question here is "mistake for what?" Or for who?
>I guess it partly comes back to defining what jazz is. To take an almost
>silly example, I think jazz would be very different if jazz musicians had
>never played trumpets or cornets (European instruments?) but maybe my view
>is too narrow.
I wanted to make a final point. You ask if there were any jazz
musicians who saw themselves as anything other than American. If these
cultural components are transmitted without knowledge of origin (which
I believe is the case--as I said, people didn't transmit the way they spoke
SIMPLY because it was African, for example) then it is very possible to
do something, or to create something, and misstate its origins.
>Andrew Charles
>ac...@intgp1.att.com
lks
Jeff Beer
issues that have nothing to do with features of the music.
Where are the discussions about specific musical elements and their
possible roots in Africa or North America?
For instance, I have a few albums of African "roots" music.
How similar is it to what Africans where playing 300 years ago?
However, if you compare it with blues and early jazz, I think you can
hear some similarities in terms of vocal techniques, and the use of
vibrato, but are there any traces of the blues scale in the music of
West Africa? An interesting point was made by Ernest Borneman in "The
Roots of Jazz", in that "It seems likely that the common sources of
European and West African music was a simple hemitonic pentatone system.
Although indigenous variants of the diantonic scale have been developed
and preserved in African, modern West Africans who are not familiar with
European music will tend to become uncertain when asked to sing in a
tempored scale. This becomes particularly obvious when the third and
seventh degrees of a diatonic scale are approached. The singer almost
invariable tries to skid around these steps with slides, slurs, or
vibrato effects so broad as to approach scalar value".
I would hesitate to say what conclusions could be drawn from that, but
when you look at this phenomena, and the blues scale, it does seem
curious. I think you clearly don't have the blues scale existing in
Africa, but yet there is some remnant of what was existing in culture
from Africa in its development.
One thing you do have from African forms is the call-and-response.
What about the rhythmic pattern of swing?
There certainly are 12/8 triplet rhythms in African music, but it is an
even pattern, and not varying like swing is. Myself, I wonder what
effect the sounds from railroads had swing.
Notice how much Duke throughout his career had compositions that main of
the sounds from trains.
Ironically, the one African American genre that strikes me as most
African is gospel. The counterpoint of the voices seems to have a
similarity in their mrimba playing.
I don't have the answers, but these discussions tend to be based on
ideology, and not musicology. The trouble with this area, the scholarship
is inadequate. So I take the other discussions about this matter with a
serious grain of salt.
Jeff
Carlos May
: Lester Kenyatta Spence writes, in part,:
: > 4) What exactly are the contributions of the white artists you
: >mention? I don't deny that there have been some white artists with
: skills
: >but I am not familiar with white INNOVATORS in the music.
: An excellent point, but I think there is one significant (and fairly
: non-controversial?) exception: Bill Evans.
Another has just been discussed in another thread: Bix Beiderbecke,
a brilliant, influential and very innovative player, who argueably
was both the first white and first non-New Orleanian genius in jazz.
IMO, the 2 real genuiuses and most influential innovators from the
earlest days of jazz seem to have been, from my reading of testimony
of musicians who heard them, Buddy Bolden and Joe Oliver. The other
slightly later geniuses were also Black: Morton, Bechet, and Armstrong.
Although this is somewhat forcing the definitions of our time onto
a culture that defined things differently; Creoles of Color such as
Morton were often concidered a different "race" from the Negros in
turn of the century New Orleans, just as Italians and Irish were
usually spoken of as being different "races".
Although early "White" New Orleans jazz musicians did not produce
any of the small handfull of innovative giants, they were well
represented in all ranks below. Admiration for playing ability
crossed racial lines. There was also significant participation
in earliest jazz by New Orleanians of Latin American decent.
In researching what has sometimes been called by later writers
the "first white jazz band" from about 1898, I found that its
members had European, African, Latin American, Native American,
and in one case Asian ancestors.
: My own slogan-sized summary of how I think about this issue is: Jazz
: is an African-American art form that is played by people of all races and
: nationalities.
I tend to agree. Although ironically it seems that participation in the
cutting edge of this African-American art form was more integrated and
multi-cultural in the turn of the century south than it was up north
half a century later.
Froggy
fro...@neosoft.com
Lester Kenyatta Spence
AFC PeterS <afcp...@aol.com> wrote:
>Lester Kenyatta Spence writes:
>...nor is anyone trying to erase it. But the culture that existed amongst
>black Americans was not truly African culture: that culture did not exist
>in Africa, only in the US, although it had roots in various African
>cultures. (To reduce Africa to one culture is ludicrous.) We can call it
>African-American culture, perhaps, which makes much more sense than
>calling it African.
It appears that I may have cut off some of your message. If you
think that the above portion misrepresents what you have said, please feel
free tore-post the original in your response.
The idea of "diaspora," is very important in my rendering of
culture, specifically in the way that it can transcend geography. You
say that African American culture is not "truly African culture." What
does this mean? To tie this into another response I have given, I can
think of a REALLY absurd example--say Nelson Mandela took over
America militarily, making North America an extension of Africa (in much
the same way that it is an extension of Europe now). Would this culture
immediately become "African?" You seem to be making a claim about cultural
"purity" so to speak, based on geographic location, a claim that I would
think to be very hard to substantiate, given the way that language and
religion (as well as music) are not necessarily bounded by space.
You state that "to reduce Africa to one culture is ludicrous."
When I state my position about African culture I realize that the Dogon,
the Ibo, the Ashanti, are all unique in very special ways, but at the
same time have many things in common, enough that the claim can be made
that they are more alike than different (especially when comared to other
groups of people). I think that people may be projecting here (although
I cannot be sure) their own thoughts about the idea of one "African" culture.
>> ...by saying that jazz is "American" music a more serious
>> mistake is being made here. I asked the question about white
>> innovators, because it is related to my contention that jazz is
>> African. If it was American in the generic sense, I would think
>> that there would be contributions made by not only African
>> Americans, but by Asian Americans, Latino Americans, as well
>> as by European Americans. But there don't seem to be (with the
>> excellent exception of Bill Evans, as noted in another post).
>
>Nobody is arguing that the music started within the black community, which
>explains the relative paucity of innovators from other backgrounds,
>although they certainly do exist beyond Evans. How do we define
>"innovative"? Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Scott Lafaro, Steve Lacy, Carla
>Bley, Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Gary Burton, Don Ellis, Gil Evans, Stan
>Getz, Bennie Goodman, Artie Shaw, Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich, Charlie Haden,
>Jim Hall, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, Ralph Towner, Jaco Pastorius,
>Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli, George Russell, Gunther Schuller,
>Josef Zawinul...just a handful off the top of my head: are *none* of these
>musicians innovators? And I haven't even touched on Latin Jazz, an entire
>subgenre that can't seriously be attributed to Africa.
Well, to "innovate," means "to begin, to originate." How many
of the artists above have actually began something that wasn't there before?
Again, this isn't to deny that these artists have skills--they can play
the music. Question, when you talk about "Latin jazz," you don't by
any chance mean "Afro-Cuban," do you? ;)
I ask this question only slightly in jest, because the area with the
largest population of "displaced Africans," so to speak, is in South America.
>The form arose in a world with far more powerful barriers of geography,
>and not the modern, melting-pot culture of 20th century America, so the
>comparison isn't as apt as it appears on the surface.
I cut off my comments about European Chamber music, because
I wanted to be sure that this posting made it on the Net. I basically
stated that in European Chamber Music, the innovators were all European.
Actually, even if your statements about geography and culture hold true,
the comparison is still valid, in that with jazz the innovators were
(with a few exceptions), African American.
>
>Peter Stoller
lks
(As a sidenote, it seems as if we are discussing my own personal
biases, which I stated up front, rather than the questions I asked about
assertions, however I have spent a considerable amount of time and effort
developing them. If we are to continue this thread, I would be very
interested in seeing others lay their "biases" on the table as I have.)
assertions, however I have spent a considerable amount of time and effort devel
js3...@acad.drake.edu
In article <3gc6dq$9...@network.ucsd.edu>, har...@inls1.ucsd.edu (Harry Luithardt) writes:
> Lester Kenyatta Spence (ksp...@umich.edu) wrote:
>
> : I didn't make a mistake when I referred to jazz as African music,
> : and I attempted to explain what I meant by that in my post. Jazz was
> : not created on the Continent, but by a diasporal group--a group that used
> : various aspects of African culture to exist and survive in a new environment.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> : This cannot be simply erased, and by saying that jazz is "American" music
> : a more serious mistake is being made here. I asked the question about white
> : innovators, because it is related to my contention that jazz is African.
> : If it was American in the generic sense, I would think that there would be
> : contributions made by not only African Americans, but by Asian Americans,
> : Latino Americans, as well as by European Americans.
>
> argument that Jazz is a fusion music that draws from a variety of cultural
> backgrounds. For example, in the section on Jazz history of "The Jazz Book"
> by J.E. Berendt, the author claims that the black musicians who invented
> jazz came from two very distict cultures, i.e. the Southern Blacks and
> the French speaking Creoles who were more influenced by the musical
> culture of France than that of Africa. Jazz certainly draws from some
> African elements via the Blues but other key influences such as ragtime
> are not African in origin at all.
>
> Harry
I'm late getting to this thread so I hope this comment is repetetive or out of
place. However, while I have very little time for Wynton Marsalis most of the
time, his comments on this issue in the Feb. 1986 Ebony article "Why We Must
Preserve Our Jazz Heritage" speaks to these points in a very interesting way.
While certainly seeing jazz as a music "invented" by "negroes" (his words), he
posits it as neither African nor American nor European, but as Black American
music. As he notes of Charlie Parker: "Parker played emlody, harmony, and
rhythm in a new way, and he never sacrificed swinging for what he achieved. His
work was pure and totally informed by Negroid standards of expression. There
is nothing European--or even African--in Charlie Parker's music in the sense
that it can be reduced by comparison to an external source. I say that because
the term Black American means a synthesis and a fresh expression of all
elements anyway" (134). In other words, it is a situational music which grows
out of the condition of former Africans living in an oppression condition in
America--a different perspective than could have existed previously or
elsewhere.
--
J.Sloop
Dept. of Speech Communication
Drake University
Des Moines, IA 50311
Alan Saul
thread is that many musicians worked in the "jazz" idiom in part because
of their skin color. If you take an individual example like Charles
Mingus, who by descent was almost as white as anybody but who was as black
as many by cultural norms, you can see that innovations in jazz were made
by musicians who didn't have much opportunity to contribute in
traditionally white musical idioms. Mingus, and so many others, would have
been important contributors in any idioms in which they were permitted to
participate.
To some extent jazz is closed to white musicians, though of course not to
a great degree. Just as it is easy to tell from contributors to the net
what their biases are in regards to the sorts of musicians they like, we
should remember that artists attain recognition not solely based on their
creations, but because of extraneous things such as race. Many of us
retain prejudices against musicians because of extra-musical factors.
Would certain segments of the "jazz" world accept the establishment of a
white woman in the pantheon next to Bird and Duke? I doubt it. And we know
how receptive the white establishment has been toward black musicians,
despite recent affirmative action efforts by many orchestras. Talk to Don
Byron. Talk to all the people who have fought the academic fight in music
departments. To my mind, rather than some mysterious secret (e.g., perhaps
originating from Africa) that makes African Americans able to create
wondrous jazz, it is a matter of people who are compelled to make music
who are channeled into the jazz tradition and thus become the innovators
in that domain.
People have to express themselves, and the resultant forms simply reflect
society.
As a side point regarding differences between African and African American
cultures, and between various African cultures, in my experience there are
differences and similarities between all cultures, and I wouldn't imagine
there are good metrics for overall cultural similarities. However, African
Americans were nothing like Central Africans, although they often felt a
closeness with Africa that those of us whose ancestors left Africa many
millenia earlier didn't feel at first. And they were slightly less
obviously Europeans, although that is in fact what they were to the
Central Africans. Divisions across African society were at a rather fine
level where I lived, with people relating very closely to their own
cousins but extremely cooly toward others. That is, the same/different
distinction was easily drawn amongst people, and fewer than 1000 people
were generally in the same category. Everybody else could get lost for all
practical purposes. Although I hate to be judgmental about such things,
which have a perfectly rational basis, I would have to say that I'm not
crazy about such divisiveness because of my own cultural biases.
--
Alan Saul
sa...@pitt.edu
Tom Brown
>>Most, though by no means all, of the important innovators in Jazz (at
>>least in its earliest days) were black, this is true. However, to call it
>>African music is a mistake. Jazz arose in the US, and was created by
>>Americans. Though the musicians were of African descent, the culture that
>>gave birth to Jazz was distinctly American. Louis Armstrong is no more an
>>African musician than I am a Russian or Austrian one.
> I didn't make a mistake when I referred to jazz as African music,
>and I attempted to explain what I meant by that in my post. Jazz was
>not created on the Continent, but by a diasporal group--a group that used
>various aspects of African culture to exist and survive in a new environment.
>This cannot be simply erased, and by saying that jazz is "American" music
Jazz evolved from african elements, but also from american marching
band traditions, european classical traditions, and various strains
of 19th century american popular music traditions. Further, most of the
tunes in the jazz player's repertory of standard tunes were composed by
whites. It's absurd to pose jazz as an "african" tradition simply because
most of the important players were american blacks. It is/was a uniquely
american cultural contribution.
Russ Evans
In article <3g4pgj$d...@lastactionhero.rs.itd.umich.edu>, Lester Kenyatta Spence writes:
> Matthew Snyder <hsn...@crab.rutgers.edu> wrote:
> >That was a very nicely written and thought-out article. Good job.
I'm afraid that message seems not to have made it this far. Pity.
So I hope my own comments aren't misplaced.
> 4) What exactly are the contributions of the white artists you
> mention? I don't deny that there have been some white artists with skills
> but I am not familiar with white INNOVATORS in the music.
I know the question wasn't addressed to me, but I would suggest that
it is worth examining the presumptions which lie behind it. It carries
an assumption that innovation is a product of a few individuals. If you
ask which individuals came into the jazz tradition with a radically
modified vision, and subsequently changed it, I can think of only four
candidates -- Bird, Armstrong, Ornette Coleman and Joe Harriott -- and,
to return to the racial theme, all four were black. If that is your sole
test of its origin, then you can say with every confidence that jazz is a
black or African-American music.
But that is only one position of many, and the usefulness of the
viewpoint is open to challenge in at least two very different ways.
Firstly, it denies the role of groups of musicians in the development
of new styles. There are many examples of informal groupings of
musicians, listening to each other's music as well as that of their
contemporary paradigm, who have developed substantially new vocabularies.
One can pick out white American groups particularly easily in the early
years of the century -- from the ODJB, through the Beiderbecke/Trumbauer
Chicago groups, to the swing bandleaders who took Fletcher Henderson's
ideas (and sometimes his arrangements!) and remade them their own. I would
suggest that the racial element of this was the outcome of the segregation
of US society rather than anything inherently musical.
If we review my list of innovators in this light, we find that neither
Armstrong nor Parker were at all alone in developing the innovations credited
to them, and that Coleman or Harriott were anything but free of all musical
tradition. At the other extreme are groups which were explicitly formed in
order to extend the musical vocabulary of its participants -- the Birth of
the Cool group and the AACM spring to mind very easily, but there is a long
tradition of experimenting rehearsal bands of all sizes from which to draw
such a conclusion.
Secondly, the thesis of primogenital innovation ignores the social aspects
of music. In fact, there is no shortage of potential innovations in the
musical history -- both practical commercial pressures and the simple
underlying desire to be heard are constantly forcing musicians to try out
new things all the time. The small ones are accepted as part of an
individual musicians style, but if she strays too far from the currently
accepted view (within his "community", however he sees it) of how the music
should be played, she won't get heard. Some musicians see their ideas
through anyhow, and they eventually achieve a place (Tristano, Stan Tracey,
Ornette Coleman for some time). On the other hand, some musicians have such
weight of influence that any innovation they pursue is widely adopted (Davis
and fusion; Gillespie and Cuban rhythms). And racial aspects can enter
through this route too. The early boppers, including Parker, were out
to invent a new black music, deliberately making new rules in part so
that it would be hard for the white swing musicians to break into the
new world. Shepp's and Mingus' attitudes contain a substantial element
of this desire to use their music as a means redevelop black solidarity.
I could expand further on this theme, but I believe I've made the key
points.
Russ
Mark Ladenson
I think that Gunther Sculler's _Early Jazz_ attempts the sort of analysis
that you urge. Do you have any thoughts about how successful he is?
Mark Ladenson (Lade...@pilot.msu.ed
Lester Kenyatta Spence
Tom Brown <tbr...@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu> wrote:
>Jazz evolved from african elements, but also from american marching
>band traditions, european classical traditions, and various strains
>of 19th century american popular music traditions. Further, most of the
>tunes in the jazz player's repertory of standard tunes were composed by
>whites. It's absurd to pose jazz as an "african" tradition simply because
>most of the important players were american blacks. It is/was a uniquely
inclined to disagree with you here, at least not strongly. But this can
be boiled down to a simple research question: How strong were each of these
elements? I am particularly interested in the European thread. I am
familiar with various instances of artists studying the European tradition,
but I've never heard European chamber music swing (or be improvisational
and fluid).
The second question I have concerns the standard tunes you mentioned.
Although I would like to here more information about the exact tunes you are
referring to, I am more interested in knowing where the artists got them
from. This doesn't sound right as I write it, so let me explain further.
What influences created these standard tunes. As I said before, jazz is
not a melanin thing, so the fact that white people created these tunes
are not important IN AND OF ITSELF.
As for the "american contribution," I think we are simply going to
have to agree to disagree. However I do think that it's interesting that you
posit that jazz is a unique "american" contribution, without acknowledging
the cultural roots of the group of people who created it USING those roots.
