Jazz Perspectives 9 3

Jazz Perspectives, 2015
Vol. 9, No. 3, 215216, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17494060.2015.1259672
Letter from the Editor
As we approach the start of 2017, the jazz world is about to celebrate an important
milestone. I refer, of course, to the 100th anniversary of the rst jazz recording
made by the Original Dixieland Jass Band (ODJB) in February of that year. Such an
event is sure to be marked by performances, recordings, essays, lectures, and the
like. But as most jazz historians understand, the claim of the ODJB session as
the rst example of recorded jazz is open to debate. During the years following
the release of this record, spirited discussions were held in the popular press about
just what jazz was, what it meant and what the future held for it. Debating the
origins and nature of jazz is thus nothing new, and Jazz Perspectives is pleased to con-
tinue to be an important venue for this ongoing discourse.
In this issue of Jazz Perspectives, we present four original, diverse articles which draw
from very different topics and approaches to the study of jazz. Fritz Schenkers essay
addresses the topic of Balkan inuence in jazz in the late Cold War era. Schenker situ-
ates jazzs Balkan-ness, as heard in the music of artists such as Dave Douglas, as an
expression a particular approach to the incorporation of world music that was
heavily inuenced by an evolving approach to Third Stream music, and which paral-
leled shifts in global consumer culture during this period. Balkan inuenced jazz,
Schenker argues, provided many white musicians with a source of racial and ethnic
authenticity that served as something of an alternative to African American cultural
sources.
Our second article, written by Doug Abrams, presents a highly detailed analysis of
the Monkishness of Thelonious Monks compositions, focusing on the classic com-
position Ruby, My Dear. Abrams suggests that elements of Monks music which have
often been characterized as weird or eccentric are, in fact, constructed through a
highly logical process. With a focus on the analysis of pitch class sets, Abrams asks
us to reconsider common conceptions about Monks music, and provides a rich theor-
etical framework with which to examine deep structures in jazz composition.
Casey Hale, in his study of interpretations of Curtis Mayelds songs, similarly pro-
vides a deep, penetrating look at particular musical moments. Hale focuses on the work
of bassist William Parker and his recording The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld, exam-
ining Parkers collaborations with Amiri Baraka in particular. Hales close reading of
the music and texts of this project reveals the ways in which the artists sought to
link past and present discourses of racial identity and unity through Mayelds music.
In the nal article in this issue, Andrew Sanchirico examines the intellectual heritage
of the neo-classicist movement. Sanchirico traces the lineage of what he refers to as
2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

216 Letter from the Editor
cultural conservatism in jazz, drawing on the work of American literary scholar
James Seaton. In doing do, Sanchirico examines the ways in which the traditions of cul-
tural self-critique which dened the works of Ralph Ellison were transformed and
operationalized as musical and institutional practices within venues such as Jazz at
Lincoln Center and its associated initiatives, including the Jazz and Democracy Project.
This issue also features two extended media reviews. The rst, by Brynn Shoivitz,
assesses the multi-part lm Jazz Tap Originals. Concluding this issue is a review by
Brian Wright of the recent documentary on legendary electric bassist Jaco Pastorius,
which was produced by Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo.
We hope you will nd these works both stimulating and entertaining, and we also
hope that you will continue to nd Jazz Perspectives an important voice in jazz
scholarship.
Ken Prouty
Editor-in-Chief
Jazz Freedoms: Balkan Rhythm, Race,

and World Music
Frederick J. Schenker
Introduction
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, trumpeter Dave Douglas seemed to nd the
freedom of jazz in a place well beyond the borders of the U.S. During an interview
I conducted with him in 2005, he described how, earlier in his career, he had found
inspiration from the music of Southeast Europe as a means of crafting a new kind of
American improvised music. Douglas explained that he had brought together tra-
ditions of Balkan music and jazz as a way of conjuring a new kind of musical
freedom.1 I feel like the great thing about America and music is that youre free,
Douglas remarked, invoking one of the most commonly employed terms in contem-
porary political discourse. Not only free, but that youre encouraged to be yourself,
Douglas continued. So whatever music you investigate and research, American music
is about having the freedom to speak up and be who you are and the freedom to
research who you are and nd it out and express it.2
Douglass invocation of freedom appears as a continuation of a long discursive
history in which jazz simultaneously mirrors U.S. democracy in its improvisatory inter-
play and also sounds out the struggle of black liberation against racial oppression. Yet
while his call to freedom may seem familiar, Douglass particular use of the concept
represents an important change from earlier iterations. This shift is intimately
tangled with a new mode of freedom that emerged from changing economic policies
and practices of governance that became prevalent throughout the globe in the late
1970s and 1980s. Douglass freedom spoke not of music per se, or even of aesthetics,
but of another situation, another condition. His particular notion of freedom was
above all a political freedom enabled by the economic, by the power of the market
and the sense of limitlessness of consumer choice.
I propose that Douglass freedom is indicative of a new mode of jazz freedom that
became audible and highly contested in the last decades of the twentieth century. More
to the point, I am suggesting that the mode of freedom Douglas employs represents a
1
The phrase Balkan music was popularized through World Music marketing and encompasses a wide variety of
musical traditions from Southeast Europe, primarily Bulgaria, the former Yugoslavia, and northern Greece. I use
the term Balkan-inuenced jazz to refer to groups such as Tiny Bell Trio, Paradox Trio, and Pachora even
though it highlights only one of many of their inuences. For a critique of a similar term, see Michelle Mercer,
Time of the Gypsies, Jazziz, June 2000, 448.
2
Dave Douglas, interview with author, February 27, 2005, broadcast on WNUR 89.3 FM on February 28, 2005. For
a similar appeal to freedom, see Dave Douglas, Preface, in Music and the Creative Spirit: Innovators in Jazz, Impro-
visation, and the Avant Garde, ed. Lloyd Peterson (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2006), xixii.

218 Jazz Freedoms
new articulation of personal expression that is informed by a broader political discourse
that emerged in the 1980s. Examining the various facets of Douglass freedom allows
us to examine how, as Javier Len argues, the economic trends of the late 1970s and
1980s and their accompanying restricting of social and political life have deeply
informed music and music-making in ways that [remain] noticeably under-theo-
rized.3 One of the most contentious elements of this new, politically informed
notion of freedom grew from its emphasis on ethnicity and racial authenticity as com-
modity forms to be purchased and consumed. As Douglas and his peers sounded out a
form of jazz that drew upon a Balkan authenticity, they sparked a renewed debate about
the often paradoxical ways in which race is cast as central to the logic of jazz freedoms.
This debate offers a critical lens through which we may examine the increasing atten-
tion among scholars to the diverse ways in which ideas of freedom in jazz contexts
relate to broader political and economic trends, as well as philosophies for musical
improvisation.4
What I seek to demonstrate is that the last decades of the twentieth century warrant a
closer examination of precisely how public debates about race, innovation, and histor-
iography in jazz were symptomatic of a broader underlying contestation between
different understandings of freedom. In a sense, I am seeking to situate jazz discourse
and musical performance in the 1990s and early 2000s in relation to the changing pol-
itical and economic developments that have prompted dramatic interventions in other
areas of music scholarship. Ethnomusicologists, for example, found they needed new
questions and new approaches towards the study of music to address an accelerated
mode of globalization and a shift in capitalist movement that had been made
audible through the emergence of World Music.5 In contrast, much of jazz scholar-
ship covering a similar time period has been captivated by the contentious debates
about jazz history and race made visible through both the cultural clout of Jazz at
Lincoln Center and the neoclassicist bent of Ken Burnss documentary lm Jazz.
These debates have been commonlyand insightfullydepicted as disagreements
about the place of innovation and a kind of musical racial memory in a jazz tradition,
as contests between those espousing historicist delity and those promoting histori-
cal revisionism, between what Herman Gray calls the jazz left and the canon
makers.6 We can, however, also understand this contentious period in relation to
3
Javier F. Len, Introduction: Music, Music Making and Neoliberalism, Culture, Theory and Critique 55, no. 2
(2014): 129.
4
E.g. Nick Stevenson, Jazz as Cultural Modernity: Consumerism, Nationalism and Cosmopolitan Freedom,
International Journal of Cultural Studies 19, no. 2 (2016): 20923; Mark Laver, Freedom of Choice: Jazz, Neoli-
beralism, and the Lincoln Center, Popular Music and Society 37, no. 5 (2014): 53856; Andrew McGraw, The
Ambivalent Freedoms of Indonesian Jazz, Jazz Perspectives 6, no. 3 (2012): 273310.
5
Martin Stokes, Music and the Global Order, Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004): 4772; Johann Kroier,
Music, Global History, and Postcoloniality, International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 43, no. 1
(2012): 13986.
6
Gary Giddens and Scott DeVeaux, Jazz (New York: Norton, 2009), 594; Herman Gray, Cultural Moves; African
Americans and the Politics of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 54. See also Travis
Jackson, Blowin the Blues Away: Performance and Meaning on the New York Jazz Scene (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2012), 2438.
Jazz Perspectives 219
broader political and global economic tendencies. I argue that we also need to view
these debates as symptoms of similar trends that gave rise to the changing musical
world made audible through World Music: they were informed in part by the clash
of two competing modes of freedom, one that emerged from new political goals and
economic policies, and another that had formed in the crucible of the Civil Rights
Movement.
I suggest that we can reveal the different facets of the contestation over meanings of
freedom in the decades after the Cold War by examining a small music scene active
primarily in the late 1980s Boston and early 1990s New York. During these years,
Douglas, along with a number of other mostly well-educated, white jazz musicians,
became intrigued with diverse musical traditions from Bulgaria, the former Yugoslavia,
Albania, and northern Greece. Douglass ensemble the Tiny Bell trio (Douglas, guitarist
Brad Shepik, percussionist Jim Black), Matt Darriaus Paradox Trio (Darriau, Shepik,
percussionist Seido Salifoski, cellist Rufus Cappadocia), and the collectively led ensem-
ble Pachora (Shepik, Black, clarinetist Chris Speed, bassist Skuli Sverrisson), all became
laboratories for creating improvised music deeply informed by both jazz traditions and
Balkan musics.7 Their interest in these musical forms, some of which came to circulate
widely with the rise of World Music, was bolstered by a sense that musical elements
from the Balkans could help them express themselves as musicians. Rhythms, timbres,
and harmonic progressions from Southeast Europe could provide a sense of racial
authenticity or what Douglas described as a way to stay real.8 These musicians
were emboldened by a logic of personal expression through musical consumption
that was particular to the historical moment; it drew on new political discourses and
practices privileging the individual consumer and a concomitant sense of endless, uni-
versal possibility that arose in part from the circulation of newly commodied musical
forms on the worlds markets.
The logic of the mode of jazz freedom practiced by musicians inspired by Balkan
music was incompatible with another, still pervasive, mode of Cold War-era
freedom. The discourse of jazz freedom that gained prominence in the decades follow-
ing World War II was based on a mix of Black liberation racial particularity and Amer-
ican exceptionalism. Many of those who employed this second mode of jazz freedom
most publically Wynton Marsalis and the critic Stanley Crouchwere deeply troubled
by the new form of freedom discourse emerging in the 1980s. In particular, the freedom
invoked by Douglas seemed to enable him to challenge the centrality of African Amer-
ican history in jazz. It appeared to allow him license to seek out other forms of racial
authenticity through the sounds of Balkan music. While the ensuing debates about
racial particularity and universalism may appear at rst as a rehashing of older conicts
about jazz freedom from the 1950s and 1960s, they are representative of different
7
Notably, among these musicians Seido Salifoski is the only one with a direct tie to the Balkans. He is a Macedonian
Roma who moved to the U.S. at age 11, attended Bostons Berklee College of Music, and is deeply involved with the
Balkan community in the Bronx.
8
Douglas, interview.
220 Jazz Freedoms
historical moments.9 To comprehend the differences between these eras we need to
look beyond the communities of jazz practice and commentary and briey examine
another eld of rhetoric in which freedom had become a watchword. This, of
course, is the eld of politics.
The 1980s marked the emergence of a new discourse of freedom that had dramatic
economic and ideological ramications. To summarize the phenomenon in brief,
many prominent politicians and economists in the U.S. and parts of Europe promoted
free market policies during the late 1970s and 1980s. As a result, a new discourse of
freedom became closely tied with both practices of deregulation and privatization, and
also an emphasis on the consumption of newly available commodities. As Stuart Hall
argued, the specic practices and policies of economic freedom that gave rise to these
structural changes came to inform much of daily life: the equation between freedom
and the free market [has] become the terms of trade, not just of political debate
but in the thought and language of everyday calculation.10 The freedom of daily life,
in other words, gradually became reimagined in terms of the freedom of markets.
The mode of market-based freedom that emerged in the 1980s had specic qualities,
especially its relation to the individual and consumption. According to Jean Comaroff
and John Comaroff, in the last decades of the twentieth century consumers in nations
such as the U.S. came to equate freedom with choice, especially to consume, to fashion
the self, to conjure with identities.11 Associating freedom with choice with consump-
tion, they argue, led to a re-working of the notion of cultural identity. Identication
became both a precipitate of inalienable natural essence, of genetics and biology and
also a function of voluntary self-fashioning, often through serial acts of consump-
tion.12 What made a new mode of self-identication through consumption different
from earlier decades of consumer-oriented behavior was its contingency upon the
buying and selling of forms which, quite simply, previously had not been for sale. In
particular, a dramatic increase in the process of commodication transformed cultural
forms, histories, and intellectual creativity into commodities to be bought and sold.13
With these new commodities came the accompanying notion that the ability to buy
an ability only accessible to the global economic elitegave one rightful claim to ident-
ify with all that was available in the markets of public culture.
In the discussion that follows, I explore the ways in which the broader discourse of
political and economic freedom in the last decades of the twentieth century came to
manifest itself in the debates about race, jazz tradition, and the sounds of a small group
of musicians inspired by Balkan music in three sections. First, I trace the emergence
9
E.g. Ingrid Monson, Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call Out to Jazz and Africa (New York: Oxford University Press,
2007).
10
Stuart Hall, The Toad in the Garden: Thatcherism among the Theorists, in Marxism and the Interpretation of
Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 40. Ellipsis in
original.
11
Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming, Public Culture
12, no. 2 (2000): 333.
12
Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, Ethnicity, Inc. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 40.
13
David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 356; Comaroff and
Comaroff, Millennial Capitalism.
and inuence of a new mode of consumer-oriented jazz freedom in the 1980s, one
informed by a broader political discourse which I briey outlined above. Through a
historical overview of the development of the concept of Third Stream music, and
by drawing on interviews I conducted with the leading gures of the Balkan-inuenced
jazz scene of early 1990s New York, I show how a re-fashioned form of Third Stream
informed their philosophies for musical improvisation. Second, I situate their engage-
ment with Balkan music in relation to the rise of World Music. I show how their invo-
cation of a mode of jazz freedom based on individual consumption enabled them to
embrace Balkan music as a source not only for personal expression but also as a
source of easily accessible racial authenticity. In the nal section, I consider their per-
formances through the critique of Stanley Crouch, one of the most provocative critics
associated with the so-called neo-classicists of the 1990s and 2000s. In particular, I want
to reframe Crouchs racial critique of Douglass use of Balkan rhythms as an attempt to
maintain a pre-existing notion of jazz freedom based on Civil Rights era rhetoric of
black liberation, a mode of freedom that demands particular musical elements to
support its seemingly contradictory logic.
Third Stream Music and Jazz Freedoms

