Class, Race & Art

[walto]

Last night I had a great dream. It was about reading a short story by Gary Sisco someplace (The "Atlantic"? The NYer?) involving a teenage welfare kid in an arts program and how he was treated. As I must expect from Sisco (& as everybody else should by now too), the piece was both really funny and extremely incisive. The rich kids blew tremendous amounts of $$ on stupid, useless techniques, and everyone, particularly the instructor, had a very condescending attitude toward the protagonist, who was struggling to get passing grades. He loved art, but he just wasn't sophisicated (read: well off) enough to be truly cool.

I take it that it's obvious that this kind of stuff is out in the world as well as in my sleeping head. But most people know, too, that there are some countervailing pressures out there as well. "Jazz has got to be from the streets. White kids can learn technique, but they can never really learn to play." That this strain exists in the visual arts world too could be seen in the treatment of the main character in the recent bio pic about the Black NY graffitti artist (who's name naturally escapes me as I type).

I thought a(nother) thread on this melange of issues would be interesting.

[Tom K]

"White kids can learn technique, but they can never really learn to play."


One of the most popularly cherished, immortal items of bullshit prejudice I can think of. It's opposed to what I think is perhaps the greatest quality of jazz - its openness. If it were true, jazz would probably still be geographically limited to the French Quarter in N.O. and maybe some black ghettoes in a few major US cities. Real museum music.

[yardbird]

So why did Ornette use Charlie Haden?

[Tom Storer]

Originally posted by walto
But most people know, too, that there are some countervailing pressures out there as well. "Jazz has got to be from the streets. White kids can learn technique, but they can never really learn to play"

I don't recall every reading or hearing quite this sentiment, i.e. jazz must be "from the streets." I've read claims that the African-American experience is essential to jazz expression, and forever inaccessible to white folks, but that doesn't seem to be the same thing, since white folks can be "from the streets" and black folks of middle-class origin are not told they lack the requisite authenticity. "From the streets" seems to be a class claim, while "white kids can only learn technique" seems to be a race claim.

Must someone repeat the now well known and true story of Roy Eldridge's failed attempt years ago to make good on his claimed ability to tell the race of a jazz musician by his sound?

[walto]

Originally posted by Tom Storer
"From the streets" seems to be a class claim, while "white kids can only learn technique" seems to be a race claim.

Right. I didn't mean to suggest that the two statements were synonymous. I 'd like the thread to be about both sorts of claim.

BTW, "Basquiat" was the movie I was thinking of.

[Gary Sisco]

It's not racist to make the obvious claim that jazz is a music that came out of the American African culture(s), in their collision with American European, not to mention, Latino cultures. Art Blakey made the call once (always quoted out of context by the way), "No America, no jazz." People always use this one to counter the extremely dominant role of American black culture in the creation of the music, and most of its innovations until very recent times, I'd add. But Blakey's claim wasn't actually about the music so much as the people who made it, who he was insisting were Americans, not Africans. Still American black people, however. Many have tried to twist his words by quoting only that one sound bite out of what he had to say. I agree with him.

Which is not to say that whites can't play, now or then. Any human can learn how to do something that another human can do. Any culture cannot create what any other culture is going to create, however. Learning to play something, and creating an art form, are not the same things however. It would be just as accurate as Blakey's remark to say "No African slavery, no jazz." Or, in short, "No Africa, no jazz."

The main role of white America in jazz's *creation* and emergence as an art form was social, and also a rare instance of a negative producing a positive: By trying (very hard, viciously, and very purposefully) to deafricanize the slaves, they were de facto forced to deal with European/American musical concepts and instruments, albeit in African ways that became increasingly American with time, as American culture became blacker than it wishes to acknowledge even today, with time. The further social acts of ghettoizing black Americans as a population within a population (still today, more than most whites will admit) reinforced the cultural isolation necessary to produce the music (and not just jazz).

This same, still continuing process, including music's collision with electronic technology (techno having its roots in Detroit's black youth) is the reason why American popular culture is always black in its roots and first expressions, not only in music but in general, language very much included.

Thus far, I'm in agreement, by the way, with Ellison, from whom all "neocon" positions today flow, not always with the nuance and thought shown by Ellison. White America is blacker than it will probably ever admit. Indeed, American culture is unthinkable otherwise. What would it be that is specifically American, absent the influence of American Africans, from the start, centuries ago?

