Date: 10 May 1999 06:56:47 -0000
From: Electronic Drum 
Subject: ARTICLE: [BRC-NEWS] Jazz and Race

Electronic Drum

http://www.lol.shareworld.com/zmag/articles/feb95carter.htm

Z Magazine

February 1995

Jazz and Race

By Sandy Carter

The musical tradition known as jazz is a hybrid with roots in West Africa,
Europe, the Caribbean, and North America. Nonetheless, over the last four
decades, many African-American musicians have become increasingly vocal
regarding the idea that jazz is essentially a black art form. In brief,
the argument for the blackness of jazz contends that although jazz is not
entirely "pure," the most immediate and significant ancestors of jazz
(work songs, spirituals, blues, ragtime, and brass band music) were
expressions rooted in black communal life. And in the music's hundred year
existence, the tradition's greatest innovators (Louis Armstrong, Duke
Ellington, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane,
and Ornette Coleman, to mention only a few) have been black. 

Needless to say the view of jazz as black music is controversial. It
politicizes the world of art and entertainment, it reminds of racial
division, and ultimately it rankles notions of white supremacy. For some,
it is a statement of reverse racism aimed at white jazz musicians and is
destructive to a "truly democratic music." All of these issues are
addressed in Gene Lees's recent book about jazz and race, Cats Of Any
Color: Jazz Black And White(Oxford University Press, New York). 

Lees, a veteran jazz critic and former editor of Down Beat magazine, draws
the title and central theme of his essays from Louis Armstrong's comment,
"It's no crime for cats of any color to get together and blow." Believing
that jazz is not the property of any one racial group, Lees takes this
quote as a reflection of the jazz tradition's noble effort to explore "the
full range of human experience and emotion." Unfortunately, as Lees freely
acknowledges, jazz lives in a society where questions around the artistic
and economic ownership of jazz remain racially volatile. 

To provide some background to the conflict, Lees presents a number of
anecdotes illustrating the plight of black jazz musicians during the
heyday of Jim Crow racism. Included are tales of a 10-year-old Horace
Silver observing a concert of Jimmie Lunceford's band through a wooden
fence separating him from an outdoor whites-only show in Connecticut; of
revered artists such as Oscar Peterson and Nat Cole being refused hair
cuts and meals because of their skin color; of the pressures and sanctions
bearing on musicians challenging segregation; and of the general disparity
between black and white musicians in monetary rewards and popular
recognition. 

While most serious, liberal-minded jazz fans have some awareness of the
racist conditions plaguing black jazz players throughout this century,
Lees's stories are nonetheless poignant and necessary reminders of where
jazz is coming from. But in laying out some of the old fashioned racial
barriers imposed on jazz, Lees has another agenda in mind. Assuming that
anti-black feelings are no longer a major problem in the world of jazz,
Lees now fears that the historical cumulative effects of white racism have
produced a reverse racism that threatens to destroy the egalitarian heart
of jazz. 

Lees's evidence of the rise of "black xenophobia in jazz" comes mainly
from the statements of African American musicians and writers (Amiri
Baraka, Spike Lee, Archie Shepp, Stanley Crouch and Wynton Marsalis)
advocating jazz as a black-defined aesthetic. He asserts, however, that
the idea of black supremacy in jazz has become so popular and politically
correct that jazz audiences, black jazz musicians, and even white jazz
critics routinely discriminate against white musicians and downgrade their
contributions to the jazz heritage. An upholder of jazz as basically an
interracial art form celebrating "the human spirit" and "personal vision,"
Lees argues that "any statement that jazz is black music and only black
music is racist on the face of it." 

To be sure, there are kernels of truth in Lees's argument. Jazz has never
been exclusively black. Its origins are multicultural and scholars on the
subject agree that at the turn of the century, when the music became a
recognizable idiom, white and black musicians were playing similar, though
not identical, forms of music. It is also true that numerous white
musicians (Bix Beiderbecke, Benny Goodman, Harry James, Zoot Sims, Gerry
Mulligan, Bill Evans, Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck, and Charlie Haden among
them) have left distinguished marks on jazz history. It may be further
conceded that historically African American jazz players have harbored
some bitterness about white musicians "stealing music" originated by black
musicians. None of this, however, adds up to a rebuttal of "jazz as black
music." 

In recent years a generation of young black jazz musicians has taken on
the mission of re-establishing the significance of jazz as an African
American defined art form. This advocacy, however, does not include claims
that all jazz is about or for only black people. Nor has it been argued
that whites, by virtue of genes or culture, are incapable of playing
authentic and original jazz. What has been articulated is the centrality
of jazz to African American culture. Which is to say, the jazz expression
of black Americans is a creative reflection of black experience. 

