Class notes, Jews and Jazz, 3 February 2015

Here are my lectern notes for the first session of the class Jews and Jazz. I'm certainly open to discussion on all aspects of this. If I've left something out or ignored something important, let me know.

Enjoy!

Class 1, Session 1
Class teaching notes
What is Jazz?

Introduction

In this class, I want to talk about the development of Jazz and the influence Jewish music, Jewish musical inflection, Jewish culture and art, and Jewish society have had on the history of Jazz. Likewise, I’d also like to explore the areas where Jazz has had an influence on Jewish music and culture.

While it’s unmistakably true that Jazz can not be separated from African-American culture, I would argue that Jazz can’t be separated from American culture and all the components of the rich cultural stew that is America. African rhythm is essential to Jazz, but then so is Jewish and eastern European melodic inflection and western European harmony. There are also many other contributions from all over the world. However, all of these various strains are essential to make up Jazz as we know it know.

Jazz is a music indigenous to the United States. Jazz does not exist in its native form anywhere else in the world. All of the pieces came together and fused in just one place, the space in and around the port of New Orleans. The music then got carried up the Mississippi to St Louis and Kansas City and beyond to Chicago and New York and ultimately disseminated all over the country, with each location adding its own flavors to the mix. Eventually Jazz went all over the world, but its birthplace is here.

Tonight’s class isn’t going to get too deep into the Jewish aspect of things. That’ll really get going next week. Tonight I’d like to bring us all up to speed on the music, define a few terms, and talk a little bit about how to listen to music and then the broad history of jazz.

Terms and definitions
Who listens to jazz regularly?

Who in the room listens to jazz on a regular basis? Live? Recorded? Radio? Through CDs, computer files, phonograph records, what? What does jazz mean to you?

What is jazz? What is Jewish music?

What is Jazz? Scholars and “normal” people have argued over that for decades. For our purposes, Jazz is the improvised music (and its direct descendants, composed and/or improvised) that came into existence through the melding of cultural influences in and around New Orleans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

What is Jewish music? Again, we could argue about this for hours, but for the purposes of this class I’m loosely defining it as the music made by and for the Jewish people both sacred and secular, including cantorial style sacred synagogue music, composed music in Jewish style both instrumental and vocal, and secular music for the Jewish community through the dance music of Klezmer, the show music of the Yiddish theater, and so forth.

“Jewish style” is another one of those terms that could be discussed for days, but I’m going to call it music with a specific intent that often (although not always) has identifiable melodic and harmonic characteristics. Improvisation may or may not be a part of the music.

There are a lot of overlapping materials and concepts, exceptions to these rules, and so forth, but we’ll discuss these as we go along.

Who is Jewish?

Also, a very difficult and thorny question. Not everybody we are going to talk about considered themselves Jewish in any meaningful way. Some were culturally Jewish, growing up in a secular Jewish household and taking part in community life but were not particularly religious; some were more religiously observant; and some others were deeply conflicted about their Jewish roots and identity.

Gdal Saleski, in his book, Famous Musicians of Jewish Origin (Bloch Publishing Company, NY, 1949), wrote:

“The author wishes to make clear at the beginning that the words Jew and Jewish are not used in their religious or national senses. The method of approach is purely an ethnic one. He has isolated these musicians into one volume for the simple reason that all of them have in their souls that fire to which the Jewish prophets gave utterance in the time of old Jerusalem's glory.” (from the Prelude, p.xiii)

(It’s an amusing book and I’m sure we’ll talk about it some later on in the class. It’s interesting, even though the book was published in 1949 there is not one jazz musician among its ranks. No Benny Goodman, no Artie Shaw, not one. George Gershwin is listed, but mostly for his concert music, and Irving Berlin gets a grudging two pages.)

What does jazz have to do with Jewish life?

