‘But that’s what the music is… a lost thing finding itself.’
SIDNEY BECHET
There is a myth that permeates the Jazz world: when legendary trumpeteer and vocalist Louis Armstrong was confronted with the question: ‘What is Jazz?’, ‘Satchmo’ responded simply with the words: ‘Son, if you have to ask, you’ll never know’.[1] Despite these words, many attempts have been made to describe this unique musical phenomenon, seemingly the most interesting and insightful of which come from the musicians themselves, rather than critics or academics. Many such descriptions emphasise the transient, amorphous, diasporic nature of the genre, keeping with the wild, unknowable feeling of the music. Bebop trombonist J.J. Johnson assuaged (seemingly) fruitless attempts to typify Jazz in any lucid sense, instead simply stating that ‘Jazz is restless. It won’t stay put and it never will […] Jazz is forever seeking out and reaching and exploring’.[2] Swing and hard-bop saxophonist Ahmad Alaadeen went one step further, stating that ‘Jazz does not belong to one race or culture, but is a gift America has given the world’.[3] While the realisation of Jazz as a recognisable genre certainly took place within the United States, considering Jazz to be a solely American phenomena puts one in a questionable predicament, as the style inherently owes a debt to numerous international musical cultures and influences, which come together to form a unique musical synergy.
To provide a comprehensive overview of the many theories regarding the transnational nature of Jazz music, and the diasporic origins of its pioneers and innovators would take far more than a single article. Many books, spanning thousands of pages, have been written on the subject, and few (if any) of them would ever claim to provide a complete overview of Jazz as a whole. This article simply intends to offer some insight into the lives and multinational influences of just a handful of the artists who shaped and continue to re-shape Jazz; from the prototypical days of ‘Jass’,[4] right up to the modern era, wherein musicians continue to constantly expand Jazz through a range of new, transnational influences made possible by the Information Era.
We begin with a man who’s name is synonymous with the foundations of American Jazz, and yet one who consciously separated himself from the term: big-band leader Duke Ellington. Ellington’s view on his music was defined by national borders, and he categorised his music, not as Jazz (more specifically, big-band Jazz), but instead simply as ‘American music’ – he frequently alluded to the idea that the music he was creating was ‘beyond category’.[5] Writing in Down Beat in 1939, Ellington shifted somewhat away from his musically nationalistic sentiments, instead focusing on the racial aspect of his creations, stating that: ‘[my] aim has always been the development of authentic Negro music […] we are not interested primarily in the playing of Jazz or Swing music, but in producing genuine contribution to our race. Our music is intended to be definitely and purely racial.’[6] When it comes to the concept of ‘Black America’, the vast majority of the music that came out of the cultural phenomena in its early days was inherently diasporic: the result of a cultural and geographical uprooting of African peoples to America through the international slave trade. The grizzly American legacy of slavery, in spite of the fact that it was abolished by the time Jazz began to truly take form, undoubtedly casts a dark shadow over much of the ensuing cultural content that took form in its wake – one obvious example: Louis Armstrong’s grandparents were slaves themselves.
Ellington’s comments represent, in many ways, a microcosm for what many African-American artists and musicians were attempting to do at the same time in history: namely, to create a culture that was undeniably their own, in response to the racism, segregation and hatred that they faced. But the diasporic nature of the pioneers of Jazz has resulted, fittingly, in a music that, in many respects, defies what may be referred to as traditional racial boundaries. Jazz scholar David Andrew sees this as an optimistic step toward wider social change, writing: ‘recognising that Jazz musicians and audiences have configured identities outside of our all-too-sedimented understandings of race should make us reconsider our past (musical and social) as well as alternative, hopefully more equitable and constructive, possibilities for the future’.[7]
This is, realistically, the crux of the matter of Jazz and its interwoven relationship with diaspora. The music that has resulted seems to defy national boundaries, both musically, and in terms of the culture that surrounds Jazz as a whole. To return to the opening quote from seminal Jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer Sidney Bechet (one of the true founding fathers of Jazz music as a recognisable and unique entity), he goes on from his initial statement to say that: ‘It’s like a man with no place of his own. He wanders the world, and he’s a stranger wherever he is; he’s a stranger right in the place where he was born. But then something happens to him and he finds a place, his place. He stands in front of it and he crosses the door, going inside. That’s where the music was that day – it was taking him through the door; he was coming home’.[8]
Much of Bechet’s imagery could be said to refer to the diasporic status of black artists and musicians in America at the time, however, as is by now (hopefully) to be expected, can equally be interpreted as less divisive. A good example of this is that of American Jazz pianist Bill Evans, one of the most renowned early Jazz pioneers not to be of African American descent; a man whom Miles Davis described as having ‘a quiet fire that I loved on piano’, with a tone ‘like crystal notes or sparkling water cascading down from some clear waterfall’.[9] Evans, in spite of his seemingly pure American heritage, was actually the son of a Welsh father and a mother with Ukranian Rusyn ancestry, clearly demonstrating a more internationally tinted origination than may initially appear obvious.
