1. What Is Jazz?
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1. What Is Jazz? has been called a musical were trying to get the same gigs. The reflection ofAmerica. ButNew York generally better educated Creoles were ETimes critic Bob Herbert wrote that frequently better musicians and were jazz music is more than that. Said getting most ofthe jobs. Herbert, "It is the embodiment in music The Negroes had been forced to ofthe quintessentially American idea of improvise their lives. They extended free and talented and diverse individuals their improvisation to their music. In an working, playing, frequently fighting, but effort to combat the popularity of the most ofall improvising together to come Downtown Creoles, the Uptown Negroes up with something beautiful and great." tried to set themselves apart from the While jazz is recognized throughout Creoles by playing loudly and using the world as one of very few original techniques and tunes that appealed to American art forms (the comic strip is the base instincts of their listeners and another), its origins and definition remain dancers. They also took the then fuzzy. Almost everybody who has ever Buddy Bolden revolutionary step of playing without written about jazz has attempted to trace written music. its family tree and defme it. They are almost impossible A flamboyant Uptown Negro comet player named tasks and very few writers or musicians agree. Buddy Bolden began taking gigs from the formally Jazz, in its many forms, certainly grew out ofa wide trained Creoles by playing loudly and frequently variety of influences: European church music, African improvising, or as he put it, "playing head music." singing, Negro work songs, Negro church music, ragtime Bolden is said to have bragged that he could not read a music and the blues, but jazz has no clearly-defined, note ofmusic. Bunk Johnson, who played with Bolden, neat starting point It has been called "a gumbo stirred recalled that Bolden' s band ad-libbed most of the time. and seasoned by hundreds of hands." Unfortunately, Johnson said in a 1942 interview, "I liked to read and 1 much of the historical writing of the earliest years of could read good, but Bolden played pretty much by ear jazz is based on little more than folklore, hearsay and and made up his own tunes." speculation. Bolden was known as "King Bolden," apparently giving rise to such later royal jazz appellations as How did jazz begin? "Duke" and "Count." One interesting and plausible piece of speculation Other Uptown musicians began doing what they was written by Pat Carroll of the Jazz Appreciation called "ragging." They were probably subconsciously Society of Syracuse. She theorized that jazz was born drawing on all oftheir previous musical influences and out of social protest - racial protest. were taking the first unsteady steps toward what would In 19th century New Orleans, there were Creoles become a major new art form. who were racially black and mixed, but were culturally Years later, New Orleans musicians Nick LaRocca European, born ofFrench and Spanish ancestors. Many and Jelly Roll Morton (Ferdinand Joseph Lamothe), spoke a form ofthe French language and some sent their born in 1889 and 1890 respectively, both claimed to children to schools in Paris. They took pride in their have originated the new form of music. LaRocca, in European culture and, above all, insisted they were not 1958-59 interviews with the Hogan Jazz Archive at Negroes. Tulane University, said, "The miracle happened in Near the end ofthe 19th century, the French-speaking Chicago in 1916 at the moment when the Original Creoles in New Orleans lived east of Canal Street, in the Dixieland Jazz Band made a fateful rhythmic adjustment area called "Downtown" (down river). On the other side to accommodate a theatrical dance team :.-. a shift from a of Canal Street was the so-called "Uptown" (up river) 2/4 pulse to a 4/4 pulse." He claimed that change district where poor blacks of African descent lived. transformed the feel from ragtime to jazz. Morton, in a In 1884, the Louisiana Legislature voted a 1938 letter to DownBeat magazine, claimed he revolutionary change, to extend the legal segregation of "invented jazz" in 1902 (at the age of 12?) when he Negroes to the Creoles. The Creoles were composed "Jelly Roll Blues." Longtime New Orleans understandably extremely upset and soon found musician and historian Danny Barker, in his bookA Life themselves competing with Negroes for work. in Jazz, said both LaRocca and Morton apparently There was particularly strong competition between believed what they boasted. But it has become fairly Negro and Creole musicians for jobs. The Uptown clear that jazz evolved over a long period of time from Negro musicians and the Downtown Creole musicians a variety of sources and influences. 