Well, what does jazz have to do with anything? A lot of my playing and work here in TE is informed and inspired by my life and experience with jazz. Improvisation, flexibility, a willingness to learn something new and be stretched beyond what you know and are comfortable with. A lot of the creators and composers of Jewish music these days are from the worlds of jazz and rock and theater.

Sacred vs. secular

What do these terms even mean? On the surface, sacred music is created on sacred themes and/or intended for ritual religious use. Secular music is pretty much everything else outside the shul doors. Even so, the lines get blurred regularly. To me, ultimately, anything written and/or performed from the heart and mind and soul of the artist is sacred, because it honors the connection with the divine in whatever form that may take for the individual. Music and art to me are the strongest argument for the existence of the divine among humanity in the world.

When backed into a corner and asked what my religion is I often reply, I’m an artist, music is my spiritual practice, and jazz is my primary denomination.

How far are we going?

About 1955, although we will carry some things a little further. Why? That’s the death of Charlie Parker and the rise of Rock and Roll, when the jazz world and the pop world completely and irrevocably split. Jazz continues, of course, but the Jewish contributions and aspects become more and more assimilated into the culture so that they virtually disappear from conscious awareness, even though they’re still there if you have a careful look.

Recently, more and more people are studying jazz in a systematic and scholarly way and discussing and arguing over their conclusions. You can certainly think of this as a Jewish cultural influence if you like. Also, many Jewish institutions (JCCs, synagogues, cultural societies, and professional organizations) are sponsoring performances and supporting study, research, and the ongoing creation and performance of the music.

A quick note: We’re not going to shy away from potentially offensive words and terms that were in common use at the times we’re talking about. They are sometimes necessary to the story to get the full flavor of the culture. Please understand that I am not condoning or supporting modern usage of these words. They were wrong and offensive then, they are wrong and offensive now, but to censor them in historical contexts is to give them more power than they deserve.

How to listen to music, SHMRG

Jan LaRue was a musicologist (music historian) who taught in New York City in the post-war period. He was one of the main teachers of one of my beloved teachers, Dr Irving Godt. Dr Godt is one of the people who really instilled in me a love for and understanding of learning and how it must be a lifelong process. I still use daily the methodology and thought processes that he taught me when I was a student of his in the eighties. I recently found out that he passed in December of 2006. It is largely because of him that I continue to study and learn and teach like this.

He would be uncomfortable knowing that I was teaching in shul like this, but I think he would support the idea of the class. He was an avowed atheist, even after having grown up in one of the motherlands of United States Jewish culture and life, Brooklyn NY. He served in World War II and went to NYU on the GI bill after the war. From there he settled in the small college town of Indiana, Pennsylvania, where I met and worked with him. He lived a kind of monastic life among his books and his papers (although not lonely and certainly not celibate; one of his great pleasures were the erotic madrigals and obscene rounds [where singing the music in parts resulted in wildly inappropriate textual combinations] of the Renaissance). He has the unique distinction of being one of the few musicologists in the academic world that has published work on every period of music history from pre-medieval times up through the twentieth century.

His most influential work was the rediscovery of Marianna Martines, a contemporary of Haydn and Mozart who has been completely forgotten, for largely sexist reasons. She’s no Mozart (who is?), but she has every bit the talent and ability of most of the other (male) composers of her era.

(Side note: He went to Birdland on 52nd Street in NYC a couple of times in the early 1950s while he was trying to impress a young lady. He heard Charlie Parker live and several other innovators of bebop in person. However, he had no ear for jazz and this wild and unpredictable music left him entirely unimpressed. Even though he encouraged my scholarly study of jazz and other musics that he had little interest in, he didn’t really understand why I wanted to hear about his visits there. “I never had anything to do with it other than going to a club a couple of times.”)

Through him I learned LaRue’s system for classifying music, often referred to by its acronym, SHMRG. The letters stand for Sound, Harmony, Melody, Rhythm, and Growth (or form, but that would result in SHMRF which LaRue shied away from for some reason even though the little blue people were not created until well after he developed this system).

