Sustaining Afrocentric Spiritual Jazz in 21St Century Chicago

318 Pages·2017·7.37 MB·English

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Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects CUNY Graduate Center
9-2016
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Adam Zanolini
The Graduate Center, City University of New York
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SACRED FREEDOM: SUSTAINING AFROCENTRIC SPIRITUAL JAZZ
IN 21ST CENTURY CHICAGO

by

ADAM ZANOLINI

A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Music in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York

2016
© 2016
ADAM ZANOLINI
All Rights Reserved

ii
Sacred Freedom: Sustaining Afrocentric Spiritual Jazz in 21st Century
Chicago

by

Adam Zanolini

This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Music in
satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

_________________ __________________________________________
DATE David Grubbs
Chair of Examining Committee

_________________ __________________________________________
DATE Norman Carey
Executive Officer

Supervisory Committee:

_________________ __________________________________________
DATE Jeffrey Taylor

_________________ __________________________________________
DATE Fred Moten

_________________ __________________________________________
DATE Michele Wallace

iii
ABSTRACT

Sacred Freedom: Sustaining Afrocentric Spiritual Jazz in 21st Century
Chicago

by

Adam Zanolini

Advisor: Jeffrey Taylor

This dissertation explores the historical and ideological headwaters of a certain form of
Great Black Music that I call Afrocentric spiritual jazz in Chicago. However, that label is quickly
expended as the work begins by examining the resistance of these Black musicians to any label.
I theorize that this resistance is due to the experiences of Black history, throughout which labels
have been used to enslave, exploit, and control people. I begin by discussing early musical
labels, several important n-words, and then the innovation of African diasporic subjecthood and
its labels. Then Black is examined, along with several corollary social movements and Black
music. Finally the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s Great Black Music is brought forward as a healing
descriptor, introducing the goal of healing as a characteristic of this musical tradition. In the next
half-chapter, I apply the semiotics of Charles Peirce to jazz, with specific focus on the avant-
garde. I theorize that the avant-garde’s timbral focus is related to Peirce’s concept of Firstness,
and also to iconic representation. I then briefly discuss the history of spiritual jazz before
reviewing the Afrocentric paradigm that many musicians represent in the music. I examine the
lives, careers, and work of three Black spirit musicians in Chicago: Phil Cohran, David Boykin,
and Angel Elmore. Then I bring together relevant aspects of the music, its history, and the people
surrounding it, by considering four valences of space: 1) urban space, specifically the South Side
which was a result of the Great Migration of Negroes from the south who became Black people
in the North; 2) performance spaces, especially in view of the demise of Fred Anderson’s Velvet
Lounge; 3) sonic space, one characteristic of the Chicago music, which is a loaded possibility for
creation to happen; 4) outer space, spiritual dimensions, and the musicians collective I’m part of
called the MB Collective and the Participatory Music Coalition.
iv
Acknowledgements
Ase to my ancestors, and to the musical elders and forebears that have made this music to
nourish us all. Personal thanks to Patricia and William Parker who gave me my first opportunity
to lend my best efforts to the advancement of this music I love so much. Thank you to Phil
Cohran who taught me most about the substance and importance of Black music and Black
culture. Thank you to David Boykin who helped me to find my musical voice and to experience
the wonder of creation first hand. Thank you to Ernest Dawkins for letting me be a small part of
his important efforts to advance Black music in the Black neighborhoods of Chicago. Thank you
to Gira Dahnee, SuRa Dupart, Angel Elmore, Xristian Espinoza, Viktor le Ewing Givens, JeNae’
Nicole Taylor, and Sojourner Wright for musical and spiritual collaboration. Thank you to Soji
Adebayo, Bakarae, Walter Clark, Nemu El, Baabe Irving, Kwesi, Nebu, Nuwki Nu, Tracy, and
other members of the Society for the Study of Eternal Life for their generosity and wisdom.
Thank you to Eliel Sherman Storey, Roy Campbell, Sura Ramses Dupart, and Cooper-Moore for
your musical insights, which led me onto the path of understanding the structures in music.
Thank you to Douglas Ewart and Nicole Mitchell, Ari Brown and Fred Anderson, Margaret
Murphy-Webb and Charles Heath, Wadada and Muhal, Cecile Savage and Josh Abrams, Hamid
Drake and Avreeayl Ra, for your insight and inspiration. Thank you to my professors and my
advisors who guided me through this processes – Stephen Blum, Peter Manuel, Jane Sugarman,
Michael Salim Washington, Frederick Moten, Michele Wallace, and Jeffrey Taylor. Thank you
to Gina Morrison for loving advice. Thank you to my mother Lynne Zanolini for existence and
everything important about myself.

