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Unknown: There's an unfortunate habit of studying art and intellectual development 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 picture of art history

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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 and economic

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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. It 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, 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, at

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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 but 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

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of, for example, of 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

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was 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, and 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 the white God.

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In 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 a I got rhythm, or any other 32 bar tune, which is divided into

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an 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, then the last eight bars, again in

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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 30s was, by and

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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 did away with that and

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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 would insert his chords. Those

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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. Jazz is primarily a rhythmic music, and when changes come about in jazz styles, they are manifested first into a

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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 four beat, as I've indicated, bebop did not prove to be an

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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 to witness the early stages in its evolution, were in the

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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 and the depression of the late 40s served to sound the death knell of bebop as a popular form of

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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 and emotional withdrawal that these developments induced in

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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 not restrained, that gave direct event to emotions. If you can

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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 withdrew from any overt display of emotions, whether political

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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 there was. And you can look at bebop as a type of rebellion, a

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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 unacceptable in the mccarthyist climate of the late 40s and the

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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 lesser degree, Max Roach, but it was taken over and

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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 acceptable to a large number of white listeners in the jazz

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audience. You can see this in what becomes of B, ba, of 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 music in. This was not a descriptive name, but a mislabeling, because

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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 though they both resided in Los Angeles. West Coast musicians were shorty Rogers, Dave

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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 an absence of overt emotion, a subdued tone, usually without any vibrato, less pronounced and

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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 to a negro audience raised on rhythm and blues or the rhythmic music of the gospel churches,

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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 white ones, had had a period of legitimate study. Brubeck studied with Darius Milo shorty,

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Rodgers and Jimmy Jeffrey, studied with Wesley Levis and so on and so forth. New instruments were introduced into the Jazz Repertory, the flute, the elbow and the French horn, all of them associated with a long tradition in European music, unlike the

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saxophone, the snare drums and so on, which are usually thought of when one thinks of jazz instruments, European devices and forms, fugue counterpoint in an ertsatz Baroque style best identified with Dave Brubeck. All of these represented an

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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 psychological standpoint. It represented a music or it expressed the in musical terms, the alienation of

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white intellectuals and the semi intellectuals and the McCarthy period. It was unlike bebop, which was a music of external revolt, it cool was a music of internal rebellion, music of withdrawal. If you look back at the early novels of the beat

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generation, novel such or a novel that depicted the lifestyle of the beat generation in its early years, such a novel 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

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with, were a withdrawn group, and they fitted the temper of the times perfectly in the same way that cool music did when it became too dangerous to indulge in overt rebellion, where, especially of a politically, of a political type, rebellion

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takes other forms, and it may, in some cases, take the form of with becoming withdrawn, becoming alienated from the society and cutting herself off from it. What we see now in certain folk singers such as Bob Dylan represents, again, a

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protest movement, but a protest that is externally oriented. Cool was, in a sense, a protest against the establishment, but it was a protest that turned inward. It was not a protest that became demonstrated in overt forms of action. Cool

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could not last forever. However, it was too unsatisfying esthetically and history doesn't stand still, least of all in these times, if you want to say, if you want to pick a period point at which cool begins to falter and is replaced by other

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kinds of music. You might take the death of Charles Parker, one of the leading bebop revolutionaries in 1955 as a watershed for separating cool from the music that comes afterward. And here again, we look to the negro community to

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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 initial stirrings of the Negro liberation movement, the Supreme Court decision in the case of

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brown in 1954 which supposedly was to lead to desegregation of schools, the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1956 the Little Rock School crisis of 1957 these things coincide with a new wave of jazz, and the

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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 might look at Harold R Isaacs, the new world of Negro

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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 Africans. You can see this if you survey. Titles of jazz

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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 have reference to Africa, whereas previously in the

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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, nationhood, and playing an enlarged role on the world

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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 to white values, the idea that beauty didn't have to be white

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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 that this cultural phenomenon, cultural nationalism, makes

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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 again, is the only area in United States society where a

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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 some length to the question of black nationalism as it pertains

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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, most religious minorities in the United States attempt to

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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 white Protestant immigrants, there is therefore somewhat of a

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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 Negroes especially, is this hypocritical when whites really

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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 damned if you don't amalgamate, and you are damned if you do.