(Description adapted from Texas Tech University’s Musicology Department web site, http://ttumusicology.wikispaces.com/SHMRG+details)

Sound
Texture, timbre, and dynamics

What’s making the sound? What instruments or voices? Thick texture or thin? Single line, polyphony, homophony, etc? Dynamics? Contrasts in texture or sound? Dynamics? Is there a text? What does it mean? Does the music illuminate the text or vice versa?

Harmony
The “vertical” aspects of the music

How many parts? How many notes at a time? Standard tonal harmony? Atonal harmony? Diatonic construction? Pentatonic, octotonic, hybrid scales? Built on thirds, fourths, fifths, etc? Chromatic harmony? Cadences, tension and resolution, modulations, key schemes (in larger pieces), tonal centers? Major or minor?

Melody
The “horizontal” aspects of sequences of pitches in time

Stepwise motion or leaps? Range of melody? Tessitura (range of melody in a given instrument or voice)? Shape? Diatonic, tonal, modal, pentatonic, atonal, implied harmony, etc?

Rhythm
The rhythmic aspects and division of time on the micro (beat by beat) and macro levels (over the whole piece)

Main subdivision of the beat? Prolation? Beat groupings: Consistent, repetitive, and predictable, or something unexpected or irregular? Odd or even meter? Steady tempo or rubato? Danceable rhythm or speech-like rhythm? Layered rhythm? Polyphonic (independent parts) or homophonic (unison rhythms)? Polymeter? Rhythmic contrast section to section?

Growth
The form or organization of the piece in time

Phrase length? Symmetrical, four square, or asymmetrical, unusual groupings of sections or beats or melodies? Repetition? Varied or contrasted? How is the structure conveyed to the listener, changes of harmony, modulations, texture changes, what?Familiar form (classical form) or something new? Is this being used to play with your expectations? How? Why?

These considerations are a good way to help organize your thoughts and observations while you listen to music. It also helps to listen analytically and be able to remember and compare different pieces of music.

Play two or three pieces from different periods to discuss the SHMRG aspects of them. Leave blank space on the handout for note taking.

Listening: 1. Doin’ Things - Joe Venuti’s Four
2. Struttin’ With Some Barbecue, Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five
3. On The Sunny Side of the Street, Frank Sinatra with Billy May’s big brass group, from the album Come Swing With Me.
4. Walkin’ Stomp, The Modern Jazz Quartet from the album Plastic Dreams. Didn’t play this one due to time concerns.
Basic history of jazz

1890s: Ragtime
The division into decades is a little limiting and more than a little misleading, but it is what it is.
Sedalia, Missouri (outside of St Louis), and Scott Joplin. Mostly pianistic style adapted from the nineteenth century piano styles. Mostly in standard forms like marches and waltzes and minuets. Non-rag melodies were adapted to the rhythms (“ragged”) of the new music. Improvisation and adaptation of existing music started early. Cutting contests where one player tried to outplay another began in this time. Spread throughout the labor camps building railroads and throughout the entire south and west, eventually showing up in New York City through piano rolls. Some pieces were adapted into instrumental forms and began showing up in the repertoire of dance bands and polite society orchestras of the time. James Reese Europe’s military band was the rage of the Great War (now known as World War One).

Musical examples: 1. I played a little bit of the Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin. Many good recordings of this are available.
2. Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin, unknown arranger, from the album The Red Back Book by the New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble. I skipped this one for time concerns, but it’s well worth a listen.
3. Castle House Rag by James Reese Europe’s Society Orchestra, recorded in 1914. A rough recording, but interesting listening if you can hear past the sound deficiencies. Named for Vernon and Irene Castle, pioneers in the social dance movement. Obtained from archive.org

1900: New Orleans
Home of “voluntary and involuntary immigrants” (Berendt, p.7). Beyond NO, the entire Mississippi delta area developed this music more or less in synch. Rise of Storyville as a center of vice and prostitution (and apparently a swinging good time). Young Louis Armstrong growing up in this environment. Cornet/trumpet, clarinet, trombone, tuba, drums, banjo, sometimes piano, adapted from the military band of the 19th century. No known recordings exist, but the original Preservation Hall Jazz Band purports to be the real deal.

