Cosmic Music and Alice Coltrane

Although it took some time to procure a copy through the library, we have finally finished Andy Beta's detailed biography of Alice Coltrane. Entitled Cosmic Music: The Life, Art, and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane, one can already guess the author's approach to her life and music. He tries to balance the spiritual and musical aspects of Coltrane's life, showing much respect for her as Swamini who led an ashram in Agoura Hills. Significantly longer and benefitting from more recently released or reissued recordings of Alice Coltrane's work, Beta's biography is more comprehensive than that of Berkman's earlier study of Coltrane. By adroitly balancing the various aspects of Coltrane's life and showing great respect to her faith, readers understand how the sacred was always part of Alice's aesthetic. Though sometimes leaning toward credulity, one suspects Beta wants the reader to come to their own conclusions about Alice's spiritual transformation and abilities. For examples, see how Beta nonchalantly reports Coltrane's claims to levitate, or astrally project. Or, for instance, her somehow learning Ancient Egyptian for "Er Ra." The biography abounds with examples of Turiya's claims to astral projections, meetings with deceased composers, and karmic healing. This undoubtedly informs the reader of all aspects of her life and work, from Alice's own perspective. He's also effectively demonstrates how the jazz establishment dismissed her for sexist reasons and how Alice went on to shape New Age music, a field for which we must confess a lack of interest.

Naturally, as one can expect in the standard jazz biography, Beta contextualizes Coltrane's work in the larger social, cultural and political spheres of her time. This means highlighting the impact of race and gender on limiting opportunities for African Americans, the context of the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power, and the sexism of the jazz and music industries. Thus, the story begins with Detroit and expands significantly beyond the confines of Alice's own upbringing and church community. Black Detroit, despite the ugly racism of the past, was a vibrant center for music and the arts. Even the schools, less segregated, provided an excellent musical education accessible to black students. This background helps to explain the rise of not only jazz musicians like Alice Coltrane and her older brother, but the eventual ascent to stardom of Motown (also connected to Alice Coltrane through her sister's career as a songwriter). This important historical/cultural context for Black Detroit was unknown to us, mainly the reputation of Detroit jazz artists as excellent musicians in the genre and often becoming major figures of the second half of the last century. Thus, Yusef Lateef, Alice Coltrane, Terry Pollard, and Joseph Henderson were just some of the brilliant players to come out of this musical environment. Beta also emphasizes the role of jazz musicians like Terry Pollard and Dorothy Ashby, also from Detroit, to indicate how female instrumentalists were also renowned in the city. 

The subsequent section of the biography covers Alice's early career as a musician. Despite dreams of Juilliard, she makes a name for herself in Detroit, playing with groups like the Premiers. She also spent time in Paris, meeting with the legendary Bud Powell (whose technique she was said to resemble in her piano style) and hearing Coltrane with Miles Davis at the Olympia. She even toured with Terry Gibbs, being one of the better soloists on his recording of Jewish music. Indeed, one can already detect her eclecticism here since Alice was performing music from bob, African-American spirituals, Jewish, and the jazz traditions. Her time in New York City is mentioned here or there, including the time she spent at a Loft where each morning greeted the musicians with the fresh aroma of flowers. Coltrane even married Hagood, another musician, yet faced the misfortune of his drug addictions and had to raise Michelle on her own. But the next part of her life proved to be more momentous in her musical and personal development. 

Next, Alice meets John. Both were shy, very shy. Alice had already seen him perform in Paris and John's stature in the music was very well established. The two hit it off and Alice eventually married John. Although she did not immediately join the quartet, her conversations with John obviously included their shared passion for music, such as Stravinsky. Over time, as Coltrane's music went further "out," the group fell apart while Alice replaced Tyner as pianist. By this period, Alice's playing was less of the Bud Powell-influenced style she was known for. She was still very much connected to her musical roots, but her shared interest in spiritual jazz, avant-garde music, and alternative religious systems led her and John to create more daring, freer music. One can only wonder how their music would have developed had John lived into the 1970s and 1980s.