The American blacks that you refer to are AFRICAN Americans, and although
there have been disputes about that particular term, I use it as a
cultural referent that again, cannot be ignored. To do so may not
necessarily be absurd, but it could reflect a lack of historical understanding.
peace
lks
Lester Kenyatta Spence
AFC PeterS <afcp...@aol.com> wrote:
Here Peter made a statement about slavery, africa, and jazz.
Specifically he stated that saying that jazz and blues came over on
slave ships doesn't mean it originated in Africa. I questioned this.
(I am paraphrasing in order to get this posted.)
>Precisely because the music originated in the US, and *not* in Africa.
>There were many more Africans in Africa at the time Jazz was born than
>there were in the US, and African cultures were decidedly more purely
>African in Africa, don't you think? Yet Jazz did not originate there, but
>in the US. Jazz arrived in Africa as an export from America. Why do you
>think that is?
Simply because the music originated in the US doesn't mean
anything. Culture is not bounded by space, nor is it bounded by
artificial nation states. I also don't understand what counting the
number of Africans in Africa has to do with jazz. Your conception of
"purity" needs some explaining (I mean that I would like to know more
about it). I mentioned in my FIRST post why I thought that jazz originated
in America, and because I need to make sure my response is longer than
your original post, I will explain it again. Jazz is the creation of
a diasporal group connected to the original Continent by culture. Because
culture is influenced (but again, not bounded) by environment, the
diasporal culture will not necessarily be the same as the original.
In this case especially, because the enslaved Africans came from many different
societies and places, the diasporal culture is something new, and
original. BUT still African. I will touch on this later on.
>Look at some of the other popular music from America: the songs of Tin Pan
>Alley and the musical theater. These songs were written predominantly by
>Americans of European descent, many of whom were more recent immigrants
>than the creators of Jazz. Should we then call these songs European,
>rather than American? Are Irving Berlin, Rodgers & Hart and the Gershwins
>European writers? For that matter, are Charles Ives, John Cage and Philip
>Glass European composers?
I would call them European American composers, and I would place
their compositions firmly within the European tradition. Now for the sake
of brevity I would call them European composers in the general sense, but
in the specific sense they are European Americans. Just as jazz in the
general sense is an African art form, but in the specific sense an African
American art form.
Here I asked about geography and culture.
>It is not merely a matter of geography, although that certainly counts for
>something in this sort of labeling. It is also a matter of culture. The
>culture of black people in America is *not* the culture of Africa, anymore
>than the culture of whites in America is the culture of Europe. Yes, there
>are aspects of those other cultures that were carried over here, but not
>in their entirety, not intact, not dominant. Instead, all have been
>tributaries feeding the river of American culture.
The first major statement ("the culture of black people in America
is *not* the culture of Africa, anymore than the culture of whites in
America is the culture of Europe.") I disagree with. The culture of
African Americans comes in large part from Africa, and also from inter-
actions within America. The culture of European Americans comes in large part
from Europe, and also from interactions within America. This is not as
much of an "either/or" thing as you make it here. I notice that you use
color as a referent in much the same way I use geography. You may
be interested in the recent work THE INVENTION OF WHITENESS, which talks
about the way that "whiteness" as a cultural referent came into existence
in order to control both European ethnics, and enslaved Africans.
>Russian Jazz is Jazz that originates with Russian musicians, and reflects
>the influence of Russian heritage. For obvious reasons, it is most likely
>to originate from Russia, but it could be created elsewhere. It will still
>have to be based on the African-American art form we celebrate here, or it
>ain't Jazz. The same is true of African Jazz: if the music bears no
>essential relationship to the Jazz of America, it's something other than
>Jazz.
I am not familiar with Russian jazz, but I'll say this. If it
DOES reflect Russian culture and heritage, then it has a relationship
with other Russian musical forms EVEN THOUGH it is based on an African
American art form. I posit the same thing with African music, particularly
West African music.
I think that in our case too we are going to have to agree to
disagree. Even though I disagree with most of what you say, your views
are consistent.
peace
lks
>> You compared yourself to Louis Armstrong earlier in your post.
>> I can understand why you would make this comparison, but I
>> disagree with it strongly. The concept of an "American," was
>> one that allowed many European ethnic groups to assimilate,
>> dropping their "hyphen" in the process. Now I understand that
>> this process wasn't easy for everyone--particularly Eastern
>> Europeans. But it happened nonetheless. This is not true,
>> and it hasn't been true historically for African Americans. If
>> it were, then we probably wouldn't have jazz in the first
>> place, nor the blues nor Rock & Roll as you note.
>
>We might very well not have, at least not as we know it. Assimilation was
>not possible in the same way for African-Americans for the simple, ugly
>reason of racism. Nevertheless, I stand by my comparison. Louis Armstrong
>was an American. He was born in America, grew up in America, spoke
>American English, was educated in American schools, immersed in American
>culture. The same can be said of Bird, Trane, Duke, Miles, and virtually
>every other important figure in the nascence of Jazz. Yes, all were of
>African descent, an indisputable fact. Just as indisputable, however, is
>that all were Americans, not merely by birth, but by culture. Whatever
>traditions, practices and beliefs were retained from their respective
>motherlands, they were not raised as Africans, any more than I was raised
>as a European.
>
>
>Peter Stoller
Jeff Beer
Mark Ladenson <lade...@pilot.msu.edu> wrote:
>Excellent point Jeff, which ought to be self-evident, but apparently is not.
>I think that Gunther Sculler's _Early Jazz_ attempts the sort of analysis
>that you urge. Do you have any thoughts about how successful he is?
>Mark Ladenson (Lade...@pilot.msu.ed
Schuller is what I would like to see more of. I just wish he wasn't the
only game in town. His arguments are well developed and well
researched, but I am not prepared to take everything as the gospel
truth. If only there could be other authors who were just as rigorous,
but perhaps with other viewpoints and information. But who knows if
that is possible.
Jeff
Mophandl
"Jazz and Racial Politics." Due to problems with AOL's posting, I'm sure
I missed some of the responses, so I'll do the best I can with the help of
others' quotes from previous messages.
In a post by Larry Lewicki, someone (I can't tell who) asked the following
questions:
<:> 1) When you say "trad jazz," are you referring to Big Band?
.I think that Mophandl is referring to Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton
.King Oliver up to maybe Count Basie/Benny Goodman big band. I don't know
.for sure but after listening to Live from the Riverwalk on my way to band
.practice - this is my impression.
"Trad jazz" refers in this instance to pre-WWII New-Orleans-inspired
small-band jazz (also known by some as "hot music"). Another way of
saying it is "Un-Bop combo jazz," virtually any small combo playing in a
style not influenced by Bird or Diz. We in the JCJB include pre-war
Basie, some 20's Ellington, and Bob Crosby big bands because they seem to
have been particularly inspired by "hot." Again, this is not a judgement
against Bop but more a musical focus.
<:> 2) Were Armstrong et.al., critiqued for WHAT they played, or
<:>for the acting they had to do when they played? (Miles mentioned this
<:>in his biography--that he loved Armstrong's sound but hated the way he
<:>had to act.)
Yes to both. I remember when I was a student a Berklee, John Laporta gave
a lecture/demo about "hot licks" to avoid when learning to play jazz. His
intent was to encourage originality in our jazz blowing, but the "licks"
he played were full of sliding blue notes and therefore, by his
implication "corny."
Indeed, the origin of "corn" used as a put-down can be traced to "from
the corn fields" or "countrified." In an historical context, I see this
as a growing awareness of urban jazz musicians of the increasing
sophistication of the music and an attempt to distance themselves from
their "poor country relations," those who played boogie-woogie, blues and
jug-band music .
One thing is evident when you compare the playing of Dizzy and
Louis--Louis was one the masters of the sliding blue note (seconds,
thirds, fifths, sixths, and sevenths) while Dizzy hardly ever played them
(although he used half-valve effects and flatted fifths, a very diferent
proposition). To my ear, the uninhibited sliding blue note was one of the
most overtly African musical elements lost when Bop took over.
Ironically, this may have made jazz more accessible to younger white
players and listeners. This is not to deny, however, the huge white
audience for "hot" jazz of previous generations.
You could still hear the "cornball" blue notes in groups such as the
Harlem Hamfats and Louis Jordan's Tympany Five, forerunners of R&B. From
my listening on Saturday nights to the excellent Chicago-based NPR program
"Blues Before Sunrise," I gather that black Gospel singers with their
African "melisma" singing (extensive ornamentation around a single note)
began to make records with secular themes (crossed over) beginning in
about the 50's, paving the way for later developements in Soul music. It
seems to me that these are the musical elements that steered the Black
audience away from jazz and toward other later pop-oriented forms. By the
time Mingus, Roach, Trane, Randy Weston and others began trying to
incorporate overtly African elements into jazz, it was already too late
for a mass market.
(Two notable exceptions were Cannonball Adderly and Horace Silver. By
including R&B elements into their jazz conceptions, they sold a lot of
records. But that's another debate).
<:> 4) What exactly are the contributions of the white artists you
<:>mention? I don't deny that there have been some white artists with
skills
<:>but I am not familiar with white INNOVATORS in the music.
This one has been answered excellently by Froggy and others, but let me
add my $.02:
I gather from my readings in Jazz History that in the period between
1917-23 when hot jazz was first being spread to urban centers around the
country, it mattered more whether you were from New Orleans or not than
what race you were. From the point of view of a bass player, as an
example I cite Steve Brown, a white New Orleans superstar of the bass.
Here's the irony--although he played in the same New Orleans bass style as
Bill Johnson, Pops Foster, Wellman Braud (Ellington's bassist),
segregation certainly constrained him to play in the white bands of
Goldkette and Whiteman.
I think the tendency to look only for the INNOVATORS in jazz is a
misreading of the more gradual, evolutionary process that took place in
the early days driven by a regional style of New Orleans Creole/ Black
musicians. Indeed, King Oliver called his band the "Creole Orchestra" for
a reason. When New Orleanians of all colors found themselves employed in
urban bands full of non-New Orleanians, they acted as little "spark plugs"
in those bands, heating them up, bringing them into the realm of hot jazz
beyond mere dance music.
As far as Benny Goodman, I think his contribution is huge and largely
overlooked by modern critics. Pick up any of the trio-->septet CD's
available now, especially those with Charlie Christian. These records
raise the art of small band/combo jazz to new heights, paving the way for
the combo scene of 52nd St. later.
Alan Saul writes:
>One set of points that doesn't seem to have been expressed yet in this
>thread is that many musicians worked in the "jazz" idiom in part because
>of their skin color.
An important point showing again how very complicated the picture has been
since the beginning. Also--jazz did not gain a wide audience until Benny
Goodman broke through to white youngsters in 1934. Before that, jazz was
not considered a proper music for "polite society." This seems to be the
beginning of the lop-sidedly white audience for jazz that still exists.
To sum up the thread: there's a lot more to it than meets the eye, it
takes a lot of digging into the facts to understand it, it's full of
ironic contradictions, but by gum it's our heritage as Americans!
"Jazz is played from the heart. You can even live by it. Always love
it." --Louis Armstrong
"The blues fills the longing in the hearts of all kinds of people. Now
when you hear a white person sing the blues, he can put as much in it as a
Negro. So long as it's good, it doesn't matter whether it's Negro or
white. The blues and jazz have become a part of *all* American music..."
-- W.C. Handy,
from his autobiography, "The Father of the Blues."
Don Mopsick
Jeff Volkman
On 27 Jan 1995, AFC PeterS wrote:
> Lester Kenyatta Spence writes:
>
> > Jazz was not created on the Continent, but by a diasporal
> > group--a group that used various aspects of African culture to
> > exist and survive in a new environment. This cannot be simply
> > erased...
>
> ...nor is anyone trying to erase it. But the culture that existed amongst
> black Americans was not truly African culture: that culture did not exist
> in Africa, only in the US, although it had roots in various African
> cultures. (To reduce Africa to one culture is ludicrous.) We can call it
> African-American culture, perhaps, which makes much more sense than
> calling it African.
>
> > ...by saying that jazz is "American" music a more serious
> > mistake is being made here. I asked the question about white
> > innovators, because it is related to my contention that jazz is
> > African. If it was American in the generic sense, I would think
> > that there would be contributions made by not only African
> > Americans, but by Asian Americans, Latino Americans, as well
> > as by European Americans. But there don't seem to be (with the
> > excellent exception of Bill Evans, as noted in another post).
>
> Nobody is arguing that the music started within the black community, which
> explains the relative paucity of innovators from other backgrounds,
> although they certainly do exist beyond Evans. How do we define
> "innovative"? Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Scott Lafaro, Steve Lacy, Carla
> Bley, Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Gary Burton, Don Ellis, Gil Evans, Stan
> Getz, Bennie Goodman, Artie Shaw, Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich, Charlie Haden,
> Jim Hall, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, Ralph Towner, Jaco Pastorius,
> Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli, George Russell, Gunther Schuller,
> Josef Zawinul...just a handful off the top of my head: are *none* of these
> musicians innovators? And I haven't even touched on Latin Jazz, an entire
> subgenre that can't seriously be attributed to Africa.
>
> > Just as I cannot name any Afro-Brits, or Asio-French, who have
> > contributed to European Chamber music (this is not to say they
> > don't exist--but that they aren't as prominent as the European
> > artists who created the form).
>
> The form arose in a world with far more powerful barriers of geography,
> and not the modern, melting-pot culture of 20th century America, so the
> comparison isn't as apt as it appears on the surface.
>
>
> Peter Stoller
>
>
To say that Jazz is African, or even "black" music is political
correctness at it's worst. Jazz actually owes as much, if not more, to
it's European roots as it's African roots. Nothing even close to Jazz
existed in Africa.
--Jeff
AFC PeterS
> while I have very little time for Wynton Marsalis most of the
> time, his comments on this issue in the Feb. 1986 Ebony article
> "Why We Must Preserve Our Jazz Heritage" speaks to these points
> in a very interesting way. While certainly seeing jazz as a
> music "invented" by "negroes" (his words), he posits it as
> neither African nor American nor European, but as Black
> American music. As he notes of Charlie Parker: "Parker played
> melody, harmony, and rhythm in a new way, and he never
> sacrificed swinging for what he achieved. His work was pure
> and totally informed by Negroid standards of expression. There
> is nothing European--or even African--in Charlie Parker's music
> in the sense that it can be reduced by comparison to an
> external source. I say that because the term Black American
> means a synthesis and a fresh expression of all elements
> anyway" (134). In other words, it is a situational music which
> grows out of the condition of former Africans living in an
> oppression condition in America--a different perspective than
> could have existed previously or elsewhere.
I agree with this. Parker was aware of, and incorporated, music outside
Jazz, including European music, but the key - as Marasalis says - is, not
"in the sense that it can be reduced by comparison..." Your summation is
especially good.
Peter Stoller
AFC PeterS
> culture." What does this mean?
It means that it is not identical (nor nearly identical) to culture in
Africa.
> I can think of a REALLY absurd example--say Nelson Mandela took
> over America militarily, making North America an extension of
> Africa (in much the same way that it is an extension of Europe
> now). Would this culture immediately become "African?"
In a purely political sense only, perhaps it would be "South African."
Over time, it's more likely that such a political act would have deep
cultural repercussions. What that would mean in terms of nomenclature is
anyone's guess.
> You seem to be making a claim about cultural "purity" so to
> speak, based on geographic location, a claim that I would think
> to be very hard to substantiate, given the way that language
> and religion (as well as music) are not necessarily bounded by
> space.
I spoke in terms of *relative* "purity." The point still stands that
African culture *in Africa* is more African - by *any* definition - than
the culture of black Americans in the 20th century. The point also stands
that Jazz arose in America, not Africa. Do you refute either of those
points?
> Well, to "innovate," means "to begin, to originate." How many
> of the artists above have actually began something that wasn't
> there before?
In the sense that each created something that made them recognizably
different from every musician that preceded them, they all did. The next
question is, what degree of significance did/does this "original" work
have in the history of Jazz? The answer is, some more than others. I'd be
the last person to suggest that Paul Desmond, fine player that he was, is
as important as Charlie Parker! OTOH, I think Scott LaFaro and Jaco
Pastorius are as important as any bassists in the history of Jazz. I leave
it to you to weigh Jim Hall against Charlie Christian.
> Question, when you talk about "Latin jazz," you don't by any
> chance mean "Afro-Cuban," do you? ;)
Not necessarily. :)
> I ask this question only slightly in jest, because the area
> with the largest population of "displaced Africans," so to
> speak, is in South America.
Good point. On the other hand, that which distinguishes this Jazz from the
Jazz of the US can obviously not be specifically African, since the
"African-ness" of the music would be one thing the music has in common. As
I've said, all Jazz owes a debt to African-American roots. I was speaking
specifically of what it is that makes Latin Jazz, "Latin."
> I basically stated that in European Chamber Music, the
> innovators were all European. Actually, even if your statements
> about geography and culture hold true, the comparison is still
> valid, in that with jazz the innovators were (with a few
> exceptions), African American.
Right. How many actually came from Africa - born and/or raised? The answer
is, a statistically insignificant number. Hence my continued assertion
that Jazz is American, not African, music. The *culture* that gave birth
to it existed solely in the US, although *parts* of that culture
originated in Africa.
> As a sidenote, it seems as if we are discussing my own personal
> biases, which I stated up front, rather than the questions I
> asked about assertions, however I have spent a considerable
> amount of time and effort developing them. If we are to
> continue this thread, I would be very interested in seeing
> others lay their "biases" on the table as I have.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Whatever biases I have, I believe are
"laid on the table" in the context of my arguments. If you have specific
questions, feel free to ask 'em. :)
Peter Stoller
AFC PeterS
> this can be boiled down to a simple research question: How
> strong were each of these elements? I am particularly
> interested in the European thread. I am familiar with various
> instances of artists studying the European tradition, but I've
> never heard European chamber music swing (or be improvisational
> and fluid).
