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Frank Kofsky: There's an unfortunate habit of studying art and intellectual developments in general, almost in a vacuum. As it were, art history is then divorced from all other kinds of human history, and what you get is a

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picture of art history marching down through the ages. Among in the period of the Greeks, we had pottery. In the period of Middle Ages, we had cathedrals, and with Giotto, we get painting and so forth and so on. But all of this is divorced from the social

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and economic background in which the art lives. All you really get from this point of view. And of course, in a sense, some of this separation is inevitable and results from the dividing up of fields into different disciplines and then cramming

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them into certain specified time units so that you can put them into a 16 week semester, and so forth and so on. All you get from this is a sort of a hermetically sealed picture of art, art one, and then art two, and then art three, and then art

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four. But no real reason, no real insight into the causal nature, into the processes that underlie the art in question. You don't really understand why it is that art changes, why the Middle Ages have one kind of art, and why the Renaissance,

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for example, has another. All you know that the Middle Ages have such and such a kind of art, this sort of perspective and this sort of color technique and so on. The Renaissance has another one. But why there's why there's a middle ages and why

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there's a renaissance? This is something that doesn't get investigated in your art history course, let alone why the art of one differs from the art of the other. This isn't, as I say, necessarily the fault of the instructors. They're faced with

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an impossible task to begin with. They have to sandwich all of art in within eight or 16 weeks, however many. But as I say, you don't really understand what's happening. Or this is my impression from having been in such courses, both the end

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you're in now and the end I'm in now. So if I don't present jazz, from the standpoint of first we have one kind of jazz, and then we have another kind of jazz, then we have a third kind of jazz. But if instead I try and look behind the scenes of jazz,

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at the historical determinants, at economic processes and technological change as being the driving forces of jazz, if I connect jazz to the way living human beings actually exist, what this will mean, perhaps, is that we will spend less time

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playing records, but we may understand the records that we end up playing better. So for that reason, I am going to intersperse the music with a lot of verbiage. This may bother some of you, I hope not, but in good conscience, I don't think I

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could do otherwise. All right, then, what are the sociological and historical determinants that go into jazz? We have to look at to begin with, economic developments. Sometimes a an entire jazz movement is wiped out because of, for example, of

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depression. This was the case with Bebop. Bebop simply went underground as a viable art form at the end of the 40s, largely because, first of all, a depression broke out shortly before the Korean War, and second of all, because there was

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no mass public for Bebop. This was a result, again, of other factors that be bop had been developed in a wartime period when many of the people who would have been receptive and responsive to New Jazz waves were overseas, serving in the

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army and cut off from developments in jazz. And consequently, when they came back, were left, were at a loss as to what had happened in the four or five years they had been gone. And then too, I pointed to the fact that there was a

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depression, and it was difficult to keep many groups working. If there is no market for an art in a society that markets art as a commodity, then obviously you are not going to have the art, since most of you will be bucking the system sooner or

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later. In any case, you will know that in the event of a depression, many of your products will not be saleable, and you will be faced with the impasse that beset jazz musicians at the close of the 40s. Technological change also

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plays a role, especially in jazz, which is almost totally diffused by the phonograph record, so that when there is a transition from a three minute 78 rpm record to a long play, first a 10 inch and then the 12 inch record that plays for up to

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15 or 20 minutes, this is a ultimately has an immense effect on the shape of jazz. Now, it's possible to put on a single track on a record that lasts 20 minutes, it's possible for a man to solo one man to appear in front of the microphone, soloing

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for all of that 20 minutes, it's possible to record performances live and market these performances in a way that hadn't been done, really, on a mass scale previously, jazz then ceases to be exclusively. Creation of the recording studio

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and takes on a more lifelike characteristic. You get some insight into the way the jazz musician actually functions. The restraints are taken off. He doesn't have to compress everything into three minutes. Perhaps the most important,

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important source of change in jazz comes from the negro community. Jazz depends for its vitality on its connection with the negro community, and in particular, in the last two decades, its connection with the Urban Negro ghetto. This

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connection is sociological in nature, not racial. I'm not saying that all Negroes sing and dance. What I am saying is that jazz was born in the Negro ghetto and has continued to function primarily there. When jazz has temporarily lost this

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connection, it's notable that the vitality of jazz has waned and suffered as a result, something that I'll point out later on. This connection is more marked in jazz than it would be in the case of a negro artist who is a poet, for

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example, a painter, a writer, a dramatist, because in the other arts, he has white models to draw upon, but in jazz, he can only look, or can look primarily, to other Negroes were the source of his inspiration. There is no major white

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tradition in jazz. A Negro who wants to be a jazz musician is going to have to look for other Negroes, to other Negroes. That is also true of whites. For the most part, whites who want to be jazz musicians look to Negroes for the source of their

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inspiration. With some minor exceptions, the exceptions get written about a great deal. For the most part, you could write the history of jazz, however, and omit the names of every May, every white jazz musician, with perhaps one or two exceptions,

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as I've said, and you wouldn't from the stylistic standpoint, you wouldn't have anything different at the end when you came out. Economically, this wouldn't be the case. However, white musicians have been important from an economic

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standpoint, when there is a new trend in jazz, it's generally the whites who profit from it first. This was the case in the 30s. But from the standpoint of the development of style, whites add nothing really. Major exceptions to this have been few

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and far between since jazz is a negro art in the sense that I've defined it, in the sense that it is born in and flourishes in the Negro ghetto. It's not surprising, therefore, that social currents within the negro community can be seen, can be

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detected first in jazz. This is true for example, with the spread of Islam, the Muslim religion which comes to the surface in the Negro communities in the north, not in the late 50s, but in the late 40s. Concomitant with the rise of

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bebop, there was a wave of conversions of jazz musicians to the Islamic religion. And this was a symbolic protest and an expression of disgust with the white society, a rejection of Christianity, which was identified with a white God. In

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jazz, a Negro is the master and the wife is the servant. And for that reason, you can detect trends in the negro community that in jazz, whereas you can't detect these trends anywhere else in the society, because by and large, there is nowhere else

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in the society where Negroes call the terms, call the tune, and whites do the dancing. That's why, then you can find such things as Islam flourishing in jazz in the late 40s, whereas the white public as a whole becomes aware of the Muslim

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religion and its spread among the Negroes only in the late 50s. Well, all right, so much for the major sociological determinants behind jazz. Now, to be complete today, really, I should go back and begin the story with 1940 because even

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though the Bebop revolutions which had, which took place in 1940 is today, on the way out is today being undermined. Still. To get the complete historical perspective, we should begin at the beginning time precludes this. However, I'm going to have

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to summarize bebop and what it did for jazz, and go on from there without really going into the music in any detail. What bebop, first of all, brought about was a new kind of solo pattern, a pattern of soloing over a harmony that is

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writing out a chord structure and soloing over a chord structure instead of playing variations on a melody. The reason that people asked, where is the melody in Bebop was because was not an irrelevant question, and the reason it was

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asked was because the melody had been discarded. Melody was thrown away, and only the chords, the harmony of a tune, was used as the basis for improvisation. To be sure, this had been done before, the blues is a good example of it. Those

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of you who know anything about blues know that A. Is a 12 bar structure divided into three equal parts of four bars each, and it makes use of three basic chords, the tonic, the dominant and the subdominant. But improvisation over only using

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the harmony actually was a development of bebop, though there were predecessors of the Bebop musician, such as Lester Young, who pioneered in this. For an example, you might take I got rhythm, or any other 32 bar tune, which is divided into an

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A, A, B, a structure that is eight bars of a theme which you call a, another eight bars repeated again, called a, a bridge or a channel or a middle B, which has a different theme and is in a different key, and then the last eight bars, again

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in the original with the original melodic line. This was a common pattern used by the Bebop revolutionaries. The second thing that bebop brought about was a new rhythmic complexity, new ideas of jazz rhythm. Rhythm in jazz in the

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30s was, by and large, a four, four matter, a matter of a strictly solid and steady beat played by the bass drummer, played by the drummer on his bass drum with his right foot, and also played by the piano player with his left hand. Bebop

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did away with that and made a much more spare and angular rhythm section where the bass where the bass drum wasn't struck on every beat, and the piano player had a certain amount of had a tremendous amount of liberty as to where he

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would insert his chords. Those few critics who theorize about jazz have now come around to the point of view that it is changes in jazz rhythm that are the most fundamental. The Jazz is primarily a rhythmic music, and when changes come about in jazz

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styles, they are manifested first into a large degree in jazz rhythm. Certainly, the rhythm of Bebop was most markedly different from the rhythm of swing, the swing period which preceded it, in doing away with this steady four

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four beat, as I've indicated, bebop did not prove to be an immediate commercial success. There was an absence of a substantial white or Negro market, both whites and Negroes who might have appreciated bebop, if they had been around

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to witness the early stages in its evolution, were in the service at the time, and were faced with adjusting to a music that they had no real preparation for when they came back to the States. This in the depression of the late 40s,

