Jazz Improvisation: an Expression of the Immediate

            Before taking this class on the history of jazz, I had viewed the jazz solo as an extension of the principles of the cadenza in classical European music. The cadenza is a solo designed to show off the technical and expressive capability of the musician. However, the cadenza is pre-written and does not reflect the immediacy of the performance. This class allowed me to understand improvisation in jazz not as a musical extension of the soloist but as a reflection of the present relationship between the musician and audience.

            Jazz developed without any intention of performance in the recital-hall format. It took until 1938 until jazz would premier at Carnegie Hall in a performance by bandleader Benny Goodman (Gioia 152). Jazz music instead relies on the dialogic relationship between performer and audience. In a small space like a Harlem rent party or a dance club like The Savoy, musicians constantly communicated with the audience by observing their dancing. A discussion of improvisation would be incomplete without considering this dialogism because improvisation developed as a feedback response to the audience. As an example, stride pianist James P. Johnson had a diverse repertoire including popular works as well as classical pieces. This versatility allowed him to adapt to the audience by improvising around themes which drew positive responses—whether a ragged-up Chopin Nocturne or Johnson’s “Carolina Shout” (Gioia 97).

            Improvisational expression in jazz originates in the blues of the 19^th century American South. The blues, along with the spiritual, developed as a group musical format intended for collective expression, as opposed to the lecture style recital seen in European classical styles which propagates the expression only of those on stage (lecture 1/17/2013). In his autobiography, Miles Davis wrote of how he infused his revolutionary album Kind of Blue with Arkansas blues and gospel in order to create the feeling of walking along a dark Arkansas road as a child (Davis 234). Along with its expressive roots, Jazz inherits the idea of preset chord sequences from the blues. The blues uses formats like the “12-bar blues” which systematically modulates between I, IV, and V chords (Gioia 14). This structure confines each part just enough so that multiple musicians can simultaneously improvise while retaining overall coherence. The resulting music is a direct and immediate expression of human communication itself—an element of humanity which pre-scored music cannot fully address.

            Bebop improvisation revolves around “scrambled” lines, complex runs with the functional intension of preventing imitators from appropriating the music as whites did during the swing era (lecture 2/21/2013). Because the solos cannot be imitated, each performance is spontaneous and is unique to its location and time. Bebop developed in Minton’s Playhouse, a Harlem club which Miles Davis described as a “music laboratory” (Davis 54). Since most of the patrons were musicians themselves, the performers were forced to adhere to the standards of the most informed critics—Miles recalls a patron beating up a man for playing badly (Davis 54). The combination of the small physical space of Harlem bebop bars and the involvement of the audience summons the image of a soloist playing and an audience yelling back in a constant dialogic relationship.

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Thelonious Monk and the Five Spot: an Oasis from Racism

            Thelonious Monk moved to the San Juan Hill tenements at the age of four from North Carolina (Kelley 16). Racial tensions were prevalent in the neighborhood, formerly a setting for multiple race riots between 1900 and World War I. Though the area was cordoned into blocks belonging to different groups of black migrants—southern, Cuban, Puerto Rican, and so on—the main avenues were inhabited by European immigrant groups (Kelley 18). Monk recalled of the cultural violence, “You go in the next block and you’re in another country. Don’t look at a chick living in the next block and expect to be taking her home and all that; you might not make it” (Kelley 19). He also developed an aversion to the police early in his life, remembering, “Anything you did, if you ran or something, [the cops] called you black bastards” (Kelley 19). For black children, travel (particularly the walk to and from school) accordingly became a group activity for safety. At the school, P.S. 141, the children faced discrimination by the teachers despite the black majority of the school (Kelley 21). As a teenager, Monk developed a reputation in gang circles for his capability to fistfight (Kelley 33).