No such question is "simple." For what it's worth, improvisation has a
long history as an integral part of European "classical" music. That
improvisation was, of course, quite different from Jazz improvisation, but
it existed (and still exists) nonetheless. No, the music did not "swing"
in the sense that Jazz does, nor does it approach swinging as closely as
does some African folk music. (Some European folk, though...) OTOH, the
harmonic language of most non-modal Jazz owes much more to European music
than to African, particularly Bop and post-Bop.
> The second question I have concerns the standard tunes you
> mentioned. Although I would like to here more information about
> the exact tunes you are referring to, I am more interested in
> knowing where the artists got them from. This doesn't sound
> right as I write it, so let me explain further. What influences
> created these standard tunes? As I said before, jazz is not a
> melanin thing, so the fact that white people created these
> tunes are not important IN AND OF ITSELF.
What influences? We're talking about Tin Pan Alley and the musical
theater. The influences were almost entirely European/European-American at
first. Later, some of these writers were influenced by Jazz and Blues
(with varying degrees of comprehension), but never directly by African
music to my knowledge.
> I do think that it's interesting that you posit that jazz is a
> unique "american" contribution, without acknowledging the
> cultural roots of the group of people who created it USING
> those roots.
Tom started the statement to which you're replying with:
> Jazz evolved from african elements...
How is this a lack of acknowledgment?
The point is, by the time these African Americans created Jazz, African
cultural roots were far from being their *only* cultural roots. Many
generations of black Americans had absorbed cultural elements that came to
American shores from a wide variety of other peoples, and that changed and
combined in ways wholly unique to America.
You're quick to suggest that calling Jazz "American," as opposed to
"African," "...could reflect a lack of historical understanding," but I'll
posit the opposite: to insist on calling it "African music," which is to
say that it has no essential elements and influences not derived from
African culture, *does* reflect a lack of historical understanding. For
that to be true, the music would *have* to have arisen in Africa, or in a
community of displaced Africans isolated and/or unaffected by the
surrounding local culture. This is as far from a true picture of the
origins of Jazz as New Orleans is from Dakar.
Peter Stoller
AFC PeterS
> Here Peter made a statement about slavery, africa, and jazz.
> Specifically he stated that saying that jazz and blues came
> over on slave ships doesn't mean it originated in Africa. I
> questioned this. (I am paraphrasing in order to get this
> posted.)
If that's what you think I said, I'd suggest you try reading more
carefully. What I said (in paraphrase) was that Jazz and Blues did *not*
come over on slave ships. Africans - and with them, African culture(s) -
were brought here. Jazz and Blues did not exist at that time, although the
Blues at least arose prior to the end of the slave trade. Had Jazz and
Blues come off the boat, they *would* be specifically African art forms,
at least at inception.
> > Precisely because the music originated in the US, and *not*
> > in Africa. There were many more Africans in Africa at the
> > time Jazz was born than there were in the US, and African
> > cultures were decidedly more purely African in Africa, don't
> > you think? Yet Jazz did not originate there, but in the US.
> > Jazz arrived in Africa as an export from America. Why do you
> > think that is?
>
> Simply because the music originated in the US doesn't mean
> anything. Culture is not bounded by space, nor is it bounded
> by artificial nation states.
I beg to differ. Culture is strongly bound to geography even now, and was
far more so a century and more ago when the world was not made so small by
cheap, fast international transport and global telecommunications. Quite
simply, the culture that produced Jazz did not exist in Africa. It existed
only in America. That culture existed amongst people of African descent,
but removed from Africa by generations, even centuries. In that time, the
culture of these people changed significantly. They did not live in
America as Africans, largely because they were not allowed to. Neither did
they live here as other Americans did. Instead, they developed into a
unique culture, and it was that culture that produced Jazz.
> I also don't understand what counting the number of Africans
> in Africa has to do with jazz. Your conception of "purity"
> needs some explaining (I mean that I would like to know more
> about it).
The number of Africans in Africa has little to do with Jazz...which has a
lot to do with my point that Jazz is not African music, neither by
geography nor culture. As for cultural "purity," I mean simply that
African culture did not survive intact with the displacement of African
people to America. If anything, Africans brought here by force were
systematically deprived of their own native culture. Although similar
assaults on African culture were suffered on the African continent under
colonialism, that was not nearly so effective in breaking that culture
down as was American slavery. I can't imagine why you would need much
convincing that the culture of African people in Africa was and is more
"African" than the culture of black Americans.
> Jazz is the creation of a diasporal group connected to the
> original Continent by culture. Because culture is influenced
> (but again, not bounded) by environment, the diasporal culture
> will not necessarily be the same as the original. In this case
> especially, because the enslaved Africans came from many
> different societies and places, the diasporal culture is
> something new, and original. BUT still African.
If that culture were merely a slight variation on African culture, I'd be
inclined to agree. But history says otherwise. Instead, the culture of
blacks in America is new and original, and *not* African. Yes, there are
common elements that link the people and culture to Africa, but a link
ain't a chain.
> > Are Irving Berlin, Rodgers & Hart and the Gershwins European
> > writers? For that matter, are Charles Ives, John Cage and
> > Philip Glass European composers?
>
> I would call them European American composers, and I would
> place their compositions firmly within the European tradition.
Then I would say you have a profound misunderstanding, or lack of
knowledge, of the European tradition. Of the lot, the closest would
arguably be Ives, and his work has a strong American character.
> The first major statement ("the culture of black people in
> America is *not* the culture of Africa, any more than the
> culture of whites in America is the culture of Europe.") I
> disagree with. The culture of African Americans comes in
> large part from Africa, and also from interactions within
> America. The culture of European Americans comes in large part
> from Europe, and also from interactions within America.
Well, if we understand that "any more" can also be stated as "any less,"
you actually are agreeing with me in a sense. My point is that, while
these cultures do come in part from the places of origin of our ancestors,
it is only *in part.* We can list similarities all day long, but we can
also clearly see a distinction between culture here and culture there. It
may be related to the other, older culture, but it is not the same.
> I am not familiar with Russian jazz, but I'll say this. If it
> DOES reflect Russian culture and heritage, then it has a
> relationship with other Russian musical forms EVEN THOUGH it is
> based on an African American art form.
No argument.
> I posit the same thing with African music, particularly West
> African music.
No argument there, either, save that I see no special case for West
African music. Anyway, what's your point?
Peter Stoller
Jeff Volkman
On 28 Jan 1995, Jeff Beer wrote:
> Whenever these questions is discussed, it always seems to be discussed on
> issues that have nothing to do with features of the music.
That's right. We have to be aware of whether the topic is the music, or
the social/political history of the music.
> Where are the discussions about specific musical elements and their
> possible roots in Africa or North America?
> For instance, I have a few albums of African "roots" music.
> How similar is it to what Africans where playing 300 years ago?
> However, if you compare it with blues and early jazz, I think you can
> hear some similarities in terms of vocal techniques, and the use of
> vibrato, but are there any traces of the blues scale in the music of
> West Africa? An interesting point was made by Ernest Borneman in "The
> Roots of Jazz", in that "It seems likely that the common sources of
> European and West African music was a simple hemitonic pentatone system.
> Although indigenous variants of the diantonic scale have been developed
> and preserved in African, modern West Africans who are not familiar with
> European music will tend to become uncertain when asked to sing in a
> tempored scale. This becomes particularly obvious when the third and
> seventh degrees of a diatonic scale are approached. The singer almost
> invariable tries to skid around these steps with slides, slurs, or
>
> I would hesitate to say what conclusions could be drawn from that, but
> when you look at this phenomena, and the blues scale, it does seem
> curious. I think you clearly don't have the blues scale existing in
> from Africa in its development.
>
> What about the rhythmic pattern of swing?
> There certainly are 12/8 triplet rhythms in African music, but it is an
> even pattern, and not varying like swing is. Myself, I wonder what
> Notice how much Duke throughout his career had compositions that main of
> Ironically, the one African American genre that strikes me as most
> African is gospel. The counterpoint of the voices seems to have a
> similarity in their mrimba playing.
> I don't have the answers, but these discussions tend to be based on
> ideology, and not musicology. The trouble with this area, the scholarship
> is inadequate. So I take the other discussions about this matter with a
> serious grain of salt.
>
> Jeff
Someone in a very interesting post a couple of weeks ago talked about how
the "bluenote" can be described as the superimposition of one culture's
scalar approach over another. I think this is accurate. American gospel
music draws heavily from European tradition. A lot of Mozart's minor key
piano sonatas sound just like gospel music. A couple of them even accent
the 2 and 4 in an imitation of funeral march drums. One thing that
American gospel music does that Mozart didn't though, is to superimpose
minor (usually dorian) harmonies over dominant and major chords. I
believe that is an African influence. And the rhythmic concepts in
American musics (including Central and South America and the Caribean)
are very African, although not totally African. European music is not
without it's own rhythmic traditions, and many of these are a part of
Jazz as well. And contrary to popular belief, the great classical
composers were awesome improvisers, and the improvisational element of
jazz comes as much from the European tradition of improvisation as the
African call and response tradition. Jazz, and all of the musics of the
Americas are truly melting pot music, and that melting process is alive
and well today.
--Jeff
Carlos May
comments I heard from Danny Barker and Alan Lomax at a symposium on
Jelly Roll Morton at Tulane University back in 1982. I stoped by
the Jazz Archive today, and was pleased to find that the symposium
had been taped and transcribed and I found the comments I thought were
relevent here.
FYI: Alan Lomax is a professional folklorist and music historian of
European-American decent. Danny Barker was a New Orleans jazz
musician (and acomplished amateur folklorist and historian) of
African-American decent.
Excerpt posted with permission of curator, Hogan Jazz Archive,
Tulane University, New Orleans, LA USA
[Alan Lomax had earlier repeatedly refered to Jelly Roll Morton's
music and early New Orleans jazz as "African". A portion of Jelly
Roll Morton's Library of Congress interview is played, where Morton
demonstrates "The Maple Leaf Rag" in "Saint Louis style" and then
in "New Orleans style".]
Lomax:
It's a great big typical European compsitional form, which he treats in a
totally African style.
[...] I think it the constantly amazing thing about Jelly Roll. How he's
handling both the European heritage in an extremely skilled way, and
giving up very little of the African background.
[snip]
Barker:
Now you see, what you have there with Jelly Roll's doing to the Maple
Leaf Rag, that's New Orleans. That's something that came out of New
Orleans. It didn't come out of Africa. I've heard hundreds of records
of, from Africans. African is nothing like no New Orleans music. I have
seen Africans look at American jazz music just the way Japanese look at
it. It's strange to them.
New Orleans music came out of New Orleans. King Oliver, Buddy
Bolden, out of the experience here, the experience that we went through
here. Slavery, much easier sometimes under the French than under the
Dutch, and English in Alabama and Georgia.
You had a little more freedom here. You could shake and wiggle. It was a
24 hour town. Good times. What you hear George Lewis, Bechet, and those
people, Picou, High Society; all this music, King Oliver, Kid Punch,
Buddy Petit, Kid Rena, they don't know nothing about Africa. They have
nothing to do with Africa. It's New Orleans. Just like oil come out of
Oklahoma, jazz come out of New Orleans. [...snip]
Lomax:
You just made a beautiful African speech, Danny.
Barker:
Man. Listen to him.
----------------------------------------------------------
C.M. fro...@neosoft.com
Carlos May
this.
Jeff Volkman (ve...@u.washington.edu) wrote:
: On 27 Jan 1995, AFC PeterS wrote:
: > Lester Kenyatta Spence writes:
: >
: > > Jazz was not created on the Continent, but by a diasporal
: > > group--a group that used various aspects of African culture to
: > > exist and survive in a new environment. This cannot be simply
: > > erased...
I agree with this, but not the later conclusion that this makes jazz
"African". Certainly there was African music brought to the New
World. Some music aparently still purely or nearly purely African
still flourished up to the middle of the last century in contexts
such as the Congo Square dances in New Orleans. However, by the time
the first music later called "jazz" came about, one can at the very
least see that there was some European influence in so far as
instrumentation and use of such forms as marches.
However, the argument that jazz is strictly "African" seems to
me to imply that persons of African decent somehow lost abilities
to create something new when they came to the New World. This seems
contradictory to any emphasis on innovators. By the descriptions of
those around at the time, Buddy Bolden (whether or not we wish much
after the fact to say that he marked the point where "non-jazz" or
"pre-jazz" became "jazz") was doing something new and innovative,
not merely copying traditions. (Perhaps not unlike the way Charlie
Parker created something new decades later.)
The subject of Native American influence on early jazz seems to be
little discussed, but I think should not be sumarily dismissed.
I've heard an Anthropologist say that many of the dance moves still
seen at New Orleans 2nd lines can be traced back to Africa, but
interstingly in New Orleans are often done on the toes and balls of
the foot in the Native American style, rather than flat footed in
the West African tradition. And it's now the start of Carnival
season here in New Orleans, and the "Mardi Gras Indians" are
getting ready to come out... if you've never heard of them, read
up, it's interesting.
I'd say the 3 major music forms developed in late 19th/early 20th
century USA by African Americans were ragtime, jazz, and blues.
I believe I've listed them in order of most to least influenced by
European music. The blues was in it's early forms totaly
foreign to European musical conventions, and was participated
in almost exclusively by Americans of African decent before say
1910 (with the exception of a few New Orleans musicians heavily
influenced by African American musical forms). However even the
blues is, I believe, African-American rather than African; while
some elemnts (such as note-bending) are found in Africa, others
(such as the 12 bar form) were not until brought there by
American music. (So I've read.)
: > ...nor is anyone trying to erase it. But the culture that existed amongst
: > black Americans was not truly African culture: that culture did not exist
: > in Africa, only in the US, although it had roots in various African
: > cultures. (To reduce Africa to one culture is ludicrous.) We can call it
: > African-American culture, perhaps, which makes much more sense than
: > calling it African.
: >
: > > ...by saying that jazz is "American" music a more serious
: > > mistake is being made here. I asked the question about white
: > > innovators, because it is related to my contention that jazz is
: > > African.
I think part of this argument is deeper than a matter of evaluating
history. This goes to complex sociological and anthropological
perceptions of what constutues a "culture", and whether it is in
part or whole the product of "races", traditions, individuals, or
society as a whole.
I'm of the view that there has been sufficient development and
innovation so that there is such a thing as an "American culture"
which is seperate from "European" or "African" cultures.
(I also concider that turn of the century New Orleans had it's
own well-developed subculture.)
I think that saying that jazz is "African" if created by persons of
African decent in the USA is an unwarrented stretch of the term
African. Nor would I concider, for example, the traffic light to be
an "African" invention by the same criterion. Nor the incandescent
lighbulb "European".
I suspect that some of the disagreement here may be a matter of
definition.
: > > If it was American in the generic sense, I would think
: > > that there would be contributions made by not only African
: > > Americans, but by Asian Americans, Latino Americans, as well
: > > as by European Americans. But there don't seem to be (with the
: > > excellent exception of Bill Evans, as noted in another post).
: >
I'd say that there was.
In an earlier post I compared Jazz with Opera or Rennessance painting
as a great art form. In both of those last 2 forms one can say that
the Italians played the crucial and predominant role. However if
one were to argue that Opera or Rennessance painting is an exclusively
Italian thing, or that non-Italians made no important contributions
to these artforms would be a distortion. Even back before rapid
transit or mass communications, great artistic traditions tended
to spread their influence. (I can think of no great artform which
is the exclusive property of any one ethnic group.)
Similarly, I'd say that African-Americans played by far the dominant
role in the creation and development of jazz, but to say that no
non-African-Americans had any importance is a distorting over-
generalization, regardless of whether one conciders the contribution
of non-"Blacks" to jazz to be 50%, 10%, 1%, or 1/10th of 1%.
Jazz was not the exclusive product of "Black" people. Nor, for
example, was 19th century French literature the exclusive product
of "White" people. A little bit of knowledge about the details of
history can smash many overgeneralizations.
[snip]
: >
: > The form arose in a world with far more powerful barriers of geography,
: > and not the modern, melting-pot culture of 20th century America, so the
: > comparison isn't as apt as it appears on the surface.
: >
If one accepts the New Orleans style as the first "jazz" music, it's
not suprising that it had multi-ethnic and multi-cultural participation
early on. Unlike many parts of the USA, "Black" and "White" (and "Latino")
families commonly lived in the same block (eg, Bolden and Sheilds families,
Roppollo and Robichaux families, etc). Unlike today, in those pre-
airconditioning, tv, and computor days, much of life in the long summer
was lived on the front porch or out of doors, where people were very
aware of eachother's music.
: To say that Jazz is African, or even "black" music is political
: correctness at it's worst.
Not at it's worst, by any means, but inaccurate.
: Jazz actually owes as much, if not more, to it's European roots
: as it's African roots.
Debateable. I tend to think not. However this partly depends on
how one defines jazz.
: Nothing even close to Jazz existed in Africa.
Agreed. Nothing even close to Jazz existed in Europe either.
It would be difficult, and perhaps futile, to precicely measure the
amounts of "European" and "African" influence that went into jazz
and the amount of innovation that took place in the USA added to
the mixture to say what if any influence predominates.
I would tend to agree with the viewpoint that jazz is an American
artform in it's origin, and African-Americans were by far the
dominant, but not exclusive, innovators of the form.
C.M. Froggy
fro...@neosoft.com
Glyphix
>The
>culture of black people in America is *not* the culture of Africa,
>anymore
>than the culture of whites in America is the culture of Europe.
I can't let this statement go without comment.
