I took this class because I liked and enjoyed jazz but did not know much about it. While I am hardly a jazz expert, I know more about jazz than I did three months ago, but more importantly, I am more interested in the history of jazz and inspired to dig deeper, to learn more about jazz.

My scope of jazz was relatively limited, spanning from 1940 to the present. While I enjoyed listening to jazz, I viewed each artist as an entity in himself. I did not make the connection between say Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. I did not make the connection between Miles Davis and John Coltrane. I did not realize that jazz is very much a hierarchical art and the music of today is influenced by the music of the past. I now can hear the James P. Johnson in Thelonious Monk or the Louis Armstrong in Charlie Parker. I have seen that all jazz music is connected in some way; none of it stands alone.

I realized that jazz has a number of influences. Jazz in New Orleans drew influence from Africa, Europe, and the blues. New Orleans jazz influenced Chicago jazz, and Chicago jazz influenced New York jazz. New York also had an endemic style of jazz influenced by ragtime and European classical music. Thelonious Monk was influenced by Egyptian scales and Miles Davis was influenced by Spanish guitar. Cities, people, culture, and art all influenced jazz. The more I learn about jazz, the blurrier the boundaries of jazz become.

Now, I no longer see jazz as a relic of the past; I no longer view jazz as stagnant. After tracing jazz through its history, I can feel the emotion of both a Billie Holiday song and a Bessie Smith song. Jazz was created to speak to the people, and while time progresses, people still have the same emotions, the same problems. With that in mind, I realize that jazz is still progressing and developing. Like it always has, jazz is appealing to the conditions of the time.

For whatever reason, I never realized how much work jazz musicians dedicated to their craft. I thought that one day, Monk sat down in front of a piano or John Coltrane picked up a saxophone and the music came right out. I now realize that these musicians were both supremely talented and supremely studious. These musicians dedicated their entire lives to the creation and expression of jazz, and what I perceived as a free-form music was truly the culmination of their indefatigable spirit.

Jazz is cool. I knew this before I took the class, and I definitely know it now. The class only reinforced this. From here on, I know I will listen to more jazz, read about more jazz, and think about more jazz.

Monk

Thelonious Monk was very much a product of the community that raised him. The community of San Juan Hill was extremely diverse and composed of southern blacks, West Indians, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans. As a result, distinct sub-communities were formed along racial lines, and race was often the stimulus for violence. San Juan Hill was “one of the ‘busiest crime areas in NYC (p.19),’” and residents had to be strong and rely on each other to survive. For example, in order to protect themselves from racial violence, black children walked to school in groups. Monk walked to school in a group, safe from other gangs, and saw firsthand the collective power that comes in numbers. The community of San Juan Hill instilled a strong sense of unity in Monk, and in order to survive the violence of San Juan Hill, Monk learned to rely and depend on others.

The community of San Juan Hill also shaped Monk’s opinions and feelings toward racism. Racism was prevalent in everyday life, manifesting itself at school where racial slurs flowed freely from teachers’ mouths and on the streets where fights between blacks and whites were commonplace. Yet San Juan Hill had another side to it, a positive, empowering side. Throughout San Juan Hill were testaments to black success. Walking through San Juan Hill, Monk could see black businesses and black establishments in which blacks were able to make their livings, independent from whites. Monk had successful black musicians like Freddy Johnson, “Bubber” Miley, and Russell Procope (p.27) as musical role models. Throughout the community, Monk saw examples of black success, and as a result, Thelonious saw racism as more of a troubling annoyance than a hindrance to success. To Monk, race would never prevent him from reaching his goals. To Monk, race “ain’t no drag (p.417).”

In the same light, Thelonious’ arrest in Delaware can be seen as a sort of bump in the road. Monk, Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, and Charlie Rouse were all traveling to a gig in Baltimore, but they stopped in Delaware so Monk could get a drink. The attendant refused to serve him as Jim Crow laws were still prevalent and Monk was eventually arrested for a number of charges, including assault, battery and breach of peace. Monk’s cabaret card was revoked and he was facing jail time for the charges against him. However, the sense of kinship, fostered by San Juan Hill, manifested itself once more in Theophilus Nix and Harry Colomby. Nix was Monk’s defense attorney, who settled Monk’s legal troubles, and Colomby was his manager, that got Monk back on stage. Again, Monk was reminded of the power that comes in numbers. When Monk creates a community around him, he can overcome anything that comes his way.

This sentiment is further expressed in Monk’s music and his treatment of his musicians. Monk had his own musical direction and surround himself with musicians that could think instead of merely follow musical patterns (p.230). He took great pride in his ensembles and encouraged them not to be afraid to try anything so long as they feel it (p. 231). This ideal, initially instilled by his mother, defined the ensembles Monk created. Monk’s mother trusted him to make the right decisions and granted Monk a great degree of freedom. This sort of trust between Monk and his mother is mirrored in Monk’s trust in his ensembles. The unique, dissonant music that came from these ensembles created a unique community of listeners. These listeners were not seeking accessible, catchy melodies, but sought to be challenged by Monk’s art. The collective, unsupervised improvisation (p.231) of Monk’s music demanded more from the listener and created a new artistic following. Together, Monk and his ensembles elevated jazz to a new artistic acceptance. Collectively, Monk and his ensembles created a new musical community that gravitated toward their progressive artistry.

