Why Jazz Still Matters

Why Jazz Still Matters Gerald Early & Ingrid Monson I’d rather play something that you can learn and like that you don’t know. I don’t want people to know what I am. –Miles Davis, 19851 Perhaps, like Miles Davis, jazz itself is a mystique wrapped in an enigma, an essential or inescapable unknowingness that makes this music attractive for its audience. But if jazz is partly–through its chal- gerald early, a Fellow of the lenging demands as a musical form, through the American Academy since 1997, various changes through which it has sustained it- is the Merle Kling Professor of self over the twentieth century and into the twenty- Modern Letters and Editor of first, and through its aspirations to both embody The Common Reader at Washing- and transform modernity–a music of clear and re- ton University in St. Louis. He is vealed intentions, it remains an art that many, even the author of A Level Playing Field: African American Athletes and the many of its devotees, do not fully understand. Even Republic of Sports (2011), One Na- the word “jazz” itself is wrapped in mystery. How tion Under a Groove: Motown and did the music come to be called this and what does American Culture (rev. ed., 2004), this word mean? Jazz bassist Bill Crow points out and This is Where I Came In: Black that some have thought the word comes the French America in the 1960s (2003). verb jaser, or to chatter. Others say that the word ingrid monson is the Quin- “arose from corruptions of the abbreviations of the cy Jones Professor of African first names of early musicians: ‘Charles’ (Chas.) or American Music at Harvard Uni- ‘James’ (Jas).” Some have thought it came from the versity. She is the author of Free- slang word for semen or that it came from “jazz- dom Sounds: Civil Rights Call Out ing,” a slang word for fornication.2 Anthropologist to Jazz and Africa (2007), The Af- rican Diaspora: A Musical Per- Alan Merriam notes that there are also Hausa and spective (2000), and Saying Some- Arabic words that may be related to the term: jaiza, thing: Jazz Improvisation and Inter- the rumbling of distant drums, and jazb, allure- action (1996). ment or attraction.3 © 2019 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences doi:10.1162/DAED_a_01738 5 Why One of the reasons that the early music Jazz improvisation celebrates the hero- Jazz in New Orleans and after was so disap- ic genius improviser, but, as musicians Still Matters proved of by the bourgeoisie was because know, that brilliance often depends on of the association with sex. The same re- the collective magic of the right band: in- action would occur roughly thirty-five or dividuals who compliment, anticipate, in- so years later with the advent of rock and spire, and upset each other into a commu- roll, another rebellious form of music nal whole greater than the sum of its parts. with a name associated with sex. Because Indeed, two of the most influential heroes jazz in its early days before World War I in jazz–Miles Davis and John Coltrane– was performed in brothels, as well as at are known by the brilliance of their quar- picnics and parades, an association with tets and quintets, which became the most sex and the erotic is not surprising. As revered models of group interplay. These Gerald Early observed about Miles Davis, collective musical relationships became the black male body came to define a kind generalized into idealized concepts of of black male existentialism functioning community that pervade our contempo- as “a symbol of engagement and detach- rary understanding of jazz. For Wynton ment, of punishing discipline and plush Marsalis, the jazz ensemble is democracy pleasure that operated cooperatively, not in action: participatory, inclusive, chal- in conflict, if rightly understood.” Fur- lenging, competitive, and collective.7 For thermore, this new kind of sexuality, first the interracial musical scene of the forties associated with jazz and the margins, be- and fifties, jazz improvisation was often came, over time, idealized in mainstream viewed as the ultimate integrated music, culture.4 crossing the color line and social catego- Many jazz musicians never liked the ries with aplomb.8 For others, black mu- word “jazz,” among the most notable sicians created idealized and woke com- being Duke Ellington, drummer Max munities of color, which inspired the de- Roach, saxophonist Rashaan Roland velopment of progressive black social and Kirk, composer Muhal Richard Abrams, spiritual movements. Freedom links the trumpeter Nicholas Payton, and Miles musical aesthetics of jazz and its sociopo- Davis, who said to his interlocutor in litical ambitions: associated with impro- 1985: “You know I don’t like the word visation and desperately needed for racial jazz, right? You’ve heard that? I hope justice