The presence of white jazz musicians in early 1990s New York playing Bulgarian instru-
ments such as the gaida and studying Macedonian ornamentation begs an obvious
question: how did a group of mostly young, male, college-educated, American musi-
cians with no previous connections to Southeast Europe become enamored with
Balkan music? According to multi-reedist and Paradox Trio bandleader Matt
Darriau, one of the early and inuential gures in the Balkan-inuenced jazz scene,
part of the reason was the musics surprising ubiquity. While Darriau had begun his
examination of Bulgarian music by the early 1980s, he explained that towards the
end of the decade Balkan music was in the air.14 Due to both the increasing
number of immigrants from Southeast Europe and also the surprising success of the
Bulgarian womens choirs featured on various albums in the Le Mystre des Voix Bul-
gares series, a growing audience of American listeners was exposed to newly accessible
forms of Balkan music.15 By the early 1990s, the sounds and sights of Southeast Europe
also became increasingly inescapable, as the violent splintering of Yugoslavia and the
American-led NATO airstrikes in the region led, as the author Robert Kaplan put it,
to the ascendancy of the Balkans as a news story in the 1990s.16
To a group of young American musicians rooted in jazz, the sounds of Balkan music
in the air around them did not seem entirely foreign. Instead, a newly emerging
14
Matt Darriau, interview with the author, June 21, 2005.
15
For more on the circulation of Balkan music in the 1980s and 1990s, see Donna Buchanan, Review Essay: Bul-
garias Magical Mystre Tour: Postmodernism, World Music Marketing, and Political Change in Eastern Europe,
Ethnomusicology 41, no. 1 (1997): 13157; Carol Silverman, Romani Routes: Cultural Politics and Balkan Music in
Diaspora (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
16
Robert D. Kaplan, A Readers Guide to the Balkans, The New York Times, April 18, 1993, BR1. Douglas and his
peers keenly aware of the violence in the region. Douglas even offered prayers to the former Yugoslavia in the liner
notes of his rst album with the Tiny Bell Trio. Dave Douglas, Tiny Bell Trio, Songlines SGL 1504-2, 1994, CD.
222 Jazz Freedoms
discourse of jazz freedom was inspiring them to recast these sounds, and other forms of
music, as potential sources for a new expression of personal freedom. During the 1980s,
Darriau and Douglas, and younger musicians such as Chris Speed, Brad Shepik, and
Jim Black began exploring various Balkan musical traditions through an appeal to
jazz freedom. They attempted to seek out musical possibilities of new timbres, instru-
ments, meters, and improvisational forms. Their initial interest may appear at rst to
mirror the actions of countless musicians before them who sought out new sounds,
forms, and instruments, from subtle allusions to African or Indian music to explicit
incorporations of everything from Indonesian gamelan instruments to Japanese
court music.17 Merely positioning Douglas and Darriau as continuing this familiar
practice, though, masks the transformations in the rationale of their attempts to
broaden the musical vocabulary of jazz: the encompassing trajectory of a jazz tra-
dition hides the ways in which the meanings and practices of jazz freedom were chan-
ging in direct relation to the political discourses of the 1980s and 1990s.
One way to reveal the rupture created by an incipient mode of freedom in the 1980s
is to explore the historical evolution of a philosophy for improvisation that proved
inuential on the Balkan-inuenced jazz scene: Third Stream music. It may seem
strange to start here. After all, Third Stream was initially conceived as separate from
jazz and its most famous formulation from the late 1950s appears to have little to do
with discourses of freedom. Tracing a brief history of Third Stream, however, demon-
strates how its transformations reveal a continually changing understanding of freedom
that mirrors broader political discourses and inform a wide range of musical practices.
When Gunther Schuller rst introduced the idea of the Third Stream in the late 1950s,
it was a relatively narrow, straightforward concept. He theorized an approach to impro-
visation and composition that would create a Third Stream of music by combining the
classical stream and the jazz stream.18 As Ingrid Monson has argued, Schullers
philosophy for musical expression and experimentation was in line with the work of
other jazz musicians of the era. They embraced the idea of an aesthetic, universal
freedom to explore different formal musical qualities through jazz.19 A little over a
decade after Schuller shared the concept of the Third Stream he sought to develop
the idea further it by founding the Third Stream Department at Bostons New
England Conservatory (NEC) in 1973.
17
For example, Miles Davis explained that he attempted to evoke the sound of mbiras in his composition All
Blues, Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005 [originally
published in 1989]), 234. For more examples, see Norman C. Weinstein, A Night in Tunisia: Imaginings of Africa in
Jazz (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1992); Robin D.G. Kelley, Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz
in Revolutionary Times (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012); Gerry Farrell, Reecting Surfaces: The
Use of Elements from Indian Music in Popular Music and Jazz, Popular Music 7, no. 2 (1988): 189205; Carl
Clements, John Coltrane and the Integration of Indian Concepts in Jazz Improvisation, Jazz Research Journal
2, no. 2 (2008): 15575. See also The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Urban Bushmeni, ECM 1211/12, 1980, LP; Don
Cherry, Eternal Rhythm, MPS 15 204 ST, 1968, LP; Herbie Mann, Gagaku and Beyond, Atlantic SR 9014, 1976, LP.
18
Gunther Schuller, Musings: The Musical Worlds of Gunther Schuller (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986),
115.
19
Monson, Freedom Sounds. For examples of Third Stream works by John Lewis, J.J. Johnson, George Russell,
Charles Mingus, Jimmy Giuffre, and Gunther Schuller, see The Birth of the Third Stream, Columbia CK 64929,
1996, CD.
In an institutional setting, the meanings of Third Stream began to change. The rst
shift occurred when Third Stream music moved beyond the dual streams of jazz and
classical music to include other streams of music. Ran Blake, who took over the
program after Schuller, described the concepts rst major transformation in 1976.
Schuller had only chosen jazz and classical music because they were two traditions
within his personal experience, he wrote.20 In order not to limit students to these tra-
ditions, Blake explained that we have extended Schullers original denition to include
ethnic music of various cultures.21 The expansion of Third Streams denition beyond
classical music and jazz continued through the late 1970s and early 1980s. Through the
guidance of Blake, the concept of Third Stream music not only increasingly drew on an
emerging political discourse about freedom as consumption, it also developed to
address the new possibilities of a world in which musical sounds and commodities
seemed to be circulating more widely and more quickly. As one NEC brochure from
the early 1980s described, Third Stream music had broadened outin ways that
are an apt corollary to our expanded knowledge of non-Western cultures and the
rapid shrinking of our globeto embrace, at least potentially, all the worlds ethnic,
vernacular, and folk music. The newly broadened appetite of Third Stream music,
the brochure continued, exemplies cultural pluralism and personal freedom.22
The way to grapple with the seemingly accelerated processes of globalization in the
1980s, Blake suggested, was by seeking out newly commodied musics and by
placing a greater emphasis on the idea of an individuals own freedom.
For the Third Stream music of the 1980s, focusing on consumption and personal
freedom through musical improvisation became paramount. In 1981, Blake described
how he had transformed Third Stream to a process for developing a primarily
improvised music that is a deeply personalized vehicle for the soloist or collabor-
ators.23 Blake emphasized that Third Stream was a philosophy to help improvisers
develop an individual style, a concern that already diverged noticeably from Schul-
lers rst formulation of the Third Stream.24 Over the next few years, Blake continued
to develop Third Stream into an approach for improvisers to develop their own sense of
individuality. In a 1988 article he explained that we respect and defend the sanctity of
the individual and his or her rightindeed, if he or she is being honest, needto create
a music true to the uniqueness of his or her personality.25 In a little over two decades,
the discourse of universal, aesthetic freedom that enabled musicians to explore the con-
nections between jazz improvisation and classical forms transformed into something
quite different. Third Stream came to privilege the freedom of the individual to
form his or her own sense of self through the consumption of an ever-increasing
array of newly accessible sounds.
20
Ran Blake, Teaching Third Stream, Music Educators Journal 63, no. 4 (1976): 30.
21
Ibid., 32.
22
Schuller, Musings, 20.
23
Ran Blake, Third Stream and the Importance of the Ear, College Music Symposium 21, no. 2 (1981): 140.
24
Ibid.
25
Ran Blake, The Primacy of the Ear [c. 1988], in Primacy of the Ear: Listening, Memory and Development of
Musical Style, with Jason Rogers (U.S., self-published, 2010), 107.
224 Jazz Freedoms
Third Streams evolution progressed through the 1990s, moving even farther away
from Schullers prescribed combination of classical and jazz towards a musical
approach emphasizing the importance of personal freedom. In 1992, NECs Third
Stream department even changed its name to Contemporary Improvisation but it
continued to develop in ways that privileged freedom of choice and focused on con-
sumption as a critical tool for self-identication. As a description of the program
geared towards prospective students in the mid-2000s explained, Schullers concept
for musical composition had been converted into a philosophy focusing on personal
expression through consumption and improvisation:
[Y]ou will begin to dene yourself by choosing the artists or styles most germane to
your musical personality. Then, through a deep aural absorption of your chosen
musical roots, a synthesis becomes possible, and a musical self-portrait will begin
to emerge in your improvisations.26
The ability for students to choose their own musical roots reveals the way the concept
of Third Stream music developed alongside a shifting notion of jazz freedom. It moved
from a particular hybrid of jazz and classical musics to an approach that embraced the
combination of all kinds of music at the service of crafting a musical personality. The
heightened importance of freedom of personal choice marks a dramatic change from
the rst formulation of Third Stream music in which the ingredients for self-expression
had already been chosen.
The changes in the limits and possibilities for Third Stream music not only reveal
transformations in the discourse of jazz freedom: they also begin to show how a new
sense of freedom could inform the approach of musicians such as Matt Darriau, a
key gure in the Balkan-inuenced jazz scene. Darriau rst became interested in
music from the Balkans in the mid-1970s. His parents were heavily involved in the
International Folk Dance community in Bloomington, Indiana and, while Darriau
was primarily focused on jazz at the time, he recalls being intrigued by the wide
range of music from these gatherings.27 Darriaus interest in jazz and Balkan musics
developed further when he moved to Boston in 1979. In Boston, Darriau reconnected
with his friend Alan Bern, an accordionist who had just returned from a trip to Europe
with a collection of Bulgarian LPs in tow.28 That same year, Darriau also began per-
forming Balkan music in a brass band with trumpeter Frank London. Darriau
explained that their ensemble, which formed the roots for the Les Misrables Brass
Band, functioned as a kind of conservatory that mirrored what was going on in
the Third Stream Department.29 They approached Balkan music as a potential
source for inspiring new approaches to improvisation.
The philosophy of the Third Stream soon became an even greater inuence on Dar-
riaus pursuit of new sounds. In 1980, after a year performing in Boston, Darriau
26
Contemporary Improvisation, New England Conservatory, http://www.newenglandconservatory.edu/degrees/
majors/contemp_improv.html (accessed November 16, 2008).
27
Darriau, interview.
28
Ibid.
29
Ibid.
formally enrolled in NECs Third Stream Department. During his time at NEC, Darriau
embarked upon a wide-ranging search for new sounds, experimenting with a variety of
jazz hybrids, and forming a long lasting interest in Irish music and Jewish music.30 Dar-
riaus colleagues at the Third Stream department, such as trumpeter Frank London,
engaged in similar explorations. London, who briey enjoyed a foray into Balkan
music alongside Darriau in the Boston-based Les Misrables Brass Band, wrote
about how their teachers at NEC advised students to explore other musics and turn
them into something personal: The idea is, he described, that one can study and
assimilate the elements of any musical style, form, or tradition by ear. He explained
that it could be a Charlie Parker solo or something from a Peruvian ute
player.31 As London shows, students in the department were taught to spend hours
listening carefully to recordings, transcribing and internalizing these different
sounds.32 The source material for a new set of musical roots was considered completely
accessible, with all forms of music available to NEC students. We became cultural con-
sumers, London wrote, no music was off-limits.33 Indeed, Les Misrabless 1990
record Manic Traditions shows the eclectic nature of an approach inspired by NECs
Third Stream department. The album includes songs inspired by or drawn directly
from the Caribbean, Pakistan, Serbia, Mexico, Bolivia, Argentina, and African Ameri-
can turn-of-the-century brass bands.34 Third Stream students such as Darriau and
London seemed to embrace a sense of endless possibility; they sought to broaden
their musical personalities by moving well beyond jazz to musics from throughout
the world.
Third Streams emphasis on personal expression through consumption and impro-
visation proved inuential among the musicians of the Balkan-inuenced jazz scene in
part through Darriau himself. While Darriau was the only one of this group who for-
mally studied in the Third Stream Department, his inuence has been widely acknowl-
edged among younger musicians such as Chris Speed, Jim Black, and Matt Moran.
These performers were loath to suggest a historical narrative based around a single
innovator, but Moranthe founder of the Balkan brass band Slavic Soul Partyplay-
fully described Darriau as sort of the daddy of all this stuff.35 Speed and Black recalled
how Darriau, who was seven years their senior, took an interest in the younger musi-
cians soon after they arrived in Boston.36 Black remembered that Darriau helped
inspire SpeedBlacks roommateto return to the clarinet again by sharing cassettes
of Bulgarian and Greek clarinet music with him, a generosity he extended to other
30
Darriau is a member of both the Irish music group Whirligig and the Klezmer ensemble The Klezmatics.
31
Frank London, An Insiders View: How We Traveled from Obscurity to the Klezmer Establishment in Twenty
Years, in American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots, ed. Mark Slobin (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2001), 206. Emphasis in original.
32
For Blakes own description of these methods, see Blake, Third Stream and the Importance of the Ear; see also
Ran Blake with Jason Rogers, Primacy of the Ear: Listening, Memory and Development of Musical Style (U.S., self-
published, 2010).
33
London, An Insiders View, 206.
34
Les Misrables Brass Band, Manic Traditions, Northeastern NR 5004-CD, 1990, CD.
35
Matt Moran, interview with author, June 21, 2005.
36
Darriau (b. 1960), Douglas (b. 1963), Shepik (b. 1966), Speed (b. 1967), Black (b. 1967).
226 Jazz Freedoms
musicians as well. Black explained how a lot of the guys Ive played with got a lot of
[our] source material from Matt Darriau, an observation shared by the guitarists Brad
Shepik and Adam Good.37 When Darriau presented Speed with Bulgarian music,
though, he framed it in a particular way. Black described how, when Darriau intro-
duced them to Balkan music, he explained to them that it was pretty much like
what you do but from a totally different perspective in terms of improvisation and
melodies.38 In other words, Darriau was presenting the music in such a way that it
could become source material, as Black called it, for a new kind of Third Stream
music.
Darriau was not the only one who brought a Third Stream sensibility to the burgeon-
ing Balkan-inuenced jazz scene. Darriau, Speed, Black, and Douglas also had a con-
nections to Gunther Schuller himself through Schullers son, George (while he was
in Boston, Darriau was actually roommates with George). Along with this connection,
Darriau and many of his peersincluding Speed, Black, and Douglaswere at some
point members of Orange Then Blue, a small big-band primarily for former NEC stu-
dents that George organized in 1984. Within a few years of its founding, the groups
members had begun to experiment with what George described as a lot more
world, ethnic music, resulting in a repertoire with works drawing on music from
countries such as Bulgaria, Venezuela, Senegal, and Ireland.39 Gunther Schuller had
some direct contact with the bandhe produced their albums on his G.M. Recordings
record labelbut Darriau believed that part of the reason for the bands musical direc-
tion was Schullers wider inuence on NEC and the Boston music scene. I was prob-
ably the only Third Streamer of the group, Darriau explained, but everybody was
open minded because the conservatory was an open minded place. That was probably
inuenced some from Georges father, Gunther Schuller. Darriau recalled that, even
outside of his department, the Third Stream stuff was still lingering around the
school. It was this general sense of open-mindedness he suggested, that helped to
inspire musicians to listen widely and to seek out different forms of music to help
expand their own improvisations.
The transformations of Third Stream music from the late 1950s through the early
1990s and 2000s reveal how an increasing emphasis on personal freedom in jazz dis-
course came to inspire a group of young musicians to turn to Balkan music as a
new source for personal expression. The transition towards a language of choice and
consumption in the Third Stream Department occurred alongside a growing emphasis
on a market-based notion of freedom that came to inform much of daily life, a shift in
political discourse I briey outlined above. We might view changes in Third Stream
music in relation to this broader incursion of the market on the everyday. The sense
37
Adam Good, interview with author, July 14, 2005; Jim Black, interview with author, July 5, 2005; Brad Shepik,
interview with author, June 21, 2005. Darriau also shared material with Douglas in the early 1990s. Douglas and
Darriau actually formed their ensembles the Tiny Bell Trio and the Paradox Trio after arranging to split Friday
nights at New Yorks The Bell Caf. Darriau, interview with author, June 22, 2005.
38
Black, interview.
39
E.g. Orange Then Blue, While You Were Out, G. M. 3028CD, 1993, CD; George Schuller, interview with the
author, June 21, 2005.
of possibility engendered by a discourse of personal freedom and consumption embol-