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served to sound the death knell of bebop as a popular form of music. I should also mention that the onset of the Cold War in the late 40s, the development of the Russian atomic and later the hydrogen bombs, and the state of shock and insecurity

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and emotional withdrawal that these developments induced in the American people. All of these also helped to shove bebop into an early grave. Bebop was an emotional, an overt, demonstrative, even a florid kind of music, a music that was

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not restrained, that gave direct vent to emotions. If you can recall the McCarthy period, you will, I think, agree that the social symptoms of McCarthyism were exactly the opposite, especially on the part of intellectuals. Intellectuals

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withdrew from any overt display of emotions, whether political or artistic, the art, the literature and the music of the McCarthy period was marked by and large, by a very great degree of pallidness. It was tepid. What with what rebellion

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there was. And you can look at bebop as a type of rebellion, a rebellion against European music, a rebellion against swing music, which had come to be dominated and commercially taken over by whites. What rebellion there was in bebop would be

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unacceptable in the mccarthyist climate of the late 40s and the early 50s. What came to the fore to replace Bebop was a mute. Was a music we know originally as cool music. Cool was originally pioneered by Negroes, by miles, Davies, John Lewis and to a

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lesser degree, Max Roach, but it was taken over and commercialized by whites. It then became an attempt to incorporate the advances rhythmic and harmonic of bebop within a framework that would still be comprehensible and

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acceptable to a large number of white listeners in the jazz audience. You can see this in what becomes of Biba? What becomes of cool music in its later years? In the last years of cool in the mid 1950s it became known as West Coast

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music. So. This was not a descriptive name, but a mislabeling, because it didn't include all West Coast musicians, Harold lamb, for example, or Hampton Hans, both Negroes were not considered to be West Coast musicians, even

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though they both resided in Los Angeles. West Coast musicians were shorty Rogers, Dave Brubeck, art pepper, Shelley, Mann, for the most part, whites. You can also see what cool means by looking at it as an esthetic term, cool music generally meant

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an absence of overt emotion, a subdued tone, usually without any vibrato, less pronounced and less complex rhythmic emphasis, very again, a subdued kind of rhythm. All of these things would make cool appeal primarily to a white audience, rather than

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to a negro audience raised on rhythm and blues or the rhythmic music of the gospel churches, cool was preeminently a white jazz. It emphasized a legitimate tone, a tone that you would find used by a symphonic musician. Many of the cool musicians, the

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white ones, had had a period of legitimate study. Brubeck studied with Darius Milo shorty, Rodgers and Jimmy Jeffrey, studied with Wesley la Violette and so on and so forth. New instruments were introduced into the Jazz Repertory, the flute,

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the elbow and the French horn, all of them associated with a long tradition in European music, unlike the saxophone, the snare drums and so on, which are usually thought of when one thinks of jazz instruments, European devices and forms,

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fugue counterpoint in an ertsatz Baroque style best identified with Dave Brubeck. All of these represented an attempt to lighten the pigmentation of jazz. If you want to look then beyond if you want to look at cool jazz from a social and

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psychological standpoint. It represented a music or it expressed the in musical terms, the alienation of white intellectuals and the semi intellectuals and the McCarthy period. It was unlike bebop, which was a music of external

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revolt, it cool was a music of internal rebellion, music of withdrawal. If you look back at the early novels of the beat generation, novel such or a novel that depicted the lifestyle of the beat generation in its early years, such a novel

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as Dharma bums by Jack Kerouac, you'll see that the music that the beats are listening to is cool music the beats also were with, were a withdrawn group, and they fitted the temper of the times perfectly in the same way that cool music did when it

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became too dangerous to indulge in overt rebellion, especially of a politically of a political type, rebellion takes other forms, and it may, in some cases, take the form of with becoming withdrawn, becoming alienated from the society and

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cutting herself off from it. What we see now in certain folk singers such as Bob Dylan represents, again, a protest movement, but a protest that is externally oriented. Cool was, in a sense, a protest against the establishment, but it was a

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protest that turned inward. It was not a protest that became demonstrated in overt forms of action. Cool could not last forever. However, it was too unsatisfying esthetically and history doesn't stand still, least of all in these times, if

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you want to say, if you want to pick a period point at which cool begins to falter and is replaced by other kinds of music. You might take the death of Charles Parker, one of the leading bebop revolutionaries in 1955 as a watershed for

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separating cool from the music that comes afterward. And here again, we look to the negro community to see what it was that destroyed cool undermined its hold and replace it with a more rural and vital form of jazz. First of all, we see the

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initial stirrings of the Negro liberation movement, the Supreme Court decision in the case of brown in 1954 which Unknown: supposedly was to lead to desegregation of schools, the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1956 the Little Rock School crisis of

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1957 these things coincide with a new wave of jazz, and the coincidence is not accidental. The African independence movement had a profound effect on changing the psychology of American Negroes. If you want to study this in more detail, you

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might look at Harold R Isaacs, the new world of Negro Americans, published in paper by Viking Press in 1963 African independence stimulated a new interest in Africa and a new sense of racial pride in Negro Americans, as well as in

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Africans. You can see this if you survey. Titles of jazz compositions African violence. Katanga, a region which is Nigeria, spelled backwards Dahomey dance, message from Kenya and so forth and so on. Numerous are the titles that

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have reference to Africa, whereas previously in the psychology of American Negroes, Africa symbolized jungle savagery, Tara San movies now Africa was associated with a new image, the image of a mature people emerging to statehood,

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nationhood, and playing an enlarged role on the world historical stage. Cultural nationalism was also manifest during this period. Nationalism meant a manifesto, a pride of race, a pride in Negro values and black values as being equal

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to white values, the idea that beauty didn't have to be white in standards to be beautiful, but could be black as well, whether this was in terms of facial structure, hair arrangement, or in musical terms. Again, I point out to you

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that this cultural phenomenon, cultural nationalism, makes itself known to whites, first in the jazz world, as early as the mid 50s, long before you heard anything about the Nation of Islam, the black Muslims. Because jazz, as I've said

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again, is the only area in United States society where a negro functions as something like an equal or a master. Therefore, Negroes feel freer to express themselves and the aspirations of their people than elsewhere. I will come back at

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some length to the question of black nationalism as it pertains to jazz and otherwise in my talk, but I will make some preliminary comments now. First of all, Negroes are not alone in being nationalistically oriented. Most ethnic groups,

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most religious minorities in the United States attempt to preserve their uniqueness in some form or other. They oppose intermarriage, and in many cases they oppose assimilation to the dominant standards of the old immigrants, the old Anglo Saxon

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white Protestant immigrants, there is therefore somewhat of a double standard involved when Negroes are denounced for doing the same thing. Why is it, for example, acceptable for Jews to maintain their cultural independence, but not for

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Negroes especially, is this hypocritical when whites really have no intention of amalgamating with Negroes or of letting Negroes amalgamate with them. So on the other hand, in one sense, if you are a negro, you lose either way. You are

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damned if you don't amalgamate, and you are damned if you do. The roots of nationalism in the negro community stem from a widespread mistrust of whites for the frequent, indeed almost inevitable, betrayal of Negro aspirations. In jazz in

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particular, there is much resentment among Negro musicians over the fact that whites are invariably the first to profit from the popularity of new developments. In the 30s, it was Benny Goodman, a white musician, and not Count Basie or Duke

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Ellington, who was known as the King of Swing. We saw the gene Cooper story made into a movie, not the cozy coal story. In the 50s, Dave Brubeck appears on the cover of Time magazine long before Thelonious Monk. And when monk does appear, it is as much

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because he can be invoked. He can be used to invoke certain prejudicial and pejorative stereotypes regarding Negroes as because of his musical achievement as I'll bring out later one British writer Francis Newton, or the actually, his

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real name is Eric Hobsbawm. He's a British economic historian and an amateur student of jazz records the following conversation told by a negro. You see, as soon as we have a music, the white man comes and imitates it. We've now had jazz

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for 50 years, and in all those 50 years, there has not been a single white man, perhaps leaving aside Bix. He means big spider back, who has had an idea. Only the colored men have ideas in jazz. But you see, who's got the famous names?

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They're all white. What can we do? We must go on inventing something new all the time. When we have it, the whites will take it from us, and we have to start all over again. It is as though we were being hunted another musician, a trombonist, told NAT

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Henze that only certain people, those who had suffered, those who had soul, could play jazz. He ended the statement by saying, you know who I mean. Indeed, one does know who he means. Very Weldon, how do these new trends that I've pointed to

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within the negro community? How do they express themselves through jazz, primarily through a return to a very basic and direct kind of communication, especially through the blues, which are a an age old type of music in the negro community? Me

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and through music influenced by the gospel churches. This, then, is a self consciously Negro music, a music which looks back to the roots of Negro life as found in the blues and in the Negro church for its inspiration, and rejects white

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standards, rejects the effeteness and the wispy and ethereal character of cool music. You can see this again in the names of jazz tunes. One of these days, some enterprising student will do a survey of titles of jazz compositions.