(The really amazing thing to think about is how this has become a global as well as a national phenomenon. I recently talked with a black friend, lawyer, who spent a lot of time in Saudi Arabia and other oil centers, working for the corps. We had a great conversation about how he'd be seeing Arab kids decked out in full hip-hop fashion. You'd probably find the same in outer Mongolia, today. People call it the spread of American culture, but, call it what you want. American capitalism spreading aspects of American-black culture in its commodified forms as products, I call it. But whatever one wants to call it, it's a global example of what happened here, culturally, over the past more than 400 years.)

Like Ellison said, white Americans even walk and talk like black Americans, whether they admit or not. And, yes, they do have a way of walking. It's not hard, in most cases, to spot an American ex-pat, when you travel.

The class aspect, as someone correctly noted, has to do with the street and what's being heard down on the corner. If that's not happening, it ain't popular music and never will be, no matter how great it is. That doesn't rule out the possibility for jazz, however, to become a much more popular music than it is, down on the corner. Like our man HL is fond of saying, the brothers down at the car wash often freak out over the sounds coming from his car stereo.

"The whole world is Africa
but it's divided into continent states ..." (Black Uhuru)

[Brian Olewnick]

I've recounted this story before, but I'll do so again in light of this thread. Back around 1977, I was talking with Muhal Richard Abrams one afternoon up at the new music loft, Environ. I forget how the subject came up, but we got to talking about jazz and race and, specifically, whites playing jazz. Muhal made the following analogy (I'm paraphrasing, of course, but I remember it very well. And, I should mention, it was said without any rancor whatsoever, simply stating it as what he felt to be the case): "I could go to Ireland and study Irish jig dancing. I could stay there for 20 years, study very diligently and, at the end of that time, I'd be a very, very good Irish jig dancer. But I'd never be as good as an Irishman. I would have missed growing up Irish and there's nothing I can do to recapture this. Something would be missing"

I think there's at least a grain of truth in this statement or, more exactly, I think there was something of truth to this, although I think it has lessened over time. Not due to whites becoming more accomplished, empathetic, etc. but more due to fewer and fewer young blacks growing up in an environment where jazz was an important part of the culture. Up through (at least) the 70s, I think there was an enormous gap in quality (generally speaking, of course; there were exceptions) between jazz produced by black Americans (or those from other countries) and whites. Today, I'm not sure there's any real qualitative difference, at least among musicians, say, 50 years old or younger.

[btw, I had a dream last night--really!--wherein Linda and I met Vince Kargatis at the Knit to see a Dave Douglas show in which he was using actor/vocalists. Of all the unlikely events in this episode, me going out of my way to see such a Dave Douglas project might be the most ridiculous!! ;-0 ]

[Tom K]

Why restrict the question of black vs. white jazz musicians to America?

[walto]

"But I'd never be as good as an Irishman. "

Brian, do you think he meant that every Irishman must be a better Irish dancer than every non-Irishman? Or was it just the claim that the very best Irish jigsters must be from Ireland? I suppose the latter claim COULD be true, but it seems like it's only likely to be so if there's continual work in Ireland on the jig front. I mean, even if chops can't make up for the alleged "Irish element," all other things equal, maybe the other things aren't equal any more nowadays and "authentic" Irish jigging has fallen into disseuitude.

I don't think I've put this very well. Maybe that's what you were saying in your middle graph?

[Gary Sisco]

Tom -- Because of the music's roots of origin and also because of America's extremely peculiar racial history(ies). The music is inseparable from its history.

Walto -- I stopped writing fiction back around '84 or '85, when I decided that the objective world outside my imagination was much more interesting, irrational, and, indeed, insane than anything my meager imagination could ever dream up. And more important, as well.

I also lost my muse back then, possibly for the same reasons, as this occurred during my Nicaragua years. I couldn't find a poem or a story anywhere in my brain, or hear my muse, after that experience. Something froze up, in there somewhere. Haven't played any music since then, either, or heard a song in my head. I used to wake up with them, often complete, in my head, mornings. All I had to do was play them into a cassette recorder.

