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.