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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 particular, there is much resentment among Negro musicians

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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 Ellington, who was known as the King of Swing. We saw the gene

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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 because he can be invoked. He can be used to invoke certain

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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 real name is Eric Hobsbawm. He's a British economic historian and

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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 for 50 years, and in all those 50 years, there's not been a

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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? They're all white. What can we do? We must go on inventing

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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 Henze that only certain people, those who had suffered, those

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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 within the negro community? How do they express themselves

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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 and through music influenced by the gospel churches. This, then,

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is a self consciously Negro music and 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 standards, rejects the effeteness and the wispy and

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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. This will be, I think, a very valid index to Negro sentiment.

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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, soul. Funky originally meant something that was smelly,

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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 connotations, a negro music that was funky then was Negro music,

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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 period into the reaction from cool is a record made by miles

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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 conscious significance in this title. The last G is left off in

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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 ado, miles Davies walking. I

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Nixon Niles, Davies, walkin, JJ Johnson on trombone, Lucky Thompson on tenor sax, or silver on piano, Percy Heath bass and Kenneth Clark drums. That is not an unsophisticated record, but it is a very straightforward and directing gets right to you, and

00:27:25.340 - 00:27:38.960

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 records, everybody is so stunned by what I've had to say before,

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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, and you really shouldn't be listening to it in the first place. And one way of showing that enjoyment by

00:27:52.180 - 00:28:21.260

responding to it in a very direct manner. You walkin portrays the influence of the blues in jazz, and they return to the Blues as they return to a method of communication that is not watered down by necessity of

00:28:21.320 - 00:28:35.480

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 way or another. I'm going to

00:28:35.780 - 00:28:50.920

play for you Charles Mingus from his Mingus ah um, 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 on in a

00:28:50.920 - 00:29:07.920

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 church

00:29:07.920 - 00:29:26.420

when the preacher begins his speech, 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 commercialize and vulgarize

00:29:26.420 - 00:29:47.020

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.

00:29:57.820 - 00:30:16.080

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,

00:30:17.700 - 00:30:36.560

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 a region spelled backwards in Nigeria as the lyrics. Make it quite plain. I

00:30:36.560 - 00:30:50.380

printed the lyrics up at the bottom of the sheet. The lyrics are by Johannes 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 lamb Mort

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Hendrickson bond, two men and a girl singer who may who achieve fame for recording vocal versions of Instrumental standards setting lyrics were by Hendrix, set to famous compositions and favorite famous solos of jazz musicians. This is

00:31:09.960 - 00:31:26.900

no course in textual exegesis, but perhaps we should go over the short verse. In any case, Weldon, you dig it on the map a region spelled backwards is Nigeria really closing up the gap. Back long time ago, they saw a ghost. Ghost made a boast.

00:31:26.900 - 00:31:40.720

Soon, that 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, we dig it on the map, really closing up

00:31:40.720 - 00:32:04.260

the gap, going 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, I oh yes, here we go.

00:32:05.340 - 00:32:20.480

Ghost made a bow soon that ghost was host, okay, yeah, they've left out two lines on the type version, which I didn't notice until now. The way it goes after that is as follows. The first two lines repeated, Weldon, you dig it on the map, region

00:32:20.480 - 00:32:35.240

spelled backwards, really closing up the 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

00:32:35.240 - 00:32:54.640

white man, have gotten their 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

00:32:54.640 - 00:33:16.680

album, the swingers. And one of minor ironies of jazz history, the tenor Saxon, all the Western sins do. 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 - 00:33:52.300

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

00:33:52.300 - 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 quite Henze wrote out the chords and the scoring was done

00:34:05.760 - 00:34:32.540

by the late and much lamented Eric Dolphy. Coltrane's version of Africa then um particular bait blancs, Morton Williams, at that time, a reviewer for downbeat magazine had this to say about that

00:34:32.720 - 00:34:50.020

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 sort of technical order or logic, he may find none here, if he is both blind and

00:34:50.020 - 00:35:10.320

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 trying to do. In addition to the influence of Africa and the Negro church in blues, we can

00:35:10.800 - 00:35:27.320

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 from blues and especially from gospel oriented music. The foremost practitioners in this

00:35:27.320 - 00:35:44.800

vein are Horace Silver, who was the Kenneth player on miles Davies, walking, walking, and Art Blakey, the drummer. Time precludes us investigating this in any length, but I thought for completeness, that I should throw this in as well, a

00:35:44.800 - 00:36:12.060

cautionary note should also be appended at this point. Writers and critics are in the habit of referring to distinct styles, soul, hard bop, funky and so forth and so on. The validity of drawing lines of demarcation between all of these

00:36:12.060 - 00:36:26.960

styles is questionable. On the contrary, these terms are all or can be used interchangeably, but they after coming into vogue among the musicians. They are seized on, vulgarized and commercialized by the recording companies, always in search of a