[Brian Olewnick]

I think he was saying that the best Irish jiggers would always be Irish. I might modify that to the extent the jigging remained a culturally important part of Irish life, something that was deeply a part of Irish culture. I believe he meant that important parts of what made an Irish jig "good" were things one experienced and learned growing up in Irish culture, things you couldn't "learn" retrospectively. I really don't see this as a particularly controversial statement bearing in mind we're talking about culture, not race or genetics. As I said (or implied), to the extent that jazz culture expands (evanesces?) into the general populace and becomes less and less identifiable with a given group (where, in this case, the race or the group mapped pretty well onto the culture and class for a long time), it seems that the quality of the art produced by practitioners outside of that original race/culture should also diversify.

[walto]

Well, if it's any consolation, Gary my bro, your muse is still alive and humming somewhere in my subconscious soup.

[Gary Sisco]

Glad to hear it. I've missed the motherfucker.

[walto]

Brian, I was kind of looking at it this way: Say being saturated with Irish culture is worth 10 value points and that these are points that nobody else can ever get. It might still be the case that because of chops or innovative or other deficiencies the best Irish jigsters might be more than 10 points behind the best Danish copycat jigster. If that's right, by analogy, even if "the Black Experience" were thought to be irreplaceable in jazz composition/performance, and jazz were still a big part of that experience, the best jazz could come from elsewhere. This would be true, anyway, if this "Black Experience" element wasn't thought to absolutely swamp all other constitutent value-makers.


Or something like that.

[Brian Olewnick]

Walt, I suppose it gets down to, as it usually does, which elements an individual finds most valuable in a given art form. If it's a sum total type of things and one can get to 100 by various means, that's one thing. If someone needs to hear certain specific components making up that 100 to make the experience beautiful, then it's another. I can only say that, for myself, I think that by and large I want to hear in jazz a sense of that lived experience. I get the strong feeling that it's one of the reasons I find, for instance, Joe McPhee vastly more beautiful and compelling than, say, Joe Lovano (who is, obviously, a fine musician). Maybe it's the difference between first- and secondhand storytelling.

[mke]

I was talking to a Belgian trumpeter the other day, and he felt that US musicians were closer to the tradition of jazz (in a good way), whereas Europeans were less beholden to it, and speaking personally, he didn't really care about it (and its rules and conventions) too much, or being a "jazz expert", even if he plays in a "jazz" way in various contexts (which range from relatively straight-ahead to an AG of a sort).

[Pete C]

Originally posted by Brian Olewnick
I can only say that, for myself, I think that by and large I want to hear in jazz a sense of that lived experience. I get the strong feeling that it's one of the reasons I find, for instance, Joe McPhee vastly more beautiful and compelling than, say, Joe Lovano (who is, obviously, a fine musician). Maybe it's the difference between first- and secondhand storytelling.

I don't remember the exact term from the world of logic, but isn't drawing that conclusion from that one particular preference clearly specious reasoning?

[Tanager]

Originally posted by Brian Olewnick
I can only say that, for myself, I think that by and large I want to hear in jazz a sense of that lived experience. I get the strong feeling that it's one of the reasons I find, for instance, Joe McPhee vastly more beautiful and compelling than, say, Joe Lovano (who is, obviously, a fine musician). Maybe it's the difference between first- and secondhand storytelling.

It seems to me that, at this stage, we're also talking about *which* experiences you want to hear in the music. Lovano and McPhee almost certainly come from different experiences, but I don't think that one can argue that either's is more "authentic" or suited to shape musical production in any sort of objective/quantifiable way. So I guess I'm saying that comparing it to first- and secondhand storytelling implies that one is more legitimate than the other, if I understand you correctly, and I disagree with that.

[Pete C]

Additionally, I'm surprised that Brian subscribes to the romantic notion of "genuineness" in art arising from "lived experience."

[Tom Storer]

Originally posted by Brian Olewnick
Up through (at least) the 70s, I think there was an enormous gap in quality (generally speaking, of course; there were exceptions) between jazz produced by black Americans (or those from other countries) and whites.]

I would disagree that there was "an enormous gap in quality" between US white and black musicians up through the 1970's. As of the 1920's there were considerable numbers of excellent white jazz musicians, more than simply exceptions to the rule. You might be able to make a case for parallel white and black styles or sounds - very generally, a "black" pole closer to blues and gospel and "hot" elements, and a "white" pole with less of those things. Such a schema would be open to argument, of course. But assuming it were posited, you might like one or the other better, and you might find one or the other to be more essential, vital, or what have you, but to say that there was an "enormous gap in quality" seems difficult to justify, IMHO; and in any case, each of those general tendencies included both black and white players.

