Unit 2: Armstrong to Ellington Response Essay

An alternative perspective and society; The Jazz Community of Musicians in the early 20th Century

Jazz emerged in the context of a sharply segregated America, with divisions between largely white audiences and black innovators, segregated markets for distributions of recordings, and unequal monetary rewards afforded to African American and White performers. The musicians themselves often remarked, at times obliquely, to the injustices of this uneven landscape. Nevertheless, their recollections of work with fellow players sometimes/often paint a picture of an alternative society, with a meritocracy, where one’s worth was determined by skill and not by their ethnicity. Through competition, love of music, love for each other and the alternative outlook on the world that jazz encapsulates, it was able to create a unique community in which musicians could partake in. Jazz represents a band of outcasts who decided to create another society instead of trying to change their current one.  Furthermore, jazz has been utilized as a form of expression against the White establishment, thus to some extent, leading to self segregation. 

The unique lifestyle and experience that jazz offered enticed those who viewed themselves as outsiders in the mainstream society and felt alienated. Consequently, attraction to jazz brought musicians from different backgrounds and ethnicities together to enjoy the many wonders of music. An example is the strong friendship between Bix, a German Christian born in Iowa, and Mezz Mezzrow, a Jew raised in Chicago, who were born to immigrant families, who were not considered part of mainstream American society at the time. Their bond was formed through their ability to play very well together.  “The minute he started to blow I jumped with a flying leap into the harmony pattern like I was born to it, and never left the track for a moment.”¹ This connection formed between the two musicians represents how outcasts from different backgrounds of America were able to come together and share the spoils of jazz. Mezzrow touches upon the call and response between himself and Bix “You preach to him with your horn and he answers back with his “Amen,” never contradicting you.”² Jazz’s roots stem from the African culture, in which call and response was an integral form of communication within music. Thus, this shows that Bix and Mezzrow have both fully embraced jazz, as they are starting to see the world from an African American perspective. The notion that people from different backgrounds came together under one community and perceived the world through the eyes of one specific culture has shown the dedication and the willingness to adapt to the jazz lifestyle by its musicians. As people from other ethnicities chose to adapt their view to fit the African American perspective on the world, however African American’s were forced into this perspective by the segregation and unequal treatment imposed upon them by mainstream society. Therefore, it can be inferred that this alternative community was created on the basis of social rejection by the masses.

In the early 20th Century, New York was the hotspot for arriving young musicians to prove their worth, however it was a tough environment which judged a musician on their skill and not their background. This competitive aura surrounding jazz attracted people to the community. The competitions ranged from aiming to gain fame to the greats playing against each other or for the pure friendly purpose of playing jazz itself. In some cases jazz was a tense affair in New York, which was also described as the “battlefield”³ on which jazz competitions took place. “ No quarter was given or expected, and the wound to a musician’s ego and reputation could be as deep as a cut.”⁴ The metaphorical representation of competition as a life or death scenario embodies the importance of winning. This intense passion for jazz showed that the desire to be the best and produce great music stood above the notion of social divide. However, the severity of these competitions present the jazz community far from its welcoming nature to all the musical outsiders of society, instead it is a meritocracy governed by musical talent. Nevertheless, competitions were not solely designed to prove someone’s worth to the jazz community. Friendly competitions also occurred, an example is Jimmy, an African American, and Jack, a Caucasian, both from different ethnicities became “buddies”⁵ and would compete against each other, yet their competition was in the spirit of extracting “the most swinging sounds.”⁶ This shows that the competition itself pushes the musicians to their best and this community was a prime place for musicians to excel in.  The author’s recollection of Jimmy and Jack does not dwell on the difference in their ethnicities, this represents how the community valued skill and did not judge background. 

The competitions in New York presented a time when jazz musicians were “fraternity brothers”⁷ and the social divide surrounding them did not affect their music. “There was little jealousy and no semblance of Jim Crow or Crow Jim in the sessions.[Term used as so called discrimination towards white folk]”⁸  By using Jim Crow and Crow Jim, the author Rex Stewart is signaling to us that the jazz community was a race neutral performance space. The competitions provided an environment where people did not judge each other and they respected each other’s triumphs and tribulations. This shows how competitions brought a healthy spirit of togetherness in jazz. Furthermore, the “jazzmen were bound together by their love for the music-and what the rest of the world thought about fraternizing did not matter.”⁹ The importance of jazz far outweighed the social implications which came with it. Thus, jazz in itself became a lifestyle for people who decided to divert from the mainstream society. The notion of fraternizing appeared due to the unions and promoters of jazz musicians aiming to resist the mixing of races within jazz. However, the fraternizing implies that the jazz community was predominantly dominated by males, which shows that some aspects of segregation within the mainstream society crossed over into the alternative society of jazz. Therefore, gender played a role in being accepted into the jazz community. 