Note: all page references to Thelonious Monk by Robin D.G. Kelley

Race and Swing

By the 1930s, an era referred to as “The Swing Era,” jazz had reached a peak in popularity. Swing music, the newest amalgamation of jazz, was sweeping the nation. It was a fun, lively, danceable style of music with universal appeal, yet beneath this façade of joy and happiness were deep racial tensions, embedded into jazz culture. The newfound acceptance and establishment of jazz as a major entertainment form created a new market for jazz related media. Jazz publications such as Down Beat and Metronome provided a forum for musicians, critics and enthusiasts to voice opinions and ideas on the current state of jazz. And with controversial, racially charged events like The Scottsboro Case of 1931 and the emerging Popular Front movement, racial tensions were brought to the forefront of Americans’ consciousness. A certain tension between race and jazz had always existed, but events of the 1930s reignited the issues and conflicts between race and jazz.

Blacks in the 1930s experienced a new kind of unity with whites. Industrialization required a large labor force, yet working conditions were dismal. White workers would strike, protesting the abysmal conditions and black workers would be brought in to fill the white workers’ positions. However, with the union movement, in which blacks and whites united to fight American corporations, the Popular Front gained traction as a reprieve from the overbearing racial and social discrimination in America. The Popular Front movement and swing music were complementary entities, each becoming relevant in the 1930s. The Popular Front movement, with a community ethos and emphasis on unity, was a response to fascism, and swing music “moved its audience to liberating self-expression…free of hierarchical distinctions (Swing Changes).” The popularity of swing music and the increasingly powerful Popular Front brought race issues to the forefront of the American psyche. As a result, a number of media outlets weighed in on the issue.

One of the prominent voices of The Swing Era was John Hammond, an ardent proponent of jazz and civil rights. Coming from the Vanderbilt family and endowed with an annual trust fund, Hammond seemed an unlikely jazz advocate. A testament to the popularity of swing, Hammond managed and promoted the biggest stars in jazz such as Fletcher Henderson, Benny Goodman and Billie Holiday. Additionally, he was deeply involved in the Popular Front, so much so that he was under investigation by J. Edgar Hoover in the 1940s (Swing Changes). Further, Hammond held a concert that raised funds to defend the nine Scottsboro boys accused of raping two white women. Hammond represented a newly emerging, socially conscious, jazz aficionado.

Such political and musical affiliations put Hammond in a unique position of journalistic power. Writing for Down Beat, Hammond had a means of expression in the “journal that did the most to shape critical and popular opinion on jazz” (Swing Changes). Through Down Beat, Hammond criticized Duke Ellington for “shut[ting] his eyes to the abuses being heaped upon his race and his original class (Down Beat).” Ellington performed nightly at the Cotton Club in which blacks were prohibited. Hammond’s comments were indicative of his perceived role with respect to race and jazz. Ironically, he felt that he had transcended racism and was in a position to criticize Ellington although he believed that and blacks were innately superior jazz musicians (Swing Changes).

Hammond’s polarizing opinions were important, not so much in their veracity, but in their very expression. They forced thought and internalization of the complexity of race. The events of the time brought race to the forefront of the public eye, and critics like Hammond were able to express their opinions through various media outlets. After all, equality can only progress if injustices and inconsistencies are on the minds of the people.

It is interesting to note that there were varying degrees of racial engagement between black and white musicians. Benny Goodman, for example, played in one of the most popular racially integrated bands, yet he was more motivated by “zeal for musical excellence than any desire to be a social crusader (Gioia p. 144).” Whereas Ellington, chided for his racial apathy, confronted this tension in works such as “Black and Tan Fantasy” and “Harlem Speaks.” These examples shine light on the complexity of race, and indicate that not all jazz musicians were united under one front.

A successful jazz musician, like any successful artist, must strike a balance between artistry and appeal. Jazz that is too progressive and artistic will not resonate with the public, but jazz that is too popular and appealing will not satisfy the musician’s artistic desires. And in New York and Chicago, jazz was able to deftly balance artistry and popularity. In both cities, jazz was developed in an environment that had the cultural and financial means to support jazz artistry. However in New York, not Chicago, jazz became a legitimate form of entertainment, an accessible form of entertainment. It, at times, transcended the trappings of race and social class to become the music of America. The unique environment and characteristics of New York in the 1920s made it the jazz city. New York was the jazz city because it was the birthplace of an endemic style of jazz and laid the foundation for jazz’s commercial success and popularity.