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This will be, I think, a very valid index to Negro sentiment. At the time, around the mid 50s, we begin to get new names appearing on the cover of jazz albums, and as the names of jazz compositions, these names involve such words as funky,

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soul. Funky originally meant something that was smelly, dirty, unpleasant, pertaining to body odor. When Negroes began reviving it, then they began reviving into something that was deliberately Negro, a word that had deliberate Negro

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connotations, a negro music that was funky then was Negro music, likewise with soul word that is widely employed in the Negro churches, and means essentially the same thing as funky, the seminal record in marking off the transition of the cool

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period into the reaction from cool is a record made by miles Davies in 1954 almost contemporaneous with the Supreme Court decision. By the way, the title of this record is walkin. Not walking, but walkin. Again. There is a certain self

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conscious significance in this title. The last G is left off in an attempt to portray Negro speech patterns. This record is on prestige number prestige 7076. And we couldn't do any better at this point than to have at it. So without further

00:26:55.820 - 00:27:18.360

ado, Miles Davis Walking. Miles Davis Walkin, JJ Johnson on trombone, Lucky Thompson on tenor sax, Horace Silver on piano, Kenny Heath bass and Kenny Clarke drums. That is not an unsophisticated record, but

00:27:18.360 - 00:27:35.870

it is a very straightforward and directing gets right to you, and hopefully you'll feel the impulse that it's tying you apart. I've given this lecture before, by the way, and I've noticed that the inevitable result is that when I put on the

00:27:35.870 - 00:27:44.130

records, everybody is so stunned by what I've had to say before and after that, they sit there like statues. It's perfectly all right to move around to the music, that's what it's there for. You don't enjoy it, then you really shouldn't be

00:27:44.130 - 00:28:17.420

listening to it in the first place. And one way of showing that enjoyment by responding to it in a very direct manner. You walkin portrays the influence of the blues in jazz and a return to the Blues as a return to a method of communication that is

00:28:17.420 - 00:28:34.140

not watered down by necessity of compromising to appeal to white tastes. Another hallmark of the reaction from cool jazz is a renewed emphasis on the Negro church as a source of inspiration. There are countless records that show this in one

00:28:34.140 - 00:28:50.400

way or another. I'm going to play for you Charles Mingus from his Mingus am album on Columbia one particular track, better, better get it in your soul. Not get it, but get it. This is probably the most sophisticated attempt to reproduce what goes

00:28:50.400 - 00:29:07.670

on in a negro church. As Mingus himself has said, there is in the middle of the record a sermon preached by Booker Irvin on tenor saxophone and some hand clapping that supposedly reproduces exactly the kind of response that obtains in a negro

00:29:07.670 - 00:29:24.930

church when the preacher begins his speech, his sermon. Mingus himself, in a letter to down beat, defended the artistry and the integrity of this representation of the Negro church service, as opposed to the attempts of some to

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commercialize and vulgarize this by calling attention to the hand clapping, which is in a very complex rhythmic style, as you will see when We begin. Better get it in your soul. Better get it in your soul vocal effects applied by Mingus.

00:29:57.740 - 00:30:16.030

The other transition. That I mentioned to you as being important for signifying a new era in jazz was that of the African independence movement, which began in the 50s and really acquired momentum with the middle years of that decade,

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in a way all of its own. The next election mirrors that trend. This is a vocalization of a tune composed by Sonny Rollins. The tune the original selection is Airegin spelled backwards is Nigeria as the lyrics make quite plenty. I've

00:30:35.530 - 00:30:51.290

printed the lyrics up at the bottom of the sheet. The lyrics are by John Hendricks, a very talented jazz poet and singer who up until recently, was at the head of a tripartite group, Lambert Hendricks and Ross and later Lambert Hendricks and

00:30:51.830 - 00:31:10.660

Bavan, two men and a girl singer who may who achieve fame for recording vocal versions of Instrumental standards setting the lyrics were by Hendrix, set to famous compositions and favorite famous solos of jazz musicians. This is no course in

00:31:10.660 - 00:31:27.440

textual exegesis, but perhaps we should go over the short verse. In any case, "Wait'll y'dig it on the map Airigin Spelled backwards is Nigeria. Really're closin' up the gap. Back long time ago, they saw a ghost. Ghost made a boast. Soon, that

00:31:27.440 - 00:31:42.140

ghost was host." That ghost, of course, is the white man. Ghost made a boast. Soon, that ghost was host. Soon, that ghost owned everything in Africa. Then we go back to the first two lines, Weldon, you dig it on the map, really closing up the gap, going

00:31:42.140 - 00:32:07.600

face, words, first things, reverse, oh, something has been omitted from here. I see the typist. Let me read you the full lyrics, if I can find them. Oh yes, here we go. Ghost made a boast soon that ghost was host.

00:32:08.020 - 00:32:22.170

Okay, yeah, they've left out two lines on the type version, which I didn't notice until now. Way it goes after that is as follows. The first two lines are repeated. Wait till you dig it on the map, Airegin spelled backwards, really closing up the

00:32:22.170 - 00:32:36.930

gap, going face. Words, those losing their hue, they goofed and got the wrong view. First things reversed. Last is first. You dig it. Those who are attempting, those who are attempting, then to ape the white man, have gotten their

00:32:36.930 - 00:32:57.010

priorities reversed, because last is going to be first, when the non white majority of the world's population, take takes over, and therefore first things reverse last is first you dig it. That is from a world Pacific album, the swingers. And one of

00:32:57.010 - 00:33:16.680

minor ironies of jazz history, the tenor saxophone soloist is Zoot Sims. That's one view of Africa. The next record I'm going to play presents another view that of John Coltrane. This is to

00:33:16.860 - 00:33:34.520

deviate from strict phonology, but nonetheless, Coltrane's concept of Africa is worth bringing out in this connection. I'm not going to play the entire solo now. I hope to have time to come back to it later, because the entire track on this side of

00:33:34.520 - 00:33:52.240

the record is Africa. That's the also the title of the tune, but we'll listen to it through the introduction and Coltrane solo. The scoring of Coltrane was accompanied by his regular rhythm section of McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, and I think at that

00:33:52.240 - 00:34:05.760

time, Reggie workman on bass. I think there were no there were two bass players on this particular recording, art Davies and Reggie workman. And also a brass choir for which Coltrane and McCoy Henze wrote out the chords and the scoring was done

00:34:05.760 - 00:34:28.700

by the late and much lamented Eric Dolphy Coltrane's version of Africa. Then your choice, one of my particular bait blancs, Morton Williams, at that

00:34:28.700 - 00:34:43.660

time, a reviewer for downbeat magazine had this to say about that selection. I question whether here, this exposition of skills adds up to anything. If one he forgets to say who one is if one looks for melodic development or even for some

00:34:43.660 - 00:35:02.280

sort of technical order or logic, he may find none here, if he is both blind and deaf. He also adds that the Brahms figures are, quote, a bit too monotonous to add variety. That I would say is a typical. White reaction to what Coltrane is

00:35:02.280 - 00:35:20.960

trying to do. In addition to the influence of Africa and the Negro church in blues, we can point to another trend in jazz of the mid and late 50s, the so called Hard approach, again, a characteristically Negro treatment of music that derives

00:35:20.960 - 00:35:37.340

from blues and especially from gospel oriented music, the foremost practitioners in this vein are Horace Silver, who was the Kenneth player on miles Davies, walking, walking, and Art Blakey, the drummer. Time precludes us investigating this

00:35:37.340 - 00:36:03.960

in any length. But I thought for completeness, that I should throw this in as well, a cautionary note should also be appended at this point. Writers and critics are in the habit of referring to distinct

00:36:03.960 - 00:36:20.540

styles, so old, hard bop, funky and so forth and so on. The validity of drawing lines of demarcation between all of these styles is questionable. On the contrary, these terms are all or can be used interchangeably, but they after coming into vogue

00:36:20.540 - 00:36:36.560

among the musicians. They are seized on, vulgarized and commercialized by the recording companies, always in search of a new trend and a way of selling records. So if one record claims to be the monopolizer of hard bop, then another label can say

00:36:36.560 - 00:36:54.100

that it has the funkiest musicians buy sold jazz on still a third label yet, and so on and so forth. By propagating new terms, there is a certain amount of deception of the jazz public involved, especially when hard Bob funky soul all refer to

00:36:54.340 - 00:37:13.260

essentially the same set of attributes, the same conceptions, looking at the development of the late 50s in more detail, we have to deal with two men whom Cannonball Adderley has referred to as the harmonic impressionists, Sonny

00:37:13.260 - 00:37:32.120

Rollins and John Coltrane. Both of these men are, or at the time, were in the tradition of bop. That is, they tried to build on the basic conceptions of be Bop and try to extend them. Sonny Rollins is perhaps most famous following a long

00:37:32.120 - 00:37:48.160

expository analysis of his style by musicologist Gunther Schuler in the leaves of jazz review before the demise of that journal. He is perhaps more famous for his so called thematic improvisation, that is an improvisation which