I agree that the culture of black people in America is not the culture of
Africa. However the culture of whites in America IS the culture of Europe
with varying levels of modification. The various philosophical, social,
religious and linguistic characteristics of American culture are firmly
grounded in the culture of Europe and nowhere else. That includes the
culture of black people in America with a few caveats:
1. Whatever Africanisms were retained in the American culture of black
people were passed down to us as oral tradition (they have no documented
roots in any publicly accredited or culturally sanctioned institution -
except the black church which can almost stand as a prototype of oral
tradition). This oral tradition is a strong component of black culture and
serves to intimidate or attract white people who come into contact with
it.
2. African Americans, a group to which I proudly belong, would be hard
pressed to comprehend the basic assumptions of any one of the many African
cultures on the continent, much less the subtile nuances and the
philosophical foundations of same. Unfortunately, the chattel slave system
was very efficient at destroying the underpinnings of African cultures in
the English speaking Americas. That is the essence of the violence of the
system of slavery.
That said, the European culture of America, throughout its history, has
been modified by its contact with African Americans and indeed, with the
various nations of native Americans encountered here and with Asians
imported into this country. For example, the agricultural history of the
U.S. differs greatly from the European traditions and have, in turn,
influenced Europe. The pilgrims would never survived without agricultural
technology borrowed from their hosts (who they thanked by wiping them out
in a bloody massacre). The sugar and rice industry flourished from the
agricultural technology of African slaves, not just from their labor. Many
of our most treasured industrial-age technologies were invented by African
Americans (if necessity is the mother of invention, doesn't it stand to
reason that those doing the backbreaking and, often, dangerous work would
discern solutions that would ease the intensity of their plight?).
These things are fully documented but Americans are not taught this in the
schools and in the media, because "to the victor goes the spoils," even if
the truths and facts must suffer.
Jazz couldn't and didn't develop in either Africa or Europe. It developed
in America. It developed here because of the cross-pollination of the
traditions of all Americans. However these traditions had their focus in
the African American communities because they were products of an oral
tradition that modified European forms to suit their ethos. The exotic
nature of these interpretations of European forms attracted and repelled
the critics and the general public of the day. Present generations cannot
understand how controversial jazz was back in those days. Many music
critics declared jazz to be the death of western civilization as we know
it (they were right, at least, musically).
Heated debates in academic and social circles led to the ghetto-ization of
jazz into houses of ill-repute and clubs where alcohol was served
illegally. That was done because of the nature of the music and the caste
of the people who made it. Those white Americans who were attracted to
jazz, especially musicians who couldn't believe that their European
instruments could SOUND like that, brought jazz into the mainstream, often
by watering it down. Even when they played it raw and real - and there is
no doubt that there were many who could - it was more acceptable when it
was presented by a fellow white person. More recently we had Elvis Presley
and the Beatles do the same thing with rhythm and blues.
Only recently has jazz broken through to the light of day and into venues
where it is "safe" to bring the wife and kids. More white musicians are
coming out of the conservatories with no symphony or chamber music
prospects and have fallen into "jazz" as a way of making a living. The
"jazz" that is being made now is no longer amenable to innovation because
there is no longer a thread of straight ahead tradition that is different
from the popular norm. Now we have competent musicians who have learned
the changes and practiced the requisite arpeggios. If you hear me saying
that all that jazz has to say has been said, you're right (my asbestos
suit is zipped all the way up).
Most of the jazz innovations have been rhythmic in nature and it is safe
to say that all rhythmic innovations were made by musicians of African
descent. That includes "latin jazz," to answer one of the posters; Mario
Bauza, trumpet sideman for Chick Webb and Cab Calloway, was the father of
Afro-Cuban jazz. Most of the harmonic innovations in jazz were prefigured
in European music but they were given new twists in interpretation by
African American musicians.
Italian Americans and Jewish Americans, many of them immigrants, had an
impact on jazz as well. Interestingly enough, both of these groups had
caste problems in America and still do among a decreasing circle of white
Americans.
The idea here is not to balkanize jazz but to insure that as jazz
continues to be mainstreamed, the victors do not get all of the spoils.
After all, what can be whiter than country music? But guess who was there,
innovating in that genre at its beginnings?
Bright Moments;
George Bailey
Nesly Lacroix
that blacks are the only innovators of this music is ludicrous. ( I am black.)
What about Gil Evans? How about Dave Brubeck? And I can go on and on.
Jazz is undisputedly an African-American invention that is played and developed by people of all races. No one can argue the brazilian influence on Jazz. How about the afro-cuban influence? Now we hear more and more steeldrums. That's the island influence.
Jazz is the only form music I know that unites people of all races and classes. The reason for this is that it can easily fits in any cultural settings. It is simply a free form of music. Therefore I see no need to tie race to Jazz.
Lester Kenyatta Spence
culture not being truly African."
>Africa.
>
I still fail to see what this means. Regardless of whether or
not it exists on the Continent it still is an African culture, a culture
which can be traced back (with minor dificulty) to the Continent.
Here I critiqued what I felt to be Peter's position on culture--
that it was bounded by geography, making African culture on the Continent
"purer."
>I spoke in terms of *relative* "purity." The point still stands that
>African culture *in Africa* is more African - by *any* definition - than
>the culture of black Americans in the 20th century. The point also stands
>that Jazz arose in America, not Africa. Do you refute either of those
>points?
disagreement from ANYONE here (except for choice of name)--African Americans
created the music. Simply because jazz arose in America doesn't mean that
it doesn't have African roots, and that it isn't an African art form in
the way I described it. The best metaphor I can think of is how many
American companies produce products overseas, ship the finished product
here, and still call them "American."
>> I basically stated that in European Chamber Music, the
>> innovators were all European. Actually, even if your statements
>> about geography and culture hold true, the comparison is still
>> valid, in that with jazz the innovators were (with a few
>> exceptions), African American.
>
>Right. How many actually came from Africa - born and/or raised? The answer
>is, a statistically insignificant number. Hence my continued assertion
>that Jazz is American, not African, music. The *culture* that gave birth
>to it existed solely in the US, although *parts* of that culture
>originated in Africa.
The question of how many actually came from Africa is not relevant
to me. Neither is the related question of how many artists actually knew
that they were being influenced by African traditions. Take the case of an
individual with amnesia. Speaks french, acts french. HE says he's Martian.
What would YOU say (besides "he has problems!")?
As for your continued assertion, I would simply ask what part of
the culture that originated jazz came from Africa? We already know that,
even with regional variations considered, the way that many African Americans
talk to each other is based on African linguistical patterns. We also
know that there is a considerable amount of congruency between African
modes of worship and African American modes of worship. Now as another
poster pointed out, there still needs to be work done in the area of \
music, but I haven't heard anything that would dissuade me from my position.
African Americans have a unique culture, not simply because we live in a
different environment than our ancestors, but also because of the duress
we faced during enslavement. HOWEVERthis does not negate our cultural
background. I would make a similar argument for European Americans
(sans the duress part). America has existed as we know it since 1776.
Are we to assume that the influences which occurred before this nation
state began are negligible?
>> As a sidenote, it seems as if we are discussing my own personal
>> biases, which I stated up front, rather than the questions I
>> asked about assertions, however I have spent a considerable
>> amount of time and effort developing them. If we are to
>> continue this thread, I would be very interested in seeing
>> others lay their "biases" on the table as I have.
>
>I'm not sure what you mean by this. Whatever biases I have, I believe are
>"laid on the table" in the context of my arguments. If you have specific
>questions, feel free to ask 'em. :)
When I posted my biases, I did so before people asked me. This is
so people knew up front my views on the topic, without having to divine them
from my comments (as we often have to do in electronic communication).
Contexts can be easily misconstrued, and as we have so far had a very cordial
debate I wouldn't want to disrupt that by making unwarranted assumptions
about your beliefs.
>
Peter Stoller
lks
Lester Kenyatta Spence
usually I readily acknowledge Marsalis' knowledge about a number of fields
outside of the music (or rather RELATED to the music), there are two major
flaws.
First is the use of the term "negro." Now I understand that there
are cases in which names do not matter, but this is not one of them. The
term "negro," and especially the term "negroid standard," has no meaning
outside of a misinformed American context. They are both based on a
racial classificatory system that has no basis in scientific fact. There
simply IS NO "negroid standard," just as there is no such thing as a
"caucasiod standard." To give you an example of what I am referring to
when I say "misinformed American context," let me relay a story to you
that I once read about.
Two Black men in the South made a wager, during Jim Crow. One
of them bet the other that he could dine in an all-White restaurant.
"You're on," said the other.
The one who made the bet promptly went away and came back, in
African garb, and sporting a fake accent. He was served and he won the
bet. Because he wasn't a Negro, he was an African.
Understand what I mean? The term "Negro," eradicates anything
that "negroes" did, or thought, before slavery--meaning that everything they
have now came from slavery. This is false.
The second problem I have with Marsalis' comments concern his ideas
about comparison. When making a comparison, the decision of whether the
comparison is good or bad comes NOT from the comparison itself, but from
outside observer. Let me give you another example. One individual makes
a comparison between me and my mother. Two observers note the comparison,
one who likes my mother, and another who dislikes her. We can imagine
what their responses would be to the comparison, the one who likes her
thinks it is pleasing, the one who doesn't thinks it's displeasing.
Although I can't get into the head of Marsalis, it appears that he has a
certain negative conception about the comparison that comes not from the
comparison itself, but from something else. I am not my mother. I am
unique and special in my own way. However at the same time, my "genius"
can be traced to my mother, in a way that does not diminish my individual
contributions to the world.
>
>Peter Stoller
lks
Jeff Volkman
Well said, but this sounds a lot like other debate/discussions I've heard
regarding such things as where in Africa a particular rhythm or musical
style really originated, (all of Africa is not one nation, just like
all dark-skinned people are not one race). Or how much
Middle-Eastern influence is there in the Italian, Jewish and "Gypsy"
music, which has always had an influence on European classical music. Or
who were the greater composers; the Italians or the Austrians? Or did Bo
Didley really steal that rhythm from the Cubans? How long before this
degenerates into "My people invented this music. Oh yeah? Well my people
invented that instrument you're playing. Oh yeah? Well my people built
that car you're driving" etc. I'm all for honesty, but what are these
"spoils" you're after. Sounds like fence-building.
--Jeff
Jeff Volkman
On 31 Jan 1995, Carlos May wrote:
[snip]
> of "White" people. A little bit of knowledge about the details of
> history can smash many overgeneralizations.
This is a great point, which often gets overlooked.
[snip]
>
> : To say that Jazz is African, or even "black" music is political
> : correctness at it's worst.
>
> Not at it's worst, by any means, but inaccurate.
No, I think it's at it's worst (if you don't mind). Glad you agree about
the lack of accuracy.
> : Jazz actually owes as much, if not more, to it's European roots
> : as it's African roots.
>
> Debateable. I tend to think not. However this partly depends on
> how one defines jazz.
Correct. If your definition is purely rhythmic, then you I am incorrect.
If not, then the debate lives.
> : Nothing even close to Jazz existed in Africa.
>
> Agreed. Nothing even close to Jazz existed in Europe either.
Again, if you're talking purely rhythmic, then you're correct. If not
then that too is debateable.
> It would be difficult, and perhaps futile, to precicely measure the
> amounts of "European" and "African" influence that went into jazz
Not so difficult. The hardest part is separating the music from the politics.
> and the amount of innovation that took place in the USA added to
> the mixture to say what if any influence predominates.
> I would tend to agree with the viewpoint that jazz is an American
> artform in it's origin, and African-Americans were by far the
> dominant, but not exclusive, innovators of the form.
>
> C.M. Froggy
> fro...@neosoft.com
Agreed (for the most part).
--Jeff
David Fields
>Lester Kenyatta Spence writes:
>
>> Jazz was not created on the Continent, but by a diasporal
>> group--a group that used various aspects of African culture to
>> exist and survive in a new environment. This cannot be simply
>> erased...
>
>black Americans was not truly African culture: that culture did not exist
>in Africa, only in the US, although it had roots in various African
>cultures. (To reduce Africa to one culture is ludicrous.) We can call it
>African-American culture, perhaps, which makes much more sense than
>calling it African.
>
>> ...by saying that jazz is "American" music a more serious
>> mistake is being made here. I asked the question about white
>> innovators, because it is related to my contention that jazz is
>> that there would be contributions made by not only African
>> Americans, but by Asian Americans, Latino Americans, as well
>> as by European Americans. But there don't seem to be (with the
>> excellent exception of Bill Evans, as noted in another post).
>
>explains the relative paucity of innovators from other backgrounds,
>although they certainly do exist beyond Evans. How do we define
>"innovative"? Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Scott Lafaro, Steve Lacy, Carla
>Bley, Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Gary Burton, Don Ellis, Gil Evans, Stan
>Getz, Bennie Goodman, Artie Shaw, Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich, Charlie Haden,
>Jim Hall, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, Ralph Towner, Jaco Pastorius,
>Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli, George Russell, Gunther Schuller,
>Josef Zawinul...just a handful off the top of my head: are *none* of these
>musicians innovators? And I haven't even touched on Latin Jazz, an entire
>subgenre that can't seriously be attributed to Africa.
Last time I checked, George Russell was black. As in African-American. As in
not white :-)
But where are Bix Beiderbecke and Frank Trumbauer? Jack Teagarden?
Jeff Volkman
On 29 Jan 1995, AFC PeterS wrote:
> Lester Kenyatta Spence says:
>
> > this can be boiled down to a simple research question: How
> > strong were each of these elements? I am particularly
> > interested in the European thread. I am familiar with various
> > instances of artists studying the European tradition, but I've
> > never heard European chamber music swing (or be improvisational
> > and fluid).
>
> No such question is "simple." For what it's worth, improvisation has a
> long history as an integral part of European "classical" music. That
> improvisation was, of course, quite different from Jazz improvisation, but
> it existed (and still exists) nonetheless. No, the music did not "swing"
> in the sense that Jazz does, nor does it approach swinging as closely as
> does some African folk music. (Some European folk, though...) OTOH, the
> harmonic language of most non-modal Jazz owes much more to European music
> than to African, particularly Bop and post-Bop.
Check out Debussy, Bartok, Stravinsky, Webern, Shoenberg, and others who
were experimenting with modalism, and all sorts of "post-tonal" ideas
which were later picked up by jazz musicians and incorporated into their
vocabulary. I especially like Debussy, who was doing a lot of things
which later became associated with jazz. He used 4ths voicings and
pentatonic scales in a way that often reminds me of McCoy Tyner. And he
wrote a lot of chord progressions with unresolving dominant chords moving
around and sounding suspiciously like blues. But he didn't swing. Also, a
lot of Bartok sounds surprisingly like be-bop, with tons of chromaticism
and melodic "approach patterns" similar to those used by be-bop soloists.
I don't think he swung either though.
[snip]
> You're quick to suggest that calling Jazz "American," as opposed to
> "African," "...could reflect a lack of historical understanding," but I'll
> posit the opposite: to insist on calling it "African music," which is to
> say that it has no essential elements and influences not derived from
> African culture, *does* reflect a lack of historical understanding. For
> that to be true, the music would *have* to have arisen in Africa, or in a
> community of displaced Africans isolated and/or unaffected by the
> surrounding local culture. This is as far from a true picture of the
> origins of Jazz as New Orleans is from Dakar.
>
>
> Peter Stoller
Calling Jazz" African music" reflects a lack of musical understanding.
--Jeff
Amos Omondi
Jeff Volkman <ve...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>
>To say that Jazz is African, or even "black" music is political
>correctness at it's worst. Jazz actually owes as much, if not more, to
>it's European roots as it's African roots. Nothing even close to Jazz
>existed in Africa.
Now I understand the fellow whose posting here said jazz
started when Europeans tried to play the blues. This is
what I reall admire about this newsgroup: a thorough grasp
of history and cultural knowledge.
AFC PeterS
> Regardless of whether or not it exists on the Continent it
> still is an African culture, a culture which can be traced back
> (with minor dificulty) to the Continent.
No, it can't. We're talking about Jazz, remember? Jazz cannot be traced
back to Africa, because it didn't come from there. It can only be traced
back to America. Yes, some of the roots of Jazz can be traced back to
Africa, but as I and others have pointed out, you can also trace
significant roots back to Europe. What matters is, where did the synthesis
occur? When and where did it all become Jazz? In the US at the turn of the
century, in the context of an *American* culture that was *radically*
different from the culture of Africa, the racial heritage of the creators
notwithstanding.
> Here I critiqued what I felt to be Peter's position on
> culture-- that it was bounded by geography, making African
> culture on the Continent "purer."
Let's be clear about something. The way we're labeling cultures - African,
European, American - these are largely geographical terms. We're relating
cultures to a place of origin. You simply cannot have a group of people
removed from a place by force, and also forcibly divorced from their
culture for generations and simultaneously bombarded by other cultures,
and end up with a culture that can be labeled as being strictly from the
pre-slavery point of origin. It was this history that produced a new
culture, and this new culture that produced Jazz.
> But where did it come from?
America.
> WHO did it come from?
Americans, of African descent.
> Simply because jazz arose in America doesn't mean that it
> doesn't have African roots, and that it isn't an African art
> form in the way I described it.
It does have African roots - and other roots, as I've said. And, yes, it
*does* mean that it is not an African art form as you've decribed it.
> The best metaphor I can think of is how many American companies
> produce products overseas, ship the finished product here, and
> still call them "American."
That is vastly different from the heritage of Jazz. Africans did not come
here with their culture and innovations intact, then produce here because
it was more convenient or economical. To make such a comparison is a
perversion of history.
> Take the case of an individual with amnesia. Speaks french,
> acts french. HE says he's Martian. What would YOU say (besides
> "he has problems!")?
I would say that the people in America who created Jazz did not speak
African nor act African. They spoke European languages (in American
dialects), and acted American. They were not amnesiacs claiming to be
Americans because they "had problems."
