The History of Jazz as Dialogue

The concept of dialogic is helpful for me to understand relationship between the jazz players and the city including its audience and its community. Jazz has developed through the dialogue between the musician and “his or her socially specific environment” (lecture, February fifth). In the same way jazz creates audience jazz is shaped by audience. So community creates art, and vice versa. (lecture, February fifth).

     For jazz men, the social matters came through the community and their audience to influence their life and musical style. Jazz was born in the cultural and ethical chaos to assimilate European musical style into its own. As the society which surrounded musicians and the musical taste of audience changed, jazz survived to “incorporate a variety of other music genre without losing its identity” through the dialogue between the musicians and the audience (lecture, February fifth).

     New environment and social changes always brought some musical changes to jazz. First of all jazz flourished in brothels, especially in Storyville.  Its sound is described as more collective, danceable and orchestra-like sound. Then the outbreak of World War I, the strict Jim Crow law, and the closing of Storyville were tightly connected to cause the Great Migration from the south to the industrialized north. This migration represented a major turning point in the history of African American because it made it possible that the African American as well as their music entered the mainstream of an American life. As jazz moved to Chicago, the brothels came to be replaced with speakeasies and dance hall owned by gangsters. But it is true that their elegance and affluence and musicians’ experience of the urban city brought sophistication into jazz. As jazz moved to New York, the danceable sound came more prominent though Jitterbug dance. The dance hall took on a significant aspect as “a social miscegenation” (Swing Change, p53). During the 1930s jazz came to take on more political aspects in relation to Popular Front. World War II brought another change; the smaller band, and the fast tempo and improvisation.

      After jazz players belonged to some nightclub and some band, they could earn reputation as a jazz musician; for King Oliver it was the Lincoln Gardens, and for Thelonious Monk it was the Five Spot. The nightclub and the band have been working as their community to start their career since early days. So these places also have affected their style.

      Behind their reputation as jazz players, there is always a racially segregated community. So to some extent jazz developed, responding to what white want for black people. What well represented this is Cotton Club in Harlem as a place of reproducing the stereotyped image of black people through a jangle sound. In another word, the musicians can’t ignore what the white audience wants in order to success commercially. That’s what John Hammond mainly criticized about Duke Ellington. So I think this dialogue sometimes can be a one-way communication and compulsion from the white audience as Cotton Club and gangsters-owned nightclub worked to treat black musician like slaves, based on the concept of colonialism.

     As we went over particular jazz musicians such as Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, I found the community had always played an important role in a life of these jazz musicians. Monk’s music owed a lot to Western Indian music and cultural diversity in San Juan Hill. Miles Davis started his early career in Minton’s and nightclubs on “The Street” looking for Diz and Bird. Through this class, I learned the importance to see jazz in a social, political, historical context.

Thelonious Monk

     The Monks moved from North Carolina to San Juan Hill in Manhattan in 1922. This area was well-known as the largest black community by the middle of the 1910s. Most black in this area were the Southerners and the Caribbean who lived on West 61th, 62nd, and 63rd Street. But in the next block from where the black community located, white people lived along Amsterdam and West End. They were immigrants mainly from Ireland, Germany and Italy and their descendant. Before the Monks arrived there, San Juan Hill had been racially diverse community. This racial diversity often led to fights between white and black, and between the Southerners and the Caribbean. This is what Monk tried to suggest in the quotes. In the worst case these fights provoked the race riots. As a result of these riots, San Juan Hill acquired a bad reputation for “one of the ‘busiest crime areas in New York City” (Kelly, p16).Three race riots which took place between 1901 and 1917 well represented a typical relationship between the black people and the police. Especially in the 1905 riot, police officers “ignored white mobs and arrested and beat African American” (Kelly, p19). This unfair treatment made black people furious and often led them to attack back.

     Monk’s arrest in Delaware in 1958 with Nica and Rose must have caused a sensation not only in jazz scene but in a whole black society because although he almost did nothing wrong, Monk was arrested. He just tried to ask a glass of water but as he stubbornly refused to move and answer the officer’s question, a situation was getting worse. Finally officers came out with blackjacks to beat him; according to Nica, “Thelonious was so mad, he wouldn’t move. … and couldn’t be budged until one cop started beating on his hands with billy club, his pianist’s hands” (Kelly, p254). Kelly suggested Monk believed that “the police didn’t help matters” and “they epitomize racism in the city” (Kelly, p19). Monk’s response to an officer’s irrational violence was completely different from the black people’s response to the violence in those riots. He ignored the existence of cops to refuse everything they demanded even when they started beating him. His attitude represented a black rebellion against the white authority.

     As oppose to the violence the racial diversity brought, it was true that the racial diversity created the rich musical culture in San Juan Hill. As Mary White Ovington described the Phipps Houses in 1908, which the Monks came to move to, “every household had an instrument” (Kelly, p19). Surrounded by the musical diversity, his music had been formed. Because tenements in the neighborhood were crowded and residents were closely connected with each other, the culture of the West Indians and Southerners easily mingled together without the tension (Kelly, p23). In such an environment, especially Caribbean music fascinated young Thelonious (Kelly, p23). The neighborhood was full of musicians, some of who made a living to give kids piano lesson. So he could improve his piano techniques under the guidance of two excellent piano teachers. The first teacher was a Jewish classical pianist named Simon Wolf, who taught him European classical pieces by Chopin and Beethoven (Kelly, p26). The second one was a jazz pianist named Alberta Simmons, who taught him stride piano techniques (Kelly, p27). But the most familiar teacher would be his mother, Barbara, who had knowledge of gospels and hymns and taught him some of them on the piano. She also took him to church where he was absorbed in the sacred music. So San Juan Hill as a rich musical community created his musical background.