00:37:48.160 - 00:38:03.240

constantly refers back to and reiterates a basic theme. You will see that aspect of his work in this present selection, which I'm going to play Mort tot or Magna knife, as it's more popularly known from the three Penny opera. Listen to the theme

00:38:03.240 - 00:38:19.740

carefully, and then listen to how Rollins incorporates it in the course of his solo, both in his long solo to begin with, and then in the exchanges with drummer Max Roach following the piano solo. Sonny Rollins from the album, saxophone Colossus

00:38:20.220 - 00:38:36.800

mortal, one is struck by the number of ways that Sonny Rollins can incorporate bits and fragments of the theme into his solo. He's constantly referring back. He isn't paraphrasing the theme,

00:38:36.800 - 00:38:51.820

but he's always putting little bits and pieces of it, slowing it down, speeding it up, turning phrases around, putting them together and taking them apart. The second of the harmonic impressionists, as cannonball calls them, is John Coltrane

00:38:52.780 - 00:39:08.040

Andre hodier, in a book jazz, its evolution, in essence, now available in paperback, published by Grove, points out what he considers to be the basic characteristics of bebop, namely, that it uses in place of swing, which used the quarter

00:39:08.040 - 00:39:26.240

note as the fundamental unit of improvisation, be bop uses the eighth note as its base. And he also Haute air that is, calls attention to the fact that whereas swing was based on a melodic paraphrase that is merely paraphrasing the melody.

00:39:26.480 - 00:39:47.260

Bebop, as I've already remarked, depends on improvisation over a set of chords over a fixed chordal framework. What Coltrane attempted to do in his early early in his career was to carry the Bebop techniques one step further, to replace the eighth

00:39:47.260 - 00:40:03.480

note by the 16th note, to incorporate more chords as the framework and to make the chords increasingly complex. The result of this was that Coltrane had to speed up his playing. If you put twice as many chords in, if you put in four chords where you've

00:40:03.480 - 00:40:18.060

had two previously, you have to touch all of the chords. You're going to have to play more notes in the same amount of time, and in Coltrane's Hans, this requirement ultimately eventuated in what writers called sheets of sound. Coltrane

00:40:18.060 - 00:40:35.060

was forced to play so many notes that these notes more or less merged torrential flurries of notes in uneven, asymmetric groups that produced a long, slurred phrase might be measures in length. These sheets of sound can be heard on a record he cut

00:40:35.060 - 00:40:49.000

in 1957 one of his first records as a leader for Blue Note records. The title of the album is Blue Train, and we're going to play that title track. I'm going to play only Coltrane solo because of time.

00:40:57.520 - 00:41:11.620

After bringing the sheets of sound to perfection, Coltrane abandoned them, not out of Caprice, but because it proved to be impossible to carry bop forward by straight line methods. That is, you simply couldn't do 15 years later what

00:41:11.620 - 00:41:26.490

the boppers had done in the early 40s and still have a viable music. Coltrane tried the most logical thing, simply carrying bop procedures one step forward and hoping that artistic progress could be achieved in this fashion. After he perfected

00:41:26.490 - 00:41:39.790

this technique, then he abandoned it, because it proved to be too constricting. There were too many chords, tied the soloist down, too much and didn't give him enough freedom. What this indicates, then is that the arts, like the

00:41:39.790 - 00:41:58.030

sciences, do not develop in a straight line, uni linear fashion. On the contrary, they develop by revolutionary leaps, abrupt discontinuities. Recently, when Bob has Neo be Bopp, has been undermined by the innovations of a younger

00:41:58.030 - 00:42:14.700

generation of artists. Critics have become very irate at this. They seem to think that you could go on with one style for the rest of the lifetime of a music, or simply make small modifications, carrying on with the tradition of the music

00:42:15.120 - 00:42:29.380

without making any revolutionary innovations. Coltrane actually tried this. He tried to carry the music forward the way the bee boppers had done in the 40s. And what he found out was that this was not a viable road. It simply wouldn't yield enough

00:42:29.380 - 00:42:43.600

freedom for the soloist, enough room for him to develop his ideas. He thereafter had to strike out on a new path. And this wasn't accidental, as I say it shows that jazz, or any other art, like the sciences, have to at some point, break off from

00:42:43.600 - 00:43:00.930

the direction it's been going and go in a new direction. And that the transition is not smooth. On the contrary, the transition is abrupt, and it is a revolutionary transition. In every case, three other men must be mentioned in completing our

00:43:00.930 - 00:43:19.930

inventory of jazz in the 50s, I refer to them as the three Ms, I mean monk Mingus and Max Thelonious Monk Charles Mingus and Max rose. The specific influence of Thelonious Monk is difficult to trace, although undoubtedly the wide homage that

00:43:19.930 - 00:43:33.600

is paid him by young jazz musicians represents a real estimate of his worth. Certainly, he has been important for the younger generation of jazz musicians, if not for any specific set of innovations, simply his overall liberating

00:43:33.600 - 00:43:48.600

effect. Coltrane, for one, did work with monk in 1958 for a brief period of time when he was in between various Miles Davis groups, Sonny Rollins has also appeared on various Monk's records and conversely, but it's more likely that Monk's effect

00:43:48.600 - 00:44:02.860

on musicians has been a general one, a widening of the harmonic framework of the music and a liberation of the jazz all of us from the idea that only the conventional, that is only The conventional European, only the conventional techniques can be

00:44:02.860 - 00:44:17.430

acceptable. Monk plays clusters of notes, hits the piano with his elbow if he feels that that will be appropriate. And in general, doesn't seem to be bound by European standards of music. He believes in playing a jazz and letting jazz write its

00:44:17.430 - 00:44:33.990

own rules, while he hasn't been directly copied by too many other musicians, as I say, he has been important in tearing down the old ideas that jazz music could only be played in a certain way, that only certain chords were right, and in

00:44:33.990 - 00:44:48.370

shaking up the thinking of young musicians generally. You might also notice that monk is usually considered to be one of the Bebop innovators. He's usually linked with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, the Bebop revolution of the early 40s, in

00:44:48.370 - 00:45:06.180

a way that's correct in another way, monk's roots go back beyond bebop to stride piano players like James P Johnson, early Duke Ellington and so forth. Here I'm going to present. Two solo tracks by monk from the album Thelonious himself. I should

00:45:06.180 - 00:45:24.120

care and Round about midnight, the latter is monk's most famous composition. You can't fail to be struck by the humor in monk's playing, particularly in his treatment of I should care that record has a certain ruminative quality about it. Monk is

00:45:24.120 - 00:45:39.280

talking things over with himself there. It used to be thought, used to be quite commonly read and thought and written that monk's talent was limited and that he really played that way because he couldn't play the right way. That's why he played

00:45:39.280 - 00:45:54.330

all those funny descending runs like a man falling downstairs in the last few years, say, since 1955 or six or seven, it's been realized that those are not limitations, that monk plays that way because he chooses to play that way, and rather than

00:45:54.330 - 00:46:11.070

being limited, he is a superb instrumentalist, but one Whose profound view of things is not the conventional one. It's impossible to close out the topic of monk without some comment on Time Magazine's treatment of monk since it was

00:46:11.070 - 00:46:24.610

not so long ago that he made the cover. It doesn't disparage monk's enormous resources to point out that there were other equally deserving musicians the time could have put on its cover. Miles, Davies, Suzy Gillespie, for example. But

00:46:24.610 - 00:46:41.640

monk's idiosyncrasies, the hat fetish, the dance, the dancing and the alleged pharmaceutical proclivities all lend themselves. All lend themselves to portray all of the jazz musician as a hopped up semi barbarian, the ignoble Savage,

00:46:41.640 - 00:46:55.800

if you will. Time's treatment therefore reproduces, on only a slightly more urbane level, the stereotype view of the jazz musician, and by extension, of all Negroes. They sing and dance, they wear funny hats, they take lots of pills and so

00:46:55.800 - 00:47:10.540

forth. This image time then proceeded to buttress in describing other jazz musicians, miles Davis is teaching his son to box those to fight whites. Coltrane is a freak for vegetables and so on and so forth. The concluding

00:47:10.540 - 00:47:25.710

perspective from loose land is that the state of jazz is definitely something to be bemoaned. Actually, none of this has any merit whatsoever. Jazz musicians, whatever their eccentric eccentricities, are totally disciplined and long

00:47:25.710 - 00:47:39.750

practicing men, they practice for hours at a time, especially during their apprenticeship in many cases, for example, Cecil Taylor, they're conservatory trained musicians as well be impossible to achieve the level of virtuosity of even the

00:47:39.750 - 00:47:55.570

average jazz performer without constant discipline and practice. Moreover, it's do be as if time to the contrary, notwithstanding, jazz is in the state of decline that they paint on the contrary, while there is much unemployment in jazz, from