            Despite his childhood experience, Monk came to largely disregard racial discrimination as an adult, as if ignorance would eradicate the fact. Even as a kid, Monk was taught piano in the European tradition by an Austrian Jew and became a mascot for a rural, white fire department (Kelley 21, 26). Monk’s sidemen were all black, but this reflected choice by talent rather than by race (Kelley 229). Though the main bar Monk played at, the Five Spot, was founded with white musicians and clientele, it developed a diverse audience with respect to age, status, and race during Monk’s tenure there (Kelley 227, 256). This community was bound together by the shared love of dissonant, avant-garde jazz, and was an oasis of tolerance—embodying the Bohemian atmosphere in which Monk thrived. Beyond providing his sustenance, the Five Spot represented a community in which Monk enjoyed great respect and found exemption from the racial tension which consumed other musicians like Miles Davis (Kelley 239) (Lecture 2.28.2013).

            Monk did have an affinity for African artistic traditions. Bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik brought North African modality into Monk’s band (Kelley 236). Monk befriended Guy Warren, a Ghanaian who introduced Monk to the complex rhythms of West African drumming, inspiring Monk’s composition “Bluehawk” (Kelley 245). The African trinkets sent by Warren enthralled Monk.

            White patronage helped to let Monk transcend racial disputes. A white manager, Harry Colomby, was able to convince the court to reinstate Monk’s cabaret card, the New York City license for nightclub employees (Kelley 225). White fans helped Monk move about the city between gigs (Kelley 234). Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, known as Nica, was Monk’s greatest patron. Beyond rides in her Bentley, Nica took care of Monk and let him rehearse with band members in her house. It was Monk’s denial of Jim Crow that led to his arrest in 1958 while with Nica. Monk walked into a hotel kitchen and asked the owner’s white wife for some water, prompting her to summon the police. Monk, not understanding the casus belli, resisted and later struck at the police. He was arrested, beaten, convicted, and stripped of his cabaret card—for the third time, no less. Nica posted Monk’s bond and saved him from a marijuana position charge. Monk fell into a prolonged psychiatric breakdown, partially because he could not cognize that he was abused by the police because of race (Kelley 255).

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Racial Tension in the Swing Era

            During the 1920’s, jazz not only was procured by whites and blacks, but came to symbolize a decade of dancing. The increased white interest in jazz resulted in an influx of white jazz musicians by the mid 1930’s. Marking the beginning of the “swing era,” this period saw the development of the big band. For the first time, white musicians attained the same level of prominence as blacks.

            Indeed, the “King of Swing” was bandleader Benny Goodman, a white clarinetist. Goodman premiered jazz in Carnegie Hall in a 1938 concert, breaking the label that jazz was a low-brow form of entertainment (lecture 14 Feb). Goodman also integrated black and white musicians in his band. Like other white bandleaders, Goodman enjoyed better pay, job security, and mainstream acceptance than his black colleagues (Gioia 142). At the Savoy, a black Harlem club, Goodman musically battled against black drummer and bandleader Chick Webb in 1936. Goodman summarily lost, suggesting that the white bandleader’s advantage was one of race, not skill (lecture 14 Feb).

            In October of 1929, the stock market crashed, beginning the Great Depression. Recently, the radio had become available as a means of listening to music for the masses. The economic downturn caused the radio to largely replace the record because a radio was a one-time purchase, whereas records needed to be continually purchased in order to listen to new music. Previously, music could be recorded and distributed entirely within the black community. However, radio stations were owned by whites. Since blacks were denied gigs at, for instance, hotels, survival for a black musician meant gaining the influence and recognition to be played on a white station in favor of white musicians (Swing Changes 107).

            Duke Ellington did so by conceding his image and repertoire to white entrepreneurs, signing with a white agent, Irving Mills (Gioia 123). Mills not only helped Ellington procure deals with record companies and venue owners, but helped guide Ellington’s work to reflect what would be popular. However, Ellington had to give Mills an even share of profit and creative rights in return (Gioia 130). Ellington thrived as a bandleader at the Cotton Club, a nightclub owned by mobster Owney Madden which exclusively admitted whites (Gioia 126). However, he was conscious that he abandoned the black community, perhaps inspiring the dissonance and moodiness in, as an example, his melancholy composition “Black Beauty” (Gioia 128).