00:36:27.020 - 00:36:46.180

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 that it has the funkiest musicians buy sold jazz on still a third label yet, and so on and so forth. By propagating new

00:36:46.180 - 00:37:04.020

terms, there is a certain amount of deception of the jazz public involved, especially when hard Bob funky soul all refer to essentially the same set of attributes, the same conceptions, looking at the development of the late 50s in

00:37:04.020 - 00:37:23.120

more detail, we have to deal with two men whom Cannonball Adderley has referred to as the harmonic impressionists, Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane. Both of these men are, or at the time, were in the tradition of bop. That is, they tried to

00:37:23.300 - 00:37:39.680

build on the basic conceptions of be Bop and try to extend them. Sonny Rollins is perhaps most famous following a long expository analysis of his style by musicologist Gunther Schuller in the leaves of jazz review before the demise of that

00:37:39.680 - 00:37:55.600

journal. He is perhaps more famous for his so called thematic improvisation, that is an improvisation which constantly refers back to and reiterates a basic theme. You will see that aspect of his work in this present selection, which

00:37:55.600 - 00:38:09.780

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 carefully, and then listen to how Rollins incorporates it in the course of his solo, both in his long solo to begin with, and

00:38:09.780 - 00:38:27.140

then in the exchanges with drummer Max Roach following the piano solo. Sonny Rollins from the album saxophone Colossus Mort taught. One

00:38:27.140 - 00:38:40.480

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, but he's always putting little bits and pieces of it, slowing

00:38:40.480 - 00:38:56.980

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 Andre hodier, in a book jazz is evolution, in essence, now

00:38:56.980 - 00:39:12.780

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 use the quarter note as the fundamental unit of improvisation, be bop uses the

00:39:12.780 - 00:39:32.420

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. Bebop, as I've already remarked, depends on improvisation over a

00:39:32.420 - 00:39:51.340

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 note by the 16th note, to incorporate more chords as the

00:39:51.340 - 00:40:07.450

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 had two previously, you have to touch all of the chords. You're

00:40:07.450 - 00:40:21.140

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 was forced to play so many notes that these notes more or less

00:40:21.140 - 00:40:39.800

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 in 1957 one of his first records as a leader for Blue Note

00:40:39.800 - 00:41:00.280

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. After bringing the sheets of sound to perfection, Coltrane

00:41:00.280 - 00:41:14.820

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 the boppers had done in the early 40s and still have a

00:41:14.820 - 00:41:30.860

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 this technique, then he abandoned it, because it proved

00:41:30.860 - 00:41:44.380

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 sciences, do not develop in a straight line, uni linear

00:41:44.560 - 00:42:04.680

fashion. On the contrary, they develop by revolutionary leaps, abrupt discontinuities. Recently, when Bopp has Neo be Bopp has been undermined by the innovations of a younger generation of artists. Critics have become very irate at this.

00:42:04.680 - 00:42:19.140

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 without making any revolutionary innovations. Coltrane actually

00:42:19.140 - 00:42:32.900

tried this. He tried to carry the music forward the way be 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 freedom for the soloist, enough room for him to develop his ideas he

00:42:32.900 - 00:42:46.960

thereafter had to strike out on a new path. And this wasn't accidental, so I say it shows that jazz, or any other art, like the sciences, has to, at some point, break off from the direction it's been going and go in a new direction. And that the

00:42:47.020 - 00:43:05.700

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 inventory of jazz in the 50s, I refer to them as the three Ms, I

00:43:05.700 - 00:43:23.420

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 is paid him by young jazz musicians represents a real

00:43:23.420 - 00:43:38.240

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 effect. Coltrane, for one, did work with monk in 1958 for a

00:43:38.240 - 00:43:52.480

brief period of time when he was in between various miles, Davies groups, Sonny Rollins has also appeared on various of monk's records and conversely, but it's more likely that monk's effect on musicians has been a general one, a widening of the harmonic

00:43:52.480 - 00:44:06.780

framework of the music and a liberation of the jazz soloist from the idea that only the conventional that is only The conventional European, only the conventional techniques can be acceptable. Monk plays clusters of notes, hits the piano with

00:44:06.780 - 00:44:21.740

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 own rules, while he hasn't been directly copied by too many

00:44:21.740 - 00:44:38.000

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 shaking up the thinking of young musicians generally. You might

00:44:38.000 - 00:44:51.940

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 a way that's correct in another way, monk's roots go back beyond