00:47:55.570 - 00:48:12.720

a purely artistic view, I would say that the music is undergoing something of a renaissance. So read time at your risk and accept its conclusions at a greater risk. Yet, the second of our two MS is Mingus. Charles Mingus, we've already heard one

00:48:12.720 - 00:48:29.160

track of his, and although I'd like to play more time again prohibits this. He, like monk, has had a liberating effect on jazz musicians. He's shown that it's okay to be sloppy and imprecise. What counts in jazz is the feeling, so don't worry

00:48:29.160 - 00:48:43.720

about missing a note. In fact, many of his recording sessions, he doesn't use scores at all. He plays the parts that he wants each musician to render on the piano and then leaves it to them to work out and exactly how they're going to do do this, the

00:48:43.780 - 00:48:56.610

better get it in your soul. Track that we heard previously emphasizes a sort of loose approach, sacrifices something in precision. On the other hand, I think it more than offsets this by gaining an emotional intensity. He's also had a

00:48:56.610 - 00:49:10.770

profound influence on bassists, the guitar bass that is the bass that is played as fast as a guitar and sounds like a guitar because it's drummed in the upper register. This is one of Mingus innovations, and one that can be seen in the work of

00:49:10.770 - 00:49:27.970

countless young bassists. Likewise, his music reflects the importance of contemporary sociological developments in shaping the consciousness of Negroes jazz musicians and otherwise, his titles constantly refer to contemporary themes,

00:49:27.970 - 00:49:45.540

fables of Faubus, Afro American fight song and so on and so forth. The same trend can be perceived even more closely in the work of Max Roach. Max's work further demonstrates the significance of nationalist currents in influencing jazz and

00:49:45.540 - 00:50:01.500

the Negro jazz musician. I hope I'll be pardoned if I spend some time talking about black nationalism or Negro nationalism, since the subject has been so widely discussed and so frequently misunderstood, I've indicated. Know previously

00:50:01.500 - 00:50:17.200

that there is some dishonest, intellectual dishonesty involved among other among white ethnic groups condemning the efforts of Negroes to maintain a separate cultural tradition while they themselves do the same thing. It's well known that most white

00:50:17.200 - 00:50:31.350

immigrants to this country do maintain their own church, their own religion and many of their own cultural traditions. In some cases, there's a vested interest here in condemning the condemning Negroes for doing this. Negro community is

00:50:31.350 - 00:50:46.590

thoroughly penetrated, for example, by Jewish merchants. And if Negroes were to start an exclusively buy black campaign, the first people who would be affected by this are the Jewish merchants who own furniture stores and other small

00:50:47.890 - 00:51:03.480

businesses within the negro community, so that Negro nationalism gets a very bad press among liberal publications. The fact that nationalism is condemned among Negroes doesn't stop Jews, for example, from living in one

00:51:03.600 - 00:51:16.200

or two sections of town, from practicing their own religion and so forth and so on. And you don't see the Jews assimilating to Christianity and the dominant religious mores of the culture. On the contrary, they maintain their traditions intact for the

00:51:16.200 - 00:51:31.460

most part. So as I say, there is some intellectual dishonesty to be found in this area. There is also a profound misunderstanding of nationalism. When you read the content contention that Negro nationalism equals black supremacy, you should ask

00:51:31.460 - 00:51:49.660

yourself whether this is really the case. In contradiction nationalism is doesn't represent a drive for Negro supremacy, but a drive for an equally Negro equality. It is a manifestation of a wholly justified feeling on my part, of betrayal by white

00:51:49.660 - 00:52:02.100

Americans, of the hopes and aspirations of the Negro people in the United States. And as a result of this feeling, there are several corollaries that follow. The main idea is the Negroes must become independent of whites with their own

00:52:02.100 - 00:52:16.080

leaders, rather than those appointed by the man the white man. Those of you who read James Baldwin Notes of a Native Son recall his comments about negro leaders. Negro leader is a man who has the acceptance of the white power structure in some

00:52:16.080 - 00:52:30.140

respects. Martin Luther King gives signs of becoming such a negro leader as he finds it increasingly hard to control those people who are supposed to be his followers, then you will read that it's Negro nationalists, such as the Black

00:52:30.140 - 00:52:44.800

Muslims, who teach hate. On the contrary, I would maintain that it is a white society which teaches hate. For example, in the recent election, we had as the candidate of one of the parties, Barry Goldwater now exactly what his platform was

00:52:44.800 - 00:52:58.780

and what the implications were in his candidacy can't be established with finality, because you don't know what people were thinking of when they voted for him, but the fact that he did win five of the most stone strongholds of segregation

00:52:58.780 - 00:53:13.560

is suggestive of the constituency to which Goldwater was couching his appeal. And Goldwater was not the candidate of a small third party, a minority party. He was the party of a he was a candidate of a party that is now over 100 years

00:53:13.560 - 00:53:32.120

old, the Republican Party in California to bring the issues closer to home, a pro segregation proposition 14, which denied Negroes the white the right to rent or buy where they chose, passed and attained 70 to 75% of the white vote. In

00:53:32.120 - 00:53:45.760

those cases where we've been examined to been able to examine the beliefs of white America, the results have gone along with what I've previously indicated. For example, I refer you to the Lewis Harrison poll printed in Newsweek for October 21 for 1963

00:53:46.660 - 00:54:01.620

pages 44 to 57 and the subsequent book written out of the results of this poll by Harrison William brink, the Negro revolution in America, published by Simon and Schuster in 1964 To summarize, in Brief, the results of this research, we

00:54:01.620 - 00:54:17.280

find the following. First of all, a majority of whites favored a civil rights bill, but 81% opposed a quota system for Negroes. Now you have to realize that the Negro unemployment rate is already twice that of whites on the average, and in major

00:54:17.280 - 00:54:30.860

industrial cities such as Detroit, Pittsburgh, New York, Chicago, Cleveland, the Negro unemployment rate is four and five times the white rate. As automation increases, it is Negroes who are increasingly dispossessed and driven out of

00:54:30.860 - 00:54:45.280

the economy. So if there isn't a quota system for Negroes, the result is that there will be increasing Negro unemployment, and when 81 people, 81% of the white population opposes a quota system for Negroes. What they are saying is, we want what we

00:54:45.340 - 00:54:59.080

have, and let the devil take the hindmost, or in this case, let the Negroes take the hindmost. And so there's a general equation there. 97% of the white respondents opposed a preference for Negroes in new jobs that were opened up, although it's

00:54:59.080 - 00:55:13.020

obvious that without. Such a preference, Negroes will be continue to occupy the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder in the United States. The automatic corollary is that Negroes will continue to be discriminated against, and that they will bear

00:55:13.020 - 00:55:28.160

the brunt of technological unemployment induced by automation, at least so far as the white majority is concerned. What about getting out of the area of legislation. What about the beliefs of whites regard in regard to Negroes? The figures

00:55:28.160 - 00:55:45.100

I'm going to quote now refer to white attitudes north and south, and they are indeed instructive. If you peruse them, 51% of the whites, and I remind you, this is a national survey. Object to having the a negro family next door. 85% believe Negroes laugh

00:55:45.100 - 00:56:00.100

a lot. 75% believe Negroes have less ambition. 71% believe Negroes smell different. 69% believe that Negroes have looser morals. 50% believe that Negroes have less native intelligence. Which might explain why Negro schools are generally considered

00:56:00.100 - 00:56:11.880

to be so inferior if 50% of the white people believe that Negroes have less native intelligence, that's a rather sizable percentage of the population that doesn't believe it's worthwhile wasting any money on people who are

00:56:12.000 - 00:56:26.420

inherently inferior, and 41% of the whites believe that Negroes want to live off the handout. Mind you, it was acceptable in the 1930s for white workers to accept unemployment compensation. But when Negroes now wish the same thing that's

00:56:26.420 - 00:56:42.580

known as living off of the Hans, perhaps the crucial belief in all of these tabulated is that of 74% that is three quarters of the whites who hold that Negroes, quote, are going too fast. Close quote, If Negroes are going too fast, one wonders

00:56:42.580 - 00:56:57.880

what should happen if Negroes should genuinely press genuine economic demand for jobs. For example, these views and these beliefs are not in the least accidental or fortuitous. They are, on the contrary, a true reflection of the thorough

00:56:57.880 - 00:57:15.420

indoctrination of white America with racist attitudes. Mary Ellen Goodman in her book racial awareness in young children, published by Collier in paper in 1964 has demonstrated that by the age of four years, both white and Negro children in an

00:57:15.420 - 00:57:28.640

integrated nursery school situation come to accept the greater variety, the greater desirability of white attributes. If you present these children with a white and a negro doll, both the whites and the Negroes will take the white

00:57:28.640 - 00:57:41.380

doll. If you ask the children which one they look like, both the white and Negro children will say they look white. By the age of four, Negroes have found out that it's better to be white if it's if you're white, you're right. So the question may then

00:57:41.380 - 00:58:02.760

be posed, and perhaps a more genuine answer can be given, who is it, after all, that teaches hate? On that note, perhaps we should play the next record by Max Roach and his now wife, Abby Lincoln. The title of the record is drive a man. It comes from a