dened improvisers to seek out and consume a diverse array of musical styles as a way to
develop a personal style. But it was not merely that consumption increasingly became
the means for self-identication. More critically, a new mode of jazz freedom also
pointed the way towards imagining newly commodied sounds as providing an
easily accessible sense of racialized authenticity that appeared to be missing from
much of modern society.
Balkan Rhythms and Realness

With the freedom to choose their roots, the musicians of the Balkan-inuenced jazz
scene turned to music from Southeastern Europe both because they were interested in
its formal qualities and also because it came to signify an exciting and accessible form of
authenticity, an authenticity they could render audible in their own performances.
When Balkan music was in the air in the late 1980s its sounds came to signify some-
thing appealing and available to many listeners in the U.S., namely, a sense of authen-
ticity, or what we might call realness. The sense of realness was neither arbitrary nor
natural. Rather, it was part of a marketing strategy to capitalize on the recordings of
Bulgarian womens choral music released in the U.S. in the late 1980s and early
1990s. As Carol Silverman and Donna Buchanan have both argued, record companies
and promoters depicted Bulgarian music as a form of mystical, gendered otherness. In
the U.S., the sounds of Bulgaria soon became conated with a wider range of diverse
musical traditions from the former Yugoslavia, Albania, and northern Greece, and
recast as both Balkan and Gypsy musics.40 Similar to other forms of World Music
from Africa or Latin America, Balkan music was accompanied by a discourse of auth-
enticity that worked to sell these musics as exotic yet accessible, different yet familiar.
Balkan music marketing in the late 1980s was an important part of what Steven Feld
calls a new discourse on authenticity that accompanied and drove the emergence
of World Music, a discourse that was manufactured in part by record companies
and marketing rms.41 These companies depicted exoticized musical cultures,
Timothy Taylor argues, as sources of rejuvenation, novelty, authenticity, originality,
the real and the spiritual.42
Balkan music in particular was invested with an appealing discourse of authenticity.
It seemed to ll a gap, especially for many white American listeners. As Mirjana Lau-
evi has shown in her ethnography of Balkan music and dance camps in the U.S.,
Balkan music and culture became attractive to increasing numbers of young, white,
educated Americans in the late 1980s and 1990s. This demographic comprised the
40
Boundaries between Bulgarian, Turkish, and Roma music were carefully patrolled in Bulgaria, but in the U.S.,
these genre borders were ignored and remade through a kind of generic Balkan marketing. Silverman, Romani
Routes; Donna Buchanan, Wedding Musicians, Political Transition, and National Consciousness in Bulgaria,
in Retuning Culture: Musical Changes in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Mark Slobin (Durham: Duke University
Press, 1996), 20030; Buchanan, Bulgarias Magical Mystre Tour.
41
Steven Feld, A Sweet Lullaby for World Music, Public Culture 12, no. 1 (2000): 152.
42
Timothy Taylor, Global Pop: World Music, World Markets (New York: Routledge, 1997), 20.
228 Jazz Freedoms
majority of attendees at the Balkan music and dance camps, where consuming, listen-
ing, singing, and dancing to Balkan music provided a way for them to construct a
missing sense of realness, or authenticity, a way to travel back to an imagined pre-
modern village experience.43 In a similar way, Balkan music was appealing to white
jazz musicians in particular because of the ways in which its sense of racial authenticity
appeared accessible and free for the taking.
Many listeners came to associate Balkan music with a sense of racial authenticity
through the musics connection to the body. Bulgarian and Greek dance music,
among others, became sources from which cultural consumers could create a connec-
tion to the body and a sense of authenticity that musicians such as Douglas felt was
missing from his own engagement with contemporary jazz. The claim that much of
modern jazz has lost its connection to the body and dance is highly contentious and
rooted in more troubling debates about racial essentialism, as I explore below, but it
was a very real concern for musicians who had studied jazz at institutions such as
NEC and Berklee.44 Douglas explained that he began experimenting with Balkan
music because all kinds of musicians turned to folk music from all around the
world as a way to stay real.45 Other members of the Balkan-inuenced jazz commu-
nity explained that they were drawn to Balkan music for similar reasons. In particular,
it had a connection to the body and dance that was missing from their own experiences
with jazz. Darriau recalled that he was interested in Bulgarian music in part because
you could dance to it more than jazz.46 Percussionist Matt Moran concurred,
explaining that he was drawn to Balkan music both because he wanted the challenge
of learning new musical styles but also because it enabled him to perform what he
called a neck down music.47
Moran embodied the shift to neck down music as leader of Slavic Soul Party, a
Balkan-style brass band whose members include some of New Yorks best jazz musi-
cians. While Moran is better known in jazz contexts for his work on vibraphone, a dis-
tinctly stationary instrument, for Slavic Soul Party, Moran switches to the tapan, a large
bass drum worn across the chest.48 In his weekly performances at the Brooklyn club
Barbs, he dances and bobs, conducting the ensemble with his entire body while the
audience dances along. Morans desire to play music that is neck down, or of the
body, demonstrated his attempt to add something else to his musical career, to experi-
ence something different from audiences who typically appreciated his performances
through close listening, not joyous dancing. In turning to Balkan music to try to
access a missing sense of realness, Moran and Douglas were similar to countless
43
Mirjana Lauevi, Balkan Fascination: Creating an Alternative Music Culture in America (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2007); Donna Buchanan, Performing Democracy: Bulgarian Music and Musicians in Transition
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
44
For a related discussion, see Eitan Wilf, School for Cool: The Academic Jazz Program and the Paradox of Institu-
tionalized Creativity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).
45
Douglas, interview.
46
Darriau, interview.
47
Moran, interview.
48
For examples of Morans jazz side, see his work with John Hollenbecks Claudia Quintet.
other Americans who heard Balkan music and dance as a way to provide a realness
that seemed to be missing in jazz and modern, urban life.
The musical marker of this sense of realness is most conspicuously Balkan rhythm,
a point of fascination for most devotees of music from Southeast Europe.49 While most
dance musics in the U.S. feature meters of 2/4, 4/4, or 3/4, with even subdivisions of the
beat, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and other Balkan dances commonly feature additive
meters, where two and three beat pulses are added together to create asymmetric
meters such as the 5/8 paidushko horos (2+3), 7/8 ruchenitsas (2+2+3), and 11/8 kopa-
nitsas (2+2+3+2+2), among other combinations.50 While these meters might pose an
intellectual challenge for many American dancers and musicians struggling to move
their bodies in these unaccustomed patterns, in many settings in Southeast Europe
these meters are, as Moran suggested, neck down dance music. Timothy Rice has
shown how Bulgarian dancers commonly learn these meters as repeating patterns of
short and long steps, not necessarily subdivisions of an odd number. As embodied pat-
terns of movement, Rice argues, additive meters can be heard and reproduced natu-
rally and without recourse to the intellection associated with music theory.51 In other
words, while these meters are widely considered un-danceable or dismissed as aca-
demic in the U.S., they can be just the opposite in a Balkan context. As such, these
meters become a source of fascination.
My interviews with musicians who experimented with mixtures of jazz and Balkan
music echo what Lauevi found in her interviews at Balkan music and dance camps in
the U.S. The novelty of these asymmetric patterns to Americans is, she wrote, one of
the most mentioned of initial musical attractions.52 The unfamiliar meters of Balkan
musics caught the ears of musicians such as guitarist Adam Good, who recalled that he
and his jazz-playing peers at Berklee School of Music were really interested in the
rhythms, I think thats what really attracted us: the odd time signatures 7/8 and
11/8.53 Similarly, Black remembered that when he rst heard Balkan music he was
pretty perplexed and mesmerized by a lot of the different feels and grooves.54
Their fascination with rhythm and meter from Southeast Europe is apparent in the
music output from the New York Balkan-inuenced jazz scene: well over half of the
recorded output of the groups Paradox Trio and Pachora features songs with asym-
metric groupings of beats in meters such as 5/8, 7/8, 9/8, 11/8, and 15/8.55 While
49
While the term meter may be more accurate here, I use the word rhythm because of its use by musicians and
dancers in the Balkan music scene.
50
Timothy Rice, Music in Bulgaria: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (New York: Oxford University Press,
2004).
51
Timothy Rice, May It Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994),
74.
52
Lauevi, Balkan Fascination, 61.
53
Good, interview.
54
Black, interview.
55
For a sample, see Matt Darriau, Paradox Trio, Knitting Factory KFR-171, 1994, CD; Paradox Trio, Flying at a
Slant, Knitting Factory KFW 206, 1997, CD; Douglas, The Tiny Bell Trio; Dave Douglas, Live in Europe, Arabesque
AJ0126, 1997, CD; Pachora, Pachora, Knitting Factory KFW 207, 1997, CD; Pachora, Unn, Knitting Factory KFR
230, 1999, CD.
230 Jazz Freedoms
some of these performances might obscure the meter during their improvisations,
many of the pieces in their repertoiresuch as the Tiny Bell Trios Red Emma,
the Paradox Trios Kopanitsa, and Pachoras Paidushkofeature a repeating sub-
division of short and long beats that draw heavily upon dance traditions.56
In the U.S., talk of realness and neck down occurs amidst a long history of racia-
lized discourse, a discourse primarily imagined in terms of a binary of black (body) and
white (mind). In other words, the realness of Balkan-ness builds on tropes of racial
authenticity that have long been associated both with African American musicality
particularly rhythmic abilityand white un-musicality.57 The ways in which Balkan-
ness has been transformed in relation to racial categories of black or white has not
gone unnoticed among scholars of Balkan music in the U.S. Lauevi drew on an
understanding of rhythmic ability as a non-white trait in the U.S. to think about
how Balkan meters appealed to white dancers as a form of racial supplement. If a
survey question asked Americans, What do white people not have? she mused,
rhythm would likely be a top response.58 This particular manner of racializing
musical elements is not specic to Balkan music, but rather is a key part of the
entire category of World Music. As Feld has argued, the common discourse of
World Music remind[s] Westerners that it is others who have rhythm.59 To put
it another way, while white people lack both rhythm and realness, their deciency
can be supplemented through the rhythm of non-whites, of racial others. To be
clear, the form of othering in World Music marketing may not always appear to
be in terms of race: the image of the Balkans on CDs in the early 1990s is one of a pris-
tine, rural paradise in which the people are depicted as exotic and pre-modern. Within
much of Europe, Balkan-ness refers more to a kind of temporal or nostalgic other,
while only the Roma are explicitly imagined as racially different.60 A closer look at dis-
cussions of Balkan music in the U.S., though, suggests that even a vision of a pastoral
Balkan-ness builds from a much longer history of anthropological science in which cat-
egories of temporal distinction are joined with theories of racial evolution, so that pre-
modern people are simultaneously racially inferior.61
Marketing for Balkan music promoted Balkan-ness as a form of racial authenticity
in part by stressing the sense that its performers were physically different from white
Americans. While Donna Buchanan has focused on the ways in which Bulgarian
womens choirs were gendered and exoticized through various marketing strategies,
56
See Douglas, The Tiny Bell Trio; Matt Darriau, Paradox Trio; Pachora, Pachora.
57
Tom Perchard, New Riffs on the Old Mind-Body Blues: Black Rhythm, White Logic, and Music Theory in the
Twenty-First Century, Journal of the Society for American Music 9, no. 3 (2015): 32148.
58
Lauevi, Balkan Fascination, 61.
59
Steven Feld, From Schizophonia to Schismogenesis: On the Discourses and Commodication Practices of
World Music and World Beat, in Music Grooves: Essays and Dialogues, ed. Seven Feld and Charles Keil
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 266.
60
Carol Silverman, Music and Marginality: Roma (Gypsies) of Bulgaria and Macedonia, in Retuning Culture:
Musical Changes in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Mark Slobin (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996),
23153.
61
E.g. George W. Stocking, Jr., Race, Culture and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1982).
these campaigns also implied that the mystery of this choral music was due to a specic
physical quality of the women themselves. Focusing on the supposed physical differ-
ences in vocal folds and singers bodies helped to further the musics ties to a
seeming authentic experience otherwise inaccessible to American audiences whose
bodies, it seemed, were simply unable to produce these sounds.62 In the U.S., this
type of language and marketing perpetuated and reinforced the reception of Balkan
people as a distinct group that was physiologically different from others.63 The
discourse of exotic, pre-modern musicians possessing a distinct physiology for
music-making matched older ways of thinking about black musicality and musical
authenticity in the U.S. Conversations about jazz are especially prone to fall into a nar-
rative form that tends to ignore or recast the contributions of Asian Americans, Native
Americans, and Latinos/Latinas in relation to a story of black and white.64
For musicians such as Douglas and Moran, then, Balkan music became a source for a
form of racialized realness, a sense of authenticity that was more accessible to white
audiences than forms of musical blackness with more explicit African American roots.
The emerging authority of African American jazz musicians in cultural institutions in
the 1980s such as Jazz at Lincoln Center, as well as a long history of critics calling out
white musicians for appropriating black cultural forms, made it more problematic for
white Americans to consume musical blackness in their quest for a new form of
self-expression. In contrast, similar charges of appropriation leveled against white
musicians and dancers who drew on Balkan music are mostly missing from the
public discourse on Balkan-ness. Perhaps the place of the Balkans in or near Europe
depending on ones viewenabled musicians and critics to imagine a kind of
racial solidarity between Balkan performers and white Americans, even though
music from the region was marked as racially distinct. While African American musi-
cians such as Herbie Hancock famously justied their use of African musical traditions
and recordings through a claim of racial solidarity, white musicians seemed to nd in
Balkan music an opportunity to draw on an exciting form of realness that swerved
around the troubling histories of white appropriation of black musical forms.65
Critically, though, the politics of appropriation were also colored through the sense
of privilege enabled through a discourse of choice and the commodication of eth-
nicity. Even though Balkan music might seem to be a music of Europe, it was explicitly
marketed to primarily white audiences as a racial supplement ready to be consumed.
Balkan music was a form of exotic realness that was racially distinct yet available to
whomever had the cash to purchase it. As Lauevi has shown, this genre was especially
62
Buchanan, Performing Democracy, 368; Lauevi, Balkan Fascination.
63
Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
64
E.g. Kevin Fellezs, Silenced but Not Silent: Asian Americans and Jazz, in Alien Encounters: Popular Culture in
Asian America, ed. Mimi Thi Nguyen and Thuy Linh Nguyen (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 69
108.
65
Steven Feld, Pymy POP: A Genealogy of Schizophonic Mimesis, Yearbook for Traditional Music 28 (1996): 56.
Musicians on the Balkan-jazz scene were well aware of the issues of appropriation. Jim Black and Matt Darriau, for
example, described how important it was to make sure they gave proper credit to teachers, composers, and others
who had inuenced them. See, for example, see the meticulous liner notes of Matt Darriau, Source, Knitting
Factory KFC 237, 1999, CD; Black, interview.
232 Jazz Freedoms
appealing for white Americans who had the nancial capital enabling them to obtain
their missing sense of authenticity and realness from Balkan music. Balkan music
was part of what Ran Blake considered newly available ethnic, vernacular, and folk
music, none of which, as London put it, was off-limits. We might consider the
turn towards Balkan music, then, in a slightly different manner than we might view
the simultaneous emergence of the neo-Klezmer and Radical Jewish Music scene in
early 1990s New York. While there was a noticeable overlap between the musicians
and venues of the Jewish and Balkan music scenes, Tamar Barzel notes that musicians
such as Marc Ribot and John Zorn suggested that interest in Jewish music was a less
conscious desire to reconnect with a missing piece of Jewish history.66 Their work was
often based upon some sense of connection to a Jewish past, not simply in a belief that
they were free to choose their own roots from whatever was accessible and available on
musical market. Thus, the mode of freedom that Blake promoted enabled young jazz
musicians to nd in Balkan music a source to create their own self-identication. The
growing political discourse of individual freedom through consumption emboldened
them to negotiate their place in a world by adapting newly commodied musical tra-
ditions into vehicles for improvised personal expression.
Contesting Jazz Freedoms