            Critics, typically middle class whites, worked from an entirely different social pedestal than did black musicians, constituting a lack of “embedded criticality” (lecture 14 Feb.), a shared sentiment between critic and musician. This created an aesthetic schism between black ideals and white consumption. John Hammond, the most important critic of the era, was responsible for discovering Benny Goodman and Count Basie among others (Swing Changes 56). Raised in a mansion, Hammond was an upper class white member of the Vanderbilt family (Swing Changes 55). Hammond became connected with the Popular Front, a communist organization which equated anti-Fascism with anti-racism (Swing Changes 62). Even though he believed that blacks were racially superior musicians, Hammond’s socio-economic position was detached from the problems faced by black musicians. Therefore those who prospered under his patronage were not necessarily chosen by virtue intrinsic to the black community.

            During the swing era, blacks competed with white musicians for white approval. Because they were judged with aesthetics not intrinsic to their background, blacks felt a great racial tension between a duty to their culture and a need to prosper. This tension was an artistic faucet of the dual consciousness between American and African described by W. E. B. Du Bois.

New York Jazz

            King Oliver left New Orleans in 1919, to be joined in Chicago three years later by Louis Armstrong (The Best of Jazz “King Oliver” 37). There, Oliver would develop a virtuosic paradigm of a soloist improvising in front of supporting musicians, while Armstrong would integrate melodicism into Oliver’s style (The Best of Jazz “King Oliver” 41). Meanwhile, local white groups like the Austin High School Gang helped to spread jazz into venues with prohibitory policies towards black musicians (The Best of Jazz “The Chicagoans” 154). Through a fusion of Creole, folk, and blues influences, Chicago jazz became a versatile music style suitable for both expression and entertainment.

            New York City, though, was the most important center in the development of jazz during the mid to late twenties. Jazz in Harlem was spawned from a drastically different set of influences than was the New Orleans-Chicago jazz heredity. Like in Chicago, musicians in New York drew inspiration from the blues, and New York jazz was even more influenced by ragtime than in Chicago—after all, the king of ragtime, Scott Joplin, lived in New York for the last decade of his life. Yet it was classical European music which outstandingly influenced jazz in New York. Harlem lent jazz the high class demographic needed for the music to jump from back alley blue collar entertainment to center stage as a viable mode of artistic output.

            The main force in mid-twenties New York jazz was stride piano. Stride blended ragtime with the influence of black migrants bearing the blues. However, European influence separated the auditory experience of stride from contemporaneous styles. James P. Johnson, the progenitor of stride piano, once commented, “The reason the New York boys became such high class musicians was because the New York piano was developed by the European method, system and style….The ragtime player had to live up to that standard” (Gioia 97). Johnson was known for ragging up canonical European works into “hot” versions worthy of a dance (The Best of Jazz “James P. Johnson” 25).

                        By the 1920’s, Harlem had developed a dualistic demographic consisting of poor migrants who were known for holding rent parties, and of middle class blacks who carried the artistic tastes associated with the Harlem renaissance (Gioia 94). Because of this duality, stride piano needed, simply for commercial viability, to seamlessly blend from appealing to those accustomed to “art music” to entertaining rent party-goers. To the date, ragtime and New Orleans-Chicago jazz had never managed (and perhaps even avoided) to find a moderate perch between high- and low-brow approbation (Gioia 96).

            Art Tatum’s music characterizes the relationship between stride piano and its ancestral styles. Tatum, a late entrant to Harlem stride, was continually in a dialogic discourse with multiple lineages of previous music. In congruence with Bakhtin’s literary theory, Tatum balanced his own desire for innovation with inspiration from previous composers. Tatum always adhered to the precedent by earlier stride artists like Johnson. Franz Liszt—the Entertainer of the classical era—motivated Tatum’s flashy technique (Gioia 102). Tatum’s repertoire was built on popular songs, connecting him to his audience (Gioia 104). The dialogism between Tatum and his contemporaries and precursors allowed his innovation to be socially relevant.

            New York jazz served as an antithesis to its Midwestern analogue—Chicago jazz specialized in expression and the brass solo instrument. New York jazz was fast, chromatic, highly technical, and required immense precision to effectuate daring leaps and dense harmonies. The later synthesis of New York jazz with the Chicago style would eventually yield the bebop era.

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