Of course, Coltrane tragically died from illness in 1967. After a harrowing time that was likely part mental breakdown, part spiritual awakening, Alice recovered and established herself as the bearer of John's legacy whilst continuing her own musical voice. This growing interest in Hinduism and what might be seen as New Age thinking was part of a broader current in the United States at the time. Fortunately, Beta does highlight this, even mentioning how Alice Coltrane met and worked with Laura Nyro and others interested in Eastern religion and philosophy at the time. Other jazz musicians likewise explored Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or their own Afrocentric mythologies, like Sun Ra. Sun Ra is mentioned by name here for being one of the influences on John's interests in esoterica. It's perhaps under-analyzed here how Alice Coltrane's ascent to guru is part of a Black counterculture, with all the limitations and problems of the larger phenomenon of the 1960s and 1970s.

Now paired with her Hindu-inspired spiritual awakening and harp playing, Alice's music was polarizing for the jazz establishment. Perhaps aiming for low-hanging fruit, Beta occasionally quotes and eviscerates sexist jazz critics who naively dismissed Alice's albums or "tainted" the last recordings of Coltrane by overdubbing strings or her own music. Some of this music is sheer beauty and cosmic delight, like World Galaxy, and was recorded with excellent jazz artists like Pharoah Sanders, Charlie Haden or Rashied Ali. In more recent times, musicians and critics have finally recognized the brilliance of Alice's music, both the secular and her unique recordings of bhajans accompanied by the singing of her students. Alice has finally received the recognition she was due, and not just as the wife of John Coltrane. One can only hope more female jazz instrumentalists receive the recognition they are due instead of being ignored or reduced to their relationship with more famous men.

Overall, this was a very readable, accessible, and entertaining biography. Our interest in Alice Coltrane as a guru or spiritual leader remains slight, but Beta successfully balances this aspect of her career with her earlier life. Indeed, his interviews with members of Coltrane's ashram as well as various producers, musicians, and family members who knew her well reveal how deeply researched this book is. And, as he makes abundantly clear in how Alice Coltrane was always performing or playing music after the end of her contract with Warner, members of the public could even visit her center on Sundays for rousing performances of bhajans. Music was constantly in the home, too. Still, it is a travesty that some of her recordings from studio dates or live performances have been lost, as well as much of the television material she created. Beta's biography fills in as much of the gap as possible, highlighting as always her dedication to music's sacred dimensions. Indeed, her son, Ravi, appears to have maintained some of this aura. At a concert we attended, of which the audience was at least a quarter Indian or South Asian, and performed in a church, one could feel the "cosmic" and divine. Therefore, the Coltrane legacy (both John and Alice) lives on in the music of Ravi and many others, both jazz or non-jazz artists, who imbue a "cosmic" dimension to their work. Unsurprisingly, we have been inspired to explore all of Coltrane's recorded works now. We have moved beyond our youthful dismissal of her music after the early 1970s and can appreciate the beauty of her bhajans.

As Serious As Your Life

Valerie Wilmer's As Serious As Your Life is a must-read for all interested in the history of the new thing in the 1960s and 1970s. Based on her own involvement and extensive interviews with the musicians themselves who championed their art, it resolves all doubts of free jazz's roots in the Black community and earlier forms of jazz (as well as African music, since free jazz represented a return to the percussive nature of African music). As as they struggled to survive in a world hostile to their music, the artists came together in cooperatives, ensembles, the loft scene, and related artistic endeavors in the Black Arts Movement to pursue creative music reflecting their cultural, social, musical, and intellectual environments. By letting the musicians speak for themselves, they are further humanized as we learn of their shortcomings, desires, personal lives, and aspirations. 

One cannot speak of Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, the AACM, or Andrew Cyrille as disconnected from larger currents of their era, particularly as the opportunities for profit in jazz were dwindling and the new music artists sought to define themselves and leave a legacy for future generations. Outside of academia, grants, and a few organizations like the AACM, it does seem like this spirit of jazz is long gone, but one can see in it perhaps the last great creative surge in jazz that existed in tandem with popular Black music of the era, despite its arduous path to reach the masses of African Americans. Black cultural nationalism, socialism, and mystical notions had a certain attraction to these artists, and shaped their music and their self-conception as artists beyond the confines imposed on jazz music in the past. The concert hall, rather than the nightclub, was their ideal performance venue, but they also wanted to reach a large audience and retain links with communities outside of their artistic circles. 

