Jazz Women

Lara Pellegrinelli’s article “Separated at Birth” sparked interest for me concerning gender roles in jazz from a historical point of view. She discussed how jazz singing ignited the beginning of jazz, yet was quickly abandoned after its birth. She explains this idea by saying, “To present jazz as ‘art music,’ many authors attempted to divorce it from low culture and the entertainment contexts with which singing was associated, thereby containing sexuality and the female body. Instead, they focused their attention on horns that sound like voices, an elevation of ‘raw’ musical materials.” (44) She describes the parentage of jazz, blues being feminine and ragtime being the masculine, and explains that it is no wonder why singing got the shaft from the beginning. She writes, “Despite its symbolic and practical importance in jazz’s parentage, singing is dropped from historical narratives soon after the music’s birth.” (32)

These days in the jazz setting, one might notice that the context of women in jazz has not changed much since its origin. When thinking of female jazz musicians, one will usually think “vocalist.” Despite this, however, women are clearly gaining visibility as jazz instrumentalists. It is important to remember that women entered the genre mostly as untrained vocalists. For example, Pellegrinelli (2008) writes that some styles of jazz were suited for the untrained, feminine voice and cites the blues as an example. Other musical styles required musical skill and precision, and therefore, were mainly relegated to male performers (2008).

I was watching Letterman the other night and saw the episode featuring Quincy Jones and Snoop Dogg performing “Get the Funk Out Of My Face” off of Jones’ new album. It was pretty great. I also noticed that out of all of the musicians on the stage, only three of them were women. The two backup singers and of course Felicia Collins. It’s true that Esperanza Spalding was on Letterman a few years back. This is a huge deal considering that she is not only a jazz musician but a female jazz musician. For a jazz musician to be featured on the show is quite an accomplishment for the genre. Anyway, Spalding was very well received by the audience and especially by Letterman. So this really raises the question of whether or not she would have actually landed that gig had she not been a young and sexy African American artist that played the string bass while she sang a seductive song. How does her image reflect on her legitimate talent? Is she judged by the same standards of other musicians within her genre or does her gender and image change the level of which she is judged upon?

I will here make the pretty obvious statement that women deserve to be in the mainstream of this great American art form. What I find rather interesting is that jazz in and of itself seems to be much farther behind American society and other art forms when it comes to gender discrimination. (Even the Supreme Court has women!!) A rather obvious example concerns Jazz and Lincoln Center and its clear lack of the female gender amongst their ranks. J@LC has indeed overcome many issues including nepotism, reverse racism, and age discrimination, but they have yet to overcome gender discrimination. “I hire orchestra members on basis of merit.” says Wynton Marsalis, implying that women are not up to the standard. He says that the turnover (15 positions) is slow, so there are no available opportunities.

Job opportunities and musical standards aside, I do feel that other aspect of the genre takes a real hit due to the absence of women and the representation of the female view in the jazz critic forum. W. Royal Stokes in his article entitled Women in Jazz: Some Observations Regarding the Ongoing Discrimination in Performance and Journalism, notes the limited amount of women on the list of the 113 critics involved in Downbeat Magazine. As he investigated this issue further, he was confronted with numerous excuses, the main one having to do with the fact that female critics hardly approached that magazine itself looking for work. Stokes expresses the views of many when he writes, “I would conjecture that most would hesitate to do so, having already concluded that the Down Beat editorial staff and its contributing writers is pretty much a male preserve. Not a happy image in this day and time, eh?”

The Game Continues: did Wynton Marsalis kill jazz?

Wynton Marsalis. Since you’re reading a blog about jazz, I imagine his name will mean something to you. To some, his name rolls off the tongue, dripping like honey with admiration as one of the leading jazz musicians of our day. To others, his name is to be spat out with angry bitterness for how he has tainted their beloved music with his very existence. Whichever of these groups you belong to, you cannot deny that Marsalis has been a driving influence in jazz today, be it for better or worse.

So why is it that Wynton Marsalis now finds himself on the list of suspects in the alleged murder of jazz? He first made a target of himself when he wrote this article in 1988. Marsalis’ greatest sin as an artist is not recognizing the legitimacy of other art and his obsession with a label. It seems what has earned him such disdain is his rigid definition of what jazz is. His faithful clinging to the ways and traditions of the swing era has kept alive the forms of jazz long thought dead, all while claiming his to be the one true jazz.