00:44:51.940 - 00:45:09.240

bebop to stride piano players like James B 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 care and Round about midnight, the latter is monk's most famous

00:45:09.240 - 00:45:24.800

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 talking things over with himself. There used to be

00:45:24.800 - 00:45:39.980

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 all those funny descending runs like a man

00:45:39.980 - 00:45:55.720

falling downstairs in the last few years. Say, since 1955 or six or seven, it's been realized that those are not limitations. And monk plays that way because he chooses to play that way. And rather than being limited, he is a superb instrumentalist, but

00:45:56.020 - 00:46:12.720

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 not so long ago that he made the cover. It doesn't disparage

00:46:12.720 - 00:46:26.300

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 monk's idiosyncrasies, the hat fetish, the dance, the dancing

00:46:26.300 - 00:46:43.180

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, if you will. Times treatment therefore reproduces, on only a

00:46:43.180 - 00:46:57.880

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 forth, this image time then proceeded to buttress in

00:46:57.880 - 00:47:10.980

describing other jazz musicians. Miles Davies is teaching his son to box those to fight whites. Coltrane is a freak for vegetables and so on and so forth. The concluding perspective from loose land is that the state of jazz is

00:47:11.040 - 00:47:27.320

definitely something to be bemoaned. Actually, none of this has any merit whatsoever. Jazz musicians, whatever their eccentric eccentricities, are totally disciplined and long practicing men, they practice for hours at a time, especially

00:47:27.320 - 00:47:40.360

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 average jazz performer without constant discipline and in

00:47:40.360 - 00:47:55.480

practice. Moreover, it's dubious 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 a purely artistic view, I would say that the music

00:47:55.480 - 00:48:11.820

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 track of his, and although I'd like to play

00:48:11.820 - 00:48:28.460

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 about missing a note. In fact, he many

00:48:28.460 - 00:48:42.280

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 better get it in your soul.

00:48:42.280 - 00:48:56.140

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 profound influence on bassists,

00:48:56.440 - 00:49:09.660

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

00:49:11.220 - 00:49:28.460

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 fables of fabulous Afro American

00:49:28.460 - 00:49:45.700

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 the Negro jazz musician, I hope

00:49:45.700 - 00:50:00.300

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 previously that there is some dis. Honest,

00:50:00.300 - 00:50:15.420

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 immigrants to this

00:50:15.420 - 00:50:29.900

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 condemning Negroes for doing this. Negro community is thoroughly penetrated, for

00:50:29.900 - 00:50:44.020

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

00:50:45.280 - 00:51:01.260

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 or

00:51:01.260 - 00:51:13.620

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

00:51:13.620 - 00:51:28.760

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

00:51:28.760 - 00:51:47.020

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

00:51:47.020 - 00:51:59.500

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

00:51:59.500 - 00:52:13.500

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

00:52:13.500 - 00:52:27.560

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

00:52:27.560 - 00:52:42.520

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 a candidate of one of the parties, Barry Goldwater, now exactly what his platform was and what

00:52:42.520 - 00:52:57.700

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 is suggestive of the

00:52:57.700 - 00:53:13.800

constituency to which Goldwater was couching his appeal and Lou water 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 old, the Republican Party in California

00:53:13.800 - 00:53:31.460

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 those cases where we've been examined to

00:53:31.460 - 00:53:46.600

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 pages 44 to 57 and the

00:53:46.600 - 00:54:01.020

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 find The following. First of

00:54:01.020 - 00:54:15.960

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 industrial cities such as

00:54:15.960 - 00:54:30.440

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 the economy. So if there isn't a

00:54:30.440 - 00:54:44.140

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 have, and let the devil take the

00:54:44.140 - 00:54:57.580

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 obvious that without such a

00:54:57.580 - 00:55:10.920

preference, Negroes will be continued to offer. 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 the brunt of

00:55:10.920 - 00:55:26.600

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 I'm going to quote now

00:55:26.600 - 00:55:44.080

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 a lot. 75% believe

00:55:44.080 - 00:55:57.820

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 to be so

00:55:57.820 - 00:56:10.020

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

00:56:10.020 - 00:56:24.620

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 known as living off

00:56:24.620 - 00:56:40.900

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 what should happen if

00:56:41.140 - 00:56:56.860

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 indoctrination of white America

00:56:56.860 - 00:57:13.440

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 integrated

00:57:13.440 - 00:57:27.620

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 doll. If you ask the children

00:57:27.620 - 00:57:40.720

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 you're white, you're right. So the question may then be posed, and perhaps a more

00:57:40.720 - 00:58:02.160

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 Welch and his now wife, Abby Lincoln. The title of the record is drive a man. It comes from a an album released by a company

00:58:02.160 - 00:58:16.080

candid that is now out of business been 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, and you can see why any company

00:58:16.080 - 00:58:39.440

could go out of business in a predominantly white market. This there are historical references here, obviously, to the antebellum south, the slave south. You forgot what the rhythmic punctuation is there, or what it represents. What?