00:58:02.760 - 00:58:16.620

an album released by a company candid that is now out of business and insisted on producing quality records, which perhaps had something to do with undermining it. The title of the album is, we insist freedom now sweet a few of these records,

00:58:16.620 - 00:58:36.500

and you can see why any company could go out of business in a predominantly white market this, there are historical references here, obviously to the antebellum south, the slave south. Can you figure out what the rhythmic punctuation is

00:58:36.500 - 00:58:56.680

there, or what it represents? What? Well, yes, but what's that repeated sound? Sure, it's a wick. I played that track for a group of students at the Cal State College in Los Angeles, and they couldn't figure out what that sound was. I don't

00:58:56.740 - 00:59:18.180

suppose I can tell you what color the group was. Two of a first approximation. The tenor saxophone solo, by the way, was by Coleman Hawkins, who, at the time of that recording in 1960 was 58 or 59 years old, which is remarkable in itself. The third

00:59:18.360 - 00:59:34.460

M is miles Davies, as with monk, it's difficult to point to exactly what it is that makes him such a great influence, although that his influence is ubiquitous is undeniable. One thing he seems to have done is to restyle the Bebop rhythm

00:59:34.460 - 00:59:52.900

section, cut it down, make it more lean and spare, and make the refine the pulse until it becomes almost impossible to resist and continually spurs the soloist forward. He was notable for a number of groups and a number of rhythm sections that

00:59:52.900 - 01:00:07.920

he had, the most famous one of which included Red Garland Billie Johannes on drums and Paul Chambers on bass. This is a little. Different group here. The piano player is Bill Levis, and the drummer is Jimmy Cobb, and I'm playing this particular

01:00:08.160 - 01:00:23.060

track, which is so what from his kind of blue album? Because it represents the influence of a new kind of harm, new kind of basis for jazz solo, the scale rather than the chordal foundation for a jazz solo.

01:00:25.700 - 01:00:38.600

Miles first experimented with using scales to replace chords, and found that it gave the soloist greater freedom. He wasn't as restricted as when he had a certain number of chords to touch on. He simply could use a scale for a certain number of

01:00:38.600 - 01:00:54.520

bars and leave the soloist greater choice of what notes he would play, and in this way, we introduce a reinvigorated interest in the soloist and as for the listener, likewise, perhaps the most impressive development of the idea of

01:00:54.520 - 01:01:09.240

scales as a basis for improvisation came not at the hands of miles, but at the hands of His accompanist here, John Coltrane, who is on tenor saxophone, Cannonball Adderley, rounds out the group on alto. Paul Chambers is again the bass

01:01:09.240 - 01:01:28.160

player. This is so what from kind of blue album The piano player there. Bill Evans is one of those few white musicians that you'd have to include in any history of jazz, one of the few white musicians who has had any influence on Negro musicians

01:01:28.640 - 01:01:44.440

who have picked up certain elements of his style and incorporated them into playing, particularly his approach to chords, his reliance on the kind of impressionistic Harmony you think of when you think of European music associated with

01:01:44.500 - 01:02:07.620

revel that you see composers of that era, miles obviously felt constricted by the standard Bopp harmonic and rhythmic framework as it developed In the 50s, and so he looked about to broaden and to broaden this basis and to find new materials to

01:02:07.620 - 01:02:25.220

incorporate into it. One of his ideas was to use scales, and you just heard the result of that. Another idea was to look for music from other lands, other countries, and see if this, see if this somehow couldn't be brought into jazz with good

01:02:25.220 - 01:02:41.200

results. And even on this kind of blue album that I've played, there is a track, flamenco sketches, which shows the influence of Spanish music, especially flamenco music, on Miles's ideas here in an album orchestrated by Gil Evans. Miles

01:02:41.200 - 01:02:58.660

takes us to a greater length and actually reproduces traditional Spanish music. Some cases it is scored music in which miles plays on trumpet, a part written for guitar. Other cases, he reproduces a song that would be sung. Here I'm going to play for

01:02:58.660 - 01:03:14.760

you, say eta, which is a one of the songs. It is sung during holy week, during the processional that takes place in all the major Spanish cities during Holy Week. Miles, the woman whose part Miles is playing, is on a balcony

01:03:14.760 - 01:03:31.460

overlooking the processional, and as the processional approaches her, she Linley out a song to the Virgin Mary, or to a figure of the crucified Christ. It depicts her feelings about the passion the crucifixion of Christ. Notice miles here then

01:03:31.520 - 01:03:47.260

plays that part, and he plays it with equal Express expressiveness as any singer. I'm sure. This is from the album sketches of Spain, orchestrated by miles as frequent collaborator, Gil Evans, not bill, but Gil,

01:03:53.140 - 01:04:12.300

that's one of the selections. It's always difficult to follow, except with more miles Davies, notice that, or you may have noticed that he isn't afraid to depart from the diatonic scale, that is, notes that you can play on a piano, if he thinks that

01:04:12.300 - 01:04:28.940

this will help him express something. So he plays what you would call out of tune. If you approach the album naively, he's actually deliberately playing flat, in some cases, playing out of the scale, in order to impart a more expressive, a more

01:04:28.940 - 01:04:45.280

emotional cast to his singing. I think you have to call it singing. Well, I see I got further this time than I did the last time I gave the lecture. Last time I didn't quite make it to the jazz Avenue guard, today I have so that's an achievement

01:04:45.280 - 01:05:07.500

of sorts, I guess. I want, in the remaining minutes to talk about the avenue guard, what is going on right now in jazz, the destruction of the older kind. Concepts and the introduction of several new ones. The first reaction from cool, as I've

01:05:07.500 - 01:05:23.000

indicated, was an attempt to go back to traditional Negro sources, blues and the Gospel Church, to find the inspiration for younger musicians. And to a degree, this sufficed, but beyond a certain point, there was only so much to be drunk

01:05:23.000 - 01:05:37.700

from these well springs. And as events progressed, younger artists found that they needed new sources for their inspiration. They were it's not, it's almost impossible not to want to correlate the progression of the avant garde

01:05:37.700 - 01:05:52.360

revolution in jazz with the onset of the Negro revolution as a whole, and be very difficult to refrain from making this correlation and to postulating, or at least attempting to suggest that events in the Negro revolution could not but help

01:05:52.360 - 01:06:06.420

shake up the consciousness of Negro artists who were involved in producing jazz, especially the younger musicians who didn't have The commitment to the older forms. Who hadn't spent the majority of their life playing in those styles, they naturally

01:06:06.420 - 01:06:23.480

found it easier to give up those styles and go ahead to newer things. The response of the critics, on the other hand, has been by and large negative, with some exceptions that I'll call attention to momentarily, this response has to be understood

01:06:23.480 - 01:06:39.560

from a socioeconomic standpoint. First of all, it is mistaken and fallacious to refer to most of those writers who write on jazz as critics. They, in fact, are not critics. They don't subsist even primarily on their earnings from criticism, but make the

01:06:39.560 - 01:06:53.440

bulk of their income as employees of the recording company, either in the capacity of writers of those notes that you will ordinarily see incorporated in each album, or else they serve as artist and repertoire man. That is, they

01:06:53.440 - 01:07:07.020

produce record sessions and so forth and so on. Naturally, their views come to be determined in a manner that's entirely unconscious to them, in the most for the most part, by those firms that they work for. Let's take the case of a very

01:07:07.020 - 01:07:22.460

prominent critic, Leonard feather. Leonard feather, three years ago, wrote a diatribe against the jazz revolution, revolutionaries, in particular, against John Coltrane and his then associate, Eric Dolphy, in which he called their music anti

01:07:22.460 - 01:07:35.120

jazz, said that it was disliked by most jazz musicians, and made a number of other unsupportable allegations against the music. Three years later, what do we find? Leonard feather has come around to the point of view of saying, Well, yes, the jazz

01:07:35.120 - 01:07:46.360

revolution is a good thing up to a certain degree, and so forth and so on. How do we account for this? Well, for one thing, Leonard feather is employed by Blue Note records, and Blue Note records is now one of the leading producers of recordings

01:07:46.360 - 01:08:02.220

by the avant garde. So three years ago, Leonard feather could curse Eric Gulch in his teeth. Now we find a memorial album issued with a liner notes written by the same Leonard feather. This is a way in which critical objectivity goes by the

01:08:02.220 - 01:08:19.260

boards as the erstwhile critic has to find means by which to support himself. A second liability that plagues most critics is that they are white. The exceptions to this are only a few, and they stem from the immediate past, principally

01:08:19.260 - 01:08:35.060

Leroy Jones, a poet, playwright, and also a jazz critic whose Lou's people is perhaps the major contribution to the literature of jazz in the past few years. A, B, Spellman, another poet to subsidiary degree, Ralph Ellison, also and