> We already know that, even with regional variations considered,
> the way that many African Americans talk to each other is based
> on African linguistical patterns.
I'll take your word. However, whatever these "linguistical patterns" are,
they are also speaking English in America, for the most part. In New
Orleans, you also had Creole, which is largely based on French.
> Now as another poster pointed out, there still needs to be work
> done in the area of music, but I haven't heard anything that
> would dissuade me from my position.
There have been so many posts here that have presented virtually
conclusive evidence and reasoning to the contrary, I can only assume that
*nothing* would convince you.
> African Americans have a unique culture...
Exactly.
> HOWEVER this does not negate our cultural background.
Nobody said it did. It does, however, mean that the culture is a thing
apart from its background. Let's face it, according to the best
anthropological evidence we now have, *all* of us originated in what we
now call Africa. Shall we just call all culture African culture, which
would fit in nicely with your position?
> America has existed as we know it since 1776. Are we to
> assume that the influences which occurred before this nation
> state began are negligible?
America has existed as a nation since then. "As we know it" depends on how
one means that. The culture founded by European immigrants has existed
since colonization began. The culture of the early 20th century was quite
different from that of 1776.
> > I'm not sure what you mean by this. Whatever biases I have, I
> > believe are "laid on the table" in the context of my
> > arguments. If you have specific questions, feel free to ask
> > 'em. :)
>
> When I posted my biases, I did so before people asked me.
> This is so people knew up front my views on the topic, without
> having to divine them from my comments (as we often have to do
> in electronic communication). Contexts can be easily
> misconstrued, and as we have so far had a very cordial debate I
> wouldn't want to disrupt that by making unwarranted
> assumptions about your beliefs.
I don't "post my biases" because:
1. I have no idea what biases would be relevant to the discussion, or to
you.
2. No doubt my own perception of my biases is itself biased, and what I
proclaim as my biases (or lack thereof) may not be entirely accurate.
3. I don't see that my biases are of any interest to r.m.b. as a group.
As I said before, I'm not sure what you mean by this. If you have
questions about my beliefs, ask them. I'm not going to start spouting my
philosophy of life in hope that I'll hit your target. Because a thread on
my biases does not belong here, I'd appreciate it if you addressed any
such questions to me via email. (If we find something relevant to this
discussion, I'll be perfectly happy to post that publicly.)
Peter Stoller
AFC PeterS
> The term "Negro," eradicates anything that "negroes" did, or
> thought, before slavery--meaning that everything they have now
> came from slavery. This is false.
I agree that such an assumption is false. Whether the term "negro" does
what you say is highly debateable. I do not believe Marsalis used it in
such a way. Rather, he was making a racial distinction as apart from a
geographical one.
> I am unique and special in my own way. However at the same
> time, my "genius" can be traced to my mother, in a way that
> does not diminish my individual contributions to the world.
Sure it can. But your accomplishments cannot be credited to your mother.
Just so, the accomplishments of black Americans cannot be credited to
Africa.
Specifically, Jazz is not the product of genetics.
Peter Stoller
AFC PeterS
> > OTOH, the harmonic language of most non-modal Jazz owes much
> > more to European music than to African, particularly Bop and
> > post-Bop.
>
> Check out Debussy, Bartok, Stravinsky, Webern, Shoenberg, and
> others who were experimenting with modalism, and all sorts of
> "post-tonal" ideas which were later picked up by jazz
> musicians and incorporated into their vocabulary.
Oh, absolutely. However, one can also trace modal influences in Jazz back
to African music. Jazz musicians copped from both African and European
sources there (and other cultures as well), hence my "hedge."
> > I'll posit the opposite: to insist on calling it "African
> > music," which is to say that it has no essential elements and
> > influences not derived from African culture, *does* reflect a
> > lack of historical understanding.
>
> Calling Jazz" African music" reflects a lack of musical
> understanding.
Yes, that too. :)
Peter Stoller
Tom Brown
>>> that there would be contributions made by not only African
>>> Americans, but by Asian Americans, Latino Americans, as well
>>> as by European Americans. But there don't seem to be (with the
>>> excellent exception of Bill Evans, as noted in another post).
>>
>>Nobody is arguing that the music started within the black community, which
>>explains the relative paucity of innovators from other backgrounds,
>>although they certainly do exist beyond Evans. How do we define
>>"innovative"? Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Scott Lafaro, Steve Lacy, Carla
>>Bley, Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Gary Burton, Don Ellis, Gil Evans, Stan
>>Getz, Bennie Goodman, Artie Shaw, Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich, Charlie Haden,
>>Jim Hall, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, Ralph Towner, Jaco Pastorius,
>>Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli, George Russell, Gunther Schuller,
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>Josef Zawinul...just a handful off the top of my head: are *none* of these
>>musicians innovators? And I haven't even touched on Latin Jazz, an entire
>>subgenre that can't seriously be attributed to Africa.
>
>Last time I checked, George Russell was black. As in African-American. As in
>not white :-)
Keith Jarrett also looks rather suspiciously well-tanned.
Tom Brown
1) Pentatonic scales and microtonal melismatic approaches are characteristic
of a number of folk traditions. Check out some of the appalachian
music for example. I'm now less certain that these elements
can be separated out as distinctly "african" given the cultural
melting pot in this country.
2) It's not possible to accurately extrapolate historical
music styles from contemporary traditions. Pointing out that
some present-day african singers sound like charlie patton
could only mean that they've heard the same records you have.
3) Consider the case of Brazil, where african slaves met with
europeans in a different cultural context. If jazz happened
as a result of africans appropriating european techniques,
then why didn't it develop in brazil as well? It seems to me
that this kind of control case suggests that there is something
unique to american culture that spawned jazz, and that jazz is
consequently better defined as an american tradition than
an african tradition.
PS: Lester Kenyatta, my newsfeed is not getting your posts
firsthand. Please forward them to me by email if you like.
AFC PeterS
> Keith Jarrett also looks rather suspiciously well-tanned.
Jarrett is, I believe, of Greek extraction, not African.
Peter Stoller
Jeff Volkman
On 1 Feb 1995, Lester Kenyatta Spence wrote:
> In article <3ghosk$l...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
> AFC PeterS <afcp...@aol.com> wrote:
> >> You say that African American culture is not "truly African
> I asked here about Peter's comment about "African American
> culture not being truly African."
> >Africa.
> >
> I still fail to see what this means. Regardless of whether or
> not it exists on the Continent it still is an African culture, a culture
> which can be traced back (with minor dificulty) to the Continent.
> Here I critiqued what I felt to be Peter's position on culture--
> that it was bounded by geography, making African culture on the Continent
> "purer."
> >I spoke in terms of *relative* "purity." The point still stands that
> >African culture *in Africa* is more African - by *any* definition - than
> >the culture of black Americans in the 20th century. The point also stands
> >that Jazz arose in America, not Africa. Do you refute either of those
> >points?
> But where did it come from? WHO did it come from? There is no
> disagreement from ANYONE here (except for choice of name)--African Americans
> created the music. Simply because jazz arose in America doesn't mean that
Well actually Lester, there is a little disagreement. Some of the
disagreement is based on musical definitions, and most of the rest
concerns the huge generalizations you're making. For instance, you mention
"the Continent," but do you know how many countries there are on that
continent? How about how many tribes, languages, cultures, and even races?
Since we all originate from Africa, it makes sense that there are more
individual races of people on the Continent than on the rest of the
planet. So are you presuming to group all of these races, tribes,
cultures, languages and countries into one convenient group for the sake
of your argument? Do these people think of themselves as one group? I
don't think so.
--Jeff
Jeff Volkman
Set us straight Amos.
--Jeff
KHedger
either some caucasian or Native American ( you know, INDIAN =:-) ) blood.
keith
AFC PeterS
Well, if we're gonna take that road, it's worth noting that in the US,
people of mixed extraction who are at least part African-American are
often lumped together as "black." A great many African-Americans also have
some European-American blood.
Peter Stoller
rdou...@hoasys.isd1.tafensw.edu.au
> Whenever these questions is discussed, it always seems to be discussed on
>
> Where are the discussions about specific musical elements and their
> possible roots in Africa or North America?
>
> For instance, I have a few albums of African "roots" music.
> How similar is it to what Africans where playing 300 years ago?
> Jeff
Yes, a fascinating subject, and one obscured by myths and half-truths (not to
mention politics).
One of the things that interests me is why American "African" music (Blues,
Jazz, Gospel) is so different from Caribbean "African" music. Particularly
Reggae which deliberately and explicitly refers back to the African roots of
its exponents. My theory, FWIW, is that these various musical forms are
largely the result of transplanted African cultures assimilating European
musical forms, such as hymns, popular songs and dance music. I would not for
a moment suggest that this is anything that Europeans should be proud of,
but it would be interesting to sort out this tangled web of influences.
You have to start, I suggest, by not talking about "Africans" (or "Europeans"
for that matter) as if they were a single homogeneous culture.
Its ironic, BTW, that early jazz and ragtime music was sometimes advertised,
with the naive but appalling racism of the time, as "Jungle Music".
Roger
=====
Glyphix
>I'm all for honesty, but what are these
>"spoils" you're after. Sounds like fence-building.
Where did I say that I was after some spoils? Please, let's have some
rigor in these discussions. This is a serious and sober discussion and
false attributions reflect poorly on you, Jeff. Read my post and all of
the posts here without the red flags and you will come away with the fact
that you are reading people's opinions about a compelling subject.
Building fences are for those who can enforce decisions as to who gets to
go through the gate. Thanks for attributing that kind of power to me but I
gladly decline.
Let's discuss, not accuse. OK, Jeff?
And try to have a few Bright Moments.
George Bailey
Jeff Volkman
Someone else said American Indian. We really need to settle this most
important point, guys. (smiley face w/smirk).
--Jeff
MRE...@kentvm.kent.edu
1. His father's family has a tradition of a Pennsylvania Dutch
element, but during the early days of Allentown settlement
"two family groups of Jarretts arrived, one French and the other
Scots/Irish. Since the surname was spelled the same...there are no
hard facts to tell us which strain provided the antecedents of
Keith Jarrett" (Keith Jarrett: The Man and His Music).
2. His mother's family name was Kuzma. Irma Jarrett's mother was
Austrian/Hungarian and her father Hungarian.
No mention of Greek, African, or American Indian.
Ken
Barrett Tsuji
sub-genres with significant participation from several racial and
majority groups. To argue whether or not Jazz is African or American
is superfluous. Why not just enjoy the music and leave the analysis
to stuffy academic types who don't even play the music?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Barrett Tsuji
Carleton University
Email address: bts...@chat.carleton.ca
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"I spent three years in highschool and wound up a freshman"
Charlie Parker 1920-1955
Barrett Tsuji
> J. Sloop noted:
> > while I have very little time for Wynton Marsalis most of the
> > time, his comments on this issue in the Feb. 1986 Ebony article
> > "Why We Must Preserve Our Jazz Heritage" speaks to these points
> > in a very interesting way. While certainly seeing jazz as a
> > music "invented" by "negroes" (his words), he posits it as
> > neither African nor American nor European, but as Black
> > American music. As he notes of Charlie Parker: "Parker played
> > melody, harmony, and rhythm in a new way, and he never
> > sacrificed swinging for what he achieved. His work was pure
> > and totally informed by Negroid standards of expression. There
> > is nothing European--or even African--in Charlie Parker's music
> > in the sense that it can be reduced by comparison to an
> > external source. I say that because the term Black American
> > means a synthesis and a fresh expression of all elements
> > anyway" (134). In other words, it is a situational music which
> > grows out of the condition of former Africans living in an
> > oppression condition in America--a different perspective than
> > could have existed previously or elsewhere.
> I agree with this. Parker was aware of, and incorporated, music outside
> Jazz, including European music, but the key - as Marasalis says - is, not
> "in the sense that it can be reduced by comparison..." Your summation is
> especially good.
> Peter Stoller
----------------------------
Wynton is a great musician but a horrible spokesperson for the music.
Jeff Volkman
Sounds like great advise. You might want to reread my post and notice: no
accusations, no red flags, or attributions, false or otherwise. You seem
more interested in verbal judo than serious discussion, so here's where I
jump off. Love and hugs.
--Jeff
Roger Stump
sub-genres with significant participation from several racial and
majority groups. To argue whether or not Jazz is African or American
is superfluous. Why not just enjoy the music and leave the analysis
to stuffy academic types who don't even play the music?
Because jazz is one of the most interesting cultural innovations to
appear in the past century, and most fans of the music are interested
in knowing at least something about where it came from and how it evolved.
--
Roger Stump (rst...@geog.albany.edu)
Matthew Snyder
>> Jarrett is, I believe, of Greek extraction, not African.
>> Peter Stoller
>Someone else said American Indian. We really need to settle this most
>important point, guys. (smiley face w/smirk).
Keith's extraction is Austrian/Hungarian on his mother's side.
I don't know his father's origins, but I've seen photos of him and he's
quite white. (This info from the Jarrett bio by Ian Carr.)
Matt Snyder
hsn...@crab.rutgers.edu
Jeff Volkman
FYI George. Shining on.
--Jeff
On 31 Jan 1995, Glyphix wrote:
[snip]
>
> The idea here is not to balkanize jazz but to insure that as jazz
> continues to be mainstreamed, the victors do not get all of the spoils.
[snip]
>
> Bright Moments;
>
> George Bailey
dale stevens
ohio), his father a black professor there. as george once told me, "they got
together and i dropped out." so he is half/half. --dale in cinci
Ted Thompson
(Matthew Snyder) wrote:
So Keith Jarrett is "white" and Jackie McLean and Willie Smith (alto) are Black?
Just shows you how bizarre American racial classification can get.
Steve Robinson
Let me preface this by saying it doesn't--and shouldn't--matter what race
Keith Jarrett is. I prefer to evaluate him on his music.
Now that I've said that, it surprises the heck out of me to hear anyone
say Keith Jarrett is white. I've seen him in person a number of times,
going back to about 1968, when I heard him with Charles Lloyd, and it
never occurred to me that he was not African-American. In his photo on
page 578 of the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, he looks like a
light-skinned black man (why doesn't anyone ever say "dark-skinned white
man?"). Matt, did I understand your above statement to be that you've
seen photos of Keith's dad and he looked white or were you referring to
Keith himself?
Steve Robinson
Seattle, WA
stev...@u.washington.edu
Ted Thompson
> >>Nobody is arguing that the music started within the black community, which
> >>explains the relative paucity of innovators from other backgrounds,
> >>although they certainly do exist beyond Evans. How do we define
> >>"innovative"? Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Scott Lafaro, Steve Lacy, Carla
> >>Bley, Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Gary Burton, Don Ellis, Gil Evans, Stan
> >>Getz, Bennie Goodman, Artie Shaw, Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich, Charlie Haden,
> >>Jim Hall, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, Ralph Towner, Jaco Pastorius,
> >>Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli, George Russell, Gunther Schuller,
>
> > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >>Josef Zawinul...just a handful off the top of my head: are *none* of these
> >>musicians innovators? And I haven't even touched on Latin Jazz, an entire
> >>subgenre that can't seriously be attributed to Africa.
> >
> >Last time I checked, George Russell was black. As in African-American. As in
> >not white :-)
>
> Keith Jarrett also looks rather suspiciously well-tanned.
I didn't know that Chick Correa was "white". When did that happen?
Daniel Royer
>
>The Rhino anthology states:"....his family origins are French/Irish on
>his father's side,and Hungarian on his mother's.."
But then, this is compatible with being black!
>-
> LOUIS J PERILLO XXK...@prodigy.com
>
>
Matthew Snyder
>man?"). Matt, did I understand your above statement to be that you've
>seen photos of Keith's dad and he looked white or were you referring to
>Keith himself?
In the Carr book, there is a picture of Keith's dad, and he is
definitely of European descent.
Matt Snyder
hsn...@crab.rutgers.edu
Louis j Perillo
his father's side,and Hungarian on his mother's.."
AFC PeterS
> Let me preface this by saying it doesn't--and shouldn't--matter
> what race Keith Jarrett is. I prefer to evaluate him on his
> music.
Oh, I agree, as I think virtually everyone here does. It came up because I
listed Keith Jarrett in a list of musicians to counter an argument that
the only non-African-American jazz innovator was Bill Evans. By the same
token, it doesn't really matter that George Russell is half
African-American, except that I shouldn't have put him on that particular
list. Mea culpa.
Peter Stoller
Walter Davis
XXK...@prodigy.com (Louis j Perillo) writes:
>
>The Rhino anthology states:"....his family origins are French/Irish on
>his father's side,and Hungarian on his mother's.."
>-
there's a Rhino Jarrett anthology? He recorded for Atlantic?
I'll admit I usually skip right past the Jarrett section, but
I'm surprised I never noticed this.
-walt
Walter Davis WALTER...@UNC.EDU
Department of Sociology and ph: (919) 962-1019
Health Data Analyst at the fax: (919) 962-IRSS
Institute for Research in Social Science
UNC - Chapel Hill
AFC PeterS
> > > > Nobody is arguing that the music started within the black
> > > > community, which explains the relative paucity of innovators
> > > > from other backgrounds, although they certainly do exist
> > > > beyond Evans. How do we define "innovative"? Keith Jarrett,
> > > > Chick Corea, Scott Lafaro, Steve Lacy, Carla Bley, Dave
> > > > Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Gary Burton, Don Ellis, Gil Evans,
> > > > Stan Getz, Bennie Goodman, Artie Shaw, Gene Krupa, Buddy
> > > > Rich, Charlie Haden, Jim Hall, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny,
> > > > Ralph Towner, Jaco Pastorius, Django Reinhardt, Stephane
> > > > Grappelli, George Russell, Gunther Schuller, Josef
> > > > Zawinul...just a handful off the top of my head: are *none*
> > > > of these musicians innovators?