Yet, in spite of the wide range of international influences that resulted in the construction of Jazz (including many that the scope of this article simply does not have the space to explore) it is still symbolic of America and its culture. In his legendary novel On the Road – which has itself frequently been referred to as an example of the elusive ‘Great American Novel’ – Jack Kerouac makes references to ‘Jazz America’, and, in doing so, makes Jazz emblematic of its country of origin.[10] Kerouac, himself a son of French-Canadian parentage, and a fluent speaker of French, is another example of an American phenomenon with distinctly un-American, transnational roots. And yet here is a man who, quite literally, wrote the book on 1950’s America, drawing influences and inspiration from Jazz in the process.
The spirit of America therefore seems somehow to inherently entail diaspora within it as a culture. If Jazz is, as Duke Ellington claimed, to be seen as a music that represents African-American culture, then it has gone from representing a segregated, oppressed people to somehow representing America as a whole. Eric Porter sums up the paradoxical, dichotomous nature of culture’s approach to Jazz perfectly when he says that ‘[i]t is a music rooted in American and, more specifically, African-American experience; yet it is indeed too “fundamentally human” to be racial and too international to be understood solely as a product of the United States’.[11] Jazz, therefore, seems to be a consistent anomaly, both musically and culturally. Much as the academic field of transnationalism breaks traditionally accepted binary visions of national identity, so Jazz breaks cultural conceptions of race, ethnicity, and essentialist views on nationality. The modern Jazz scene shows ever more signs of the internationalisation of Jazz as an entity, with the Information Era making transnational collaboration between artists easier and easier. What this may result in, is a (perhaps conscious) deconstruction of the idea that Jazz is an inherently American phenomenon. Put simply: art is disruptive, and the image of such a rich genre such as Jazz being simply labeled as American seems too arbitrary and simplistic to last through the modern era. Ultimately, there can be no true separation, in the case of Jazz, between transnationalism and the music itself: the former is a prerequisite to the music, and indeed, to the artists that create it.
[1] The origin of this phrase is unknown, and the exact wording varies depending on who it is that tells the story, but the basic gist of the riposte remains more or less identical, and the sheer volume of these stories would seem to lend some veracity to claims that Armstrong did, at one point or another, utter something to the same effect.
[2] Frank Alkyer & Ed Enright, Downbeat: The Great Jazz Interviews (75th Anniversary Anthology), (New York: Hal Leonard, 2009): 250.
[3] Karen McCarthy, ‘U.S. Congressional Award Citation: Ahmad Alaadeen’, Alaadeen, http://www.alaadeen.com/USCongressionalAwardCitation.html [accessed April 30, 2013].
[4] There are many competing theories on how Jazz coined its name; this one is a personal favourite of mine, told to me by an old music tutor: there was once a band in New Orleans playing what would now be termed as proto-Jazz music, called ‘The Jass Band’. A rival music group, upon seeing their posters scattered across town, decided to vandalise said posters by crossing out all of the J’s. In order to avoid the matter ever arising again, they altered the name from ‘Jass’ to ‘Jazz’, and the name stuck. I can, in no way shape or form, claim that this is in fact the origin of the term Jazz, however the sheer volume of stories like this allude to what is so fascinating to many about the genre: that fact that it is, in many ways, mythic and unknowable. It is highly unlikely that anyone knows, with 100% certainty, the true origin of the term, but theories and speculations are almost universally entertaining to exchange.