Now before we take up arms to slay the false prophet in some sort of jazz crusade, let’s do a little evaluating here. There is little question that what Wynton Marsalis plays IS jazz. He has also been extremely successful with it, earning 9 Grammy Awards and one Pulitzer Prize since 1983. This is the point that I think people are angered by the most. Marsalis has essentially ignored every jazz innovation since 1960 (before he was even born) and many still regard him as the single most influential jazz musician living today.

I believe we can put the case of this “jazz heretic” away. Put away your pitchforks and douse your torches, because Wynton Marsalis has been wrongly charged of killing jazz. Go ahead, I’ll wait for you to get back. There, have a seat and calm yourself. I think we get so worked up over this particular trumpet player because he seems to defy the rule. He refuses to let go of the old ways, the beginnings of our art form, and yet he still remains hugely successful in what we know to be a progressive world driven by innovation. If anything, I feel he has done the world of jazz a great service by keeping our roots alive in his music. Yes, perhaps his rigid stance on labels in music is less than infallible but, love him or hate him, history WILL remember him as a great influence in the world of jazz. Yes, music, like all things, will move forward. Sometimes though, we all must be reminded of where we’ve been.

"Hipsters, flipsters, and finger-poppin' daddies, knock me your lobes."

There exists a devision among our people. Classical musicians look down upon the jazz musicians for their hipster ways and blatant abuse of music theory (which for some has become music law). Jazz musicians look down on the classical musicians as being "classical snobs" who haven't evolved their craft since circa 1800. Pop musicians look down on them both for holding onto traditions older than a few years while they go to spend their millions on Auto-Tune and "Rehab." These are the ideas we seem to hold strongly onto at least.

I once was approached by a professor, who after finding out I was a classical musician, decided to inquire what kinds of music I like. I find this to be the most commonly asked question of me as a musician. I quickly responded with a well ingrained answer that spoke something of the love of composers like Mahler and Wagner, and the loathing pretty much everything else (Britney Spears and 50 Cent come to mind).

She shook her head and walked away. Perplexed, I followed and asked what was wrong with what I had said. "As a musician you really should be more supportive of others of your craft. Not caring for another's music is one thing, but hating it outright and having no appreciation whatsoever for the music or the artist is quite another." I was blown away by this comment. Never before had I ever thought of people like Jessica Simpson and Eminem as colleagues. Performers of pop music had no real talent and where just there to brainwash the masses and leech the money away from "real musicians."

I was rather humbled by this encounter. I found myself actually having an appreciation for music written post 19th century. I'm not claming to actually LIKE everything I hear today. I mean, I still don't see the draw of rap songs like "Fuck Dat Bitch", but I can concede that they have their place. Along the way I've actually found that some of today's music is actually quite good. This is an experience that I never would have enjoyed if I hadn't been able to admit to myself that yes, I was a "classical music snob". Music is not born with a label. The genre is just something we've applied later, but it all falls under the umbrella term of music. It should all, therefore, be given an equall chance. Who knows? You might actually find yourself to be pleasently surprised at what you find.

Symbols, spokesmen, stereotypes, or activists?

Posted by UrbanDiction

With this posting, I wanted to work through some definitions of roles such as spokesman, symbol, stereotype, and activist.  Again, I struggle with the problem of choice, that not everyone can choose what they stand for or what social movement will benefit from their life and artistic decisions.  This is important because as artists trying to make meaningful music and hopefully trying to make some novel discoveries, we will become symbols, spokesmen, stereotypes, or activists with and for what we do. 

I would venture to say that whenever you present something novel that you stand behind, you beome a symbol of it.  Look at Charlie Parker.  To the best of my knowledge, he did not have some political agenda, or even an artistic agenda such as the maintenance of a thriving club scene or music education.  I wouldn’t say that he just wanted to play, but I don’t think it raises much argument to say that his foremost goal by far was to realize the music he could hear in his head.  However, he became a symbol for this new music and also helped to found a stereotype of the be-bopper as intellectual and troubled.  Also, he did indirectly promote music education as his solos present exceptional teaching materials.  Parker is a symbol, but not necessarily a spokesperson.  What came after Parker, the copies and people imitating his life (even if out of sincere admiration) turned his life experience into the stereotypical bop-era experience.  Parker is a symbol and a stereotype, and it doesn’t seem that he chose or defined either of these roles for himself but let others worry about the labels.