A democratizing impulse in the music can also be found in the period. Wilmer was likely one of the first to seriously consider the question of women in the new music. Besides Alice Coltrane, Amina Claudine Myers, Carla Bley or Linda Sharrock, women artists in the new music were scarce, yet without their finncial, emotional, and artistic contributions, the jazz avant-garde would not have survived. Working women provided the necessary income to support musicians who struggled to find work as the jazz nightclubs were disappearing and the music was not supported by most of the large record labels (with the possible exceptions of Impulse and Atlantic). There was also a push for greater inclusion of women as instrumentalists in the music, not just vocalists. In a sense, jazz was democratizing itself further as women fought for their space. The sidemen versus leader dichotomy was also challenged in this democratizing push, since creative ensembles in which leadership was equally shared were perceived as better for the spirit of musical collaboration and cooperatively-run labels or associations. Jazz, like other forms of music, continue to struggle with these questions, but undoubtedly the free jazz scene paved a way forward for the music.

Blues People: Negro Music in White America

Amiri Baraka's Blues People is a fascinating read on the socio-cultural context of African American music as it pertains to the place of Black Americans in US society. While mostly centered on the blues, the text examines Black music from its African origins and the shouts, hollers, and spirituals of pre-Emancipation to the avant-garde jazz of the 1960s. While it owes much to its era and the impact of Herskovits can be strongly detected in the early chapters, it shows how the Afro-American developed a distinct music in their American context. So, regardless of how one feels about the accuracy of claims of African origin or retention, Baraka, like Gunther Schuller, presents a plausible theory of the ways in which the African past lingers in Black music.

It's an ambitious work that relies on a paradigm of double consciousness as seen in music, as well as certain sociological assumptions or conclusions about social stratification of Blacks and the question of assimilation in relation to the evolution of musical styles. Personally, I find Baraka's dismissal of ragtime problematic (ragtime's more serious composers and performers did look to African American folk traditions, not just marches or the American popular song) , as well as some of the assumptions about the black middle-class as devotees of assimilation (perhaps a result of his reliance on the seminal study of Frazier), but he is generally quite persuasive. Some may take issue with his attitudes on the literature of the Harlem Renaissance and gender dynamics in Black America, too.

The "blues continuum" concept for understanding Black music after the rise of radio and "race records" is an interesting way of understanding the continued links connecting country blues, urban blues, jazz, and R&B, not to mention the reaction and counterreactions that characterize the rise of of bebop, R&B, and avant-garde jazz. The cleavage between the Black masses and the bourgeoisie of the race are also interesting dynamics to consider in terms of the transformation of jazz in the 1920s and 1930s. Gunther Schuller's study of jazz includes some of these insights, but not quite in as forceful a manner as that of Jones, although the former certainly includes greater musicological insight and analysis.

Baraka brings to the table a deeper understanding of the blues as it pertains to African American culture and identity than Schuller, however. He also demonstrates why it is that jazz in particular, of all the blues-influenced forms of Black music, could appeal so widely and become flexible enough to absorb all kinds of influences so that whites and middle-class blacks could become innovative in it. For that reason, Blues People should continue to be read as a study of music as a way of understanding Black America and the social context of its music. Jazz aficionados have much to learn from this, in spite of its shortcomings. 

Mama's Black Baby Boy

A vocal quartet recorded in the 1890s, the Unique Quartette are one of the earliest recorded black groups in the US. This recording may be suggestive of how black vocal groups of the 1890s sounded generally, with a detectable influence from spirituals and their Southern past. According to Berlin's biography of Scott Joplin, the ragtime composer began with a vocal quartet that may have sounded something like this.

Porto Rico

The Manhattan Ragtime Orchestra playing Ford Dabney's Porto Rico. Composed in 1910, shortly after Dabney's stint in Haiti, the song is another example of Caribbean musical influences in American music. As an important figure in the development of jazz and black music in New York during the 1910s, one cannot forget the presence of Puerto Rican musicians in the band of James Reese Europe. This may explain how Dabney was able to compose a piece that almost sounds like a danza, which also possesses some similarities with the Haitian music Dabney must have heard previously. 

Bertin Depestre Salnave

Salnave

Bertin Depestre Salnave deserves our attention as one of the Haitians involved with the evolution of jazz music. Unfortunately, finding information about his life and work can be difficult. Most information about his career in Europe refer to an interview published in a 1978 issue of Storyville, a jazz publication. Salnave discusses his musical origins in Haiti through influences from a musician uncle and Occide Jeanty, the illustrious director of the Musique du Palais. Then, in 1913, he went to France, where he studied classical music before joining a variety of bands and orchestras in the 1910s and 1920s. Indeed, the French and European music scene included a plethora of forms of music, so Salnave was exposed to Antillean, tango (he claimed to have performed with Tano Genaro's band), "syncopated" music from the US, and Western classical genres.

