Jazz As a Medium for Social and Political Change Jazz Has Been A

Jazz as a medium for social and political change Jazz has been a catalyst for political and social change throughout its entire history. The music of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, Louis Armstrong, Charles Mingus, Darius Jones, Tia Fuller, Jazzmeia Horn, and Fay Victor among many others has been used as a vehicle to find express and maintain freedom as human beings. Today the music of artists like Robert Glasper, Wynton Marsalis, Gregory Lewis, Terence Blanchard, Christian Scott, Antonio Sanchez, and Ben Williams continue that expression of freedom as a wider forum for the 1 depth and richness that persons of color have contributed to this culture. Musicians like the late saxophonist Fred Ho, and Dave Brubeck used jazz as a social consciousness medium throughout their careers. Ho’s work, particularly as an improviser and playwright was a harrowing look into what Asian Americans have endured in this country, and his aligning with far left leaning philosophies only served to amplify his goals. In the 2009 documentary Jazz in The Present Tense, a sort of answer to and follow up on the limited scope of Ken Burns Jazz from 2000, one of the experts interviewed in the film ruminated the music of Davis, Gillespie and others was relatable to average people because it expressed their struggles in being human beings in a way that certain artists today did not. In 1939, Billie Holiday’s rendering of the graphic, emotionally wrenching “Strange Fruit” described the horror of observing blacks being lynched during the height of the Jim Crow era south. The lyrics are a chilling account of the treatment of black Americans, and a prescient reminder today that this is still going on. It does not matter that civil rights laws have been in place since 1965, black Americans, men especially, have been at the end of some heinous crimes. On March 19, 2015 Otis Byrd, aged 54 was found hanging in a tree; a disturbing throwback described in “Strange Fruit”. 17 year old Lennon Lacy was found hung in Bladenboro, North Carolina, another example of the present mirroring history. Every performance Holiday sang of her signature tune was rife with emotion, check out the famous 1957 performance taped for the CBS special: The Sound of Jazz. Below are the evocative lyrics from the song. Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, 2 Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant south, The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh, Then the sudden smell of burning flesh. Here is fruit for the crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop, Here is a strange and bitter crop. In 1956, the U.S. State department selected some of the greatest and most visible jazz musicians to be ambassadors to the Soviet Union in the wake of the Cold War. Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong were all invited. The political and social circumstances are well detailed in the recent PBS documentary, The Jazz Ambassadors. Sending such well known icons of the music to promote world peace, with music as the weapon instead of nuclear warfare was as smart of a move to promote U.S. image as much as political change. Congressman Adam Clayton Powell was a champion for jazz and advocated strongly for the inclusion of the musicians involved as a peace making gesture. For audiences that witnessed the music in Europe, they were blown away by the chance to see their heroes live, and for young jazz aficionados at the time, the concerts were about exactly that– a momentary escape from the social and political situations gripping their countries. Armstrong, who was supposed to attend the trip to Russia, dropped out of the tour, eventually traveling to the continent in 1961 when the political views shifted a bit. Armstrong’s first trip to Ghana in 1957 was powerful for him as it was the people of Ghana. His own explicit statement on being African American, “What Did I Do To Become Black and Blue” moved Ghanaian independence leader Kwame Nkrumah to tears. Armstrong had made the 3 connections between Africans and African Americans very clear, and his own music with striking use of counterpoint in the New Orleans tradition is directly descended from methods used in African music. September 3, 1957 marked one of the most important days in the history of the United States, when Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus interfered in the desegregation of schools. Defiant against federal orders mandating desegregation, he employed the National Guard to interfere by blocking nine children from integrating