# Jazz: A Child Pulled In Two Directions by Divorce



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

It's still possible to retain the African elements which made it jazz in the first place, and blues must be considered as almost totally synonymous with that.

By post-1960, jazz had assimilated so many other characteristics that it was almost unrecognizable.

Note that Miles Davis is also a trumpet player; there may be a degree of competition there.

Perhaps what Marsalis laments is the post-be-bop discarding of harmonic complexity, as Miles Davis led the way to, playing melodically over "drones" or melodically only, like Ornette Coleman, who rarely used a pianist, as Sonny Rollins began to do. This non-chordal, harmonically static style of melodic playing, or more accurately, the lack of harmonic root-movement, is what I think Marsalis is objecting to.

Analyzing this "no chord" way of playing, the connection to African music, and other non-harmonic/melody only "world" musics is inescapable. Realistically, Marsalis may have a point here, since jazz, originating in America, became "jazz" only when the African elements (pentatonic scales, bent notes, division of beat into three) were combined with Western rudimentary harmonic progressions, beginning with the blues use of I7-IV7-V7, and progressing from there into "I Got Rhythm" type progressions, I-VI-ii-V-I and so on, using popular "standards" as harmonic templates for melodic/pentatonic overlays.

*One more time: Jazz became "jazz" when the African elements were combined with Western rudimentary harmonic progressions and played on Western instruments. *

So, yes, jazz has always had Western influences, but these became bigger and bigger, especially with the almost total removal of the African/blues melodic features, and removal of 3-division African rhythm, as Bossa Nova did, changing it to a evenly-divided 4/4 beat. If you take these African features away, it is no longer jazz, but a hybrid form.

For the "pro-assimilation" argument, I counter by saying: The African elements of jazz were just as essential as the Western rudimentary harmonic progressions.

But for the "new jazz" revolutionaries, the Western rudimentary harmonic progressions of jazz had been increasingly emphasized, while the African elements had been slowly removed.
These harmonic progressions are what modern players like Miles Davis and others removed, in order to take jazz back to the more "black," more African elements.

So why did they do this, and why would Wynton Marsalis disagree? Because, removing the chord progression made jazz sound more like actual African music, which was melodic only, using no chords, like many non-harmonic "world" musics.

Was this fair? Admittedly, it took jazz in the opposite direction of Western harmony, transforming it into an even more "Africanized" form. A form of "cultural revenge" on America, perhaps, on the part of black jazz players?

And Marsalis is a "newer" generation of black man, more assimilated, less angry, more successful, unlike the angry Black Panther "hippie" afo-haired radicals of the 1960s.

Race aside, Marsalis is also the product of the "post-modern" era, in which we become aware of "histories" which did not really exist as commodities or "discrete objects" which could be used in various ways; to meld and cross-breed with other discrete histories, or to adopt wholesale as an artist direction, such as "roots music" movements for blues (The Fabulous Thunderbirds) or bluegrass (Brother Where Art Thou), or, Marsalis himself and his "Jazz at Lincoln Center" series. In this case, Marsalis is a "roots" traditionalist who has adhered to a strict historical model of jazz, as a fusion of African and Western elements, but still strictly American.

Also, Louis Armstrong the Man plays a factor in this; his unflagging good nature, his feeling that he did truly belong to America, the love audiences had for him, and, generally, that he was coming from a place of love, rather than anger or hate. Malcolm X also gravitated to a more "loving" position and tried to start a less hateful form of Islamic religion.

But in this sense, are Malcolm X and Miles Davis seeing themselves as more "world citizens?" Is this their motivation? And does this validate Davis' transforming of jazz into a more African, more "world," less American form? Perhaps this is just as valid as Marsalis' more conservative view. The "world" view, however, takes jazz away from America, away from the slavery and poverty from which it was created.

In this sense, "jazz" was just as "artificially created" as anything else; a "fusion" hybrid music from the beginning, created from the results of dislocation, aggression, and a people literally ripped from its cultural roots. Is it any wonder?

I guess Ken Burns is strictly an American historian, after all, so it makes good historical sense that his PBS documentary series took the form it did, and avoided these types of controversies. Perhaps "History" did end by the pst-1960s. "It's the End of the World As We Know It," as REM sang.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

That's very interesting. One thing (among many) made me pause:

"If you take these African features away, it is no longer jazz, but a hybrid form."

Can a white man play jazz, then? Or is it only authentic jazz when it retains that whiff of its African/American origins? What about all these Nordic jazz guys, Jan Gabarek and the likes?

"One more time: Jazz became "jazz" when the African elements were combined with Western rudimentary harmonic progressions and played on Western instruments. "

Absolutely.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Yes, anybody can play jazz, but seeing it morph into different forms might have been too much for Miles Davis to bear. There are black jazz musicians who insist that "white people can't swing." The Jazz Messengers, fronted by drummer Art Blakey, were a conscious attempt to take jazz back. He went to Africa, converted to Islam...


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