01:08:35.060 - 01:08:48.640

Barbara Gardner, who sometimes writes for downby, the four Negro critics, two of them really of top ranks, Feldman and Jones. This means that, of necessity, the white critic is out of touch with the real developments that impel the

01:08:48.700 - 01:09:02.760

Negro jazz musician to look for new modes of expression. He doesn't live in a ghetto, he doesn't play in the nightclubs and so forth and so on. He therefore is under no obligation to reflect what the problems of the Negro jazz musician are and

01:09:02.760 - 01:09:17.760

consequently, most white critics function as obstacles ball works in the way of artistic innovation. It's worth noting in this connection that the young Negro critics are solidly behind the jazz avant garde, whereas the white critical establishment

01:09:17.760 - 01:09:35.600

in the main has been hostile or skeptical at best, to a degree, all of this critical response is however irrelevant A B Spellman, the Negro critic to whom I referred already, has observed and I quote, a far more important index to the validity

01:09:35.600 - 01:09:48.760

of an artist's work than the opinions of professional critics favorable or unfavorable, is the judgment of his peers. On that basis, it seems safe to hazard the prognostication with confidence that the contributions of the jazz avant

01:09:48.760 - 01:10:05.340

garde will, in time, be accepted as a permanent and valuable part of the jazz literature. What is the jazz avant garde? Then, unfortunately, it's impossible to say. Say. And this, again, is not accidental. We are right now in the beginning or incipient

01:10:05.340 - 01:10:20.120

stages of a revolution when all of the old restraints and all of the old conventions are being overthrown. A great amount of energy has been released, but no new standards have arrived at, been arrived at. I think this is probably characteristic of all

01:10:20.120 - 01:10:34.460

artistic revolutions, and I think that also it is characteristic of Scientific Revolutions as well. There is a period of time, a crisis period, if you will, between the time when the old conceptions that were formerly established have

01:10:34.460 - 01:10:48.160

been undermined and no longer function, no longer command the universal assent of the practicing community, whether scientific or artistic, and a time when some new conventions are arrived at this crisis period is a time of

01:10:48.160 - 01:11:08.400

experimentation, of anarchy, of no rule, of all of the rules being in suspension, all kinds of things are attempted, some of them valid, some of them merely cranked. Some of the merely crank ish ideas. So that's why we can't give any single, brief,

01:11:08.400 - 01:11:21.380

fixed summary of what the avenue guard revolution is. What we can say is that the avant garde revolution is against the status quo. It is seeking to overthrow the status quo and find new, more viable means of improvising. To date, no

01:11:21.380 - 01:11:35.300

universal ascent has been reached as to what these shall be. Some things, however, we can say the avant garde revolution is not. It is not, for example, a tonal that is without tonal centers. Although writers, particularly Morton Williams,

01:11:35.600 - 01:11:50.980

have gone on record as saying that the avant garde revolution is a tonal This is a mistake on their part. Certain musicians such as Ornette Coleman are non diatonic. They play out of the scale. But that doesn't mean that they don't have constant

01:11:50.980 - 01:12:09.420

reference to a tonal center. Indeed, Williams himself has acknowledged this in a round table discussion that recently appeared Williams I beg your pardon. Williams has this to say regarding Ornette Coleman, who Williams previously

01:12:09.420 - 01:12:21.560

characterized Coleman as an atonal musician. This is what he has to say more recently. Though sometimes Ornette isn't free enough, you know, because he always plays modally. That is, he always plays in a mode. People say he's too free. No,

01:12:21.560 - 01:12:36.680

he's not. He's always right in that key. Indeed, he always is right in that key, even if he departs from the scale, he still remains in the key. Cecil Taylor, perhaps the other best known, avant gardist, likewise, is not an atonal musician. He

01:12:36.680 - 01:12:52.960

plays clusters of notes, he plays dissonances, but he still has reference to a fixed tonal center in the majority of his work. Other things that the avant garde is attempting to renovate is the question of rhythm. Should rhythm be a

01:12:53.080 - 01:13:09.120

steady four, four as we see it now, with the drummer beating on the cymbal with his right hand and keeping time or punctuating the soloist with his other hand and his two feet. Or should tempo be free? Should the drummer start and stop? Feel

01:13:09.180 - 01:13:25.520

free to come in and out of the music and attempt to make a group sound, rather than a sound in which the soloist is on top and the other musicians are subordinate. This hasn't been decided. Modes and scales have been introduced to the jazz

01:13:25.520 - 01:13:40.360

literature now permanently. I suspect, as I pointed out, miles Davies was the first to make extensive use of these. John Coltrane has pushed their development further yet. Mention of John Coltrane then leads me to go back to the album that I

01:13:40.360 - 01:13:54.460

started with earlier, Africa. I think now we'll listen to, I won't listen to the whole we won't listen to the whole thing, but we'll try and get the second half of the album, the second half of that side.

01:13:56.080 - 01:14:10.680

This is based on a scale. I forget which one offhand. I think it's E minor. There are no fixed chords. The piano player is free to choose any chords that lie in or out of the scale. But basically, the scale is always in the musicians mind

01:14:10.680 - 01:14:26.900

during the improvisation. It should always be in your mind as well. Let's see if we can pick up where we left off last time, we just finished Coltrane solo and McCoy Tyner was hard on his heels for a number of reasons. Coltrane is probably the

01:14:26.900 - 01:14:43.060

greatest single influence on the jazz Avenue guard naturally you would expect, and this is indeed the case, that the influence would be most appreciable and most apparent as regards other saxophonists. And this can be found if you look for it. For

01:14:43.120 - 01:14:57.520

example, such younger musicians as Charles Lloyd, Jimmy woods, Archie Shep Prince, Lashay, Sonny Simmons are just a few of the many men who have been influenced by Coltrane's contribution, as I should have indicated before. However, that

01:14:57.520 - 01:15:10.980

doesn't mean that everybody wants to play exactly. By Coltrane. The Avant Garde revolution is still too directionless for that to be the case. What it does mean is that Coltrane is an important symbol of freedom in jazz and the way

01:15:11.400 - 01:15:26.840

new mode of self expression that's viable and less stereotype than the old bebop method. It also means that Coltrane has made very significant contributions of his own of a very specific nature. Some of those should have been

01:15:26.840 - 01:15:41.200

apparent to you. For example, the rhythm on that piece was not like the typical straight four, four. That was a very complex rhythm. And if you wanted to, you couldn't really, I've tried to have people count it. And last time I gave this lecture, I

01:15:41.200 - 01:15:53.080

gave it to a group that included a number of music majors. I couldn't get any agreement among them as to what time signature was in. Some people said it was a five bass. Some people said it was a four bass. Some people said it was a six bass. This is

01:15:53.080 - 01:16:07.440

not accidental. It's deliberate on Coltrane's part. Last time he was here, I asked him why he used two basses and why he abandoned them. What he said, in effect, was that he was looking to introduce this new rhythmic variety into the music. This

01:16:07.500 - 01:16:20.780

would relieve the monotony of simply Chinga, Chinga, Chinga, Chinga on the cymbal and a straight 1234, on the bass. He did away with two basses, first of all, because that means it's one more mouth to feed, and it means that your price to club

01:16:20.780 - 01:16:32.840

owners has to be higher and restricts your availability. But secondarily, or maybe even primarily, because he found he no longer needed two bass players, he found a way to get the same effect with one bass player. But this rhythmic

01:16:32.840 - 01:16:44.440

ambiguity, this multiple pulsation that underlays his improvisations, is one of the contributions that he has made, and that is recognized by other jazz musicians as leading away from the

01:16:45.580 - 01:17:08.040

monotonous and monotonous and constricting, four, four straight ahead, four, four of the Neo bebop rhythm section. The way he does this now is by a combination of the bass, the drums and the piano, all playing in different rhythms. Secondly,

01:17:08.040 - 01:17:26.900

his tonal effects. He screams, He grunts, he groans, He howls, he yowls. And all of this is an attempt to bring out the inherent emotionality of his music. He doesn't leave anything unsaid. And this is what, to me, makes his music more exciting

01:17:26.900 - 01:17:38.360

than of any other instrumentalist. He is a man driven. You can hear that on those long phrases when he starts and continues to blow and blow and blow. You wonder how it is that he hasn't run out of breath already. It reminds me of

01:17:38.360 - 01:17:54.520

James Joyce and Ulysses, a man compelled to go on talking and to bear his soul to you. These two things, his exploration of the saxophone to the greatest possible lengths and his new rhythmic approach have been coupled with the use of scales

01:17:54.520 - 01:18:10.440

rather than chords. The chord structure is no longer fixed. Now the improvisation is based on scales, as it was here, on what I think is an E flat scale or even a minor, if my memory doesn't serve me incorrectly. And this is an open ended

01:18:10.440 - 01:18:23.120

structure. Traditionally, the jazz piece has been of a fixed length, 12 bars, and then you go back and repeat. If you start off on a C major chord at bar one after you play 12 bars, you go back and repeat that chord and keep on doing that. Keep on