00:58:40.220 - 00:58:55.180

Well, yes, but what's that repeated sound? Sure, it's a whip. 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 suppose I can tell you what

00:58:55.180 - 00:59:19.020

color the group was, to the 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 M is miles Davies, as with monk.

00:59:19.020 - 00:59:33.620

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 section, cut it down, make it

00:59:33.620 - 00:59:51.520

more lean and spare, and make 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 he had, the most famous one of

00:59:51.520 - 01:00:07.440

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 track, which is so what from his

01:00:07.440 - 01:00:26.660

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. Miles first experimented with using scales to replace chords,

01:00:26.660 - 01:00:40.420

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 bars and leave the soloist greater choice of what notes he

01:00:40.420 - 01:00:55.780

would play, and in this way, we introduce a reinvigorated interest in the soloist and the listener. Likewise, perhaps the most impressive development of the idea of scales as a basis for improvisation came not at the hands of miles, but at the

01:00:55.780 - 01:01:15.180

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 player. This is so what from kind of blue album, the piano player there. Bill Levis is one

01:01:15.180 - 01:01:31.580

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 who have picked up certain elements of his style and incorporated them into playing,

01:01:31.820 - 01:01:54.040

particularly his approach to chords, his reliance on the kind of impressionistic harmony you think of when you Think of European music associated with ravel. Did you see composers of that era? Miles obviously felt constricted by the standard Bach

01:01:54.880 - 01:02:10.440

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 incorporate into it. One of his ideas was to use scales, and you just heard the result of that.

01:02:10.860 - 01:02:29.060

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 results. And even on this kind of blue album that I've played, there is a track, flamenco

01:02:29.060 - 01:02:46.060

sketches, which shows the influence of Spanish music, especially flamenco music on Miles's ideas here in an album orchestrated by Gil Evans, miles takes us to a greater length and actually reproduces traditional Spanish music. Some cases, it is

01:02:46.060 - 01:03:02.820

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 you say to which is a one of the songs. It is sung during holy week, during the processional

01:03:02.820 - 01:03:18.900

that takes place in all the major Spanish cities during Holy Week, miles, the woman whose part Miles is playing, is on a balcony overlooking the processional, and as the processional approaches her, she Linley out a song to the Virgin

01:03:18.900 - 01:03:36.620

Mary, or to a figure of the crucified Christ. It depicts her feelings about the passion the crucifixion of Christ. Notice miles here then plays that part, and he plays it with equal Express expressiveness as any singer. I'm sure. This is from

01:03:36.620 - 01:04:00.720

the album sketches of Spain, orchestrated by miles as frequent collaborator Gil Evans, not bill, but Gil, that's one of the selections. It's always difficult to follow, except with more miles Davies, notice that, or you may have

01:04:00.720 - 01:04:16.320

noticed that he isn't afraid to depart from the diatonic scale that is in the notes that you can play on piano, if he thinks that this will help him express something. So he plays what you would call out of tune. If you approach the album naively, he's

01:04:16.320 - 01:04:34.280

actually deliberately playing flat, in some cases, playing out of the scale in order to impart a more expressive, a more emotional cast. To get singing, I think you have to call it singing. Well, I see I got further this time than I did the

01:04:34.280 - 01:04:55.060

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 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

01:04:55.900 - 01:05:12.420

destruction of the older concepts and the introduction of several new ones. Was the first reaction from cool, as I've indicated, was an attempt to go back to traditional Negro sources, blues and the Gospel Church, to find the inspiration

01:05:12.480 - 01:05:27.680

for younger musicians. And to a degree, this sufficed. But beyond a certain point, there was only so much to be drunk from these Welch springs. And as events progressed, younger artists found that they needed new sources for their

01:05:27.680 - 01:05:42.220

inspiration. They were it's not, it's almost impossible not to want to correlate the progression of the avant garde revolution in jazz with the onset of the Negro revolution as a whole. And be very difficult to refrain from making this

01:05:42.220 - 01:05:57.940

correlation and to postulating, or at least attempting to suggest that events in the Negro revolution could not but help shake up the consciousness of Negro artists who were involved in producing jazz, especially the younger musicians who didn't