Not all listeners, though, heard these mixtures of jazz and Balkan music as a celebration
of jazz freedom. This was especially true for those who appealed to an older, still power-
ful mode of jazz freedom, one that took form after World War II through the combi-
nation of the political discourse of Cold War American exceptionalism and the rhetoric
of the Civil Rights Movement. A Cold War-era freedom not only formed the basis for
the increasing cultural authority of a group of neoclassical African American musicians
such as Wynton Marsalis. As I suggest, it also proved incompatible with the emerging
freedom emphasizing personal choice and endless possibility. Douglas noted one aspect
of the tension between competing concepts of freedom in 2006, when he mused: Does
jazz represent a cultural lineage belonging to the African American community
that created it, or is it the fruit of personal expression by talented, hardworking indi-
viduals?67 In other words, Douglas asked, how can a jazz based on personal
freedom be compatible with a concept of jazz as a music with a particular racial
history and sound? Or, to put Douglass query in yet another way, how might
Balkan-ness be heard in relation to a story of jazz based on black liberation and col-
lective struggle?
The critic Stanley Crouchs answers to these questions are instructive, for they reveal
the degree to which Douglass jazz freedom challenges the logic of a Cold War-era
66
For example, Dave Douglas is a member of John Zorns ensemble Masada and Matt Darriau performs reed
instruments with The Klezmatics. Musicians such as Jim Black, though, have critiqued how these two scenes
have often been lumped together. See, for example, Jon Pareles, The Trails of Klezmer, Always Evolving, The
New York Times, December 24, 1999, E26. Tamar Barzel, New York Noise: Radical Jewish Culture and the Downtown
Scene (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015), 79.
67
Douglas, Preface, xii.
discourse of jazz liberation. In his April 2003 column in the magazine Jazz Times,
Crouch offered a provocative critique of the continued racism of jazz criticism in
2003 that bears revisiting, in part because he turned his focus to the critic Francis
Daviss praise of Dave Douglass Balkan-inspired Tiny Bell trio. Crouch argued that
Davis employed the following line of reasoning to lift up the trumpeter:
Unlike these misled uptown Negroes who spend too much time messing around with
stuff like the blues and swinging, Downtown Dave brings truly new stuff into jazz, like
Balkan folk material that surely predates the twentieth century in which blues and
jazz were born.68
Crouchs column, titled Putting the White Man in Charge, prompted such a backlash
that he was subsequently red from his position as regular columnist for Jazz Times.69
Crouchs column did more than challenge what he viewed as a jazz establishment. The
way that Crouch heard Douglass Balkan-inuenced music also revealed how two
different modes of jazz freedom were operating at the same time. Crouch focused,
in particular, on the ways in which race, and particularly blackness, is imagined and
made audible through these various notions of freedom.
While for Douglas, Balkan music is a folk music that helps him stay real as he
explores the borders of jazz, for Crouch, Balkan musics racialization takes on a differ-
ent hue. According to Crouch, Douglass turn to Balkan music as a source for racial
authenticity represents the continued domination of white, European culture. By
turning to Balkan music, Crouch argued, Douglas was effectively turning away from
an African American history of jazz and replacing it with folk material from
Europe. Balkan music, he sarcastically suggested, had an even greater sense of real-
ness than the blues, given its supposed pre-twentieth century origins. The result,
he argued, was the destruction of the Negro aesthetic in jazz.70 Rather than
hearing Balkan-ness as a distinct racial category apart from whiteness or blackness,
Crouch followed the common practice in jazz narratives of collapsing all racial
nuances into a blackwhite binary. While in World Music markets Balkan music
sounded out the rhythm of the other, the non-white, a Balkan other was also dis-
tinctly not black, and was perhaps even vaguely European. In the sounds of Balkan-
inuenced jazz, Crouch heard a challenge to an African American claim of ownership
of jazz.
Crouch may have felt particularly troubled by the praise for Douglass performances
because his own cultural authority rested on a different mode of jazz freedom, one that
became codied in the 1950s.71 After World War II, musicians and critics alike began to
imagine a form of jazz freedom inuenced by both the Civil Rights Movement and the
68
Stanley Crouch, Putting the White Man in Charge, in Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz (New York: Basic
Civitas Books, 2006), 233.
69
For a discussion of Crouchs ring and the arguments of his column, see Blues for Clement Greenberg, http://
www.jerryjazzmusician.com/2003/05/blues-for-clement-greenberg-a-jerry-jazz-musician-roundtable-hosted-
roundtable-on-jazz-criticism-with-stanley-crouch-martha-bayles-and-loren-schoenberg/ (accessed June 3, 2016).
70
Crouch, Putting the White Man in Charge, 234.
71
John Gennari, Blowin Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
234 Jazz Freedoms
political discourse of the Cold War.72 The form of freedom from this era draws on the
rhetoric of Black liberation and depicts a version of freedom that is hard won and care-
fully protected, one that is directly analogous to African American struggles out of
slavery in the U.S.73 Jazz freedom was not only this, though, because it also became
intertwined with a narrative of American exceptionalism that took on great political
signicance during the broader, global campaign against the spread of Communism.
Indeed, while post-World War II jazz freedoms have most commonly been presented
as either promoting universalism or African American collective struggle, the narrative
of American exceptionalism actually brings these approaches together in ways that we
need to understand in order for the weight of Crouchs critique to make sense.
The paradoxical pairing of racial particularity and universalism is apparent even in
the rhetoric of musicians who clearly attempted to use their music to promote political
change against racial oppression. In 1968, for example, the pianist Randy Weston
worried that white musicians had taken over jazz and blues to the detriment of
black musicians. In an interview with the drummer Art Taylor, Weston posited that
jazz was a black music. In the same interview, though, Weston presented what
seems to be a contradictory view by claiming that jazz is universal: We have no limit-
ations with this music, he explained, and we can use any other form of music in jazz.
Its the only really universal music I know.74 Westons paradoxical depiction of jazz, as
both African American and also open to any performer and any inuence, represents
the standard way in which jazz freedom was employed in the popular imagination of
the U.S. and the world during the height of the Cold War.75 This notion of
freedom, described as analogous to an idea of American freedom, also continues to
be perpetuated through popular cultural institutions such as Jazz at Lincoln Center
and the Smithsonian Institution.
A mode of jazz freedom symbolizing a musical performance of American exception-
alism rests on a complex narrative that, in turn, demands certain musical markers for it
to make sense. Nikhil Singhs work on American exceptionalism, in particular, helps to
clarify the way in which Crouch and Westons jazz freedom requires certain musical
parameters to be heard.76 To paraphrase Singh, one common formulation of American
exceptionalism goes roughly as follows: U.S. history is marred by the shadow of slavery
and the racial injustices it has suffered across the twentieth century. Because African
Americans have been partially, if not fully, integrated into American society,
however, things are not so bad. Indeed, the progress of integration is deemed to
reveal the exceptional nature of the U.S. If over time African Americans are able to
72
Marshall Stearns, The Story of Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958); Ralph Ellison, The Charlie
Christian Story, in The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, ed. John F. Callhan (New York: The Modern Library,
2003), 26677.
73
Scott Saul, Freedom Is, Freedom Aint: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2003).
74
Quoted in Art Taylor, Notes and Tones: Musician-to-Musician Interviews (New York: Da Capo Press, 1993), 22.
75
Penny Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2004).
76
Nikhil Singh, Black Is a Country: Race and the Unnished Struggle for Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 2004).
become fully equal, free members of American society, then the U.S. will truly realize its
exceptional nature. As Singh argues, this formulation is based on the myth of the
melting pot, which Singh identies as promoting a universalizing propensity.77
The popular national myth of assimilation suggests that the nations ability to overlook
differences of race is so powerful that it masks even the historical horrors of slavery. In
other words, the U.S. is so exceptional that race no longer matters.
In order for this claim to work, however, race cannot simply disappear. Indeed, the
primary example of deracinated freedom and universal equality in the U.S. is the social
progress of African Americans. As Singh writes, civic myths about the triumph over
racial injustice have become central to the resuscitation of a vigorous and strident
form of American exceptionalismthe idea of the U.S. as both a unique and universal
nation.78 This paradoxical formation reveals the strange ways in which, as Etienne
Balibar has argued, the claim towards universalism is based on racial particularity.
Balibar argues that there is a complementarity between universalism and racism.79
In other words, claims towards universality are rst premised on the recognition of
difference or particularity. Universality occurs by attempting to atten those differ-
ences. Thus, claims about American exceptionalism and universalism are based on
the recognition of racial difference as a critically important part of American history.
A Cold War-era discourse of jazz freedom, then, is wrapped up in this myth of
racial progress and American exceptionalism. The audible performance of a freedom
based on these parameters, however, has specic requirements: musicians have to
play in ways that still refer back to the musics African American roots. African Amer-
ican freedom has to be heard as a reminder that slavery has been abolished.
It is here, in the musical realm, where the concept of freedom realized in Balkan-
inuenced jazz is most obviously incompatible with the idea of a jazz freedom based
on a history of racial particularity. The tension between these two concepts of
freedom can be heard in the musical elements that rst fascinated the Balkan-inu-
enced jazz musicians: the asymmetric meters of many styles of Balkan music. With
these asymmetric meters, Balkan-inuenced jazz frequently does away with the most
racially marked element of jazz: 4/4 swing. Jazz rhythm and swing have long been
essentialized as both explicitly African American and central to jazz. The process of
imagining swing as having particular racial qualities builds on a long history of
stereotypes linking rhythm with blackness. In his investigation of the idea of Black
Rhythm, a concept that is a conation of musical and racial discourses, Ronald
Radano argues that, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the connection
between rhythm and blackness seemed to overtake other aspects, identifying what
many believed to be the musics vital essence.80 The pairing of blackness and
rhythm is central in jazz historiography: the notion that black rhythm was the key
77
Ibid., 17.
78
Ibid.
79
Etienne Balibar, Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy Before and After Marx (New York: Rou-
tledge, 1994), 198. Emphasis in original.
80
Ronald Radano, Hot Fantasies: American Modernism and the Idea of Black Rhythm, in Music and the Racial
Imagination, ed. Ronald Radano and Philip Bohlman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 459.