Musical example: Hindustan, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, from the album The Best of the Early Years, recorded in the mid-sixties when many of the original players were still in the group even though they were quite old. Obtained from iTunes.

1910: Dixieland or Traditional
Further development of what was started in the 1900s

Musical example: Livery Stable Blues, The Original Dixieland Jazz Band recorded in 1917. This is considered to be the first recording of jazz music. Of course the band is all white, black musicians would have to wait until 1921 to be recorded.

1920: Chicago
Storyville closed by the authorities during WWI, people moved up the river to Chicago. King Oliver is the hero, Louis Armstrong is taken under his wing and develops as a cornet player with him. Jelly Roll Morton does his thing. Armstrong breaks out on his own. The improvised solo becomes a codified part of jazz. The saxophone takes over for the clarinet in ensembles.

Music examples:1. Dippermouth Blues, King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band with Louis Armstrong on second cornet. Obtained from archive.org
2. West End Blues, Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven. It’s hard to overestimate how important this recording with its out of tempo opening fanfare. It really set the stage for a lot of what was to come. From the Sony collection, The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings, although this is available from many sources.
3. Black Bottom Stomp, Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers. Jelly Roll is a world unto himself. We probably won’t get much if any deeper into him, but again, he’s an influential figure in the music. Taken from an RCA-Bluebird CD compilation of Morton’s music. I also mentioned his Library of Congress recordings with Alan Lomax. They’re worth seeking out, too, and although they can be hard listening they’re a fascinating look into the mind of one of the music’s great original creators.

1930: Kansas City, Swing
Rise of four beat jazz, codification of swing rhythms. Bennie Moten to Count Basie in KC, Fletcher Henderson to Benny Goodman. The soloist versus the ensemble. Dance bands to the fore.

Music examples: 1. Moten Swing, Bennie Moten. Didn’t actually play this one for time concerns.
2. King Porter Stomp, Fletcher Henderson and his orchestra
3. King Porter Stomp, Benny Goodman and his orchestra
4. Begin the Beguine, Artie Shaw and his orchestra. Again, cut for time
5. Jumpin’ At The Woodside, Count Basie and his orchestra

1940: Bebop
Swing turned into a gigantic marketing machine, with the term and the artists being used in many different ways and contexts beyond the music. Musicians rebelled and formed a new music based (usually) around smaller groups with more musical room for soloists. Melodies became more complex and angular, harmonies developed into more complex sounds, and rhythms became more sharp and pointed. Tempos are often much faster. Separation from dance use.

Musical examples: 1. Night in Tunisia, Dizzy Gillespie. Didn’t play this one for time reasons.
2. Ornithology, Charlie Parker Septet. An early-middle period bebop recording from 1947, with a very young Miles Davis on trumpet
3. Ow, Dizzy Gillespie big band. Bebop style in a big band setting

1950: Cool, Hard Bop
More rebellion, this time in the opposite direction. More scored ensemble work, more modest tempos. But, by 1955 the pendulum swings again. Soloists featured again, tempos and melodies funkier and “hotter” than cool. Art Blakey, Horace Silver, The Jazz Messengers, and so forth.

Musical examples: 1. Little White Lies, George Shearing Quintet. An early recording of theirs before the sound was totally coopted by every Muzak arranger.
2. Venus DeMilo, Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool band, music by Gerry Mulligan. Seminal recording in the cool school of the late forties to early fifties.

1960: Free Jazz

1970: Jazz-Rock Fusion

1980 and beyond: Synthesis of all styles, rise of repertory playing and “retro” players


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