01:05:57.940 - 01:06:12.480

have the commitment to the older forms, who hadn't spent the majority of their life playing in those styles, they naturally found it easier to give up those styles and go ahead to newer things. The response of the critics, on the other hand, has

01:06:12.480 - 01:06:28.580

been by and large, negative, with some exceptions that I'll call attention to momentarily. This response has to be understood from a socioeconomic standpoint. First of all, it is mistaken and fallacious to refer to most of those writers who

01:06:28.580 - 01:06:43.180

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 bulk of their income as employees of the recording company, either in the capacity of writers of those

01:06:43.180 - 01:06:58.660

notes that you will ordinarily see incorporated in each album, or else they serve as artist and repertoire man that is a produce record sessions and so forth and so on. Naturally, their views come to be determined in a manner that's entirely

01:06:58.660 - 01:07:12.720

unconscious to them, in the most for the most part, by those firms that they worked for. Let's take the case of a very prominent critic, Leonard feather. Leonard feather, three years ago, wrote a diatribe against the jazz revolution,

01:07:12.960 - 01:07:26.840

revolutionaries, in particular against John Coltrane and his then associate, Eric Dolphy, in which he called their music anti jazz, said that it was disliked by most jazz musicians, and made a number of other unsupportable allegations against the music.

01:07:27.620 - 01:07:37.880

Three years later, what do we find? Leonard feather has come around to the point of view of saying, Well, yes, the jazz 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

01:07:37.880 - 01:07:50.620

thing, Leonard feather is employed by Blue Note records, and Blue Note records is now one of the leading producers of recordings by the avant garde. So three years ago, Leonard feather could curse Eric Gulch in his teeth. Now we find a

01:07:50.620 - 01:08:06.480

memorial album issued with the liner notes written by the same Leonard feather. This is a way in which critical objectivity goes by the boards as the erstwhile critic has to find means by which to support himself. A second liability that

01:08:06.480 - 01:08:23.780

plagues most critics is that they are white. The exceptions to this are only a few, and they stem from the immediate past, principally Leroy Johannes, a poet, playwright and also a jazz critic whose Lou's people is perhaps the major contribution

01:08:23.780 - 01:08:39.020

to the literature of jazz in the past few years. Amy Spellman, another poet to a subsidiary degree, Ralph Ellison, also and Barbara Gardner, who sometimes writes for downby, the four Negro critics, two of them really of top rank, Spellman and

01:08:39.020 - 01:08:51.580

Jones. This means that, of necessity, the white critic is out of touch with the real developments that impel the Negro jazz musician to look for new modes of expression. He doesn't live in a ghetto, he doesn't play in the nightclubs

01:08:51.580 - 01:09:08.400

and so forth and so on. He therefore is under no obligation to reflect what the problems of the Negro jazz musician are, and consequently, most white critics function as obstacles ball works in the way of artistic innovation. It's worth noting in

01:09:08.400 - 01:09:26.060

this connection that the young Negro critics are solidly behind the jazz avant garde, whereas the white critical establishment in the main has been hostile or skeptical, at best, to a degree, all of this critical response is however irrelevant A B Spellman,

01:09:26.300 - 01:09:40.180

the Negro critic to whom I referred already has observed and I quote, a far more important index to the validity of an artist's work than the opinions of professional critics favorable or unfavorable is the judgment of his peers. On that

01:09:40.180 - 01:09:54.820

basis, it seems safe to hazard the prognostication with confidence that the contributions of the jazz avant garde will, in time, be accepted as a permanent and valuable part of the jazz literature. What is the jazz avant garde? Then,

01:09:55.600 - 01:10:10.140

unfortunately, it's impossible to say, and this, again, is not accidental. We. Are right now in the beginning or incipient stages of a revolution, when all of the old restraints and all of the old conventions are being overthrown. A great amount of

01:10:10.140 - 01:10:24.200

energy has been released, but no new standards have arrived at, been arrived at. I think this is probably characteristic of all artistic revolutions, and I think that also it is characteristic of Scientific Revolutions as well. There is a

01:10:24.200 - 01:10:38.060

period of time, a crisis period, if you will, between the time when the old conceptions that were formerly established have been undermined and no longer function, no longer command the universal assent of the practicing community, whether

01:10:38.060 - 01:10:55.180

scientific or artistic, and a time when some new conventions are arrived. At this crisis period is a time of experimentation, of anarchy, of no rule, of all of the rules being in suspension, all kinds of things are attempted, some of

01:10:55.180 - 01:11:12.180

them valid, some of them merely cranked. Some of them merely crank. Ish ideas. So that's why we can't give any single, brief, fixed summary of what the avant garde revolution is. What we can say is that the avant garde revolution is against the status

01:11:12.180 - 01:11:26.060

quo. It is seeking to overthrow the status quo and find new, more viable means of improvising. To date, no universal sense has been reached as to what these shall be. Some things, however, we can say the avant garde revolution is not.