Now if we look at a person such as Wynton Marsalis, we can attribute both the roles of spokesman and symbol.  He promotes what he wants to promote (spokesperson) and is successful at his craft to the point of canonization (symbol), but to determine which role has been more influential on the other proves difficult.  He has cemented his role as a symbol of musical excellence through, among other notable achievements, winning a Grammy for both classical and jazz recordings and through this spotlight has been able to promote his agenda.  However, his particular agenda of jazz education and presence in gold-standard performance institutions has created a new layer of symbolism for his already complex character.  Although the music is of obvious importance to Marsalis, he is definitely not only “in it for the music” and through his life achievements has been able to himself define his symbolic status.

I use the word “activism” to talk about promoting an agenda that benefits from your artistic achievements as the spotlight provides a visible platform, but that does not necessarily tie to your personal life stories or struggles.  Activism is dependent on choice, because nobody will assume your music or proceeds from ticket sales have anything to do with the preservation of the rainforest unless you tell them.  Activism is promotion in the freest degree, as you are consciously choosing to associate with that cause.  Compare that to someone who is a spokesperson, let’s say, an Asian jazz artist who indulges interviewer’s questions about ethnicity issues.  He cannot escape from being Asian in this predominantly black/white community, he can put himself in healthy places but cannot entirely escape stereotyping or racist hiring practices.  When being Asian is still novel in jazz, he cannot escape becoming a symbol for Asian achievement if he creates meaningful and fresh artistic contributions.

With this posting I hoped to find more clarity on how musicians (their music, lifestyles, and professional choices) promote extra-musical agendas.

Voice = Roots of Jazz?

The Laura Pelligrinelli article, "Seperated at Birth," Brings up some really important factors of the roots of jazz music that might of been ignored by several other sources. When speaking of the beginnings of this music, most historians would mention the blues genre as a major leading force in jazz. Interestingly enough, blues music has a lot to do with vocal's since most of the songs were sung with lyrics having to do with day to day troubles or whatnot. This was an important factor once the instrumentalists came along and started playing this music.

To me the voice is a great tool to show emotion. It is a natural vorce that we all aquire because we talk with emotion every day. However when one is learning a new instrument we have to learn how to make it feel natural, like the voice. I believe that the beginning instrumentalists were imitating the voice to make their lines seem more natural to the listeners. This is important because of the importantance of sheer emotion in blues music. It is also interesting to think that the roots of jazz were coming from vocalists even though years later they were trying to imitate the sounds from the instrumentalists.

Pelliginelli writes, "If singers and vocal activities were prevalent during the music's formative years in New Orleans and possibly elsewhere, why do they only figure amoung jazz's precursors? What purposes does their erasure from histories serve?" This is an important question to consider. What and when was the turning point for vocalists to take an unwelcomed back seat in the history of the music. I think that the turning point for this subject would be the new setting for jazz in the BeBop era as serious music.

BeBop brought a lot of change to the jazz world, it was almost like an entirely new music independant of the swing era. Tempo's, chords, and melodies all became more complex as did the importance of improvisation. The "Heads" of tunes were almost just like a precursor to the real importance of the tune: Improvisation. This being said a lot of vocalists were not involved because new tunes didn't even include lyrics, not to mention each instrumentalist was supposed to improvise over the changes. Maybe this was not a natural idea to vocalists who originally focussed on lyrics and emotion. BeBop had a different kind of emotion in the music and it had to do with complex lines or phrases in the soloing, not on the slight adjustments of the melody or blues emotion that was attached to a tune. This was a turning point for vocalists in the small jazz ensembles.

It is interesting to think that now vocalists were trained to imitate the instrumentalists in their scat singing approaches. Just as Luis Armstrong would imitate the trumpet, other vocalists were trained to be like a saxophone and use complex bebop licks. Pelliginelli also brings up an important point that since this music was to be serious it should loose touch with the vernacular culture and lyrics that it was originally tied to. This meant that songs no longer included lyrics which led to less vocalists being involved.

Jazz has come a long way from its creation. It would be hard for someone who had never heard jazz to compare recordings of today to the original groups in New Orleans. However I believe that it is important to keep the spirit of jazz alive and this came from the vocalists. Our first display of emotion comes from our voice inflections way before we can show our feelings through any instrument. This is why jazz pioneers looked to the vocalists to find the emotion that they would need to interpret through their instruments in order to make this new music a success. It is not fair that vocalists are overlooked in jazz music because they provide so much of what makes jazz music important and fun to listen to. They were the driving emotions that spawned a great legacy that continues today.