Florius Notte and His Creole Band Jazz de la Coupole included at least 2 Haitians in its early formation, Salnave and Emile Chancy. Chancy is presumably the same Chancy who launched his own band in Haiti, Jazz Chancy, one of the groups playing jazz-influenced music near the end of the US Occupation.

Salnave also joined Will Marion Cook's group in England, where he met a number of African American, Puerto Rican, and Caribbean musicians, such as Sidney Bechet. Like Jim Reese Europe, the Southern Syncopated Orchestra was a sort of transitional band that linked early jazz with ragtime and other forms of American popular music of the era. According to the Storyville piece, by the 1920s, Salnave was playing "jazz" proper with American musicians like Crickett Smith, a trumpeter. In addition, Salnave played saxophone in the band of Arthur Briggs, although he may have left the group before they were recorded. Nonetheless, he participated in a number of black American groups in Europe who were pivotal in exporting jazz. This meant Haitian and other Caribbean musicians were able to learn techniques, methods of playing, and stylistic conventions of African American musicians, which they later brought back to the Caribbean. 

Salnave with Arthur Briggs' Savoy's Syncopators Orchesta ca. 1924.

By the time he formed his own group, Emile Chancy, Jeff Sevestre, Firmin, and Florius Notte were members. Jeff Sevestre, possibly Geffrard Cesvet, may have become a bandleader in Haiti after returning from France. Undoubtedly, Salnave's band played a pivotal role in the transmission of jazz music to Haiti through musicians returning from France after performing with European, African American, Latin, and Antillean groups. These musicians, plus the presence of US Marines and their radio station, inundated the country with foxtrots, blues, tango, and Cuban music. According to Averill's study on Haitian popular music, the radio established by the US Marines was not accessible to the majority of Port-au-Prince, but concert programs for broadcasts in Le Matin and Le Nouvelliste indicate many bands that performed a repertoire of Cuban, American, and Haitian meringue tunes. Many of these bands also performed in clubs, bars, and public events, such as the Musique du Palais (directed by Occide Jeanty, then Luc Jean-Baptiste). Thus, the impact of jazz on Haitian dance music was shaped not only by the forces of US Occupation and its cultural impact, but Haitian musicians themselves who incorporated it into their local repertoire. 

1927 recording of "Mean Dog Blues" by the group of Arthur Briggs. Salnave is not featured, but this may be an indication of how the band sounded in 1924, when he was a member.

Lamentably, what became of Salnave after his return to Haiti is difficult to deduce. The Storyville article indicates his career as a jazzman ended when he returned to the island. But, in light of others affiliated with him who appear to have continued their music careers in Haitian dance bands, perhaps Salnave gave lessons or performed with local bands. Perhaps Haitians like himself may have refined some of the jazz influences with local groups who, since the late 1920s, included standards of that era in their performances. Some of the elements of jazz he claimed to have learned in Europe, such as call and response, going without written arrangements and saxophone improvisation may have been in-demand skills for their novelty and authenticity. In terms of recordings, "Brown Love," from 1933, features some of these techniques. Salnave plays in the "hot" style with fellow Haitian, Emile Chancy,, and the record features some intriguing but too brief soloing. The interesting thing to uncover here would be if the local jazz bands that formed by the late 1920s in Port-au-Prince were playing in a similar manner to Salnave's group in France. However, until someone uncovers any possible recordings of Jazz Scott, Jazz Chancy, or Orchestre Pantal Jazz, all we have to go on are 1930s recordings of a few Haitian dance bands from Alan Lomax. 

For Joseph Jarman

In light of the recent passing of Joseph Jarman, below is a selection of an essay by this blogger about the Art Ensemble of Chicago and AACM. Rest in peace...