2 Cleveland Jazz History How do you define "jazz"? Textbook author Gridley attempted to get through this Clevelander Mark Gridley, the author ofthe world's maze of inability by the art form's major practitioners to leading introduction-to-jazz college textbook, devoted articulate a defmition of the music. The Shaker Heights several pages of his book, Jazz Styles, History and resident wrote there are two essential elements: First, Analysis, to a discussion of the problems of defining "Each jazz performance must represent an original and jazz. Essentially, he said it is difficult to defme. spontaneous creation - improvisation. Jazz requires its • Historian and critic Barry Ulanov said, "There is performers to create their parts as they play them." no common defmition of jazz; it resists dictionary Critic Leonard Feather wrote, "Improvisation is the definition. " governing factor ofalmost every performance generally • Pianist Art Tatum, who played for years in classified as jazz." However, Gridley rejects the idea Cleveland, was once asked by a that improvisation is the only Cleveland Press reporter, "What element that distinguishes jazz. is jazz all about?" Tatum said Many other forms of music also jazz could not be explained in include improvisation. Solo words. As the reporter turned to improvisation was common during leave, Tatum called out, "Tell the Baroque period. Opera singers your editor he will never in the 1700s and 1800s were understand it in words." permitted to improvise their Some of the most important cadenzas and change the repeated people in jazz said basically the melodies of their arias. When same thing in different ways: Beethoven' s Symphony No. 1 was • Benny Goodman, one ofthe first performed April 2, 1800 in most important figures in the Vienna, the program noted that history of jazz, admitted he could part of the concert also included not define jazz. "Herr Ludwig van Beethoven • Louis Armstrong, the man improvising on the pianoforte." who propelled the art form and . American composer Aaron had hit records in 1926 and 1988 Copland said the unique thing (17 years after his death), had his aboutjazz is group improvisation. own simple definition: "Jazz is "When you improvise, it is my idea ofhow a tune should go." axiomatic that you take risks and • Duke Ellington, usually can't foretell results. When five pretty articulate with words as or six musIcIans improvise well as music, once defined jazz Louis Armstrong: "Jazz is my idea of simultaneously, the result is even as "freedom of expression." But how a tune should go." more fortuitous. That is its he admitted that really wasn't a charm. Something has been very serviceable defmition. Later, Ellington said, "I developed here that has no duplication." don't think I have a definition anymore, unless it is that Jazz places the emphasis on the performance rather jazz is a music with an African foundation which came than the composition. Jazz artists create - or even out of an American environment." compose - as they play, within the limits of the style • Singer Ella Fitzgerald found it impossible to and form they select for themselves. Bix Beiderbecke define jazz. She said, "I don't know. You just swing!" once said he was unable to playa chorus the same way • Big band drummer Chick Webb, who discovered twice. "I don't feel the same way twice," he said. Ella in the 1930s, tried to define jazz by saying, "It's "That's one ofthe things I like about jazz, I don't know like lovin' a gal, and havin' a fight, and then seein' her what's going to happen next." again." A jazz performance may be 95% improvisation of • Saxophonist Charlie Parker once defmed jazz as variations ofthe head tune or it may be only an individual "a happiness blues." solo within a written arrangement. The Glenn Miller • Pianist Dave Brubeck said, "When there is not Orchestra, a band noted mainly for tightly-performed complete freedom ofthe soloist, it ceases to be jazz." arrangements and not considered "a jazz band" by many, • Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis later said, "Jazz music proved that jazz improvisation does exist in solos played is freedom ofexpression with a groove." within carefully written and performed arrangements. • Drummer Jo Jones said, "Jazz is when you play Miller, who started out as a jazz trombonist, attempted to what you feel." defme jazz as "something you have to feel, a sensation that What 'Is Jazz? 3 can be conveyed to others." Despite this excellent description ofjazz by Kenton, In addition to improvisation, feeling and sensation, we are still left without an adequate working defmition Gridley wrote that to qualify as jazz, the music must of the music. project what he calls ''jazz swing feeling." Perhaps Ellington was right when he said, "It' s in the • Drummer Gene Krupa, a pioneer in "jazz swing ear of the listener. If a man has some very hungry ears feeling," defmed it as "complete and inspired freedom of for what he considers jazz, or for a pleasant noise that rhythmic interpretation." makes him feel he wants to swing - that's jazz." • Pianist Jess Stacy who, like Krupa, played with Jazz is what you or I say it is.