The demand and pressures on jazz creation were different in Chicago and Harlem. Chicago was an importer of New Orleans jazz acts with artists coming into a controlled, white-dominated setting. Perhaps the greatest irony in jazz is that New Orleans jazz developed and flourished in Chicago (Gioia, 45). Yet in Harlem, jazz was free to meet the tastes of the people. In 1920, the already established black middle class and migrating southern blacks controlled 70 percent of Harlem’s real estate (Gioia p.94). Much like the blacks in Chicago, this collective living in Harlem was set on self-improvement and self-sufficiency. But despite this apparent unity and directed intellectual movement, there was a constant tension or “ambivalen[ce] about embracing vernacular elements of African-American culture” between Harlem’s established middle class and the southern, country migrants (Gioia, p. 95). The piano, with both a deep European classical tradition and ragtime roots, was able to balance the appeals of the established and migrating blacks.

In Harlem, the piano gave rise to a new style of music. At rent parties, in which small admission fees were charged to cover the month’s rent, jazz became the music of the people, free from the oppression and constraints of the rich and privileged. Rent parties had a distinct dialogue between the performer and audience. The performer knew exactly what appealed to the audience and was able to adjust his styles accordingly. Clasically trained musicians like James P. Johnson, Thomas Wright “Fats” Waller and Art Tatum re-interpreted ragtime to appeal to the emerging culture desperate and hungry for entertainment. The Harlem Stride Piano combined the ragtime traditions, a new rhythm, progressive syncopation and European “method, system and style (Gioia, p.97).” The music at rent parties was accessible to a population of poor African-Americans, while jazz in Chicago was accessible to wealthy African-Americans at a number of South Side clubs. Despite its accessibility, stride piano lacked the refinement to appeal to the middle class. It had not yet distanced itself sufficiently from the southern vernacular. Yet, the stride pianists’ impeccable, dapper style influenced the eventual rise of a new, wider appealing style of music.

Duke Ellington bridged the racial and social divides with a distinct style of New York jazz. Duke, elegant and articulate, was enamored with stride piano as a youth, but in order to develop into a successful musician, he had to ensure he appealed to a wider audience. Without compromising his artistry, Duke created a sound which resonated with the poor and the rich, the white and the black. Duke’s leadership prowess resulted in an eclectic group that “offered little in the way of virtuosity… but boasted an excess of character (Gioia 120).” The “novelty of the new sounds (Gioia p. 120)” spoke to a variety of conditions. Duke utilized the abundant resources New York offered, e.g. recording studios, radio, diversity and wealth in unique ways to reach a black and white audience. Duke was New York jazz because was able to balance the diverse tastes of a diverse city with his innate artistry. Ellington, who is still culturally relevant today, pioneered a transcendent style of music which resonates even today.

I associate jazz with a sense of freedom, freedom in expression and freedom in form. However, after spending some time learning about the origins and roots of jazz, I realized that jazz was not always so freely structured and spontaneous; there was a time when jazz was structured around rigid musical forms and techniques. Some of the earliest jazz ensembles were focused on cohesion and unity as opposed to focusing on soloists and improvisation. Despite the organized nature and sound of early jazz, I still hear and feel a degree of freedom, and I think that this freedom was the most important factor in the emergence of jazz.

In the 18th century, the Atlantic slave trade brought Africans, of widely diverse and unique backgrounds, to New Orleans. In 1764, France ceded New Orleans to Spain, and in 1800, France regained New Orleans. In 1791, the Haitian Revolution brought thousands of white, French refugees. So at this time in New Orleans, there were Spanish, French, African, German, Italian, English, Irish, Scottish, and Caribbean people present. In “perhaps the most seething ethnic melting pot that the nineteenth century world could produce (Gioia, p.9),” the stage was set for a melding of cultural and artistic traditions. This syncretism heavily influenced the emergence and subsequent development of jazz.

A common theme throughout the history of jazz is the emergence of the oppressed. States like Georgia and South Carolina can forbid musical instruments, but the slaves will still sing. States can prohibit slaves from meeting in large groups, yet in New Orleans’ Congo Square the people will congregate. Louis Armstrong can be forced into the background of ensembles, but his horn will still resonate, even today. Intellectual and artistic liberties can only be suppressed for so long.

New Orleans was unique in the amount of personal freedom slaves and residents had. In 1817, the New Orleans City Council established an official site for slave dances, while at the same time South Carolina was banning drums and Georgia was forbidding horns, drums and any loud instrument. In Congo Square, the African principles of song and dance, e.g. attack in sound and motion, call and response, and propulsive rhythm, were exposed to non-African eyes and ears. These forms persist in jazz today, however the transformations of jazz took place gradually.

The freedoms and liberties that New Orleans offered cultivated, in the early 20th century, a culture of celebration and an inseparable relationship to music. New Orleans residents were hearing music in parks, at parties, at fish fries, on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, in restaurants, and at almost every major event (Gioia, p.32). These bands played wide varieties of music, and a notable shift occurred in the gradual “ragging” of traditional works. Musicians and artists exercised their freedom to push the boundaries of jazz.

Jazz could not have emerged in any other city. New Orleans and the musical arts became inseparable due to the freedoms the city allowed. The preexisting cultural diversity and richness of the area combined with the relatively lax slave-related laws led to a meshing of African and European artistic traditions which eventually amalgameted into jazz.