> > >
> > > Last time I checked, George Russell was black. As in
> > > African-American. As in not white :-)
> >
> > Keith Jarrett also looks rather suspiciously well-tanned.
>
> I didn't know that Chick Corea was "white". When did that
> happen?
Are the only people who aren't black, white? Read what I wrote again. All
I claimed was that a case can be made for non-black jazz innovators other
than Bill Evans. George Russell notwithstanding, I trust that I've made my
point...even without remembering to mention Bix Beiderbecke.
Peter Stoller
harr...@vms.cis.pitt.edu
ne...@crunch.eng.hou.compaq.com (Nesly Lacroix) writes:
> This whole discussion of Jazz and Racial Politics is tinged of racism.
I disagree. I have been delighted with the impassioned yet civil tone of this
discussion at a time when most of our culture speaks in insults or ugly
codewords about race. Your opinion is as welcome as anybody elses, but I don't
find racism in the discussion of the origins and/or history of jazz.
It would be racist to claim that, for example, physics is a white science
because most of the innovators have been white. But music is not science, and it
seems to me that a discussion of the roots and development of jazz has to
acknowledge the primacy of the great black innovators, because many of those
innovations arose out of and are a product of african-american culture. I am not
a musicologist or historian so I can't argue with any of the musical/historical
points that have been made in this thread, but it has been fun and educational
to read them.
- James Harrigan, harr...@vms.cis.pitt.edu
AFC PeterS
> there's a Rhino Jarrett anthology? He recorded for Atlantic?
Yep, he did a few records for them. He also appears on the Rhino reissue
of _Gary Burton & Keith Jarrett_, which is coupled with Burton's _Throb_
on one disc.
Peter Stoller
Matthew Snyder
>there's a Rhino Jarrett anthology? He recorded for Atlantic?
>I'll admit I usually skip right past the Jarrett section, but
>I'm surprised I never noticed this.
Yes, mon! He started his career with the Charles Lloyd group, which
recorded 7 albums for Atlantic:
Dream Weaver
Live at Antibes
Forest Flower
In Europe
Live At the Fillmore
In the Soviet Union
Soundtrack
To my knowledge, none are currently in print. Anyone know if this has
changed?
Matt Snyder
hsn...@crab.rutgers.edu
Chandrasekhar Ramakrishnan
<harr...@vms.cis.pitt.edu> wrote:
> It would be racist to claim that, for example, physics is a white science
>because most of the innovators have been white. But music is not science, and it
I'm sorry. I don't quite follow this. What is the difference between
music and science in this case?
-sekhar
Tom Brown
> I asked here about Peter's comment about "African American
>culture not being truly African."
>>
> I still fail to see what this means. Regardless of whether or
>not it exists on the Continent it still is an African culture, a culture
>which can be traced back (with minor dificulty) to the Continent.
With even less difficulty, one can trace african-american culture
back to europe.
> But where did it come from? WHO did it come from? There is no
>disagreement from ANYONE here (except for choice of name)--African Americans
>created the music. Simply because jazz arose in America doesn't mean that
>it doesn't have African roots, and that it isn't an African art form in
>the way I described it. The best metaphor I can think of is how many
>American companies produce products overseas, ship the finished product
>here, and still call them "American."
But jazz WAS produced in america, by american workers, assembled
from parts that came both from africa and europe. This seems to
go over your head. I get the feeling, lester, that you formulated
your theory first, then accept only evidence which supports it.
> The question of how many actually came from Africa is not relevant
>to me. Neither is the related question of how many artists actually knew
>that they were being influenced by African traditions. Take the case of an
>individual with amnesia. Speaks french, acts french. HE says he's Martian.
>What would YOU say (besides "he has problems!")?
What if he spoke martian with an african accent? That would be
a better analogy for the african influence in jazz.
> As for your continued assertion, I would simply ask what part of
>the culture that originated jazz came from Africa? We already know that,
>even with regional variations considered, the way that many African Americans
>talk to each other is based on African linguistical patterns. We also
>know that there is a considerable amount of congruency between African
>modes of worship and African American modes of worship. Now as another
>poster pointed out, there still needs to be work done in the area of \
>music, but I haven't heard anything that would dissuade me from my position.
What is your position, anyway? I mean, I know that you started (and continue)
this thread by insisting that jazz is "african". Others have provided
musicological evidence that jazz is only part african, yet you keep
up the same act without addressing the evidence to the contrary. Why?
What is the point of insisting that jazz is "african" when anyone
with a rudimentary knowledge of musicology knows and can prove
that this is false?
harr...@vms.cis.pitt.edu
uncontroversial to say that physics is interesting and useful mainly for what it
has to say about the physical world. I can't imagine anything particularly
English about Newton's laws of motion, nor anything particularly jewish about
Einstein's laws of relativity. But jazz is different: I feel that a knowledge of
the black experience in America informs my understanding of jazz (even when
played by musicians who are not African Americans), insofar as jazz is a product
of the balck american experience. To take a concrete example: my appreciation of
Mingus' "Live at Antibbes 1960", which I was listening to the other day, is
enhanced by my (meager) understanding of the connections in Mingus' music
between the black church, the jazz avant garde, and Ellington. To take another
Mingus example: I don't think you can really understand his "Fables of Faubus"
without knowing something about Brown vs. Board of Education. The point is,
Mingus' blackness is an integral part of his music in a way that Einstein's
jewishness is not an integral part of his science.
- James Harrigan
harr...@vms.cis.pitt.edu
Larry Lewicki
<:>In article <3ghosk$l...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
<:>AFC PeterS <afcp...@aol.com> wrote:
<:>>> You say that African American culture is not "truly African
<:> I asked here about Peter's comment about "African American
<:>culture not being truly African."
<:>>
<:> I still fail to see what this means. Regardless of whether or
<:>not it exists on the Continent it still is an African culture, a culture
<:>which can be traced back (with minor dificulty) to the Continent.
<:>that it was bounded by geography, making African culture on the Continent
<:>"purer."
<:>>I spoke in terms of *relative* "purity." The point still stands that
<:>>African culture *in Africa* is more African - by *any* definition - than
<:>>the culture of black Americans in the 20th century. The point also stands
<:>>that Jazz arose in America, not Africa. Do you refute either of those
<:>>points?
<:> But where did it come from? WHO did it come from? There is no
<:>disagreement from ANYONE here (except for choice of name)--African Americans
<:>created the music. Simply because jazz arose in America doesn't mean that
<:>it doesn't have African roots, and that it isn't an African art form in
<:>the way I described it. The best metaphor I can think of is how many
<:>American companies produce products overseas, ship the finished product
<:>here, and still call them "American."
<:>>> I basically stated that in European Chamber Music, the
<:>>> innovators were all European. Actually, even if your statements
<:>>> about geography and culture hold true, the comparison is still
<:>>> valid, in that with jazz the innovators were (with a few
<:>>> exceptions), African American.
<:>>
<:>>Right. How many actually came from Africa - born and/or raised? The answer
<:>>is, a statistically insignificant number. Hence my continued assertion
<:>>that Jazz is American, not African, music. The *culture* that gave birth
<:>>to it existed solely in the US, although *parts* of that culture
<:>>originated in Africa.
Hmmm - I'm not sure if my Polish-American side is typing this or
my Hungarian-American side ;-} but I would be interested in
musical examples to support the African roots of early jazz.
For example - if I hear "when the saints go marching in" I
hear distinctly European harmonic cadences maybe rhythmically
you could say that the call and response set ups are African.
I believe that gospel music and delta blues maybe more African
in origin than jazz (whatever that is). I don't hear African
patterns in say Charlie Parker's solos - though I would definitely
re-think this if someone would point out an example.
I think that you hear more "African" roots later in jazz's development
by say McCoy Tyner (Hand in Hand being self conciously set up in this
mode) or maybe Equinox. I believe that these elements were
developed in support of the civil rights movement - showing pride
of origin rather than being a subconscious development based on
heritage.
I suspect that the issue regarding influences of popular music on
jazz get further blurred because the music that most of us listen
to has been subjected to many different levels of cross-influence.
For example - Gershwin's Porgie & Bess was influenced by African-American
music (though other Gershwin tunes were influenced by Jewish traditions
as well). Likewise - Harlold Arlen was influenced by African-American melissmas
to write his more blues-inflected songs. I would have a hard time
making this contribution to Irving Berlin however.
I stand with the majority here that - in my opinion jazz - is an American
melting pot. I don't perceive the African roots until the 60s (maybe
the 50s since Airegin is Nigeria spelled backwards but it doesn't
sound African to me.) The harmonic complexity of Giant Steps seems
to me to be as much of an attempt to acheive 12-tone music (on a macro-scale
view since in the space of one or two bars it is certainly tonal)
since 3 separate scales have the same relative importance and the
the concept of V of V does not apply. This seems more like Shoenberg
than an African concept.
I would be interested to see any other musical (as opposed to
demographic) examples regarding this topic.
L^2
---
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*Larry Lewicki | National Semiconductor |Opinions are mine and in *NO* |
*l...@galaxy.nsc.com | Santa Clara, CA |way represent National Semi. |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chandrasekhar Ramakrishnan
<harr...@vms.cis.pitt.edu> wrote:
>
>ci...@soda.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU (Chandrasekhar Ramakrishnan) writes:
>I am neither a historian nor philosopher of science, but it seems fairly
>uncontroversial to say that physics is interesting and useful mainly for
>what it
>has to say about the physical world. I can't imagine anything particularly
>English about Newton's laws of motion, nor anything particularly jewish about
>Einstein's laws of relativity. But jazz is different: I feel that a knowledge of
Uh, oh! Well, at the risk of straying off topic... I think science
*is* a product of the western world. Not science in the sense of attempting
to come to an understanding of nature, but science in the western sense,
a *mathematized* understanding of nature, is a construct of the western world.
This is an interesting analogy to music and jazz, in particular.
For this is not to say that other peoples can't do scince, for this is
certainly not the case. However, it is pretty indisputable to say that
scince, what we think of science, is western. This is not to say that
other people didn't develop some understanding of the world, for many cultures
such as Chineese, Middle Eastern, and African didn't make amazing scientific
discoveries either. Nor is this to say that the Greeks developed scince
inisolation. The Greeks actually had access to much of the "scientific"
work done in other cultures, surely helping them come up with our modern
concept of scince. But, it is significant to note that science did arise
in Europe. Also, i think science has been deeply influenced by the European
(i guess, predomenantly Greek) view of the world(as opposed to, say, the
Chineese view of the world at this time. However, the Chineese view of
the world allowed them to develop a very advanced theory of Magnitism
with didn't come about in the west until a mileniea or two later(i don't
remember the dates)
What does this have to do with jazz? Well, i think jazz is an American
product, made possible by the meeting of cultures that took place in America.
Most of the pioneering work has been done by African Americans, but this does
not imply that others can also make excellent jazz.
Sorry for the inchoerence -- i'm kinda sleep deprevated...
Oh, and take this with a grain of salt; i'm not a philosopher of science
either!
-sekhar
Glenn Lea
Yes, mon! He started his career with the Charles Lloyd group, which
recorded 7 albums for Atlantic:
Dream Weaver
Live at Antibes
Forest Flower
In Europe
Live At the Fillmore
In the Soviet Union
Soundtrack
To my knowledge, none are currently in print. Anyone know if this has
changed?
A little -- Forest Flower/Soundtrack were released as a single disc
last year.
--
Glenn Lea
Lester Kenyatta Spence
AFC PeterS <afcp...@aol.com> wrote:
>Lester Kenyatta Spence wrote:
>
>> The term "Negro," eradicates anything that "negroes" did, or
>> thought, before slavery--meaning that everything they have now
>> came from slavery. This is false.
>
>I agree that such an assumption is false. Whether the term "negro" does
>what you say is highly debateable. I do not believe Marsalis used it in
>such a way. Rather, he was making a racial distinction as apart from a
>geographical one.
This is the other reason that I had a problem with the use of the
term, as I pointed out in my original response to Marsalis' comments.
Distinctions based on alleged "racial" differences are highly problematic.
Check out this weels NEWSWEEK (or is it TIME I can never tell the difference)
if you are interested in a soundbite story about it.
>> I am unique and special in my own way. However at the same
>> time, my "genius" can be traced to my mother, in a way that
>> does not diminish my individual contributions to the world.
>
>Sure it can. But your accomplishments cannot be credited to your mother.
>Just so, the accomplishments of black Americans cannot be credited to
>Africa.
Why CAN'T my accomplishments be credited to my mother? I think
that I may be misunderstanding you here, but my mother and father definitely
get the credit (and also SOME of the blame) for what I am, because they
raised me. In a similar way, the cultural works of an African people
(in this case African Americans) can be rightly called African.
>Specifically, Jazz is not the product of genetics.
Now this I really take issue with for two major reasons. The
first reason is this. I NEVER STATED THAT JAZZ WAS THE PRODUCT OF
GENETICS. I specifically addressed this in my first post. Given the way
this thread has developed I wouldn't expect people newer to the thread to
remember this (or even to have seen it), but I have gotten more responses
from you about my comments than anyone else. I remember lmost all of
the crucial points to your argument. Why have you forgotten mine? I used
a cultural referent SPECIFICALLY to get away from the type of genetic
argument that leads to statements like "White people can't play jazz."
I stated EXPLICITLY that the music "don't know melanin."
The second reason is this. You contradict your own position when
you accept Wynton's argument (because it agrees with yours) which is based
on genetic/racial distinctions, and then disagree with mine based on the
same distinction. This is especially troubling given that I didn't use this
genetic distinction myself.
lks
>
>Peter Stoller
Lester Kenyatta Spence
AFC PeterS <afcp...@aol.com> wrote:
>Jeff Volkman writes
>
>> > OTOH, the harmonic language of most non-modal Jazz owes much
>> > more to European music than to African, particularly Bop and
>> > post-Bop.
>>
Two questions here. Why is this, and how was this influence
Two questions. Why is this, and how was this transmitted?
To get back to the "politics" side of this post, from what I have read
one of the reasons that bop was developed was because white people
couldn't play it. Not because of genetics, but because of its blistering
speed, and its form. Now I am familiar with the fact that many artists
sought out European influences, after the music was already developed, but
are you saying that these influences were present at bop's inception?
Sidenote, many African Americans couldn't play this music either. In
fact it was THIS form specifically that was referred to as "jungle music."
>Oh, absolutely. However, one can also trace modal influences in Jazz back
>to African music. Jazz musicians copped from both African and European
>sources there (and other cultures as well), hence my "hedge."
>
>> > I'll posit the opposite: to insist on calling it "African
>> > music," which is to say that it has no essential elements and
>> > influences not derived from African culture, *does* reflect a
>> > lack of historical understanding.
>>
>> Calling Jazz" African music" reflects a lack of musical
>> understanding.
>Peter Stoller
I strongly disagree on both points. In the first case I think
that you are again, reading things into my posts that weren't there. I
never stated that there were no influences that came from outside of Africa.
Given the presence of large numbers of non-Africans in America this position
would be absurd. HOWEVER given that the music was in large part created
by, and in large part modified by African Americans, an African people, it
makes perfect sense to call it an African music. In a similar way it
makes sense to call it African (as opposed to American) musically.
lks
Lester Kenyatta Spence
Tom Brown <tbr...@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu> wrote:
>I have several points to add to this thread:
>
They were good points Tom, but I had to delete them in order
to be able to post here.
>3) Consider the case of Brazil, where african slaves met with
>europeans in a different cultural context. If jazz happened
>as a result of africans appropriating european techniques,
>then why didn't it develop in brazil as well? It seems to me
>that this kind of control case suggests that there is something
>unique to american culture that spawned jazz, and that jazz is
>consequently better defined as an american tradition than
>an african tradition.
This is a good point, but I think that you are missing something.
I acknowledged that there were influences received by interaction with
non-African peoples in America, as well as influences received from their
general state of being. These influences were distinctly different
than those in Brazil for obvious reasons. However, this doesn't mean
that jazz is better defined as an American tradition. It means that
although in the general case, jazz is an African art form, in the SPECIFIC
CASE, jazz is an AFRICAN AMERICAN art form. This point is important, and
one that some people seem to forget that I have made.
(Tom I don't actually know HOW to send this to you directly, so I hope
that you get this.)
peace
lks
>PS: Lester Kenyatta, my newsfeed is not getting your posts
>firsthand. Please forward them to me by email if you like.
Lester Kenyatta Spence
>With even less difficulty, one can trace african-american culture
>back to europe.
mine. What is culture? How is it transmitted? How does it change in
different environments? With contacts with different people? Is there
such a thing as a "hybrid" culture?
>But jazz WAS produced in america, by american workers, assembled
>from parts that came both from africa and europe. This seems to
>go over your head. I get the feeling, lester, that you formulated
>your theory first, then accept only evidence which supports it.
No it doesn't go over my head. It simply is neither original
nor insightful. I've noted already that in the specific sense, jazz
is an African American music, and in a general sense, an African music.
In the same way the music by Berlin and others can be called European in
a general sense, and European American in a specific one. I used the
automobile example in order to show that geography isn't as important as
you think it is in production.
>> As for your continued assertion, I would simply ask what part of
>>the culture that originated jazz came from Africa? We already know that,
>>even with regional variations considered, the way that many African Americans
>>talk to each other is based on African linguistical patterns. We also
>>know that there is a considerable amount of congruency between African
>>modes of worship and African American modes of worship. Now as another
>>poster pointed out, there still needs to be work done in the area of \
>>music, but I haven't heard anything that would dissuade me from my position.
>
>What is your position, anyway? I mean, I know that you started (and continue)
>this thread by insisting that jazz is "african". Others have provided
>musicological evidence that jazz is only part african, yet you keep
>up the same act without addressing the evidence to the contrary. Why?
>What is the point of insisting that jazz is "african" when anyone
>with a rudimentary knowledge of musicology knows and can prove
>that this is false?