01:11:26.600 - 01:11:41.560

It is not, for example, a tonal that is without tonal centers. Although writers, particularly Morton Williams 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

01:11:41.560 - 01:11:57.040

Ornette Coleman are non diatonic. They play out of the scale. But that doesn't mean that they don't have constant reference to a tonal center. Indeed, Williams himself has acknowledged this in a round table discussion that recently

01:11:57.040 - 01:12:13.020

appeared Williams, I beg your pardon, Williams has this to say regarding Ornette Coleman, who Williams previously characterized Coleman as an atonal musician. This is what he has to say more recently, though, sometimes Ornette isn't

01:12:13.020 - 01:12:25.520

free enough, you know, because he always plays modally. That is, he always plays in a mode. People say he's too free. No, 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

01:12:25.520 - 01:12:41.620

remains in the key. Cecil Taylor, perhaps the other best known, avant gardist, likewise, is not an atonal musician. He plays clusters of notes, he plays dissonances, but he still has reference to a fixed tonal center in the majority of his

01:12:41.620 - 01:12:57.340

work. Other things that the avant garde is attempting to renovate is the question of rhythm. Should rhythm be a steady four, four, as we see it now, with the drummer beating on the cymbal with his right hand and keeping time, or punctuating

01:12:57.400 - 01:13:14.580

the soloist with his other hand and his two feet or should tempo be free? Should the drummer start and stop? Feel 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

01:13:14.580 - 01:13:30.020

musicians are subordinate. This hasn't been decided. Modes and scales have been introduced to the jazz literature now permanently. I suspect, as I pointed out, miles Davies was the first to make extensive use of these. John Coltrane has

01:13:30.020 - 01:13:47.680

pushed their development further yet. Mention of John Coltrane then leads me to go back to the album that I 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

01:13:47.680 - 01:14:01.320

and get the second half of the album, the second half of that side. 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

01:14:01.320 - 01:14:15.480

is free to choose any chords that lie in or out of the scale, but basically, the scale is always in the musicians mind 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,

01:14:15.960 - 01:14:31.580

we just finished Coltrane solo and McCoy Tyner was hard on his heels for a number of reasons. Coltrane is probably the greatest single influence on the jazz avant garde, naturally you would expect, and this is indeed the case, that the influence

01:14:31.580 - 01:14:48.340

would be most appreciable and most apparent as regards other saxophonists. And this can be found if you look for it. For for example, such younger musicians as Charles Lloyd, Jimmy woods, Archie Shep, Prince, Lasha, Sonny Simmons are

01:14:48.340 - 01:15:00.720

just a few of the many men who have been influenced by Coltrane's contribution, as I should have indicated before. However, that doesn't mean that everybody wants to play exactly like Coltrane, the avenue guard revolution. And is still too

01:15:00.720 - 01:15:18.780

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 new mode of self expression that's viable and less stereotype than the old bebop method. It also means that

01:15:18.780 - 01:15:32.120

Coltrane has made very significant contributions of his own, of a very specific nature. Some of those should have been apparent to you. For example, the rhythm on that piece was not like the typical straight four four. That was a very complex

01:15:32.120 - 01:15:44.320

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 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

01:15:44.320 - 01:15:58.000

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 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

01:15:58.000 - 01:16:12.360

abandoned them. What he said, in effect, was that he was looking to introduce this new rhythmic variety into the music. This would relieve the monotony of simply Chinga, Chinga, Chinga, Chinga on the cymbal and a straight 1234, on the bass. He

01:16:12.360 - 01:16:24.620

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 owners has to be higher, restricts your availability, but secondarily, or maybe even primarily, because he found he

01:16:24.620 - 01:16:37.400

no longer needed two bass players, he found a way to get the same effect with one bass player. But this rhythmic ambiguity, this multiple pulsation that underlays his improvisations, is one of the contributions that he has made,

01:16:37.400 - 01:16:59.320

and that is recognized by other jazz musicians as leading away from the 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

01:16:59.320 - 01:17:19.800

bass and drums and the piano all playing in different rhythms. Secondly, 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