[Brian Olewnick]

I'm not sure how "romantic" that is. Might not be post-mod but I hadn't realized the notion had been throughly discredited. Not by me anyway; I'm old-fahioned that way. I only used McPhee/Lovano as an illustration to make the idea a bit more concrete.

Tanager, I agree regarding "which experiences" to the extent that one musician is simply examining his or her own such. Something of jazz, imho, refers to the blues experience, however, specifically to the experiences shared by most of black American culture. A white musician referring to this experience is almost necessarily operating at (at least) one remove. Needless to say, this doesn't mean that what results is automatically "good" or "bad" in some broader context, but as "jazz", it might be argued to be lacking some element that many find necessary. It's a fine, subtle line certainly.

Gary's made reference somewhere before to his amusement at white kids sporting dreads. Something along that sort of line is what I'm trying to get at (though not so trivial).

[Brian Olewnick]

Tom, I should have said something on the order of "an enormous gap in what I consider to be qualitatively important". For example. and again only as an example, I get far, far more from Sonny Rollins than Stan Getz. But that's just me.

[Pete C]

Brian, where would Brotzmann fall in your first-hand vs. second-hand dichotomy?

NP: Albert Ayler, Nuits de la Fondation Maeght, v. 2

[Tanager]

Originally posted by Brian Olewnick
Gary's made reference somewhere before to his amusement at white kids sporting dreads. Something along that sort of line is what I'm trying to get at (though not so trivial).

I think I understand where you're going, but I don't think the analogy holds, if only due to something else to which Gary and others have alluded, that being the extent to which the influences that might, in your mind, make McPhee's playing more "genuine" have permeated all of American culture.

White kids sporting dreads might, indeed, be trying to coop "blackness" as a way of reaffirming their hipness (indeed, many probably are, I might argue). But I don't think Lovano's playing jazz (or insert any other "white" (in quotes because I think we're discussing white as an ethnicity, not a race in the purely geneological sense) musician) is an act at all of the same sort.

I think the "blues experience," if you will has been around that it's an integral part of being American in many quarters regardless of race/ethnicity. Is it equally so across the board? Hell no, no more than any other cultural influence. But I don't think any of us is really qualified to judge to what extent it frames this is or that musician's music as it applies to authenticity.

[Brian Olewnick]

Originally posted by Pete C
Brian, where would Brotzmann fall in your first-hand vs. second-hand dichotomy?

I don't want to get into specifically dissing this or that musician, but since you asked, second-hand, definitely, imho. I enjoy much of his work but, well, he's no Roscoe Mitchell.

In fact, I should say that I think he excelled in Last Exit, not really very much of a jazz band, per se.

[Brian Olewnick]

Tanager, back in my first post, I said that I didn't think the difference was very much around these days, that it's dissipated over the last few decades. Among younger musicians, I'm not sure whether it's even something worth thinking about any more (I think it might still be an issue with musicians old enough to have grown up when it was more of a legitimate concern). The sense of a given artist's authenticity is necessarily going to be an at least somewhat subjective judgment on the part of the observer. We do it all the time with various art-forms. The same way I might watch a Hollywood blockbuster and think to myself that it simply doesn't ring true, I might have the same feeling sitting in Tonic watching some obscure jazz musicians with 50 people. I might well be in a minority of opinion, even among that severe minority of the population that cares about the form in the first place, but so it goes.

[Uli]

imho it all depends on your personal experience with the globalisation paradox. As an example from my background, I would have thought that only the English could fully dig amm and it's aftermath. But apparently motherfuckers all over the world are now sharing similar experiences.

[Pete C]

Brian, as far as "genuineness" is concerned, I think as an aesthetic issue it is, indeed, basically a 19th Century legacy. I was alluding as much to its relative recentness as its age.

[RainyDay]

These types of threads often have a tone that seeks to marginalize the influence of Africans and people of African descent in the US and the Caribbean on blues and jazz. And I'm being generous by saying "influence" because I believe these art forms originated with these folks and that these people continue to have a significant influence on the music. That seems to be the common assumption in my experience until coming to Jazz Corner. Last time I participated in one of these discussions I was called a bigot so I think I'll just sit back and listen to the expert opinion on this. That would be anyone but me.