[5] Mark Tucker, Ellington: The Early Years, (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995): 6.
[6] Eric Porter, What is This Thing Called Jazz?, (New Jersey: University of California Press, 2002): 1.
[7] Andrew, Jazz Cultures: 11.
[8] Andrew, Jazz Cultures: 10.
[9] Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989): 117.
[10] Jack Kerouac, On the Road, (London: Penguin Classics, 2000): 185.
[11] Eric Porter, What is This Thing Called Jazz?: 335.
To provide a comprehensive overview of the many theories regarding the transnational nature of Jazz music, and the diasporic origins of its pioneers and innovators would take far more than a single article. Many books, spanning thousands of pages, have been written on the subject, and few (if any) of them would ever claim to provide a complete overview of Jazz as a whole. This article simply intends to offer some insight into the lives and multinational influences of just a handful of the artists who shaped and continue to re-shape Jazz; from the prototypical days of ‘Jass’,[4] right up to the modern era, wherein musicians continue to constantly expand Jazz through a range of new, transnational influences made possible by the Information Era.
We begin with a man who’s name is synonymous with the foundations of American Jazz, and yet one who consciously separated himself from the term: big-band leader Duke Ellington. Ellington’s view on his music was defined by national borders, and he categorised his music, not as Jazz (more specifically, big-band Jazz), but instead simply as ‘American music’ – he frequently alluded to the idea that the music he was creating was ‘beyond category’.[5] Writing in Down Beat in 1939, Ellington shifted somewhat away from his musically nationalistic sentiments, instead focusing on the racial aspect of his creations, stating that: ‘[my] aim has always been the development of authentic Negro music […] we are not interested primarily in the playing of Jazz or Swing music, but in producing genuine contribution to our race. Our music is intended to be definitely and purely racial.’[6] When it comes to the concept of ‘Black America’, the vast majority of the music that came out of the cultural phenomena in its early days was inherently diasporic: the result of a cultural and geographical uprooting of African peoples to America through the international slave trade. The grizzly American legacy of slavery, in spite of the fact that it was abolished by the time Jazz began to truly take form, undoubtedly casts a dark shadow over much of the ensuing cultural content that took form in its wake – one obvious example: Louis Armstrong’s grandparents were slaves themselves.
Ellington’s comments represent, in many ways, a microcosm for what many African-American artists and musicians were attempting to do at the same time in history: namely, to create a culture that was undeniably their own, in response to the racism, segregation and hatred that they faced. But the diasporic nature of the pioneers of Jazz has resulted, fittingly, in a music that, in many respects, defies what may be referred to as traditional racial boundaries. Jazz scholar David Andrew sees this as an optimistic step toward wider social change, writing: ‘recognising that Jazz musicians and audiences have configured identities outside of our all-too-sedimented understandings of race should make us reconsider our past (musical and social) as well as alternative, hopefully more equitable and constructive, possibilities for the future’.[7]
This is, realistically, the crux of the matter of Jazz and its interwoven relationship with diaspora. The music that has resulted seems to defy national boundaries, both musically, and in terms of the culture that surrounds Jazz as a whole. To return to the opening quote from seminal Jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer Sidney Bechet (one of the true founding fathers of Jazz music as a recognisable and unique entity), he goes on from his initial statement to say that: ‘It’s like a man with no place of his own. He wanders the world, and he’s a stranger wherever he is; he’s a stranger right in the place where he was born. But then something happens to him and he finds a place, his place. He stands in front of it and he crosses the door, going inside. That’s where the music was that day – it was taking him through the door; he was coming home’.[8]
Much of Bechet’s imagery could be said to refer to the diasporic status of black artists and musicians in America at the time, however, as is by now (hopefully) to be expected, can equally be interpreted as less divisive. A good example of this is that of American Jazz pianist Bill Evans, one of the most renowned early Jazz pioneers not to be of African American descent; a man whom Miles Davis described as having ‘a quiet fire that I loved on piano’, with a tone ‘like crystal notes or sparkling water cascading down from some clear waterfall’.[9] Evans, in spite of his seemingly pure American heritage, was actually the son of a Welsh father and a mother with Ukranian Rusyn ancestry, clearly demonstrating a more internationally tinted origination than may initially appear obvious.