Founded in 1965, AACM, under Muhal Richard Abrams’s guidance and direction, connected a number of African American musicians looking for new opportunities and alternatives to the commodification of black creative music. A number of similar jazz collectives dedicated to communitarianism arose in St. Louis, Los Angeles, and other cities around the same time, including the Black Artist Group, which often collaborated with AACM. AACM then established a voting system and structure which also defined itself in relation to Chicago’s South Side, as well as a commitment to creative music.^[2] According to George E. Lewis, AACM’s communitarian ethos also included collaborations with a number of other cultural organizations among African Americans, particularly Jeff Donaldson’s collective of black artists who explored African and African American styles for a distinct black aesthetic.^[3] Moreover, members of AACM also retained connections with the Organization of Black American Culture and the Affro-Arts Theater through Phil Cohran, an early member invested in promoting black cultural heritage through music and theater.^[4] Cohran’s involvement with the community-based Affro-Arts Theater attracted Gwendolyn Brooks, Haki Madhubuti, and Stokely Carmichael while contributing to culture building with music, dance, and classes for women, men, and children.^[5] Indeed, Ronald Michael Radano observed, “The AACM’s achievement as a stable, working organization could not have come about without a strong commitment from its membership, and that commitment surely would not have developed without inspiration from the black-rights movement.”^[6] Without the atmosphere of black activism and a political climate demanding self-determination, self-definition, and self-reliance, the AACM may not have been born or survived to become a fixture of Black Chicago music and culture.

In Chicago, Sun Ra and his Arkestra in the 1950s took jazz into different directions like the aforementioned artists. Adding his interests in Afrofuturist and ancient African history references and early use of electric instruments for his soundscape, Sun Ra’s Arkestra included Phil Cohran, who later became a member of AACM.^[7] Sun Ra’s band also used costumes, theatrical components to performances, space chants, multiple drums, and a larger mythos of “Great Black Music” which encompassed African, Latin, African American, Asian, and European styles. “India” from the Arkestra’s Super-Sonic Jazz, for instance, experiments with electric piano, exotica, and the eclecticism found in the works of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. However, Art Ensemble members usually cited the influence of Albert Ayler, Coltrane, or Cecil Taylor rather than Sun Ra.^[8] Age differences as well as Sun Ra’s move to New York in 1960 resulted in him having less influence upon AACM. Furthermore, during his Chicago years, Sun Ra was a more conventional player who did not embrace atonality and free-form structures as he famously did in later decades.^[9] However, his use of extramusical art forms of performance and visual art, in addition to esoteric writings, aesthetic spirituality, and embrace of African history shaped the course of Chicago jazz musicians just as it reflected larger Afro-modernist sensibilities of jazz musicians elsewhere.

Significantly, the authoritarian structure of the Arkestra also distinguished it from AACM and Art Ensemble. The participatory and egalitarian organization of AACM differed from the extreme practices of Sun Ra, who often punished Arkestra members who disobeyed his absolute authority.^[10] Punishment sometimes took the form of house arrest, sometimes physical force for those who disobeyed his rules of conduct, which included prohibition of drugs, alcohol, cavorting with women, or missing rehearsals.^[11]  The Arkestra’s communal living further distinguished AACM and Sun Ra, although the cooperative economics practiced by Art Ensemble of Chicago as a result of their time spent in France shows a shared value of solidarity.^[12] Furthermore, Sun Ra’s Arkestra did not permit membership of women except for vocalists. Even then, June Tyson was subject to occasional exclusion and women instrumentalists were not used. Even the Jazz Composer’s Guild, a short-lived organization of avant-garde artists in New York City, fell apart partly due to Sun Ra’s opposition to Carla Bley’s membership and the question of interracial collaboration on equal terms.^[13] Thus, Sun Ra’s views on gender limited a more democratic cooperative of jazz musicians.

Like Africobra, Art Ensemble of Chicago is a collective, and sought to connect their creative music to a tradition of “Great Black Music.” The group similarly incorporated a vast array of African, African American, and Caribbean musical traditions and styles into their sound. “Ja,” from their 1979 release, Nice Guys, uses a reggae rhythm and Jamaican accents in the vocals, for instance. “Theme de Yoyo” from Les Stances A Sophie, featuring then-wife of Lester Bowie, Fontella Bass, used funk musical features within an utterly unique Art Ensemble of Chicago aesthetic. With Bass singing over a funky bassline, the rest of the band maintain an unstable groove that threatens to fall apart despite its repetition, retaining avant-garde tonalities and hinting at free-form structures within a funk vamp. Art Ensemble of Chicago similarly used the blues form as homage to black musical traditions and Chicago’s history. “Bye Bye Baby” from Certain Blacks is a blues with harmonica, but retains space for individual expression of avant-garde soloing. The titular song from 1970 LP Certain Blacks includes Chicago Beau as well as lyrics on black individual expression, asserting “Certain blacks do what they wanna.” This can be interpreted as not only a reference to Black militancy of the time, but a defense of individual and group difference against black or white critics and conformists opposed to Art Ensemble of Chicago’s eclectic tastes and presentation. Trumpeter Lester Bowie, for example, defended the Art Ensemble’s musical expansiveness against Wynton Marsalis because they embraced tradition and the future rather than remaining stuck playing the same chord changes of the bop era.^[14] “Get In Line,” another composition with lyrics, is a critique of the French critics who only perceived the band in terms of racial politics and exoticism, not as creative artists.^[15]