and inclusion. For some, the polit- that’s one of the things you’ve heard.”5 ical and cultural associations of jazz are Many African American musicians primary, indeed, above the music itself, viewed the word as a music industry la- which can make jazz seem like a branch bel created by whites that demeaned, ste- of social theory. Ralph Ellison criticized reotyped, and limited them artistical- this tendency by wryly critiquing Amiri ly. Bill Crow ends his meditation on the Baraka’s (LeRoi Jones) Blues People by not- word jazz by noting: “As we enter the ing that “the tremendous burden of so- 1990s the sexual connotation of the word ciology which Jones would place upon has almost completely faded away. ‘Jazz’ this body of music is enough to give even is now used to identify musical forms, as the blues the blues.”9 For others, the mu- well as a style of Broadway theater danc- sic must be addressed to the exclusion of ing, a patented exercise regimen, a toilet the social and cultural. Music theorists water, a basketball team, a brand of com- are more comfortable on this terrain, but puter software.”6 Within this metamor- the most interesting recent work on jazz phosis lies a tale. has emphasized the sound of the music, 6 Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences the embodied experience of listening and are considered its most important inno- Gerald performing as the link between the musi- vators. Because most of the great singers Early & 10 Ingrid cal and the social. were women–from Billie Holiday, Sar- Monson Jazz is a complex, highly blended, ah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald, and Peggy sometimes contradictory music and, in- Lee to Cassandra Wilson and Dianne deed, since its inception, it has been hot- Reeves–male bias on the part of both ly debated exactly what forms or styles the musicians themselves and of critics constitute this music. Is it music theory (most of whom were and are male) likely or a technique that is applied to music? skewed our sense of this music.11 Is it one music or several loosely grouped Jazz has always sought a popular audi- forms of music that deal with improvi- ence with varying success but, since its sation? Its roots are African and Euro- earliest days, it has been a music that is pean, classical and popular, dance music often performed by musicians for musi- and art music. It has been called both cool cians. This has made many listeners im- and hot, earthy and avant-garde, intellec- patient with it, feeling that if one needs tual and primitive. It has been influenced practically a degree in music theory to by Latin American and Afro-Cuban mu- appreciate it, its practitioners should sic, by Middle Eastern, Indian, and oth- not expect untrained or casual audienc- er forms of Asian music, by African mu- es to be bothered with it. But on the oth- sic, and by varieties of religious music er hand, its technical pretensions have including gospel and the Protestant hym- made jazz a kind of status music with nal. Jazz also has roots in the American some audiences. popular song (which makes up a good Early sound technology such as pho- deal of its repertoire), the blues, hokum nograph records and radio spread jazz and circus music, marching band music, around the world, and the speed with and popular dance music. It is known for which it spread frightened many people being improvised and touted for the free- in its early days, especially because the dom it permits its players, but jazz in its music in its inception appealed so pow- heyday of swing was largely composed erfully to the young. Jazz emerged in the and tightly arranged; although many twentieth century, the Age of Music, jazz players have soloed, relatively few, when people not only heard more music as might be expected, were exceptional, than ever before but consumed it more memorial, or highly influential soloists. voraciously than ever before in human In any case, why did so-called free mu- history, largely attracted to music for its sic generated on the spot by the player be- emotional and psychological effects. Jazz come more highly valued by jazz players became the first, though not the last, pop- and audiences than notated music that, ular music to be trapped by its intellec- by its very nature, is presumed to have a tual pretensions, on the one hand, and greater range of expressiveness? Impro- its anti-intellectual appeal, on the other. vised music goes back to Western classi- Jazz has been condemned and promoted cal composers like Bach, Beethoven, and by various political ideologies and gov- Mozart, who were superb improvisers, ernments: Nazis called it “Nigger-Juden” but has also existed elsewhere around the music;12 the Soviets thought of it as mu- world for millennia.

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