Yet, in spite of the wide range of international influences that resulted in the construction of Jazz (including many that the scope of this article simply does not have the space to explore) it is still symbolic of America and its culture. In his legendary novel On the Road – which has itself frequently been referred to as an example of the elusive ‘Great American Novel’ – Jack Kerouac makes references to ‘Jazz America’, and, in doing so, makes Jazz emblematic of its country of origin.[10] Kerouac, himself a son of French-Canadian parentage, and a fluent speaker of French, is another example of an American phenomenon with distinctly un-American, transnational roots. And yet here is a man who, quite literally, wrote the book on 1950’s America, drawing influences and inspiration from Jazz in the process.
The spirit of America therefore seems somehow to inherently entail diaspora within it as a culture. If Jazz is, as Duke Ellington claimed, to be seen as a music that represents African-American culture, then it has gone from representing a segregated, oppressed people to somehow representing America as a whole. Eric Porter sums up the paradoxical, dichotomous nature of culture’s approach to Jazz perfectly when he says that ‘[i]t is a music rooted in American and, more specifically, African-American experience; yet it is indeed too “fundamentally human” to be racial and too international to be understood solely as a product of the United States’.[11] Jazz, therefore, seems to be a consistent anomaly, both musically and culturally. Much as the academic field of transnationalism breaks traditionally accepted binary visions of national identity, so Jazz breaks cultural conceptions of race, ethnicity, and essentialist views on nationality. The modern Jazz scene shows ever more signs of the internationalisation of Jazz as an entity, with the Information Era making transnational collaboration between artists easier and easier. What this may result in, is a (perhaps conscious) deconstruction of the idea that Jazz is an inherently American phenomenon. Put simply: art is disruptive, and the image of such a rich genre such as Jazz being simply labeled as American seems too arbitrary and simplistic to last through the modern era. Ultimately, there can be no true separation, in the case of Jazz, between transnationalism and the music itself: the former is a prerequisite to the music, and indeed, to the artists that create it.
[1] The origin of this phrase is unknown, and the exact wording varies depending on who it is that tells the story, but the basic gist of the riposte remains more or less identical, and the sheer volume of these stories would seem to lend some veracity to claims that Armstrong did, at one point or another, utter something to the same effect.
[2] Frank Alkyer & Ed Enright, Downbeat: The Great Jazz Interviews (75th Anniversary Anthology), (New York: Hal Leonard, 2009): 250.
[3] Karen McCarthy, ‘U.S. Congressional Award Citation: Ahmad Alaadeen’, Alaadeen, http://www.alaadeen.com/USCongressionalAwardCitation.html [accessed April 30, 2013].
[4] There are many competing theories on how Jazz coined its name; this one is a personal favourite of mine, told to me by an old music tutor: there was once a band in New Orleans playing what would now be termed as proto-Jazz music, called ‘The Jass Band’. A rival music group, upon seeing their posters scattered across town, decided to vandalise said posters by crossing out all of the J’s. In order to avoid the matter ever arising again, they altered the name from ‘Jass’ to ‘Jazz’, and the name stuck. I can, in no way shape or form, claim that this is in fact the origin of the term Jazz, however the sheer volume of stories like this allude to what is so fascinating to many about the genre: that fact that it is, in many ways, mythic and unknowable. It is highly unlikely that anyone knows, with 100% certainty, the true origin of the term, but theories and speculations are almost universally entertaining to exchange.
[5] Mark Tucker, Ellington: The Early Years, (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995): 6.
[6] Eric Porter, What is This Thing Called Jazz?, (New Jersey: University of California Press, 2002): 1.
[7] Andrew, Jazz Cultures: 11.
[8] Andrew, Jazz Cultures: 10.
[9] Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989): 117.
[10] Jack Kerouac, On the Road, (London: Penguin Classics, 2000): 185.
[11] Eric Porter, What is This Thing Called Jazz?: 335.
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