into the school causing a national uproar. Bassist Charles Mingus, a shamelessly outspoken critic of racial injustice wrote the scathing, powerful “Fables of Faubus” as a result. The lyrics go as follows: Oh, Lord, don’t let ’em shoot us Oh, Lord, don’t let ’em stab us Oh, Lord, no more swastikas Oh, Lord, don’t let ’em tar and feather us! [Chorus] Oh, Lord, no more Ku Klux Klan Name me someone who’s ridiculous, Dannie Governor Faubus! Why is he so sick and ridiculous? He won’t permit integrated schools Then he’s a fool! Boo! Nazi Fascist supremists! Boo! Ku Klux Klan (With your Jim Crow plan) [Chorus] Name me a handful that’s ridiculous, Dannie Richmond Bilbo, Thomas, Faubus, Russel, Rockefeller, Byrd, Eisenhower Why are they so sick and ridiculous? Two, four, six, eight: They brainwash and teach you hate H-E-L-L-O, Hello Boo! Nazi Fascist supremists! Boo! Ku Klux Klan (With your Jim Crow plan) [Chorus] Name me a handful that’s ridiculous, Dannie Richmond Bilbo, Thomas, Faubus, Russel, Rockefeller, Byrd, Eisenhower 4 Why are they so sick and ridiculous? Two, four, six, eight: They brainwash and teach you hate. The lyrics today are still penetrating and poignant, and are almost just as relevant given the particular climate as First Amendment rights are threatened nearly every day. The bassist’s lyrics were deemed so controversial, that when he entered the Columbia 30th Street Studio on May 5th, 1959 to record tunes that would eventually be part of Mingus Ah Um, the label would not allow the lyrics to be included. However, when Mingus signed with Candid records, the full exchange between him and drummer Dannie Richmond was included on Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus the following year. Louis Armstrong was so enraged that President Eisenhower and Governor Faubus reached a standstill that he issued the following famous statement in a newspaper interview: “My people, the Negroes, are not looking for anything, we just want a square shake. But when I see on television and read about a crowd spitting on and cursing at a little colored girl, I think I have a right to get sore and say something about it.” The incident was just one reason that eventually caused the trumpeter to cancel his tour of the Soviet Union, and as mentioned earlier, he did not go there until 1961. The conflict between Central High School and Governor Faubus was alleviated when President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army to allow the nine students to integrate. In 1958, Sonny Rollins released his classic recording Freedom Suite (Riverside). It is one of the earliest jazz records to deal with the burgeoning civil rights movement that defined 1960’s America. Jazz Times magazine ran a cover story in 2017 discussing 5 socially relevant jazz from “Strange Fruit”, to Max Roach’s We Insist! Freedom Now (Candid, 1960) and Louis Armstrong’s “What Did I Do To Be So Black and Blue” mentioned earlier in this piece. These timeless pieces were mentioned alongside contemporary fare from Kamasi Washington and Christian Atunde Adjuah (Christian Scott) but curiously, Rollins’ pivotal recording received no mention. The retired saxophone giant made a call to the magazine and then crafted a tremendous letter arguing for the inclusion into the pantheon of socially and politically relevant jazz. In a brief excerpt, Rollins lamented: “The record Freedom Suite was made in the beginning of 1958. It was a trio recording with Max Roach and Oscar Pettiford, and it was an important album. The producer, Orrin Keepnews, took a lot of heat for that record. I made a statement [about civil rights on the back cover of] that record, and he even had to say at one time that he wrote the statement, which is ridiculous. But he wanted to record me on his Riverside label, and that was the piece that he had, and he accepted it. I took some heat for it as well. I was playing a concert in Virginia, something at a school down there, and I remember being confronted—not in a hostile or violent way, just verbally—about why I made this record, and so on and so forth. There were a lot of those [incidences]. It wasn’t a big deal for me, because as I said, it was quite normal. I was born into a family that was always very cognizant of those things. I do remember that the controversy was slightly scary—but not too much, because I was a big, strong guy, and when you’re young you think you’re indestructible. But in retrospect it was a little scary, yes. And it was also one of these situations where some people talked with me about it and some people didn’t, but it was always there, hanging over everything.

Load more