Some members, such as Famoudou Don Moye and Malachi Favors Maghostut, used face paint and body art to add a visual component to the band’s performances. Lewis argues that the use of masks, body paint, a variety of “little instruments,” and the multi-instrumental virtuosity of the band created an assemblage of sounds and textures.^[16] The face paints, masking, and African dress additionally emphasized the role of musicians within many African cultures as a seer or griot. Like Phil Cohran’s Artistic Heritage Ensemble, which connected themselves to the griot tradition of West Africa, Art Ensemble of Chicago used African signifiers to affirm the communitarian ethos of AACM and reflect their understanding of Black Aesthetics.^[17] Becoming an assemblage, or a multi-layered approach to music and art within a collective that tied itself to community support, education, and celebrating African American culture and history, Art Ensemble resembles Africobra. Art Ensemble of Chicago also reinterpreted familiar materials from popular culture, like Africobra.^[18] Both groups used an assemblage of poetry, jazz, face paint, and musical styles from popular music or the past to world music.

However, the concept of “Great Black Music” or a “Black Aesthetic” was never defined in narrow or essentialist terms, which allowed for individual expression in both groups. Art Ensemble, for instance, included a diversity of performance attire and musical styles in their performances, as well as incorporating aspects of European and world music into their repertoire. Lewis describes Art Ensemble of Chicago’s sonic, visual, and multi-media diversity as a way of asserting a particular black cultural identity within a universal medium, music.^[19] The performative aspects, individual stylistic variations, cooperation as a unit, and cooperative economics allowed the group to persist, particularly when the band resided in France.^[20] As Kelley suggests, the use of poetry, humor, painting as well as other elements of the Art Ensemble’s performances and recordings affirm a radically different structure of a jazz band that contributed to the Black Arts Movement without being overtly political or essentialist.^[21] Indeed, there may also be elements of Afrofuturism in Art Ensemble’s allusions to futurity in their slogan or Lester Bowie’s lab coat worn during performances. As a result of combining futurity and tradition, Art Ensemble’s revision of the past and imagining of the future endeavors to resist traditionalism. By resisting the traditional jazz-oriented club performances, they also asserted black self-definition and self-determination to resist commodification of their art form. Thus, in spite of Amiri Baraka and Frank Kofsky’s interpretation of free jazz as linked to black nationalism, Art Ensemble shows a more nuanced portrait of the jazz avant-garde’s support of black cultural aesthetics and community art without necessarily following the narrower forms of black cultural nationalism.

In short, AACM and the Art Ensemble of Chicago exemplify a form of Chicago Black Arts Movement aesthetics that eschews essentialist notions of identity, undemocratic organizations, and commodified art removed from communities. Drawing on earlier generations of jazz activism and aesthetic sensibilities which encouraged the Civil Rights era, Art Ensemble of Chicago champions an innovative performance style within a black aesthetic favoring individuality through the collective. Like Glissant’s metaphor of the rhizome for explaining identity without grounding black cultural movements in a totalitarian or singular root, they respect black musical traditions and heritage, but also retain visions of the future in sight. The sense of individual expression is not lost, lending credence to Glissant’s notion of identity through relation as each member of the collective shapes and refines the other. Jeff Donaldson and the members of Africobra practiced a similar approach to black cultural identity and the visual arts. Donaldson’s TransAfrican aesthetic, which combines elements of jazz and popular culture, and African art forms, shares the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s rhizomatic model of cultural and artistic expression. The democratic form of these two groups likewise contributed to their longevity because members were able to express their own unique styles, pursue their own ideas of performance, and retain connections with the communities they seek to serve.

---

[1] Paul Steinbeck, Message to Our Folks: The Art Ensemble of Chicago (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017) 32.

[2] George E. Lewis, “Expressive Awesomeness: New Music and Art in Chicago 1965-75,” in The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 116.