Given the historical circumstances of black life in the United States, the
many black musical roots of jazz, and the preponderance of technical and
stylistic inventions of African American jazz players, it seems clear that
the black impact on jazz weighs heavier than that of other groups in our
society. Interpreting "the black experience" at times narrowly and at
other times abstractly, Lees, however, finds the proposition of black jazz
near absurd. In his dramatic, overblown polemic he complains, "How anyone
can think that the art of Louis Armstrong--or Benny Carter or Count Basie
or Coleman Hawkins or John Coltrane--is the cry of pain of a downtrodden
people is beyond me." Later he concludes that jazz is "dead" if it is
useful only "for the expression of anger and resentments of an American
minority." 

No one, of course, has ever argued that jazz or blackness is only about
pain and suffering. Wynton Marsalis has, in fact, described jazz as
"optimistic music." And down through the century, black musicians have
stated and publicly demonstrated that jazz is a music with universal
appeal. Nevertheless, it is also a music that takes its primary
inspiration from the struggles and achievements of the black community. 

* "Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't
live it, it won't come out of your horn." --Charlie Parker

* "You probably would take a white kid and subject him to the same things
that one of us was subjected to and he'd probably stomp his foot just like
we do. It's not a matter of race, but environment." --Dizzy Gillespie

* "For a long time, social protest and pride in the Negro have been the
most significant themes in what we've done. In that music we have been
talking for a long time about what it is to be a Negro in this country."
--Duke Ellington

* "I can't see any separation between my music and my life. I play pretty
much race music: its about what happened to my father, to me, and what can
happen to my kids." --Archie Shepp

* "A lot of it [the music] has to do with all the things I experienced
growing up in New Orleans, that kind of feeling of fraternity, of humor,
of style, food, dances, parades, churches, ribbing, family, sports,
girls--all of it." --Wynton Marsalis

Although Lees has been around jazz a long time and is obviously familiar
with statements of this kind, they have left little impression on his
perspective. A white Canadian who professes to be "color blind," Lees
hears in jazz only abstract humanity. Still, when he digs through history
to redress the neglect of white contributions to jazz, he consistently
exaggerates the Anglo-European influence on black creativity. Yes it is
true that Charlie Parker admired Stravinsky; that Miles Davis employed
many white musicians and admitted the influence of white trumpeters Harry
James and Bobby Hackett; that Ellington's cornetist Rex Stewart studied
the solos of Bix Beiderbecke. But this hardly means that the genius of
Parker, Davis, and Stewart was equally derived from black and white
sources. 

Lees's color blindness also presents a problem when it comes to
recognizing the political economy of jazz. Particularly since the birth of
modern jazz in the 1940s, black musicians have been outspoken critics of
how the white domination of record companies, clubs and festivals,
magazines, television, and movies hinders the visibility and profitability
of jazz. As trumpeter Jimmy Owens once explained: "Black music has never
really been controlled by the people who are making that music.
Consequently, the amount of money going to the people who perform that
music, the musicians, has been very small compared to what goes to the
people who control the music." While Lees is well aware of this obvious
sore spot on "jazz black and white," his fragmented, selectively focused
portrait of jazz history tends to overemphasize the popularity and
critical esteem enjoyed by black jazz musicians. As a result, when he
quotes from black protests against the white, corporate-dominated music
industry, the statements come off more as allegation (and anti-Semitism)
than fact. 

Interestingly, Lees seems much more committed to addressing the
contemporary racial bias in jazz, which he finds most powerfully embodied
in Wynton Marsalis's directorship of the prestigious Lincoln Center jazz
program. Lees condemns Marsalis for firing most of the organization's
white employees, hiring and honoring only black musicians, and preaching a
jazz as black music ideology. And in all of this Lees sees the creeping
institutionalization of anti-white blackness. Someone a shade or two less
wary and not so color blind, might view these moves cautiously, but as an
imperfect effort at artistic affirmative action. But Lees's reaction is so
hasty and hysterical that one must assume he carries an abiding affection
for the good old days of "jazz black and white." 

The Marsalis Defense: In August of the past year, Wynton Marsalis
responded to charges of racism in a debate with jazz historian James
Lincoln Collier at the Lincoln Center in New York. At that time he
presented statistics showing that he had hired and showcased many white
musicians in the center's jazz program. More recently, he has commented on
the criticism of Gene Lees. In a December 18, 1994 interview with San
Francisco Examiner reporter Joan Smith, Marsalis explained: "I work with
musicians I think are playing the best music. It's not true that we hire
only black musicians, but even if we did would that be so odd? Would it be
odd if you organized a polka festival and all the musicians were white? To
say that my tastes are racist because I don't think a musician should be
included that you think should be included is just plain wrong. 

"As long as there is democracy, there will be people wanting to play jazz
because nothing else will ever so perfectly capture the democratic process
in sound. Jazz means working things out musically with other people. You
have to listen to other musicians and play with them even if you don't
agree with what they're playing. It teaches you the very opposite of
racism and anti-Semitism. It teaches you that the world is big enough to
accommodate us all." 

(c) 1995 Z Magazine


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"We are the digital drummers of the technical ether, counteracting the
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the wilderness West.  As soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, mind to mind, I &
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jamal ali
copyright   18 march 1991

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