You of all people should know my position by now, since you have
responded to it more than anyone else. What others are you referring to?
The person who posted the insightful comment by Marsalis? Saying that
jazz is only part African makes absolutely NO sense, given its production
by an African people. I notice that you continue to refer to African
Americans as "Black" Americans. Usually the use of names isn't that important
to me. Sometimes we're Black, sometimes we're African, sometimes we're
trifling.
However in this case I think I see where you are coming from. In
every case I refer to Black people as African, you revert to using Black.
In the first response I made to your post, I stated that to you "it
ain't where you're from, it's where you're at." The use of the term
"Black" American seems to fit with this. However to me where you are at
cannot properly be determined without stating where you are from. This
is why I use the term "African" whenever I get into discussions such as this.
You state that others have produced evidence that jazz is only partlyxD
African. Well these others haven't denied that jazz was produced and
modified in large part by African Americans. You also address my lack
of musicological knowledge. I think that my lack of musicological
knowledge will cause problems for me, as far as using the proper terms and
models to describe what I beleive. However my knowledge of culture,
and history, serves me well here because I am able to assert firmly
that African American people are in the general sense, African. So in
order to affirm my "hypothesis" all I have to do is look at the creators,
and the major innovators.
lks
Carlos May
[snip]
: Hmmm - I'm not sure if my Polish-American side is typing this or
: my Hungarian-American side ;-} but I would be interested in
: musical examples to support the African roots of early jazz.
I've been told that some non-European note pitches (eg "bluenotes")
and certain rhythms (eg the "Charleston") can be traced to
West Africa.
I've also heard that the standard New Orleans jazz "front line"
of lead cornet, trombone, and clarinet, corrispond in voicings to
West African vocal music of lead midrange male voice, deep male
voice, and high female voice.
: For example - if I hear "when the saints go marching in" I
: hear distinctly European harmonic cadences maybe rhythmically
: you could say that the call and response set ups are African.
When you hear it played by who? Bunk? Armstrong? The Marine
Corps Military Band? IMO "jazz" comes more from the interpretation
than from the compositions per say.
: I believe that gospel music and delta blues maybe more African
: in origin than jazz (whatever that is).
I would not object to the sugestion that there may be more pure African
influence in traditional gospel or in delta blues than in most jazz.
: I don't hear African
: patterns in say Charlie Parker's solos - though I would definitely
: re-think this if someone would point out an example.
: I think that you hear more "African" roots later in jazz's development
: by say McCoy Tyner (Hand in Hand being self conciously set up in this
: mode) or maybe Equinox. I believe that these elements were
: developed in support of the civil rights movement - showing pride
: of origin rather than being a subconscious development based on
: heritage.
Let me preface my remarks by saying that while I have done a fair
amount of research on early New Orleans jazz and it's immediate
cultural context, I'm not particularly knowledgeable about African
folk music, early European music, nor post-bop jazz; hence I
am repeating some generalizations I've heard others express and
in some cases frankly lack the detailed knowledge to evaluate.
I would welcome additional information or correction.
While later jazz may have been more conciously culturally
African American, in some ways early jazz seems to reflect
more African traditions, even though early New Orleans jazz was
participated in by more persons of a wider ethnic and "racial"
background than some later jazz developments. For one obvious
example, traditional jazz is a particpatory music to be danced
to. I've been told that just sitting and listening to music is
a European thing, quite contrary and foreign to African traditions.
IMO, it seems that a good argument can be made that "early jazz"
is more "African", but that later jazz is more "African-American.
However I think that they are both distincly American in their
development.
[snip]
fro...@neosoft.com
Oren H. Levine
I heard an interview with Wynton Marsalis on a local public radio
call-in show (WBUR - Boston) a couple of months ago. When the
discussion turned to jazz musicians and race, Marsalis said that one
of the things he liked about the music is that what *really* matters
is not what you look like, but whether you can *play the music*.
As to the music itself, I don't understand this racial counting of
musicians I'm seeing in these posts - who was "black", who was
"white", who was an "innovator". It seems more than obvious to me that
jazz is, at root, an African-American musical invention, to which lots
of musicians of all different hues have contributed. To deny the
African-American roots of jazz is absurd, just as it's absurd to deny
the contributions of non-A.A. musicians.
Just my $.02 cents worth. We know return to our regularly scheduled
newsgroup...
-Oren
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Oren Levine | "Benjamin Franklin: the only
(ole...@meceng.coe.neu.edu) | President of the United States
| who was *never*
Northeastern University | President of the United States"
Boston, MA USA | -FT
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Volkman
The Charleston is a great example of what you're talking about. You can
hear in music and rhythms like the Charleston the mixture of a simple
polka-like European folk music with a simple African rhythm. This is
basically the story of American music (IMO). Change the rhythm slightly
and you've got Dixieland. Change it a little more and you've got Merengue,
Samba, Calypso, etc. I realize I'm vastly oversimplifying things, but if
we can forget racial politics for a minute, the music tells it's own
history.
--Jeff
AFC PeterS
> Why CAN'T my accomplishments be credited to my mother?
Hey, you can credit whoever you want, but if you're going to do that, sign
your posts with your mother's name. As far as I'm concerned, *I* am
writing this post, not my parents, nor my grandparents, let alone the
whole of Austrian/Russian Jewry. Am I influenced by that culture? Am I
influenced by my parents? Sure. But there's a vast difference between
influence and accomplishment.
> > Specifically, Jazz is not the product of genetics.
>
> Now this I really take issue with for two major reasons. The
> first reason is this. I NEVER STATED THAT JAZZ WAS THE PRODUCT
> OF GENETICS.
I realize that. But since it's already been made clear by countless
posters that the culture of black people in America is decidedly different
from culture in Africa, and that Jazz owes a great deal (directly and
indirectly) to European music, the only way left to validate the claim
that Jazz is "African music" is via the genetics of its progenitors. You
and I agree that this ain't so...so what do you have left?
> You contradict your own position when you accept Wynton's
> argument (because it agrees with yours) which is based on
> genetic/racial distinctions...
I think you're misunderstanding Wynton's argument, and specifically his
use of racial distinctions. He did not credit "Negro genes" with giving
birth to jazz. (We already know that Wynton, like you, says jazz is not
dependent on melanin.) Rather, he was using "Negro" as opposed to
"African" to make the point that the culture that gave rise to Jazz was
*not* African, but *was* Black (or "Negro," to use Wynton's term of
choice). We're still talking about culture here, not genetics, but
boundaries of American subcultures are often delineated by genetics and/or
national origin, if for no other reason than racial prejudice.
Peter Stoller
Louis j Perillo
"Foundations"(2 CDs)-R2 71593.
AFC PeterS
> > OTOH, the harmonic language of most non-modal Jazz owes much
> > more to European music than to African, particularly Bop and
> > post-Bop.
>
> Why is this, and how was this influence transmitted?
How do you mean, "why"? Check out what's going on harmonically in bop,
then look at African and European music. It doesn't take a rocket
scientist to see where the basis for chord changes originates. How was it
transmitted? Via the American cultural melting pot.
> ...from what I have read one of the reasons that bop was
> developed was because white people couldn't play it. Not
> because of genetics, but because of its blistering speed, and
> its form.
First, where did you read this? I'd *love* to see that source! Second, if
"white people couldn't play it," why would that be if not genetics? Are
you saying that bop's inventors presumed a *cultural* barrier to playing
with "blistering speed" and in the bop form? (Either way, it's a
profoundly stupid presumption.)
> I am familiar with the fact that many artists sought out
> European influences, after the music was already developed, but
> are you saying that these influences were present at bop's
> inception?
Yes. They were there long before bop's inception, for that matter.
> Sidenote, many African Americans couldn't play this music
> either. In fact it was THIS form specifically that was
> referred to as "jungle music."
Which goes to show how ignorant bop's detractors were.
> I never stated that there were no influences that came from
> outside of Africa. Given the presence of large numbers of
> non-Africans in America this position would be absurd. HOWEVER
> given that the music was in large part created by, and in large
> part modified by African Americans, an African people...
Try, "an American people." If we're talking culturally, rather than
genetically. You're still discounting the systematic assault on native
African culture imposed by slavery. By the time Jazz was born, the culture
of displaced Africans in America was radically different from the
culture(s) of Africa. Traces of African culture were not eradicated, but
what was left could not as a whole be called "African." That's a major
reason for the "back to Africa" cultural movement of the '60s and later;
had the culture of blacks in America been African already, there would
have been no such impetus.
Peter Stoller
AFC PeterS
> > But jazz WAS produced in america, by american workers,
> > assembled from parts that came both from africa and europe.
> > This seems to go over your head.
>
> No it doesn't go over my head. It simply is neither original
> nor insightful.
It wasn't claimed as original; it's *history*, which you seem eager to
ignore.
> I've noted already that in the specific sense, jazz is an
> African American music, and in a general sense, an African
> music.
You've "noted" it, but failed to support it. Jazz is *not* an African
music.
> In the same way the music by Berlin and others can be called
> European in a general sense, and European American in a
> specific one.
Which is also false, as Irving Berlin's music is American and not
European, although it is arguably closer to European music than Jazz (in
general and at its inception) is to African music.
> I used the automobile example in order to show that geography
> isn't as important as you think it is in production.
Yes, but it was a fatally flawed analogy. Jazz wasn't merely
"manufactured" in America - it was invented, designed and developed here,
in the context of a culture that existed nowhere else. You need to show
that not only can the ancestors of jazz's creators be traced to Africa,
but that all the essential musical elements of jazz can be traced to
Africa, or that all the essential cultural elements that led to those
musical developments can be traced to Africa.
> Saying that jazz is only part African makes absolutely NO
> sense, given its production by an African people.
Again, the people who produced jazz were an *American* people. They did
not live in an African culture - along with their freedom, their culture
was stolen from them. Jazz is "part African" in the sense that surviving
cultural remnants from Africa contributed to its nascence...but no more so
(and arguably less so) than did cultural influences absorbed in America
that were derived from European sources...and nobody would call jazz
"European music"!
> I think that my lack of musicological knowledge will cause
> problems for me, as far as using the proper terms and models to
> describe what I beleive. However my knowledge of culture, and
> history, serves me well here because I am able to assert firmly
> that African American people are in the general sense, African.
> So in order to affirm my "hypothesis" all I have to do is look
> at the creators, and the major innovators.
On the contrary, your knowledge of culture and history is serving you very
poorly. Your firm assertions are ill-supported. African American people
are, in *a* general sense (that of extraction), African, but that sense is
not applicable to culture born in America. African Americans have their
*own* culture which is distinct from African culture, and jazz is a part
of that distinct culture. You need much more to affirm your hypothesis
that jazz is "African music" than to point to African American creators
and innovators. So far, you have produced nothing else.
Peter Stoller
Tom Brown
>Mingus' "Live at Antibbes 1960", which I was listening to the other day, is
>enhanced by my (meager) understanding of the connections in Mingus' music
>between the black church, the jazz avant garde, and Ellington. To take another
>Mingus example: I don't think you can really understand his "Fables of Faubus"
>without knowing something about Brown vs. Board of Education. The point is,
>Mingus' blackness is an integral part of his music in a way that Einstein's
>jewishness is not an integral part of his science.
I don't think so. How would you know he was "black" just from
listening to the music? By your logic no one can fully
"understand" beethoven's 6th because the woods in which he
composed it are now a suburban sprawl.
I think this programmatic approach has always been a failure.
Wha tsounds "black" to you might sound like "garter belt" to
me. Music is an expression of emotions, and they simply don't
translate easily into programs.
Rent Romus
As a Jazz musician, and as someone who lives the life and feels the music
the issue of race has nothing to do with Jazz. Yes, the Jazz industry in
some respect has worked against both sides of the issue, but as it stands
the truth of Jazz is simple [to live IT], dig?
As my fellow colleague Chico Freeman once said as we walked on to the
stage. "Color means absolutely nothing once the music has begun."
It's 1994. Jazz was founded mostly by African AMERICANS, but it is now a
world wide music. All people can experience it, and anyone from any
culture can live it, play it, and fully experience Jazz without being
black, white, yellow, red, purple, or green.
Rent Romus
W.Hery
> recorded 7 albums for Atlantic:
Not quite. He was with Art Blakey before Lloyd, and appeared on the
Limelight LP BUTTERCORN LADY before the Lloyd recordings. That Blakey
album also included Chuck Mangione, and is by far the weakest of Bu's
recordings.
It was reissued on an Emarcy CD, but that is also out of print.
Bill Hery
AT&T Bell Labs, Whippany NJ
201-386-2362
w.h...@att.com
Larry Lewicki
<:>
<:>On 9 Feb 1995, Carlos May wrote:
<:>
<:>> Larry Lewicki (l...@galaxy.nsc.com) wrote:
<:>>
<:>> [snip]
<:>>
<:>> : Hmmm - I'm not sure if my Polish-American side is typing this or
<:>> : my Hungarian-American side ;-} but I would be interested in
<:>> : musical examples to support the African roots of early jazz.
<:>>
<:>> I've been told that some non-European note pitches (eg "bluenotes")
<:>> and certain rhythms (eg the "Charleston") can be traced to
<:>> West Africa.
There are many cultures that use pitch bending to achieve
melissma - gypsy violinists (my Hungarian-American side) and
have bluenote affects. Also check out pedal-steel guitars
and lap-steel guitars in C&W music. I am not sure exactly
where the Charleston originated from.
<:>> I've also heard that the standard New Orleans jazz "front line"
<:>> of lead cornet, trombone, and clarinet, corrispond in voicings to
<:>> West African vocal music of lead midrange male voice, deep male
<:>> voice, and high female voice.
I think you could also make the same comparison to any 3 part
voicing - soprano, alto and tenor. I am not a specialist in
the interactions of a Dixie land frontline. I know that there
are certain rules about which instrument states the melody and
how the other lines are created.
<:>>
<:>> : For example - if I hear "when the saints go marching in" I
<:>> : hear distinctly European harmonic cadences maybe rhythmically
<:>> : you could say that the call and response set ups are African.
<:>>
<:>> When you hear it played by who? Bunk? Armstrong? The Marine
<:>> Corps Military Band? IMO "jazz" comes more from the interpretation
<:>> than from the compositions per say.
The Marine band of course (and I use a Marine band harp to
play blues on as well) ;-}. There has been some discussion about
standards and song forms. My point was that the form of the
song has very European cadences - regardless of the interpretation.
Call and response is not necessarily an African thing either - check
out concerto forms (as Gould would say - the soloist versus the
orchestra). Obviously - interpretataion and the way it affects
the rhythm are very important and probably the rhythms are the
least European of all the elements. My point being that jazz was
an amalgam of European harmonies and non-European rhythmic and
melissma-like inflections. This relates back to the first
posting on this thread that jazz is African in origin - I disagree
contending that it has strong eleoments of European common practice.
<:>>
<:>> : I believe that gospel music and delta blues maybe more African
<:>> : in origin than jazz (whatever that is).
<:>>
<:>> I would not object to the sugestion that there may be more pure African
<:>> influence in traditional gospel or in delta blues than in most jazz.
If you read Lomax's book "The Land Where Blues Began" he describes
recording gospel forms that were very close to African forms - much
different from stuff like "The Old Rugged Cross" and it's ilk.
By stating that this stuff was more pure African - that implies jazz
may be less pure African (yes?) and hence more of an African-American
form? This was my point all along.
<:>>
<:>> : I don't hear African
<:>> : patterns in say Charlie Parker's solos - though I would definitely
<:>> : re-think this if someone would point out an example.
<:>>
<:>> : I think that you hear more "African" roots later in jazz's development
<:>> : by say McCoy Tyner (Hand in Hand being self conciously set up in this
<:>> : mode) or maybe Equinox. I believe that these elements were
<:>> : developed in support of the civil rights movement - showing pride
<:>> : of origin rather than being a subconscious development based on
<:>> : heritage.
<:>>
<:>> Let me preface my remarks by saying that while I have done a fair
<:>> amount of research on early New Orleans jazz and it's immediate
<:>> cultural context, I'm not particularly knowledgeable about African
<:>> folk music, early European music, nor post-bop jazz; hence I
<:>> am repeating some generalizations I've heard others express and
<:>> in some cases frankly lack the detailed knowledge to evaluate.
<:>> I would welcome additional information or correction.
I would really recommend listening to Hand in Hand from McCoy's
album "The Greeting" to undestand what I am referring to.
<:>> While later jazz may have been more conciously culturally
<:>> African American, in some ways early jazz seems to reflect
<:>> more African traditions, even though early New Orleans jazz was
<:>> participated in by more persons of a wider ethnic and "racial"
<:>> background than some later jazz developments. For one obvious
<:>> example, traditional jazz is a particpatory music to be danced
<:>> to. I've been told that just sitting and listening to music is
<:>> a European thing, quite contrary and foreign to African traditions.
I agree with this - and I have found Miles Davis' and Herbie Hancock's
attempts at "dance" oriented music to be a return to these original
roots. (I find this ironic in that Wynton Marsalis and Marcus
Robert's criticize "modern" jazz as being separated from it's dance
tradition roots and also Miles and Herbie are criticized for "selling out"
to play dance oriented funk). Traditional jazz was also played for
parades and such. I don't really think of this as being Euro rather
instead of African in origin. I think of it as being entertainment
versus "art" - notice that Bird wanted people to sit and pay attention
to him - not use the music as aural wallpaper. Bird listened to
classical music as well.
<:>> IMO, it seems that a good argument can be made that "early jazz"
<:>> is more "African", but that later jazz is more "African-American.
<:>> However I think that they are both distincly American in their
<:>> development.
If you really feel comfortable with that - that's alright by
me. I enjoy thinking about the cross fertilization between
Gershwin (or Arlen) and jazz players and would love to know
what Cole Porter was thinking about when he wrote "What Is this
Thing Called Love" "Love for Sale" - those really ambiguous
minor/major things that have become jazz standards.