236 Jazz Freedoms
essence of the music was present in early jazz histories and became standard following
World War II.81
The idea that jazz rhythm is racially black and forms the genres center has important
political ramications. If jazz rhythm can be traced back to an African origin then jazz
becomes an afrmation of history for African Americans. It roots them in an African
past. Jazz rhythm, or swing, becomes the marker of blackness through which the
pairing of universalism and racial particularity takes audible form. We might even
say that, in this particular formation, swing is the essential sound of jazz freedom.
However, since the link between race and sound is not inevitable or natural, musicians
and critics invested in a Cold War-era jazz freedom idea have had to protect the idea
that a racialized sense of swing is central to jazz. This task has proved contentious in
part because swing is a musical feature notoriously difcult to dene. In a 1955 inter-
view, for example, Miles Davis resorts to describing the embodied effects of jazz rhythm
to dene swing: Whats swinging in words? If a guy makes you pat your foot and if you
feel it down your back.82 In other words, swing is akin to Morans neck down music.
It is a musical feature that is connected to the body and to dance. In the context of the
U.S., swing feel has been commonly understood as rhythmic feel specic to a 4/4, or
2/4 meter. While Crouchs own narrow denition of jazz has been highly contested, he
lists 4/4 swing as the rst of the irrefutable jazz fundamentals that have maintained
themselves from generation to generation.83 The focus on duple rhythm in jazz,
though, is more than simply a way to identify an important musical element. As a
meter and a rhythmic feel associated with blackness, swing rmly entrenches an
African American presence in musical production that is critical for the perpetuation
of a Cold War-era concept of jazz freedom.
For adherents of this mode of freedom, Balkan rhythms do not sound out a form of
realness. The logic one might use to reach this conclusion focuses not on what swing
is, but rather what meters such as 7/8 are not. Even if the compelling rhythms of a 7/8
Bulgarian rachenitsa may fulll Daviss denition of swing by making someone pat
their foot, there is a historical discourse in which these rhythms are depicted as the
opposite of a seemingly natural, black rhythm.84 Asymmetric meters have commonly
been presented as un-danceable and removed from the body in a wide range of musical
analyses, included narratives of diasporic black rhythm. John Chernoff, for example,
employs similar reasoning to argue that even the most complicated rhythmic patterns
in Africa must be in binary meters because they are accompanied by dance. He scoffs at
81
E.g. Hugues Panassi, Hot Jazz: The Guide to Swing Music, trans. Lyle and Eleanor Dowling (Westport, CT: Negro
Universities Press, 1970), 4; Winthrop Sargeant, Jazz, Hot and Hybrid (New York: Da Capo, 1975), 127; Stearns,
The Story of Jazz, 13; Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (New York: Oxford, 1986), 4;
John Collier, Jazz: The American Theme Song (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 71.
82
Quoted in Nat Hentoff, Miles, Down Beat, November 2, 1955, 14.
83
Stanley Crouch, The Jazz Tradition Is Not Innovation, in Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz (New York:
Basic Civitas Books, 2006), 210.
84
More recently, Jeff Pressing cites the additive meters of Macedonian dance music as an example of something
distinct from a Black Atlantic music [that] overwhelmingly favors equal pulse durations. Jeff Pressing, Black
Atlantic Rhythm: Its Computational and Transcultural Foundations, Music Perception 19, no. 3 (2002): 288.
the alternative: music in 7/4 time would be very difcult to dance to. A similar 85
rhetoric appears in the late 1950s, when unusual meters in jazz were rst prominently
introduced not as dance music, but as novelty pieces. Max Roachs 1957 record Jazz in
3/4 Time and Dave Brubecks albums Time Out (1959), Time Further Out (1961), and
Time Changes (1963), emphasized metrical experimentation as a key marketing tool,
sometimes over the musicians own objections.86 Trumpeter Don Ellis took this
approach to an extreme in 1966 with Live in 32/3/4 Time, his own over-the-top take
on Roachs album. Elliss long fascination with asymmetric meters was in part a
project to challenge the depiction of complex meters as unnatural. While describing
one of his compositions that drew on Bulgarian dance music, Ellis stressed that for
his Bulgarian pianist Milcho Leviev, these asymmetric meters were just as natural as
duple meters. He writes in liner notes to Tears of Joy that the [Bulgarian] Bulge is
in 33 (and 36); its just like 4/4 to Milcho.87 The very fact that Ellis felt he needed
to show that 33/8 could be just like 4/4, is revealing of a tendency to think the
opposite.
One more example shows how asymmetric meters have historically been presented
in contrast from musical markers commonly associated with blackness. Dave Brubecks
1959 Blue Rondo a la Turk, a piece reportedly inspired by Turkish music, is one of
the more famous compositions that explores the contrast between asymmetric meters
and swing. It adheres to a rondo form that features repeated juxtapositions of a 9/8
section, subdivided into groups of 2+2+2+3 and 3+3+3, with a swinging 4/4 section.
The contrast between the 9/8 and 4/4 section is more than merely metrical, though.
The 4/4 swing section features the harmonic and melodic language of the blues, a
sound that clearly signies a connection between duple meter and a tradition of
African American vernacular music. It is as though Brubeck wanted to stress the
exotic, foreign sound of 9/8 by contrasting it with what he considered to be its opposite:
the relaxed and swinging sound of the blues. While many musicians today would dis-
agree strongly with the claim that non-duple metered pieces cannot swing, it is impor-
tant to recognize that these meters have been racially marked in much of jazz history as
distinct from other features widely associated with African American musical practices.
Thus, when Crouch claimed that Douglass turn to Southeastern European music in
the Tiny Bell Trio represented the destruction of the Negro aesthetic he was focusing
on Douglas to address a symptom of a larger phenomenon. Crouch was ultimately con-
cerned with challenging what he saw as a critical establishment that praised musicians
such as Douglas in order to remove the signicance of Afro-American elements of jazz
from the discussion.88 But Crouch also revealed his discomfort with the audible form
of a new jazz freedom, one deeply informed by a political discourse privileging
85
John Chernoff, African Rhythm and African Sensibility: Aesthetics and Social Action in African Musical Idioms
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 47.
86
E.g. liner notes to Max Roach, Jazz in 3/4 Time, EmArcy/Mercury MG 36108, 1957, LP.
87
Liner notes to Don Ellis, Tears of Joy, Columbia G 30927, 1971, LP. For more on Leviev, see Claire Levy, Swing-
ing in Balkan Mode: On the Innovative Approach of Milcho Leviev, in Jazz Worlds/World Jazz, ed. Phil Bohlman
and Goffredo Plastino (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 7997.
88
Blues for Clement Greenberg.
238 Jazz Freedoms
individual choice and endless possibility. Crouchs concerns here were not simply
about how to write a history of jazz. As Loren Schoenberg mused in his 2003 conversa-
tion with Crouch and Martha Bayles, Crouch likely faced a backlash from other
members of the jazz community when they realized that Crouchs vision of jazz
freedom was a driving force of Jazz at Lincoln Center.89 Musicians who did not
embrace Crouchs mode of freedom could be excluded from the potential prots
and fame generated through performances at the Lincoln Center. Thus, when
Crouch promoted a Cold War era, American exceptionalist narrative of jazz freedom
that relied on a specic performance of the complex pairing of racial particularity
and universalism, he was likely doing so with an eye on maintaining the cultural
capital of institutions such as Jazz at Lincoln Center. In doing so, he was also challen-
ging the discourse of freedom of individual choice employed by Douglas and his peers,
a freedom that enabled a new sound of realness and racial authenticity that was fun-
damentally incompatible with a pre-existing way to imagine a liberatory impulse of
jazz.
Conclusion
Crouchs critique reveals another way to listen to the sounds of the Balkan-inuenced
jazz scene in early 1990s New York City. While many of us might enjoy these perform-
ances on aesthetic grounds, or might be impressed at the creativity and virtuosity that
musicians such as Matt Darriau, Jim Black, Brad Shepik, and Dave Douglas employed
to explore new instruments, timbres, melodic modes, and meters, we also need to listen
in another way. For they were performing the sounds of a new mode of jazz freedom,
one that drew on an emerging political discourse of individual choice and endless
possibility amidst a world of changing economic relations and intensifying commodi-
cation. The novelty of their invocation of freedom may be hard to detect at rst listen,
but the historical development of concepts such as Third Stream Music clearly show
how a new strand of jazz freedom arose during the 1980. And while the transformation
of Schullers term is most readily apparent in the language through which instructors,
musicians, and critics spoke about musical possibility, personal choice, and racial auth-
enticity, it is also audible in musical composition and improvisation. Performers felt
enabled and encouraged to seek out increasingly accessible sounds from outside the
U.S., sounds that became sources for new performances of cultural self-identication.
Recognizing the emergence of a new mode of jazz freedom in the 1980s also allows
us to engage in a more critical listening to the debates of the 1990s and 2000s. By paying
attention to new concepts of freedom in the late twentieth century, we might begin to
explore how the political discourse of late modernity clashes with another, pervasive
mode of jazz freedom: one rooted in a discourse of American exceptionalism and
the rhetoric of Black liberation, a Cold War-era freedom that pairs racial particularity
with universalism. By focusing on the ways in which Balkan-music seemed to erase the
seemingly contradictory formulation that required the audible reminder of an African
89
Blues for Clement Greenberg.
American history of oppression, Crouch points to an event that has largely been neg-
lected in jazz scholarship. This event, I suggest, is the emergence of a new sense of
freedom in jazz, a concept that enables a way of thinking about race, ownership, and
history that is fundamentally at odds with a Cold War-era understanding of jazz
freedom.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the author.
Abstract
In the late 1980s, a group of young, well-educated white jazz musicians invoked a
legacy of jazz freedom in their experiments with Balkan music. Yet they were not
embracing a timeless, unchanging concept. Instead, they employed an incipient
mode of freedom, one that was deeply informed by a broader political discourse that
emerged in the 1980s. This form of freedom, which emphasized individual consump-
tion amidst a world of newly commodied ethnicities and musical traditions, seemed
to promise an exciting new direction for musical exploration, yet it also proved starkly
incompatible with a still-dominant understanding of freedom shaped during the Cold
War era. By examining the emergence of and reception to the small Balkan-inuenced
jazz scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s, I seek to demonstrate that the last decades
of the twentieth century warrant a closer examination of precisely how the public
debates about race, innovation, and historiography in jazz were symptomatic of a
broader underlying contestation. I suggest that these debates were informed in part
by the clash of two competing modes of freedom, one that emerged from new political
goals and economic policies of the 1980s, and another that had formed in the crucible
of the Civil Rights Movement.
Recursive Structure and Inversional