v
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................... v
Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 8
Methods ........................................................................................................................................ 10
1. Coming to Terms: Names, Labels, Genres, and History .................................................. 12
Self-determination of Terms ................................................................................................................ 16
Early Musical Labels ............................................................................................................................ 21
Nigger, Negro, Necro, Nègre, Noire ..................................................................................................... 23
African and African American ............................................................................................................ 29
Diaspora ................................................................................................................................................. 32
Black ....................................................................................................................................................... 45
Black Musical Authenticity and The Black Arts Movement ............................................................ 47
Complicating Black: Matana Roberts ................................................................................................. 56
Complicating Jazz ................................................................................................................................. 58
The Relationship Between the Labels Black and Jazz, and the Imperative for Black Jazz
Musicians to Reject All Labels. ............................................................................................................ 64
Great Black Music and Spiritual Healing ........................................................................................... 68
1½. Semiotics: Representing Black Music ................................................................................ 77
Semeiotic Not Semiology ....................................................................................................................... 78
The Firstness of Timbre ....................................................................................................................... 95
Generative Representation – Creating Black culture ...................................................................... 107
2. Ideologies: Afrocentricity and the Black Spirit of Chicago .............................................. 111
Afrocentricity ...................................................................................................................................... 111
Black Nationalism and Religio-political Formations ....................................................................... 115
Nation of Islam .................................................................................................................................. 117
Moorish Science Temple .................................................................................................................. 121
Black Hebrews .................................................................................................................................. 123
Spiritual Jazz ....................................................................................................................................... 127
3. Figures: Black Spirit Musicians of Chicago ....................................................................... 138
Elders and Ancestors .......................................................................................................................... 138
Phil Cohran – Original Afrocentric Musicologist ............................................................................ 139
Biography .......................................................................................................................................... 141
Astronomy ......................................................................................................................................... 148
Music Theory .................................................................................................................................... 151
The Spiritual Dimension ................................................................................................................... 153
Phil Cohran and Afrocentricity ......................................................................................................... 154
Phil Cohran, the Spiritual Musician .................................................................................................. 155
Phil Cohran – Deep Knowledge ........................................................................................................ 160
Sun Ra Tribute Concert 2008 ............................................................................................................ 171
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David Boykin ....................................................................................................................................... 177
Biography .......................................................................................................................................... 178
Sonic Healing .................................................................................................................................... 180
Angel Elmore ....................................................................................................................................... 188
Participation ...................................................................................................................................... 191
MB Collective and Participatory Music Coalition ............................................................................ 201
Afrocentric Spiritual Jazz Lineage .................................................................................................... 212
4. Space: Four Dimensions and Sustaining a Black Creative Community .......................... 215
Migration and Urban Space: Motivation, Inspiration, Transportation ........................................ 219
Performance Space: Velvet Lounge .................................................................................................. 227
After the Velvet Lounge ..................................................................................................................... 239
Jazz, Jam Sessions and the Participatory Ethos .............................................................................. 245
Intra-sonic Space ................................................................................................................................. 248
Outer-space: Afrofuturism and Afro-surrealism ............................................................................. 251
Coda: Fred Anderson Park ................................................................................................................ 256
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 259
Appendix – Transcription of “Zincali” ................................................................................... 268
Glossary of People Places and Fests ........................................................................................ 272
New York People ................................................................................................................................. 282
California People ................................................................................................................................. 283
Organizations and Collectives ............................................................................................................ 283
Venues .................................................................................................................................................. 284
Full Time Jazz Clubs ......................................................................................................................... 284
Series / Sometimes Jazz Spots ......................................................................................................... 285
Jam Sessions ..................................................................................................................................... 286
Festivals ............................................................................................................................................ 286
Annotated Discography ............................................................................................................ 288
Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 293