[3] Clovis E. Semmes, “The Dialectics of Cultural Survival and the Community Artist: Phil Cohran and the Affro-Arts Theater,” Journal of Black Studies 24, no. 4 (1994): 449.

[4] Ibid, 457.

[5] Radano, New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton’s Cultural Critique (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 91.

[6] Clovis E. Semmes, “The Dialectics of Cultural Survival and the Community Artist: Phil Cohran and the Affro-Arts Theater,” 452.

[7] George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 160.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ingrid Monson, Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call Out to Jazz and Africa, 310.

[10] Paul Szwed, Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra (New York: Pantheon Books, 1997), 117-118.

[11] Steinbeck, Message to Our Folks: The Art Ensemble of Chicago, 80.

[12] Benjamin Piekut, "New Thing? Gender and Sexuality in the Jazz Composers Guild." American Quarterly 62, no. 1 (2010): 25-48, 37.

[13] Nanette de Jong, “Women of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians: Four Narratives” in Black Women and Music: More than the Blues (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 135.

[14] Paul Steinbeck, Message to Our Folks: The Art Ensemble of Chicago, 104.

[15] George E. Lewis, “Expressive Awesomeness: New Music and Art in Chicago 1965-75,” in The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now, 119-120.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

[18] George E. Lewis, “Singing Omar’s Song: A (Re)Construction of Great Black Music,” Lenox Avenue: A Journal of Interarts Inquiry 4 (1998): 85.

[19] Paul Steinbeck, Message to Our Folks: The Art Ensemble of Chicago, 80.

[20] Kelley, “Dig they Freedom: Meditations on History and the Black Avant-Garde,” Lenox Avenue: A Journal of Interarts Inquiry 3 (1997): 21.

[21] Ibid, 22.

Chicago Jazz

The following is another simple class assignment based on a chapter from a cultural history of jazz in Chicago. The main purpose of the short assignment was to summarize a reading and offer some questions or different interpretations. The one thing I learned from this book, as well as several articles and texts on Chicago's jazz scene, is how detailed and important "jazz studies" can be.

“The Evolution of South Side Chicago Jazz,” from Kenney’s Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History, 1904-1930, overviews the shifts in jazz music and performance in 1920s Chicago. According to Kenney, jazz music was increasingly professionalized through cabaret performances, stylistic expectations of dress, specialized musical training through formal or informal means, new repertoire that included more popular songs, the rise of a star system instead of folk anonymity, and instrumental virtuosity, perhaps best exemplified in the skills of Louis Armstrong. 

The movement of jazz musicians to Chicago led to performing for mixed audiences, absorption of Anglo-American musical culture, exposure to formal music theory, and “calculated primitivism” to appeal to some of the tastes and expectations of white audiences. Furthermore, African American composers, performers, and songwriters contributed to the standardization of twelve-bar blues, in addition to adopting faster tempos. In short, jazz’s evolution on the South Side contributed to a professionalization of jazz musicians and a commitment to music and instrumental virtuosity. 

In addition, the regional diversity of Chicago as well as its black population’s heterogeneity appears to have been a major factor in the evolution of jazz. Lil Hardin, for instance, did not come from New Orleans, and brought with her piano skills a formal music education background. Earl Hines also did not come from Louisiana, and black migrants to Chicago who were natives of the North or possessed a formal musical education, assisted in the professionalization of jazz, musical talent, and performance. 

Moreover, the diversity of Chicago’s white population similarly contributed to jazz. Armstrong, for example, studied with a German teacher, plus other jazz artists of the studied clarinet under Franz Schoepp, who also taught Benny Goodman. Chicago, though segregated, proved conducive to music education and a blending of musical cultures.

Riding on a Blue Note

Riding on a Blue Note is comprised of a number of reviews and essays on several major or lesser known figures in the worlds of jazz and popular music. Giddins writes with wit and a sense of humor to discuss the merits and problems facing artists as diverse as Sinatra, Irving Berlin, Ellington and Ethel Waters to Bobby Blue Bland, Wes Montgomery, and Cecil Taylor. Giddins also approaches the question of race, culture, and identity in a more nuanced way than many other (white) critics of jazz, from what I've encountered so far. The essay on George Benson may come off as too dismissive of jazz fusion, but I cannot help but (mostly) concur with Giddins on the fusion question during 1970s jazz. This is an indispensable collection of essays from the 1970s that will add much needed nuance to the state of the music during those times. 