Pitch-class Relations in Thelonious
Monks Ruby, My Dear: An
Analytical Approach to Monkishness
Douglas R. Abrams
Introduction
Robin D.G. Kelley, in his outstanding biography of Thelonious Monk, tells of a 1954
continuing education class offered at Columbia University titled Adventures in
Jazz.1 For a unit on bebop, the teacher, British guitarist Sidney Gross, invited
Monk, several other musicians, journalist Nat Hentoff, and Langston Hughes to par-
ticipate in one of his classes. According to Kelley, an interesting exchange took place:
Nat Hentoff remembers Gross turning to Monk and asking him to play some of your
weird chords for the class. Thelonious was taken aback by the question. What do
you mean weird? Monk replied acidly. Theyre perfectly logical.2
In this article, I explore the tension between weird and logical in one of Monks
best-known compositions, Ruby, My Dear. I do so by providing a detailed analysis of
the piece, focusing on three passages in particular which stand out as unusual relative to
the rest of the composition. These passages, which some listeners might hear as being
merely weird or eccentric (for reasons that will be discussed below) actually play
crucial roles in the logical unfolding of the piecehence the tension between the
two poles posited above. Passages such as these are sometimes referred to as sounding
Monkish. This is a useful term, for it encapsulates simultaneously the undeniably
idiosyncratic nature of Monks style and its underlying musical logic; terms like
weird or eccentric, by contrast, miss the logic and capture only the apparent strange-
nessthe sometimes harsh dissonances, unusual chord progressions and reharmoni-
zations, trademark whole-tone scales, and rhythmic displacements. The goal of this
article, then, is to explicate the logic operating behind a faade of strangenessthat
is, the Monkishnessin his classic composition, Ruby, My Dear.
With the Monk centennial approaching (in October 2017), Monk and his music
have been enjoying much recent attention, with the publication of two monographs
in 2008 and 2009 (one by Gabriel Solis and the other the aforementioned biography
1
Robin D.G. Kelley, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (New York: Free Press, 2009),
1812.
2
Ibid., 182.

242 An Analytical Approach to Monkishness
by Kelley).3 A decade earlier, the year 1999 saw the publication of a special issue of
Black Music Research Journal devoted exclusively to Monk. That year also saw the pub-
lication of an article by Michele Caniato on Ruby, My Dear, in the Annual Review of
Jazz Studies, a piece which demonstrates most interestingly a compelling relationship
between the main melodic theme and the tonal plan of the body of the piece.4
The present author encountered this article after formulating the basic ideas
expounded upon here, includingin addition to the ideas about inversional pitch-
class relationsan extended version of the link between melodic and tonal structure.
Clearly, these were ideas whose time had come.
Three Monkish Moments

Within the context of Monks compositional oeuvre, Ruby, My Dear is one of his
most conventional compositions; much of the piece sounds as though it could be
taken from a popular song of the day. (Ruby, My Dear was probably written in
the mid 1930s, though not recorded until 1947).5 This facilitates analysis by making
unusual passages stand out all the more clearly. In particular, there are three
unusual passages that will be analyzed in detail. A complete discussion of the
musical text from which these passages are drawn is postponed until the following
section, but for ease of reference, a lead sheet contextualizing these passages is included
here as Example 1.
The three Monkish passages are as follows:
. The surprisingly dissonant chord on beat 31.3 (containing a harsh minor ninth)
and the notes leading up to it, beginning with the last three notes of measure 30
(Example 2)6
. The enigmatic cadence on G6/9 on beat 32.1 and the four notes leading up to it
(Example 3);7 I term this enigmatic because it does not follow any conventional
cadential formula8
. The seemingly eccentric urry of notes at the end of the bridge, bearing no appar-
ent relationship to the previous or subsequent harmonies and consisting of an
arpeggiated triad with both major and minor thirds (Example 4).
3
Gabriel Solis, Monks Music: Thelonious Monk and Jazz History in the Making (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2008); Kelley, Thelonious Monk.
4
Michele Caniato, From Popular Song to Jazz Composition: Thelonious Monks Ruby, My Dear, Annual
Review of Jazz Studies 10 (1999): 89102.
5
Ibid., 89.
6
The chord on beat three of m. 31 sometimes occurs on beat two of the introduction (see Example 1).
7
This passage sometimes occurs in the introduction in its entirety (see Example 1).
8
However, treating A as the tonic (prepared by the ii7-V7-Imaj7 progression in m. 29-30), we obtain a cadential
progression familiar from Monk tunes such as In Walked Bud and Bye-ya, namely, a tonic melody note
over a VII6/9 supporting harmony. This paper explicates the formula and its preparation as they appear in this
piece.
Example 1. Ruby, My Dear Lead Sheet (See Text for Sources). Music by Thelonious
Monk. Copyright (c) 1945 by Embassy Music Corporation (BMI). All rights outside the
USA controlled by Music Sales Corporation (ASCAP). International copyright secured.
All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
Example 1. Continued
Example 2. Unexpected Chord on 31.3, with Immediately Preceding Notes.
Example 3. Deceptive Cadence on 32.1, and the Notes Leading Up to It.
We turn now to a detailed description of the musical text from which the above pas-
sages are drawn.
Example 4. Enigmatic Flurry of Notes at the End of the Bridge, with Immediately Pre-
ceding Notes.
The Musical Text