01:17:19.800 - 01:17:33.140

unsaid, and this is what, to me, makes his music more exciting 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

01:17:33.140 - 01:17:48.940

is that he hasn't run out of breath already. Reminds me of James Joyce and ulys, a man compelled to go on talking and to bare his soul to you. These two things, his exploration of the saxophone to the greatest possible lengths and his new

01:17:48.940 - 01:18:03.600

rhythmic approach have been coupled with the use of scales 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 E flat minor, if my memory

01:18:03.600 - 01:18:18.300

doesn't serve me incorrectly. And this is an open ended structure. Traditionally, the jazz piece has been of a fixed length, 12 bars. Then you go back and repeat. If you start off on a C major chord at bar one after you play 12 bars, you

01:18:18.300 - 01:18:31.580

go back and repeat that chord and keep on 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

01:18:31.580 - 01:18:48.100

that scale over the shifting rhythmic 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,

01:18:48.100 - 01:18:59.260

talking about Charlie Parker, that one indication of 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

01:18:59.260 - 01:19:13.800

of Coltrane, who has discovered or found three men, many of whom 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 Tara. Elvin

01:19:13.800 - 01:19:27.980

Jones was on a number of sessions, and was one of the 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

01:19:27.980 - 01:19:43.960

rhythmic style of playing. And one indication, or one hallmark 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

01:19:43.960 - 01:19:57.760

Elvin Jones turning up with increasing frequency on Avenue 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

01:19:57.760 - 01:20:13.740

Murray, JC Moses are. Are both incomprehensible unless you realize what prior work has been done by Elvin Jones. I've been fortunate to hear a long an hour or so tape made by Sonny Murray in New York, and it's never been released, and I've never had a

01:20:13.740 - 01:20:24.500

chance to transcribe it. And he talks at great length 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

01:20:24.500 - 01:20:42.460

relationship between Elvin Jones and subsequent drummers like Moses and like Sonny Murray, I'll only have time to talk about two more avant gardists, the two foremost names, Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman, the Antipodes. I call them because

01:20:42.460 - 01:20:56.560

they're, in so many respects, completely opposite. To take them in reverse order. Coleman is a self taught musician. He taught himself harmony and fingering while running the elevator at Bullock's. He was the victim of technological

01:20:56.560 - 01:21:13.560

unemployment. They put in a self service elevator, 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

01:21:13.560 - 01:21:29.420

he calls it, no freak, no fixed chordal 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

01:21:29.420 - 01:21:45.940

element is our concept of free group 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

01:21:46.000 - 01:21:57.160

start, we do not have any idea what the end 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

01:21:57.160 - 01:22:08.880

idea, as I'll show you with 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

01:22:08.880 - 01:22:21.320

group what to do. I want them to 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 selection I'm going to play is

01:22:21.320 - 01:22:35.900

from an album change of the 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

01:22:35.900 - 01:22:54.400

statements of emotional 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

01:22:54.400 - 01:23:11.820

Coleman's music first appeared, 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

01:23:11.820 - 01:23:25.760

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

01:23:25.760 - 01:23:41.620

Messianic complex built up 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

01:23:41.620 - 01:23:58.780

hired publicists in an 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

01:23:58.780 - 01:24:11.820

concerning his own music. For 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

01:24:11.820 - 01:24:28.460

many respects, a rather settled 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

01:24:28.460 - 01:24:41.560

that, but as I say, the phrasing 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 reluctant to give

01:24:41.560 - 01:24:57.280

an open 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 musicians, white critics and record companies

01:24:57.580 - 01:25:12.180

putting in their two cents worth an attempt to defend. Of their own vested interests. The other avant gardeus 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

01:25:12.180 - 01:25:25.400

training and by way of his approach. He's 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

01:25:25.520 - 01:25:41.200

music. He is, to my mind, 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

01:25:41.200 - 01:25:55.660

who is playing such a third 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

01:25:55.660 - 01:26:10.380

part of my life as an American 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

01:26:10.380 - 01:26:23.600

selection of Taylor's that we're 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

01:26:23.600 - 01:26:35.420

section recognition and moves on 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

01:26:35.420 - 01:26:56.980

that's a nice introduction. It's been 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 absolutely

01:26:56.980 - 01:27:10.800

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 music that has a group sound that includes not only simply a soloist and rhythm section subordinated to that

01:27:10.800 - 01:27:23.540

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

01:27:23.540 - 01:27:39.140

that it will be 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

01:27:39.140 - 01:27:52.900

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.

01:27:52.900 - 01:28:00.540

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.