Blutopia

Graham Lock's Blutopia: Visions of the Future and Revisions of the Past in the Work of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Anthony Braxton is a thought-provoking and serious work in Jazz Studies. Anytime one can encounter a serious work on jazz that takes the musicians themselves seriously and endeavors to engage with their ideas should be applauded. Lock also manages to impressively integrate an analysis of Sun Ra and Anthony Braxton with Duke Ellington, despite vast differences in style, thought, and age among these titans of jazz. However, Lock raises more questions than he answers in much of the text. 

First, Sun Ra. It's been a number of years since I've read Szwed's Sun Ra book, but much of Lock's analysis felt 'new' or 'fresh' to me. In a literature class over the last several months, Sun Ra came up more than once and we discussed the parallels of his work with Negro spirituals, but because I know very little about spirituals, Lock connecting spirituals and Sun Ra's chants (in addition to the ring shout and the way the Arkestra moved counterclockwise around the audience) was informative. However, I was at times struck by how Lock seems to take Ra's mythology too much at face value, as if there are not several troubling implications from Sun Ra's Astro Black Mythology. I think Lock came closest to grappling with this issue by identifying Ra as someone who chose to identify with Pharaoh over Moses. 

Wilson J. Moses has written about the Pharaoh-Moses dialectic with regards to African American black nationalists and intellectuals, but it seems as if the despotic aspects of Pharaoh are left out of the discussion while the 'authoritarian collectivism' of Moses (and, by extension, Christianity) are rightfully included by Lock's discussion of Ra's opposition to Christianity. As a result, Sun Ra's ideas of the past and future, not to mention the present, are not fully considered since the Moses-Pharaoh conflict is never resolved or rejected (are African Americans stuck with only Moses or Pharaoh? What of Legba?). 

As for Duke Ellington, a composer I have not listened to seriously in probably 5 or 6 years, these two chapters were a breath of fresh air. Ellington's fight for jazz to be taken seriously and the complexity and nuance of African American music to escape essentialist and condescending treatment in the eyes of white America are still relevant, as are his attempts to fight minstrelsy, blackface, and 'Uncle Tom' depictions of black life in popular culture. I think Lock also hit the nail on the head about Duke Ellington's view of black America's history as (mostly) based in the US, and his race pride was inseparable from his patriotism. Such a sentiment is lacking in Sun Ra's revisions of the black past and black present, and Duke Ellington's views are probably the most 'mainstream' when it comes to African American perceptions of their nation. 

Nonetheless, I was a little surprised that Duke Ellington's middle-class background and support for respectability politics was not integrated into the two chapters (Duke believed African Americans must behave in ways that command respect, according to Lock, plus he opposed the confrontational aspects of the Civil Rights Movement). Given the climate around respectability politics among those in African American Studies today, what are the limitations of Duke Ellington's revisions of the past and future? How does his Blutopia fall short? In what ways are Duke Ellington's US-centered black history and future limited by exclusion of Africa? What do we make of the 'world music' aspirations of his later LPs?

Last but certainly the most confusing and perhaps less relevant to Blutopia, Anthony Braxton. I do not entirely buy the argument of Mackey about Legba's limp and jazz swing or syncopation. It seems too fanciful and impossible to 'prove,' plus it may neglect the ways in which Legba's limp may be more a product of dances and music rather than the other way around. I have no evidence for my own assertion either, but I remain skeptical of a Legba interpretation of Braxton's multiformity. Lock is right about Braxton's synesthesia and the heterogeneity of black creativity (not to mention the critiques of jazz critics), but the Legba interpretation and the chapter on Trillium operas was somewhat less successful or convincing. Braxton's 'vibrationism' and spirituality were fascinating, but one must visit his esoteric writings directly to get a more detailed 'feel' for his views. Lock, to his credit, admits this and acknowledges that the chapters on Braxton did not go in depth. 

Overall, however, this is a provocative and insightful reading of three significant jazz artists. Jazz musicians as intellectuals is a growing interest of mine, and Lock has increased my appreciation for artists like Ra, Braxton, and Ellington. Some recent readings of mine on AACM and Art Ensemble of Chicago have tangentially included Braxton, but I think an interesting project would be to focus solely on the differences between Braxton and Art Ensemble of Chicago's approach to "Great Black Music" and revisions of the past and future. Perhaps that will be my next rambling post?