Bigotry and the Afrocentric “Jazz” Evolution

99 Pages·2011·2.29 MB·English

Bigotry and the
Afrocentric “Jazz” Evolution
Second Edition
By Karlton E. Hester, Ph.D.
University of California-Santa Cruz
Copyright © 2012 by Karlton E. Hester. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
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any information retrieval system without the written permission of University Readers, Inc.
First published in the United States of America in 2012 by Cognella, a division of University Readers,
Inc.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent to infringe.
Image credits:
India Cooke 2003 Vancouver International Jazz Festival
© Josephine Ochej, photographer
(Josephine Ochej: [email protected])
16 15 14 13 12 1 2 3 4 5
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-60927-451-1
To learn more please access the following weblink supplements available with this text.
Th is weblink below contains an Encyclopedia of Music, Musicians and Recordings:
Discographies, Biographies, Chapter Supplements, Lesson Plans for Teachers,
Classroom Materials, and Images to accompany the 12 chapters of the textbook. Th is
weblink can be accessed at:
http://digital.universityreaders.com/resources/Hester_70058-1_supplements.zip
In Memory of
Clara and Webb Hester, Jr.
Contents
Foreword vii
Preface xiii
An Introduction to Afrocentric Music xv
I. Traditional African Music 1
II. Th e Sociocultural Context in Which
African-American Music Emerged 63
III. Traditional African-American Music 91
IV. Innovators Emerging Between 1900 and 1910 137
V. Innovators Emerging Between 1910 and 1920 189
VI. Innovators Emerging Between 1920 and 1930 223
VII. Innovators Emerging Between 1930 and 1940 275
VIII. Innovators Emerging Between 1940 and 1950 329
IX. Innovators Emerging Between 1950 and 1960 393
X. Innovators Emerging Between 1960 and 1970 439
XI. Innovators Emerging Between 1970 and 1980 491
XII. Innovators Emerging Between 1980 and 2000 535
Index 587
Reserve and In-Class Recordings 613
Discussion Questions 645
Listening Exams 671
Foreword
Racism is alive and well in America, it is a growth industry. We need to
understand that white world supremacy (racism) is a given fact of life in
the world and is not vanishing. Th erefore, we cannot, if we are intelligent,
continue to use racism as an excuse to not execute our worldview. If this is
clear, we will save a lot of hearts and minds that think we can change white
peo ple with conversation, spiritual sharing, money or astronomy.… I am
convinced without doubt or hesitation, that white world supremacy has to
be seen as an organized and deliberated attack on all people of color. And an
eff ective defense against it must be incorporated into the teaching of every
Black youth in the world.
—Haki R. Madhubuti, 1991
T
he term “African American” is witness to the continued exclusion of
peop le of phenotypical African ancestry from an unchallenged claim to
call themselves American after over 400 years in this land. I never hear
objections to the terms Latin jazz, Japanese jazz, Polish jazz, Brazilian jazz, and now
even Chinese jazz, but African-American jazz seems to rub people the wrong way.
Why is that? I submit that such objections are under the aegis of a paucity of avail-
able history written from the African-American perspective … one of the greatest
stories never told. Th is sad state of aff airs eff ects students of all hues. What is tragic
in all of this is that scientists have recently concluded that the total variance in the
human gene pool is at the .001 level. Yet, most of the wars on Earth center on racial
or ethnic themes. Th ese are facts that cannot be mitigated by cultural blindness but
by raising ourselves to a level where we can identify primarily with the common
denominators while still appreciating the idiosyncrasies.
vii
Th e great battle in any cultural war is for the primacy of symbol.
—Jamal Ali, 1990
It follows that African-American culture and arts can only be properly taught or
transmitted in the context of an African worldview, the oldest known worldview on
the planet. Otherwise it will become extinct with the next generation of its elders
who pass away. Absent this requirement and not even a reasonable facsimile of the
cultural tradition results. We are steadfastly approaching a time when no one will be
around that knows the diff erence. A read of history from the African-American or
African perspective enables one to see a quite diff erent point of view. What is needed
is an examination of African-American culture from the perspective of the African
world view. Dr. Karlton E. Hester’s treatise addresses and thoroughly challenges the
reader to confront both the overt and vestigial expressions of bigotry that continue to
plague the evolution of Afrocentric Jazz.
Some would argue that the jazz world is a shining example of democracy at work.
Th ey expound examples that fail to notice the subtleties that chara cterize modern
bigotry. Bigotry is evident where it is claimed that the origins of jazz came from
Europe, a claim that was anathema before the advent of Th e US Congressional des-
ignation of Jazz as a National Treasure in 1987 (HCR 57). We hear no disputes with
the idea that the Chinese invented gun powder or the Europeans invented symphonic
music or opera as we know it. As soon as the Black man claims to be the source of
positive value, especially at a time when the value is offi cially declared to be such,
there is a dispute over the label. Th is is the same music that was during my lifetime
not cons idered to be an art form at all by many music schools that today claim it
to be “American” as opposed to African-American. Bigotry is expressed in programs
that train artists into the European tradition on the assumption that they will be able
to transfer their skills into any other tradition in the Western world. Th is is no more
thoughtful than to believe you can teach Latin and expect the student to be able to
speak Chinese. Bigotry is expressed whenever an African-American jazz musician
is performing without sheet music and is automatically questioned whether they
know how to read music. Th ose who persist in representing the reading of nota-
tion as the most valuable skill a musician can acquire are suggesting that the map is
more important than famil iarity with the territory, another form of bigotry. ASCAP
still has a division on its songwriter submittal form headed “for serious music only”
(meani ng, of course, European symphonic music) clearly indicating that bigot ry is
still acceptable where it remains unchallenged. When an organization or school uses
the term Afro- or African-American in its name, curiously white people generally
tend to avoid the school and the community it is in be cause of the label. Th e question
is why the label Afro- or African-American music almost always is interpreted by
viii • Bigotry and the Afrocentric “Jazz” Evolution
white people as meaning “for” African Americans instead of “by” African Americans
or “about” African Americans. Th e answer is it is just another form of bigotry, ample
reason to justify build ing more organizations dedicated to the preservation of the
accurate history and development of jazz, the invention of African Americans under
oppress sion now shared and claimed by the world.