Jazz in the 20th Century offered an African American perspective towards life in the United States to other outsiders such as immigrants. The collective prejudice of the White mainstream society has lasted for hundreds of years leading to African Americans and other outsiders to band together to form an alternative society with a distinct perspective. To further comprehend this African American experience, it is important to acknowledge the harsh reality of slavery faced by African Americans which played a gruesome role in moulding their outlook on life and its impact on their music which became one of the main roots to jazz. African Americans adapted Signifyin(g), derived from African diaspora, and used the rhetorical and subversive language to show their anger and pain, “tones, loud, long and deep, breathing the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with bitterest anguish.”¹⁰ towards the White masters. They were forced to sing by their masters, but they were able to achieve some solace in the meaning behind the music they sang. Douglass was only able to comprehend the meaning of this situation in retrospect,¹¹ which shows how only when Douglass became a free man was he able to comprehend the horrors he faced under slavery. Bessie Jones describes the songs, during slavery, as having a double meaning through, “these games were for talking to them white folks direct, because slaves didn’t like the way they were being treated.”¹²  Bessie clearly shows that the games were used to indirectly insult the White people without their knowledge as they did not have the freedom or priviledge to do so directly.  The combination of Bessie’s and Douglass’s recollections show the cruel reason why the jazz community was formed from an alternative society, as the mainstream White society of America stripped African Americans of their freedom and the only way to regain some freedom was to form a community of its own. Other outsiders who did not feel welcome also became attracted to this alternative lifestyle, resulting in the culmination of jazz musicians who saw themselves as part of the “fourth dimension…”¹³  an alternative reality which suited them. The reconciliation of two contradictory societies can be explained by Signifyin(g). Signifyin(g) is a subversive style of language containing double meaning. The occurrence of the double meaning at the same time, reflects the alternative lifestyle of the jazz community and the reality of the segregated society, thus creating a double consciousness of the world for the jazz musicians. 

Through Signifyin(g), jazz can be presented as a message voiced indirectly at the White society. This clearly shows how jazz was not solely designed to create an alternative society for outcasts. Jazz could be understood by different people to mean different things.  Consequently, it was used by those without power, African Americans and other outsiders, to speak up for themselves in an alternative, protected way. “Often silenced in their expressions of political interpretations, moral judgments, and Utopian visions, blacks in the United States invented strategies of indirect discourse that enabled expression.”¹⁴ This is a very different representation of how jazz was utilised to call out a society specifically based on their race and values, and to express their different outlook on the world which was forced upon them. However, a key difference between the White and Black musicians of the jazz community, is that the White musicians chose to become part of this world yet African American musicians are stuck in it. Consequently jazz can be viewed as a community of musicians from all walks of life and at the same time a tool for African Americans to express their anger and disappointment at the racial divide in the United States as “Being Black in America produces its own survival mechanisms.”¹⁵  

The jazz community of the early 20th Century has to some extent created an alternative society in which one was solely judged by their musical ability and not by the colour of their skin or ethnicity. This alternative society and perspective is a culmination of competition, fraternising and the troubled roots of jazz which created a community for musical outcasts. Nevertheless, this society was built upon a meritocracy of musical skill and maintained some form of segregation based on gender. Therefore, even though the community did not judge your background one must be dedicated enough to accept the perspective of the community and the challenges which came with it.  Simultaneously, jazz and its roots were not confined to the sole idea of an alternative society; it was also a tool used to express the want for equal treatment of African Americans and to further advance their cause. 

Footnotes

1. Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe, From Really the Blues (1946), cited in Reading Jazz, ed. Robert Gottlieb (New York:  Pantheon Books, 1996), p. 152
2.  Ibid.
3. The Cutting Sessions, 1967, by Rex Stewart, cited in Reading Jazz, ed. Robert Gottlieb (New York:  Pantheon Books, 1996), pp. 387-92
4.  The Cutting Sessions, 1967, by Rex Stewart, p.390
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., 390-391
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. The Cutting Sessions, 1967, by Rex Stewart, p.390
10. Frederick Douglass, from My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) in Eileen Southern, ed., Readings in Black American Music, 2nd edn. (New York:  Norton, 1979), p. 84.
11. Frederick Douglass, from My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), pp. 84-85
12. Bessie Jones, “More Than Games,” in For the Ancestors: Autobiographical Memories (University of Illinois Press, 1982), p. 45.
13. Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe, From Really the Blues (1946), p. 154
14. Paul Hanson, “Signifying,” from The Oxford African American Studies Center (2010)
15.  The House in the Heart by Bobby Scott from Gene Lees’s Jazzletter (September 1983), cited in Reading Jazz, ed. Robert Gottlieb (New York:  Pantheon Books, 1996), p. 452

Bibliography

Frederick Douglass, from My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) in Eileen Southern, ed., Readings in Black American Music, 2nd edn. (New York:  Norton, 1979), pp. 82-87.

Paul Hanson, “Signifying,” from The Oxford African American Studies Center (2010) 

Bessie Jones, “More Than Games,” in For the Ancestors: Autobiographical Memories (University of Illinois Press, 1982), pp. 44-83. 

Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe, From Really the Blues (1946), cited in Reading Jazz, ed. Robert Gottlieb (New York:  Pantheon Books, 1996), pp. 149-58

The House in the Heart by Bobby Scott from Gene Lees’s Jazzletter (September 1983), cited in Reading Jazz, ed. Robert Gottlieb (New York:  Pantheon Books, 1996), pp. 450-467

The Cutting Sessions, 1967, by Rex Stewart, cited in Reading Jazz, ed. Robert Gottlieb (New York:  Pantheon Books, 1996), pp. 387-92