List of Figures
Figure 1 Photo: Great Black Music Ensemble performs “Kujichagulia” at the Velvet Lounge in 2009 ... 16
Figure 2 Jean-Jacques Nattiez's Tripartite Model of Semiosis ................................................................... 80
Figure 3 Diagram of waveform “envelope” .............................................................................................. 100
Figure 4 Photo: Three guest participants on stage improvising. ............................................................... 209
Figure 5 Photo: Scene at the Velvet Lounge circa 2005. .......................................................................... 230
Figure 6 Photo: Velvet Lounge circa 2005. Water damage is visible in the upper left. ........................... 231
Figure 7 Photo: MB Collective and Participatory Music Coalition present “Mothership” in 2015 ......... 254

vii
Introduction
The South Side of Chicago is widely considered a very violent and dangerous place.
Poverty and crime rates are extraordinarily high. The daily news often features stories of murder
on the South Side, and Chicago’s gun problem is a topic of national interest. Last year, there was
even a new film by Spike Lee called Chiraq, a title that caused a great deal of controversy in
Chicago by comparing our city to an intractable war zone. And so the image that’s created of the
South Side, and the one that many people have in their minds, is of a dystopian nightmare. But
while living and working there, I have found that it is also full of beauty and riches. With miles
of lakefront property, crisscrossed by transit, adjacent to the largest metropolitan area in nearly a
thousand-mile radius, there is also an enormous reservoir of Black history and culture. On the
South Side, I met Black musicians who are using their creativity, their voice, their notoriety, and
their industry to do positive things for the Black community, working to remove the self-
fulfilling stigma of their neighborhoods, and making it possible to imagine healthy communities
in its place.
Now, jazz is changing. It has always been changing. Jazz is a music of changes. In the
21st Century, most jazz musicians in the world may not be Black. Most jazz audiences may not
be Black. Yet jazz will remain an important part of Black culture and of ongoing Black history. I
am not here to add my voice to those who declare that all jazz is essentially Black music by
virtue of its origins and its qualities. I am here to document the way that many musicians practice
and perform jazz as an expression of Black culture and identity. For many musicians, the
Blackness in jazz is part of the reason they play it, part of why they play the way they play. For
some musicians playing is a sacred, spiritual practice as such. Furthermore, jazz can teach us
viii
about Blackness, Black culture, Black identity, Black history … indeed, that’s part of what it is
here to do.
The impetus for my focus on sustainability came from a New York avant-jazz presenter’s
comment to me that the only place currently generating young Black experimental/creative jazz
musicians is Chicago. She then thought harder and remembered musicians from New York and
Washington, DC, but I was struck by my own experience of the strength of this current in
Chicago compared to New York. While in some ways jazz was thriving – with increasing
academic programs and a number of successful clubs in New York at least – Black people and
jazz seemed to be getting a divorce. In New York, it was difficult to hear jazz in Black
neighborhoods, themselves eroding under torrents of gentrification. And in the jazz clubs, it was
much easier to see an all-white band than a Black one. But in Chicago, there was a Black jazz
scene. New young Black musicians were emerging just as mid-career Black artists were reaching
their full potential, and Black elders who were already legendary among musicians were finally
being recognized by the public at large. When I returned to Chicago from New York in 2012, the
South Side of Chicago was a place where almost any night of the week you could hear Black
musicians playing jazz for a Black audience, in a place that was owned or controlled by Black
people. Although the scene was but a shadow of its former self, many of the musicians were
carrying on an intellectual tradition that had been developing there since the days of Sun Ra. My
project was to find out why this was so, and whether we can expect it to continue to be so, and
especially if there’s anything I could do to help it continue to be so. In other words, I
endeavored to learn about jazz in Chicago – where it is also thought of as one name that
describes part of a larger field called Great Black Music – in order to shed light on the
sustainability of this rich cultural tradition. How has the jazz in Chicago maintained its strength
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