As there is a fair degree of variation between the recorded versions of this tune, it is
worthwhile to take a moment to clarify the musical text analyzed here. In particular,
the reader may wonder whether the Monkish moments are integral parts of the com-
position. In fact, they are: all of them appear on the original 1947 Blue Note recording
(both master and alternate takes, on the out choruses),9 and frequently enough there-
after that they may safely be assumed to belong to the piece. For example, they appear
in the 1957 version with John Coltrane,10 the 1957 version with Coleman Hawkins,11
the 1959 solo version (though the second passage appears intact only in the introduc-
tion, rather than in the body of the piece),12 and the 1965 solo recordings (master and
alternate takes).13 A 1961 version by Bud Powell reharmonizes the rst two passages
but includes the third verbatim.14
Different versions of the piece, however, feature different degrees of abstraction in
the performance of the rest of the melody, and in some cases slightly different chord
changes. To be specic, the 1957 Coltrane version and the 1965 Monk solo versions
feature clear renditions of the entire melody (though Coltrane makes judicious use
of ornamentation), while the original 1947 versions and the 1957 Hawkins version
feature extensive variation of the melody. In Monks 1959 solo version, and to a
lesser extent the alternate take of his 1965 solo recording, Monk ornaments the
melody with gorgeous dissonant verticalities above some of the melody notes.
Monks chord voicings, of course, sometimes extend above the lines played by Coltrane
and Hawkins in their respective versions, and sometimes he doubles the melody 8va.
Finally, in the solo versions Monk uses a rst inversion G7 chord in the third
measure of each A section rather than a root position chord.
9
Thelonious Monk, Genius of Modern Music Vol. 1, Blue Note CDP 7 81510 2, 1947, LP.
10
Thelonious Monk, Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane, Jazzland JLP 946, 1957, LP.
11
Thelonious Monk, Monks Music, Riverside RLP 12-242, 1957, LP.
12
Thelonious Monk, Alone in San Francisco, Riverside RLP 1158, 19959, LP.
13
Thelonious Monk, Monk Alone, Columbia C2K65415 1998, CD. Master take originally released on Solo Monk,
Columbia CS9149, 1965, LP.
14
Bud Powell, A Portrait of Thelonious, Columbia CL 2292, 1961, LP.
For the sake of clarity, therefore, the musical text analyzed here will be a hypothetical
performance of the lead sheet shown above as Example 1, adapted with permission
from the lead sheet found in The New Real Book. This choice is made not because
The New Real Book version is necessarily authoritativethough by and large it is a
useful representation of the tunebut because the lead sheet adapted therefrom
culls from the versions mentioned above the features that are most germane to the
present analysis, while ignoring details that are not important. For example, the orna-
mental passages linking the ii7-V7-Imaj7 progressions in each A section are omitted; the
accuracy of the last two measures of the rst two A sections is left in doubt (it is difcult
to nd consensus regarding these measures amongst the versions mentioned above);
and the exact rhythmic phrasing of the melody is abandoned in favor of consistency
and ease of representation.15 This obviates the need to transcribe every detail of a
selected performance, such as ornamental bass pitches; notes that sound like mistakes;
or the D with which Coltrane precedes his statement of the bridge on the head out.
Note, too, that in some versions the introduction is different from the one shown
herein fact, some versions have no introduction.
As indicated above, the result is not merely expedient, but based upon agreement
between multiple versions regarding the Monkish elements explored in detail
below, as well as the rest of the melody.
Inversional Symmetry and Recursive Structure

Focusing again on the three Monkish moments, we nd that close analysis reveals a
prominent role for pitch-class inversion in all three of them. (For readers unfamiliar
with the concept of pitch-class inversion, a brief introduction is provided in Appendix
1.) The passages being analyzed are not only structured internally by pitch-class inver-
sion; pitch-class inversion also informs the relationships that two of them bear to the
global dominant (A), emphasizing it and helping to prepare the nal cadence of the
piece. These relationships, in turn, depend upon the structure of a scale-degree set
that is found to function both on the local or surface level (i.e. the notes as we actually
hear them), and on a global or structurally higher level (i.e. describing some property of
groups of the notes that we hear). This type of linkage between multiple structural levels
will be termed structural recursion or recursive structure.
This study, then, will explicate the musical meanings of three Monkish passages by
examining how a rich network of inversional pitch-class relationships not only links
several important moments together, but also interacts with structural recursion in
the domains of melody, harmony, and tonality to prepare the nal cadence. We now
identify several important groups of notes that will gure prominently in the rest of
the discussion.
15
Some readers may object to the fact that the adapted lead sheet omits the ornamental passages linking the ii7-V7-
Imaj7 progressions in each A section, which certainly form a prominent part of the musical surface. These passages,
however, are not rooted in functional harmony, but rather represent passing and neighboring chords linking the
functional ii7-V7-Imaj7 progressions.
Example 5. Distinctive Melodic and Harmonic Motif Repeated with Minor Rhythmic
Variations in Three Different Keys in Each of the A Sections.
A Description of the Musical Surface

According to Ko Agawu, the knowledge that [analysis] produces is not necessarily
objective or replicable, like an archival report, but subjective, an invitation to a way
of perceiving.16 This is not to say that consensus among analysts is not a desirable
goal. Rather, it implies that the relationship between hearing and analysis should be
treated as a two-way street: each analysis suggests its own way of hearing. Most impor-
tantly, hearing informs analysis, but a compelling analytical framework may suggest
that we try adjusting our aural approach to hear the elements of that framework.
Doing so may lead us to perceive deeper connections than we would otherwise have
been able to perceive. We shall have several occasions to emphasize this point in the
discussion that follows.
Perhaps the most salient feature of the piece is the distinctive melodic and harmonic
motif that occurs in three different keys in each of the pieces A sections: E major
(measures 12, 910, and 2526), F major (measures 34, 1112, and 2728), and
A major (measures 56, 1314, and 2930). See Example 5. In scale-degree notation,
the melody of this motif is 3, 2,
6,
5 , while the chord roots (omitting embellishments
in the bass part) are 2 , 5 , 1 . Combining the melody and chord roots and arranging them
in ascending order yields the ve-note set (1, 2,
3,
5 , 6).
17
While the bridge does not contain any manifestations of this motif, it does contain a
clear manifestation of a six-note group that contains the ve-note group discussed
above. This can be found in the rst 11 beats of the bridge (beat 17.1 up to and includ-
ing beat 19.3), in the melody and bass parts: (A, B, C, E, F, F). These notes form a
clearly audible subphrase of the four-measure phrase that moves from A major in
measure 17 to C minor in measure 21, set apart by the long duration of the dotted
half-note at the beginning of measure 19. Bearing in mind the quote that began this
section, we choose to leave off the F at the top of this group, leaving, in scale-
degree notation, the set (1 , 2 , 3 , 5 , 6 ), the same set we encountered in the A sections
above.
16
Ko Agawu, How We Got Out of Analysis and How to Get Back In Again, Music Analysis 23, no. 23 (Jul.Oct.
2004): 276.
17
As mentioned previously, in the solo versions, the G7 chord in the second iteration of the motif appears in rst
2,
inversion. This does not negate the importance of the scale-degree set (1, 3,
5 , 6).

Example 6. Three Transpositions of a Prominent Tetrachord on the Bridge, Which

Together Comprise the Chromatic Aggregate.
There is an alternative way to parse the notes from the beginning of the bridge
again bearing in mind the quote that began this sectionthat highlights their relation-
ship to the rest of the bridge rather than to the distinctive motif in the A sections. This
does not vitiate the validity of either interpretation; in fact, what it shows is that these
notes are multivalent symbols, and that investigating both interpretations leads to a
richer analysis than one that results from investigating only a single interpretation.
Rather than focusing on the melody and bass parts of the subphrase described
above, we focus only on the melody, yielding (B, C, E, F, F). We choose to omit
the single note F in order to reveal a compelling theoretical relationship (it is impor-
tant to note here that F appears only after the other four notes): doing so yields the set
(B, C, E, F), which can, in turn, be identied in the melody and bass parts of
measures 2122 transposed down by a major third (G, A, C, D), and in the melody
and bass parts of beat 23.1 up to and including beat 24.2 transposed down by a
minor sixth and respelled enharmonically (E, F, A, B). There is no contradiction
in analyzing the melody and bass parts in the second and third parts of the bridge
but only analyzing the melody part in the rst; the important point here is that in
all three cases the tetrachords in questionand their interrelationshipsare clearly
audible. These three transpositions of the set are disjoint, meaning that the three ver-
sions of this set together comprise the chromatic aggregate. See Example 6.
We shall have occasion to return to these sets in the discussion that follows.
Recursive Structure
Martin Williams states that the melody and the harmony of a good Monk piece do
not, almost cannot, exist separately.18 This is certainly the case for Ruby, My
Dear, as Michele Caniato points out in his 1999 article: he demonstrates that the gen-
erating factor for the harmonic plan is the theme, i.e., the intervals in the melody of
the motif from the A sections exactly describe the set of tonal centers articulated by
authentic cadence in the body of the piece.19 This is a clear example of recursive struc-
ture as dened above: there is a set that functions on the surface level (as the notes com-
prising the melodic motif from the A sections) and on a higher structural level as well
(as the tonal plan of the body of the piece). To see this, compare the set of tonalities
established by authentic cadence in the body of the piecethree in each A section
(E, F, A) and one in the rst three measures of the bridge (A)to the notes in the
melody of the recurring motiffor example (F, G, B, C). The intervals are identical.
18
Martin Williams, The Jazz Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 153.
19
Caniato, From Popular Song to Jazz Composition, 93.
2,
Example 7. Five Forms (One Global, Four Local) of (1, 3,
5 , 6).

Here we extend Caniatos demonstration of recursive structure by taking three more

things into account: (1) the chord roots of the primary motif from the A sections (along
with the melody notessee previous section), (2) the melody and bass parts of the rst
11 beats of the bridge (which belong for the most part to the same scale-degree set as
the melody and bass parts in the primary motifsee previous section), and (3) the ton-
ality established at the end of the piece, D major. We obtain interesting results by so
doing.
First of all, the set of tonal centers is expanded to become (D, E, F, A A),
or, respelled enharmonically and put into scale-degree notation in the key of Db
2,
(1, 3,
5 , 6).
20 This is the set we encountered in the melody and chord roots of
the primary motif from the A sections and in the rst 11 beats of the bridge. Thus,
in addition to functioning locally (at the musical surface), this scale-degree set func-
tions globally too: referred to the key of the global tonic, D major, this set comprises
all ve tonal centers articulated by authentic cadence in the piece, including the nal
cadence at the end of the coda. See Example 7.
Some readers may object that the C minor harmony in the fth and sixth measures
of the bridge has not been included in the set of tonal centers. There are two reasons for
this, one objective and one subjective. Objectively, there is no authentic cadence that
establishes C minor, whereas for the ve tonal centers included in the list, there are.
In fact, for all but one of the tonal centers included in the list, there is a ii7-V7-Imaj7
progression that strongly articulates the given tonal center, and in the one case that
does not include a ii7-V7-Imaj7 progression, there is a non-contiguous ii7-V7 at the
end of the bridge whose corresponding Imaj6/9 chord is the nal chord of the piece.21
Speaking subjectively, furthermore, I hear the C minor chord as subsidiary to the
ii7-V7 in D at the end of bridge. Perhaps this is because the C minor chord falls directly
in the sequence of transpositionally related tetrachords leading up to the end of the
bridge (see above). In any case, to my ears C minor is momentarily tonicized, but
not actually established as a tonal center.
2,
One of the most salient features of (1, 3,
5 , 6)
is the half-step between the upper-
most two pitches. In its local manifestations, this half-step corresponds to mild harmo-
nic and melodic dissonances: a atted-ninth on a dominant seventh chord that resolves
to either the fth of a tonic major seventh chord (in the A sections) or the sixth of a
tonic major sixth chord (on the bridge). In its global manifestation, howeverA-A
it draws attention to the global dominant (A) and thus plays an important role
in structuring the piece. One expression of this half-step on the global level is the
20 2,
It is interesting that the global form of the set (1, 3,
5 , 6)
has the global tonicDas scale degree 1.