01:18:23.120 - 01:18:37.520

doing that as many times as you want. Now, Coltrane has taken away this repetitive element, simply left openness, an open ended harmonic structure. Just here is a scale play anything that comes to mind on that scale over the shifting rhythmic

01:18:37.580 - 01:18:52.840

background provided for you by the other instruments. So all of these things have made Coltrane important and important to other people than saxophonists, his drama Well, Andre rodeo remarks again, talking about Charlie Parker, that one indication of

01:18:52.840 - 01:19:06.120

Parker's genius was that he could find men who were capable of supporting him, of giving him the kind of rhythmic accompaniment that he needed. This is also shown in the case of Coltrane, who has discovered, or found three men, many of whom

01:19:06.120 - 01:19:20.360

were around for quite a while, but whose potentiality hadn't been tapped. McCoy Tyner, although nobody ever remembers it now, was originally a piano player with the jazz hat. Elvin Jones was on a number of sessions, and was one of the

01:19:20.360 - 01:19:35.300

veteran musicians who nobody had ever singled out before for a special mention, Coltrane put these men together and got them to play together, jointly with them, worked out this new rhythmic style of playing. And one indication, or one hallmark

01:19:35.300 - 01:19:49.420

of Coltrane's influence is the number of people who have tried to style their rhythmic rhythm similar, either by imitation or by even using Coltrane's accompanists. So now you find Elvin Jones turning up with increasing frequency on Avenue

01:19:49.420 - 01:20:04.320

guard record dates. I've got a couple of more albums in there, which I won't get time for I see today that will show both of them have Elvin Jones on them, modern drummers like. Sonny Murray, j, c, Moses are both incomprehensible unless you

01:20:04.320 - 01:20:18.540

realize what prior work has been done by Elvin Jones. I've been fortunate to hear a long about an hour or so tape made by Sonny Murray in New York. It's never been released, and I've never had a chance to transcribe it. And he talks at great length

01:20:18.540 - 01:20:28.640

about how important Elvin was for opening his ears to new ways of playing. So I'm not just making it up when I say it, although it would be apparent, even if you hadn't heard the tape, that there was a relationship between Elvin Jones

01:20:29.120 - 01:20:47.020

and subsequent drummers like Moses and like Sonny Murray. When we have time to talk about two more avant gardists, the two foremost names, Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman, the Antipodes. I call them because they're in so many respects, completely

01:20:47.020 - 01:21:01.500

opposite. To take them in reverse order. Coleman is a self taught musician. He taught himself harmony and fingering while running the elevator at bullocks. He was the victim of technological unemployment. They put in a self service elevator,

01:21:01.980 - 01:21:18.360

and that was it for his job. Fortunately, he had been discovered by contemporary records by that time, and he was unable to make a living on his musicianship. His innovation is free jazz, as he calls it, no freak, no fixed chordal

01:21:18.360 - 01:21:33.860

structure, no fixed baseline predetermined. His music is tonal, however, not atonal, regardless of what people think. Here's what he has to say himself about free jazz. Perhaps the most important new element is our concept of free group

01:21:33.860 - 01:21:50.620

improvisation. The idea of group improvisation in itself is not at all new. It played a big role in New Orleans early bands, the big bands of the swing period, changed all that. When our group plays, before we start, we do not have any idea what the end

01:21:50.620 - 01:22:01.020

result will be. I would say, by the way, that isn't a particularly accurate description. What he means, I think, is that they don't have a finished idea of what the end product will be. They have some idea, as I'll show you with

01:22:01.020 - 01:22:12.780

another quote. Each player is free to contribute what he feels in the music at any given moment. We do not begin with a preconceived notion as to what kind of effect we will achieve. I don't tell the members of my group what to do. I want them to

01:22:12.780 - 01:22:25.340

play what they hear on the piece for themselves. I let everyone express himself, just as he wants to. Musicians have complete freedom. Ours is at all times a group effort. The collection I'm going to play is from an album change of the

01:22:25.340 - 01:22:39.860

century. It's called ramblin. And of ramblin Ornette has this to say. It is basically a blues, but it has a modern, more independent melodic line than older Blues have. Of course, blues are definite emotional statements of emotional

01:22:39.860 - 01:22:58.720

situations can only be told as blues. So clearly, he is here starting out with at least some idea in mind. He is going to play a blues, and we are now going to play the blues that he is going to play. Since Coleman's music first appeared,

01:22:58.720 - 01:23:17.520

it has been the center of one of those teapot tempests that periodically infect the ranks of jazz. Largely, this is due to the pretentious titles that have been given to his recordings, the change of the century, the shape of jazz to come, the fact

01:23:17.520 - 01:23:29.960

that his records are packaged with Jackson Pollock reproductions in the center, indicating that Ornette Coleman is the Jackson Pollock of jazz and that everybody should fall in line. Partly, it is due to the Messianic complex built up

01:23:29.960 - 01:23:46.060

about his music by certain writers, as if everything previous in jazz were of no value. Again, this demonstrates how the natural course of jazz evolution can be partially distorted by recording companies and their hired publicists in an

01:23:46.060 - 01:24:02.760

attempt to promote, to find, to discover, or to manufacture, if necessary, a new trend that will have big commercial results. Holman himself, however, has added to the controversy by some rather injudicious utterances concerning his own music. For

01:24:03.000 - 01:24:15.900

example, the following some of the comments made about my music, and here he's talking about other musicians. Make me realize, though, that modern jazz, once so daring and revolutionary, has become, in many respects, a rather settled

01:24:15.900 - 01:24:32.660

and conventional thing. Members of my group and I are now attempting a breakthrough to a new, Freer conception of jazz, one that departs from all that is standard and cliche in modern jazz. Now there's much truth in that, but as I say, the phrasing

01:24:32.660 - 01:24:44.680

is injudicious, because it makes everybody who isn't playing like Coleman look like a fool. Obviously, if he says that you are playing what is standard and what is cliche, then this makes you somewhat relish somewhat reluctant to give an open

01:24:44.680 - 01:25:00.960

hearing to what he's doing. Nonetheless, in attempting to evaluate the pros and cons of the controversy, we can't help but remark upon the deleterious, deleterious effect of white music white critics and record companies. Putting in their two

01:25:00.960 - 01:25:15.960

cents worth an attempt to defend their own vested interests. The other avant garde that I'll get to today is Cecil Taylor, and as I've already indicated, he stands at the opposite extremity from Coleman, both by way of his training and by way of his

01:25:15.960 - 01:25:29.480

approach. He is a conservatory trained musician New York College of Music, and then four years at the New England Conservatory in Boston, and conversant with all of the most recent developments in European music, he is, to my mind,

01:25:29.480 - 01:25:45.460

considerably more provocative than Ornette Coleman. There is much talk about a third stream music that will integrate contributions from jazz and the European tradition. Taylor is the only musician that I know of who is playing such a third

01:25:45.460 - 01:25:59.980

stream music in an entirely natural way. Perhaps he is the only musician really capable of playing it. I am not afraid of European influences. Taylor told one interviewer, point is to use them, as Duke Ellington did as part of my life as an American

01:26:00.040 - 01:26:15.420

Negro. The tune I'm going to play is from an album produced under the imprimatur of Gil Evans. Although it nowhere has Evans himself on it, it's called into the hot a successor to his out of the cool album. And the selection of Taylor's that we're

01:26:15.420 - 01:26:28.220

going to hear is mixed, which, according to Taylor, and I quote, is an expression of my feelings of love at the moment, it's really about a love relationship and what happens. And it's divided into a nascent section recognition and moves on

01:26:28.220 - 01:26:43.720

through travail and dissent, as indeed do we all Oh, except that that's not the selection I'm going to play after all, because we don't have time for that. We're going to hear another one called pots, but that's a nice introduction. So Hmm, it's been

01:26:43.720 - 01:26:59.020

complained of Taylor that his accompanying is too profuse and that he isn't restrained enough that he plays too many chords, and from the standpoint of the previous kind of music, that complaint is

01:26:59.020 - 01:27:13.920

absolutely right. The whole point is that he isn't trying to play the previous kind of music. He's trying to play his own kind of music that has a group sound that includes not only simply a soloist and rhythm section subordinated to that soloist,

01:27:13.920 - 01:27:26.480

but an entire group sound, the sound of the whole group playing at once. And if this means that the music is more complex, and that is going to demand an increasingly sophisticated response from the listener. But it doesn't mean that it will be

01:27:26.480 - 01:27:41.740

possible to go back to what has been played for the last 10 years and what has become somewhat shop worn in the process. Well, I see that my three hour jazz talk has requires about four hours to deliver. So unfortunately or

01:27:41.740 - 01:27:55.480

fortunately, as your point of view may be, I can't go any further into the avenue guard. Perhaps some other time, I'll come back and run through the last hour, hour and a half of avant garde music, and you can explore the frontiers of jazz.

01:27:55.480 - 01:28:03.120

But for now, this will have to wind it up. I'm glad I had this opportunity to put my thoughts in order, and present some of them to you this afternoon. You.