<:>>
<:>> [snip]
<:>> fro...@neosoft.com
<:>
<:>The Charleston is a great example of what you're talking about. You can
<:>hear in music and rhythms like the Charleston the mixture of a simple
<:>polka-like European folk music with a simple African rhythm. This is
<:>basically the story of American music (IMO). Change the rhythm slightly
<:>and you've got Dixieland. Change it a little more and you've got Merengue,
<:>Samba, Calypso, etc. I realize I'm vastly oversimplifying things, but if
<:>we can forget racial politics for a minute, the music tells it's own
<:>history.
<:>
<:>--Jeff
I totally agree - sorry about responding to Carlos' post in
Jeff's post but I don't have the original in my reader at this
time. As Bob Marley would say "Lively up yourself.... (Charleston
style )..
Back to the rat race.
Lester Kenyatta Spence
AFC PeterS <afcp...@aol.com> wrote:
>Lester Kenyatta Spence writes:
>> I've noted already that in the specific sense, jazz is an
>> African American music, and in a general sense, an African
>> music.
>> Saying that jazz is only part African makes absolutely NO
>> sense, given its production by an African people.
>
>Again, the people who produced jazz were an *American* people. They did
>not live in an African culture - along with their freedom, their culture
>was stolen from them. Jazz is "part African" in the sense that surviving
>cultural remnants from Africa contributed to its nascence...but no more so
>(and arguably less so) than did cultural influences absorbed in America
>that were derived from European sources...and nobody would call jazz
>"European music"!
jazz were not Americans even in the sense that you address (as far as
being full citizens). As for culture, it has already been persuasively
proven by scholars from Herskovits to Asante to Gates that much of
what we know as African culture survives in African Americans. The myth
that our culture was stolen from us was one perpetuated by people without
the methodological skills to properly study their subject AT BEST. At worst
it represents something else entirely.
>
>On the contrary, your knowledge of culture and history is serving you very
>poorly. Your firm assertions are ill-supported. African American people
>are, in *a* general sense (that of extraction), African, but that sense is
>not applicable to culture born in America. African Americans have their
>*own* culture which is distinct from African culture, and jazz is a part
>of that distinct culture. You need much more to affirm your hypothesis
>that jazz is "African music" than to point to African American creators
>and innovators. So far, you have produced nothing else.
take it out of context), and look at my statement above. I stated
that jazz is in the general sense an African art form because it was produced
by an African people in the general sense. In the specific sense, jazz is an
African American art form because it was produced by African Americans
using African cultural norms (polyrthythm and improvisation being cheif
make that CHIEF among them, along with certain oral forms translated to
music).
You asked me what was my point earlier, now I ask you the same thing.
I stated that African Americans were African people in a general sense, and
you agree. However you DON'T agree that jazz can be stated to be African
in the same sense. Now this would logically follow if you believed that jazz
was created by a non-African people, or by a lot of different cultural groups,
but you don't seem to be saying this. Using Aristotelian logic, this is my
argument.
p1 African Americans are an African people in the general sense.
p2 African Americans created jazz.
c1 jazz is a creation of an African people.
c2 jazz is an African art form (in the general sense).
You agree with the two important premises, although only partially in the
first premise, but you don't accept the conclusion. There must be something
else going on besides logic.
lks
Lester Kenyatta Spence
AFC PeterS <afcp...@aol.com> wrote:
>Lester Kenyatta Spence writes:
>> European in a general sense, and European American in a
>> specific one.
>
>Which is also false, as Irving Berlin's music is American and not
>European, although it is arguably closer to European music than Jazz (in
>general and at its inception) is to African music.
didn't exist anywhere else besides America? More importantly was this
concept totally removed from his OWN cultural experience?
>Again, the people who produced jazz were an *American* people. They did
>not live in an African culture - along with their freedom, their culture
>was stolen from them. Jazz is "part African" in the sense that surviving
>cultural remnants from Africa contributed to its nascence...but no more so
>(and arguably less so) than did cultural influences absorbed in America
>that were derived from European sources...and nobody would call jazz
>"European music"!
I don't think I've asked this, but it's very important. What
do you mean by "American" people? Technically the people that produced
jazz were not American citizens right, as in having the right to vote, the
right to go where they wanted marry who they wanted, etc. I'm pretty surte
that you mean culturally American. What does this mean? I have been
trying to think of an art form that can be termed "American," as far as
being bounded not only geographically but also culturally and the only
one I can think of is film. Not only was the technology created in the
country, but since it was such a new form of artistic production I don't
see it appropriating ANYTHING culturally from sources outside of America.
Now I do think that there are certain responses to market forces that can
be called "American,"-here I am referring to a certain type of hedonistic
individualism that was produced in the creation of a consumer culture-but
I don't think that jazz (or Berlin) can be bounded within American culture
in the way that film can, and because of this I strongly disagree with
creating a musical dichotomy--jazz can't be African, its American!
lks
harr...@vms.cis.pitt.edu
> In article <3h8eie$c...@usenet.srv.cis.pitt.edu> harr...@vms.cis.pitt.edu writes:
>>Mingus' "Live at Antibbes 1960", which I was listening to the other day, is
>>enhanced by my (meager) understanding of the connections in Mingus' music
>>between the black church, the jazz avant garde, and Ellington. To take another
>>Mingus example: I don't think you can really understand his "Fables of Faubus"
>>without knowing something about Brown vs. Board of Education. The point is,
>>Mingus' blackness is an integral part of his music in a way that Einstein's
>>jewishness is not an integral part of his science.
>
> I don't think so. How would you know he was "black" just from
> listening to the music? By your logic no one can fully
> "understand" beethoven's 6th because the woods in which he
> composed it are now a suburban sprawl.
You're welcome to your opinion, but perhaps I failed to make my point clearly.
You don't have to know anything about Mingus' skin color or who Orville Faubus
was to appreciate Mingus' music, but rather a knowledge of these things can
enhance your understanding and appreciation. When I started out listening to
jazz I didn't know much about its history or its place in American culture;
having learned some, I now understand things about
the music that I didn't before, and I get more out of my listening. I know
virtually nothing about Beethoven or any kind of european classical music, but
I'd be surprised if a knowledge of musical and general history didn't
contribute to its appreciation. The same goes for painting, baseball, etc.
- James Harrigan
harr...@vms.cis.pitt.edu
Marc Sabatella
question being discussed. I know what the music means to me, and how I relate
it to various cultural influences I am familiar with, and that is enough for
me. However, I could not let the following misinformation go unchallenged:
Lester Kenyatta Spence wrote:
> To get back to the "politics" side of this post, from what I have read
> one of the reasons that bop was developed was because white people
> couldn't play it.
This is nonsense.
> Not because of genetics, but because of its blistering
> speed, and its form.
This is insulting. If it isn't genetics, then what is it that would prevent
white people from being able to play blisteringly fast, or "bebop form"
(nothing special there, really - AABA heads, head-solos-head forms)? These
amorphous African cultural influences? I can absolutely guarantee that these
precise traits (eighth note runs, AABA and head-solos-head forms) are much more
European than African in origin. For proof, listen to some African music, and
tell me how many eighth note runs you find; now do the same for Mozart. Then
show me where African music uses either AABA or head-solos-head forms; you
won't find it. You will, however, find this to be the norm in the first
movement of virtually every symphony and sonata written during the 18th and
19th centuries in Europe (in fact, another name for this form is "sonata
allegro"). You'll have to come up with something else to attribute to African
origins; these particulars aspects bebop *definitely* do not serve your thesis
well.
> Sidenote, many African Americans couldn't play this music either. In
> fact it was THIS form specifically that was referred to as "jungle music."
False; it was a particular period of Duke Ellington's band - predating bebop -
that was generally given the "jungle music" moniker. Bebop was once referred
to as "Chinese music", though.
--
Marc Sabatella
ma...@fc.hp.com
--
All opinions expressed herein are my personal ones
and do not necessarily reflect those of HP or anyone else.
Walter Davis
Jeff Volkman <ve...@u.washington.edu> writes:
>
>On 10 Feb 1995 harr...@vms.cis.pitt.edu wrote:
>
>> I'd be surprised if a knowledge of musical and general history didn't
>> contribute to its appreciation. The same goes for painting, baseball, etc.
>
>Perhaps Einstein's Jewishness was an integral of his physics theories,
>and a greater understanding of Jewish culture and history might enhance
>your understanding and appreciation of the Theory of Relativity. Or to go a
>step further; perhaps Quantum Physics is a Jewish science (or German).
>
No, it's not a Jewish science, but that doesn't mean that the fact
that Einstein (and others) were Jews played no part in the how, why,
and where of the development of the science. Jewish scientists
and other intellectuals escaping Nazi persecution, coming to
America and Britain, exposing these scientists to their
ideas (and vice versa) had a tremendous impact on the way
that physics developed. If you don't think that Einstein's
religious background influenced the course of physics,
ask yourself where physics would be today if he had never
left Germany.
To believe that social and cultural forces play no part in
the development and perception of science is to ignore even
rudimentary history and sociology of science. I think it's
even more absurd to think that Mingus being black and
experiencing the struggle for civil rights had no effect
on his music. It's one thing to think that science is
independent of its cultural context, it's another to think
that culture is independent of its cultural context.
-walt
Walter Davis WALTER...@UNC.EDU
Department of Sociology and ph: (919) 962-1019
Health Data Analyst at the fax: (919) 962-IRSS
Institute for Research in Social Science
UNC - Chapel Hill
Jeff Volkman
On 10 Feb 1995 harr...@vms.cis.pitt.edu wrote:
Perhaps Einstein's Jewishness was an integral of his physics theories,
and a greater understanding of Jewish culture and history might enhance
your understanding and appreciation of the Theory of Relativity. Or to go a
step further; perhaps Quantum Physics is a Jewish science (or German).
--Jeff
Walter Davis
Most of this is way off the rmb track. I've tried to stay
out of this, but the sociologist in me just had to speak
up.
>Lester Kenyatta Spence said:
>
> No it doesn't go over my head. It simply is neither original
>nor insightful. I've noted already that in the specific sense, jazz
>is an African American music, and in a general sense, an African music.
>In the same way the music by Berlin and others can be called European in
>a general sense, and European American in a specific one. I used the
>automobile example in order to show that geography isn't as important as
>you think it is in production.
Do you accept that there are European elements in jazz as well,
perhaps in equal or greater amounts? If so, isn't jazz a
"European music in the general sense" by your definition?
If not, how do you counter the musicological arguments which
have been posted?
>models to describe what I beleive. However my knowledge of culture,
>and history, serves me well here because I am able to assert firmly
>that African American people are in the general sense, African. So in
It seems to me that your knowledge of culture and history is
a bit skewed. You continually refer to African culture as
if there was a single dominant African culture. As we know,
the enslaved Africans came from numerous different tribes
with really quite different cultures. Upon arrival in
America, they were then "distributed" without regard to
tribal origins. They were brutalized physically, socially
and culturally for hundreds of years. The descendants
of these slaves grew up in America, exposed to American
customs, education, beliefs, and values. African customs
certainly weren't tolerated by white society. Many traditions
and customs did continue, although probably only in bits and
pieces and greatly transformed in response to the surrounding
culture.
Let's take a couple of your examples. African-American
religious services no doubt contain some similar elements
to certain African rituals. To call them African, however,
we would need to conveniently overlook the fact that African-
Americans are overwhelmingly Christian. Consequently,
even if there is some similarity in style, there's
virtually no similarity in content between African-American
religion and pre-colonial African religions. Are the
African elements of the various African-American churches
("Black" Baptists, AME, etc.) greater than the European
elements? I sincerely doubt it.
(as a side note, I know virtually nothing about pre-colonial
African religions and nothing special about African-American
churches. I'm curious as to what the similarities are that
you refer to.)
A few posts ago, you offered the example of an African-American
soldier in Somalia interacting with a local child (I hope I'm
attributing this story correctly - if not, sincere apologies
Lester). The child told the soldier that he (the soldier)
was Somalian, to which the soldier replied that he (the soldier)
was American. You said the soldier missed the point, that he
had much more in common with the Somalian child than he thought.
No doubt he did have more in common than he realized, but
how much "culture" do you think a man raised in the US, whose
ancestors have been raised in the US for over 150 years,
educated in the US, who listens to American music, watches
American TV, is bombarded with images of "white society",
drives a car, eats twinkies, etc. shares with a
Somali child? Especially when East Africans were, to
my knowledge, not part of the slave trade.
No one is trying to argue that there aren't African elements
in jazz. No one is arguing that the majority of the premier
innovators (especially early) were African-Americans. But
it seems to me that calling jazz African makes about as
much sense as calling country music British.
One point which I don't think anyone has made yet is that
the development of jazz is highly dependent on urbanization.
It is in the urban areas, which are by their very nature
diverse, that the various types of African-American and
European musics came into contact. If the various musics
had remained in rural isolation, they would have maintained
much more of their traditional form.
Jeff Volkman
On 11 Feb 1995, Lester Kenyatta Spence wrote:
[snip]
> Now take a look at this statement (I am fairly sure that I didn't
> take it out of context), and look at my statement above. I stated
> that jazz is in the general sense an African art form because it was produced
> by an African people in the general sense. In the specific sense, jazz is an
> African American art form because it was produced by African Americans
> using African cultural norms (polyrthythm and improvisation being cheif
> make that CHIEF among them, along with certain oral forms translated to
> music).
Improvisation is not a distinguishing feature of African music.
> You asked me what was my point earlier, now I ask you the same thing.
> I stated that African Americans were African people in a general sense, and
> you agree. However you DON'T agree that jazz can be stated to be African
> in the same sense. Now this would logically follow if you believed that jazz
> was created by a non-African people, or by a lot of different cultural groups,
> but you don't seem to be saying this. Using Aristotelian logic, this is my
> argument.
> p1 African Americans are an African people in the general sense.
No, they're Americans with African ancestry. And this is in a very
general sense, since Africa is composed of many, many seperate peoples
and cultures.
> p2 African Americans created jazz.
No, but they played a big role in the creation of jazz, no doubt.
> c1 jazz is a creation of an African people.
No, (see above).
> c2 jazz is an African art form (in the general sense).
That statement goes beyond generalization. Revisionist might be a better
description.
> You agree with the two important premises, although only partially in the
> first premise, but you don't accept the conclusion. There must be something
> else going on besides logic.
> lks
>
Have you heard that Ray Charles is God? I can prove it.
--Jeff
AFC PeterS
> The people who produced jazz were not Americans even in the
> sense that you address (as far as being full citizens).
That wasn't the sense I addressed. I referred only to culture.
> As for culture, it has already been persuasively proven by
> scholars from Herskovits to Asante to Gates that much of what
> we know as African culture survives in African Americans.
In what form, and to what extent, are we talking about cultural survival?
I think you're misinterpreting the work of these scholars. Yes, many
aspects of African cultures can be identified in African-American culture,
but hardly in their original form, and definitely not in their original
context. *As a whole*, the culture is not African.
> I stated that jazz is in the general sense an African art form
> because it was produced by an African people in the general
> sense.
Which I declaimed as faulty reasoning.
> In the specific sense, jazz is an African American art form
> because it was produced by African Americans...
Yeah...
> ...using African cultural norms (polyrthythm and improvisation
> being cheif make that CHIEF among them, along with certain oral
> forms translated to music).
They also used European "cultural norms," as has been shown by myself and
numerous other posters here. So let's call jazz "European music," or maybe
"African-European music," right?
> I stated that African Americans were African people in a
> general sense, and you agree. However you DON'T agree that
> jazz can be stated to be African in the same sense.
Let's look at what I said:
> > African American people are, in *a* general sense (that of
> > extraction), African, but that sense is not applicable to
> > culture born in America. African Americans have their *own*
> > culture which is distinct from African culture, and jazz is a
> > part of that distinct culture.
Now, try addressing this statement directly.
> Using Aristotelian logic, this is my argument.
>
> p1 African Americans are an African people in the general sense.
> p2 African Americans created jazz.
> c1 jazz is a creation of an African people.
> c2 jazz is an African art form (in the general sense).
>
> You agree with the two important premises, although only
> partially in the first premise, but you don't accept the
> conclusion. There must be something else going on besides
> logic.
Try this:
African Americans are an African people in the general sense.
African Americans speak English.
English is an African language.
That's how sound your logic is. As Lloyd Bentsen might say, "you're no
Aristotle."
African Americans are African in the (general) sense that their ancestors
can be traced to Africa. They are American in the (general) sense of
nationality. The question is, from whence comes their *culture*?
The culture of the African Americans who created jazz existed nowehere
else in the world but the US - not in Africa, not in Europe, not in Asia,
Australia or the rest of the Americas. Although you might trace some
speech patterns back to Africa, the languages they spoke were European.
They did not (in general) wear African clothes, eat African food, attend
African schools, read African books, study African history, celebrate
African holidays, practice African religions...or listen to African music.
What elements of African culture *did* survive were stirred into the
melting pot of global influences that was distinctly American. Because the
African American community was segregated, they concocted their own brew
in that melting pot, and that brew is African American culture. That
culture produced jazz.
The culture of African Americans in turn-of-the-century New Orleans was
nearly as foreign to Africa as the minuet. (Indeed, I daresay that
European colonists had already introduced the minuet to parts of Africa,
making it more familiar on the continent than jazz.)
To label something "African," you must show that it comes *primarily* from
Africa. You can do this with the lineage of African Americans. You cannot
do it with the culture that produced jazz, let alone jazz itself. That is
why whatever "general sense" allows you to call the people "African" does
not apply to jazz. Jazz's musicological lineage can be traced as much to
Europe as to Africa, but jazz itself can be traced to one place only:
America.
Peter Stoller