Dr. Hester writes, “James Reese Europe (1881–1919), like Antonin Dvorak
(1893), realized that African-American music was a powerful source for the devel-
opment of an innovative twentieth-century American art form. His critics, though
strongly infl uenced by his music, insisted that his music should model itself after
European ‘serious’ composers to be validated by main stream America.”
You see, we colored people have our own music that is part of us. It’s the
product of our souls; it’s been created by the suff erings and miseries of our
race.
—James Reese Europe
Cultural bigotry, however, persists in many forms and is evident in the writings
of those who disparage jazz openly and even in the writings of some who portend
to recognize its higher value and champion its cause. We are all victims of schooling
that taught the history of Europe and its conquests as “world” history. Th is bias
has not been eradicated from the minds of scholars by the passing of time. Western
traditions of scholarship tend to examine phenomena in terms of structure in order
to pinpoint characteristics that can be classifi ed, through analysis and correlation of
derived facts. Th e premise is that of separation or distinction as a value that leads to
greater understanding, a cultural bias in itself. Th is approach is evident in the analy sis
of the renowned ethnomusicologist, Alan Lomax who wrote:
Early jazz is probably America’s most important cultural contribution. No
music had ever been so complex … these people were doing counter point
in polyrhythm, and all the parts were being improvised jointly. With virtuo-
sic control of the tone, and with everybody singing through the instrument
rather then playing notes from music—singing their own song which was
cont ra to the other song. It was polyrhythmically organized, and improvised
at the same time, using the concert instruments of Europe. Th ere had never
been anything like this … Euro peans have a whole diff erent approach to
music, and to conv ersation, and to organizing human interaction, than
Africans have. We forget that Africans have a musical culture that goes back
50,000 years! It’s the fi rst musical culture. … And they have come over
here: they’re missionaries in our continent. We’re learning from them, step
Foreword • ix
by painful step. … Th ere’s no Euro pean orchestra that plays that way …
they studied Europ ean counter point, and they had the whole African tradi-
tion avail able to them. Th ey put it together, and out of it came the most
complicated music that the human species has ever pro duced. Africa plus
Europe: the African love, and the European sub tleties and gentleness …the
positive together with the positive.
—Alan Lomax
Even today music education systems are teaching Eurocentric music philoso-
phy and methodology and labeling it “multicultural.” African-Amer ican students
extremely scarce in student jazz classes. For example in my own city the annually
sponsored Student Jazz Spectacular in 2001 had only two Black jazz students out of
50 in the performing groups. Th ere was also a dramatic diff erence in the performance
levels of the two student groups based on the conductor’s style. Th e fi rst conductor
used the African-American style and they played much better than the second group
conducted in the European style. Tragically the African-American students along
with the other students are receiving no mentoring from the African-American living
masters of the music who are available but are not formally trained licensed teachers.
Some of them were in the audience wishing they had more access to the students.
Traditionally such access was part and parcel of the Black community, however, since
music and art education has been turned over to the schools, non-academic living
masters of jazz little or no access to the students. Has our schooling indeed interfered
with our education?
Afrocentric Jazz Evolution remains America’s greatest cultural export yet is largely
unappreciated and widely neglected by both audiences and educators at home. An
examination of Western models of the human species will reveal the favoring the
rational intellectual sense on the assumption that the best qualities of the life ex-
perience are to be found in technology, numbers and material pursuits. Dramatic
breakthroughs in consciousness research and theory now warn that our neglect of the
creative sense has placed us in the position of training our youth in quantitative skills
to become poor computers while ignoring the qualitative potential of the creative
mind which the computer will never accomplish. If we don’t soon re-awaken the
creative genius within us from which culture derives its meaning, we will inherit a
world where computers make the decisions, robots do the work and androids police
the people to keep them from killing each other. We will have forgotten how to think
or have fun and will have never learned to get along with each other. It is only the
creative sense and the imagination that are capable of new ideas, examining frames
of reference, and establishing scales of value by correlating variables in the context of
one’s world-view, traditional history, identity, self-image and cultural practices.
x • Bigotry and the Afrocentric “Jazz” Evolution
Th e present skewed emphasis in favor of math and science as opposed to the arts
extant throughout American’s educational establishment, fueled by myopic hindsight,
can be held responsible for a tremendous imbalance in the quality of life experience
by students whose literacy rates have been plummeting. A cursory history of any
artistic modality would illustrate that the vision of the artist has always been the
beacon of vision into the unknown future upon which great civilizations have been
built. Conversely, the suppression or neglect of the artistic sensibilities is historically
the harbinger of societal decay. Th e eradication of a people’s vision and hope can be
held responsible for the decline of many great civilizations and is the covert aim of
white world supremacy (racism) and cultural bigotry.
Dr. Hester’s provocative treatise, Bigotry and the Afrocentric Jazz Evolution, posits
the gauntlet and sets the stage for the redirection of perspective concerning Afrocentric
music in areas of scholarship and general understanding.
Nelson E. Harrison, Ph.D., December 2003, Adjunct Professor
Africana & Ethnic Studies, Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC)
Psychologist, Musician, Composer, Lyricist, and Author
Foreword • xi