Caniato, From Popular Song to Jazz Composition, 94. Caniato points this out as well.
21
interval between the tonic A established in measure 56 of every A section (particu-
larly the second A section) and the tonic A established in the rst 12 beats of the
bridge. However, it is reinforced in other ways as well, which will be described
below in the section on inversional pitch-class relations.
Inversional Pitch-Class Relations

Having demonstrated that Ruby, My Dear exhibits recursive structure in the domains
of melody, harmony, and tonality, we turn now to an analysis of the piece in terms of
inversional pitch-class relations. In particular, we analyze the three Monkish passages
identied above, and demonstrate not only that the internal structure of these passages,
but also in two cases their relationships to the global dominant, are inuenced by inver-
sional pitch-class relations.
Two types of pitch-class inversion in particular will be shown to play important roles
in Ruby, My Dear: I1 and I7, i.e., inversion around the half-steps C-C (equivalently F-
G) in the case of I1, and E-E (equivalently A-B) in the case of I7. These two types of
inversion share a property possessed only by pairs of inversion operations whose
indices differ by 6: I7 inversion applied to a set that is symmetric with respect to I1
does not disrupt the I1 symmetry, because applying I7 inversion to a set with I1 symmetry
amounts simply to transposing it by a tritone, and transposing a set by a tritone does not
affect its inversional symmetry. (See Appendix 2 for a proof of these facts.) Exchanging I7
and I1 with each other in the previous sentence does not alter its validity.
Thus, the mere fact that I1 and I7 are prominently represented in this piece indicates
that inversional pitch-class relations function on a level of structure higher than the
musical surface. Further high-level properties of inversional pitch-class relations,
however, are described below.
The rst passage to be analyzed is the unexpectedly dissonant chord on beat 31.3 and
the notes that immediately precede it (see Example 2). Note that the last three melodic
notes of measure 30 and the chord on beat 31.1 form a set with I1 symmetry: (A, B, C,
D, E, F)an A major hexachord. The dissonant chord on 31.3 almost forms a set
with I1 symmetry; in fact, it is almost the I7 inversion of the rst set, which would be a D
major hexachord(D, E, F, G, A, B). Note that together these two sets would com-
prise the chromatic aggregate.
Note, too, that this set can also be interpreted as a transposed version of the rst set
(see the above discussion of I1 and I7). We choose to emphasize its inversional deri-
vation from the rst set because that allows us to relate it directly to the explicit
pitch-class inversions found in the third Monkish passage. The same caveat applies
to the discussion of the second passage below.
Whichever way we choose to derive it, the set we get on beat 31.3 is (D, E, F, G, A,
B), the only difference with the exactly transformed version of the rst set being the
exchange of G (or A) for G. (See Example 8.) I therefore propose that the lack of sym-
metry in the second set draws attention to A; in fact, since it is the bottom note in a
dissonant harmonic minor ninth (see Example 2), we can even argue that the lack of
Example 8. Near-I7 Inversion of Notes on 31.1 and Preceding Represented by Hexa-

chord on 31.3 (Following the Second Set of Ellipses).
Example 9. I1 Symmetry of the Outer Voices on 31.2 and 31.3, and the I7 Inversional
Relationship Between Them.
symmetry draws attention to the half-step A-A. This is one of the ways in which atten-
2,
tion is drawn to the half-step in the global manifestation of (1, 3,
5 , 6).

It is worthwhile noting that the outer voices of both the chord on the downbeat of
measure 31 (B and E) and the chord on beat three of that measure (E and A) possess
pairwise I1 symmetry, and are related to each other by I7 inversion.22 (See Example 9.)
This reinforces the argument above regarding the lack of I1 symmetry in the second set,
since the symmetry within the outer voices of each chord and the inversional relation-
ship between them heighten the listeners awareness of the near symmetry in the set (D,
E, F, G, A, B).
The next passage to be analyzed (illustrated in Example 3)the enigmatic cadence
on the downbeat of measure 32 and the four notes leading up to itwe approach in
similar fashion. Momentarily leaving out the A on the downbeat of measure 32, we
are left with four melodic pitches at the end of measure 31 and a four-note chord
on the downbeat of measure 32. While neither of these groups is itself symmetrical
with respect to I1 or I7 (they are symmetrical with respect to other axes), we can
obtain one from the other by I7 inversion: F, E, C, A inverts to D, E, G, B. As
in the analysis of the passage above, this relationship can also be interpreted transpo-
sitionally (this is a consequence of the fact that the two sets are inversionally sym-
metric), but by choosing to understand it as an inversional relationship, we gain
further insight into its connection to the rest of the piece, especially its relationship
to the third Monkish passage.
22
It is intriguing that in the original 1947 recording, the bass pitches in the last two bars of the rst two A sections
comprise these notes exactly (E, A, E, B). As noted before, however, it is difcult to nd consensus between ver-
sions on these chord changes.
Example 10. Near-I7 Inversion of Pick-ups to m. 32 (Preceding the First Set of Ellipses)
Represented by Notes on the Downbeat of Measure 32 (After the Second Set of
Ellipses).
Example 11. (a) I1 Symmetry of the Flurry of Notes at the End of the Bridge. (b) I1
Symmetry of the Notes Leading Up to the End of the Bridge.
Intriguingly, these sets have two pitch classes in common, C and F (or D and G);
the other pitch classes involved are A and E in the rst set, inverting to B and E in the
second. These I1-symmetrical pairs of notes were seen in the outer voices of the two
chords analyzed in the context of the rst passage above.
Returning to the discussion of the passage at hand, it is only the presence of A
(which can be grouped with the rst set, the second set, or both) that prevents this
passage from clearly demonstrating inversionalI7symmetry. Thus, the lack of sym-
metry again draws attention to A, and, through melodic half-step dissonance, to A as
well. This is the second way in which attention is drawn to the half-step in the global
manifestation of (1, 2,
3,
5 , 6).
See Example 10.
The nal passage to be analyzed is the last two beats of the bridge, containing the
urry of notes E2, B2, G3, B3, F4 and F5 (see Example 4). It is noteworthy that
they end on a passing tone between the prominent F on the second eighth of
measure 24 and the G in measure 25; more important for our purposes, however, is
the fact that they possess I1 symmetry (see Example 11(a)). Our attention is drawn
to this symmetry by the passages outlandish and clearly atonal character; it is prepared,
furthermore, by notes in the melody and bass parts that also possess I1 symmetry:
E, F, A, B (see Example 11(b)). As discussed previously, this is the third
Example 12. I1- and I7-Symmetric Forms of the Intervals at the End of the Bridge.
transpositionally related version of this set to appear on the bridge, and together with
the rst two versions, completes the chromatic aggregate (see Example 6). Thus, there
is a subtle conguration of transpositional and inversional relationships manifested
throughout the bridge, which culminates in the I1 symmetry of the notes at its end.
Note that together, the notes E-F-F-G-A-B clearly possess inversional symmetry
but, unlike the previous examples, cannot be represented by a single transposition of
a subset. Thus inversion must be invoked here to understand the underlying musical
structure. The fact that this passage is structured by inversional symmetry means
that it is in dialog with the two other passages that can be represented by inversional
symmetry or near-symmetry, serving to link these important, Monkish, moments
together.
A nal remark on symmetry is in order. Taking the aggregate of the rst and second
sets discussed in the context of the second passage(F, E, C, A) and (G, D, B, E)
we obtain (enharmonically) the hexachord (E, F, A, B, D, E). Leaving off the rst
and last (inversionally related) notes in this list, we obtain (F, A, B, D), a transposed
version of the notes heard at the end of the bridge, (E, F, G, B). This set exhibits I7
symmetry rather than I1 symmetry, but the transpositional relationship between the
two sets draws attention to the inversional symmetries at play. See Example 12.
Conclusion
Scott DeVeaux points out that with Monk, parody and eccentricity [often] act as a
mask concealing deeper levels of meaning.23 This certainly seems to be the case
with Ruby, My Dear, wherein notes that seem at rst to be non-sequiturs actually
turn out to be keys to understanding the pieces higher-level structure. We might
even say that with Ruby, Monk was signifyin(g) on the genre of popular song.
Here the term is used in the sense of creating meaning through reference to an
entire genre, not just through reference to a single work, the sense in which the
term is more commonly used.24 In The Signifying Monkey, Gates denes signifyin(g)
as repetition with a signal difference.25 This denition is particularly apt in the
present situation due to the fact that Ruby, My Dear conforms for the most part
to the conventions of popular song, while the elements that we have labeled as
23
Scott DeVeaux, Nice Work If You Can Get It: Thelonious Monk and Popular Song, Black Music Research
Journal 19, no. 2 (1999): 170.
24
Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 116. In a dis-
cussion of Ralph Ellisons response to critic Irving Howe, Gates provides an example of this broader meaning of the
term signifyin(g).
25
Ibid., 56.
Monkish deviate from the conventions of popular song and thus represent the signal
differences of Gatess denition. Rather than merely calling these elements different,
however, we can go one step further and call them subversive: by selectively negating
the culturally acceptable but bland conventions of popular song, these elements help
raise the piece to the level of high art. In this connection, see Amiri Barakas comments
on the differences between commercialized swing and bebop;26 see also Caniatos com-
ments on the transition from popular song to jazz composition represented by Ruby,
My Dear.27 Breaking the rules of popular song, then, is a way of questioning the
musical (societal?) status-quo and demonstrating that by so doing, a more authentic
and satisfactory state of affairs may be achieved.
2,
Starting from the observation that on the local level, the scale-degree set (1, 3,
5 ,

6) describes the melody and chord roots of the motif that occurs three times in each A
section, and almost describes the melody and bass pitches in the rst 11 beats of the
bridge, we nd that it functions on a global level as well, describing exactly the set of
tonalities established in the piece by authentic cadence, including the nal tonality
established at the end of the coda: (D, E, F, A, A).
Having established that structural recursion gures prominently in the piece, we nd
that inversional pitch-class relations play an important role as well. Upon closely ana-
lyzing three Monkish passages, we nd that the pitch-class inversion operations I1
and I7 not only inform their internal structure, but in conjunction with the global
version of the set described above, also inform the relationships that two of them
bear to the global dominant. These relationships are characterized by dissonance and
the lack of I7 inversional symmetry where it is expected, drawing attention to the
half-step A-A (which is a prominent feature of the global version of the set described
above). Emphasis on this half-step highlights the global dominant, A, and helps to
prepare the nal cadence in D, while the presence of inversional pitch-class relations
in all three passages serves to link them together.
The idea, proposed above, that the lack of inversional symmetry (or the presence of
near symmetry in its place) can be a musically pertinent quality may seem counter-
intuitive at rst. In light of the ubiquity of inversional and near-inversional pitch-class
relations in this piece, however, the phenomenon of near symmetry as an important
quality does not seem so far-fetched, whether or not it is directly perceived by the
listener.
Jonathan Kramer argues that the fact that a listener cannot hear a given structure in a
piece of music does not imply that the structure is musically unimportant: [The
analyst] realizes that some things which cannot literally by heardthat is, cannot
be accurately identied, named, or notatedmay still have discernible musical
reasons for being in a piece.28 As an example he cites the tone rows used by
12-tone composers, which are inaudible to all but the most expert listeners.
26
Amiri Baraka, Blues People: Negro Music in White America, rev. ed. (New York: Perennial Press, 2002), 1812.
27
Caniato, From Popular Song to Jazz Composition.
28
Jonathan Kramer, The Time of Music: New Meanings, New Temporalities, New Listening Strategies (New York:
Shirmer Books; London: Collier Macmillan, 1988), 328.
Perhaps, then, the complex network of pitch relationships in Ruby, My Dear

described here, particularly those involving recursive structure and inversional pitch-
class relations, were audible only to the composer. Perhaps, however, it is precisely
this network of relationships that makes Ruby, My Dear the enduring classic that
it is, something the discerning listener can return to time and time again.
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I would like to thank Stefan Love for reading numerous drafts of the
present version of this paper. I would also like to thank Nils Vigeland, Robert Wason,
and Kevin Quashie for reading and providing encouraging comments on previous ver-
sions of this paper. Finally, I would like to thank Christopher White for proofreading
Appendix 2. Any mistakes are, of course, mine.
Disclosure Statement
ORCID
Douglas R. Abrams http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2470-8348
Abstract
The goal of this study is to elucidate the musical meanings behind some of the more
unusual passages in one of Thelonious Monks best-known compositions, Ruby, My
Dear. A ve-note scale-degree set is identied that appears on the surface level of the
A sections and the bridge, and on a higher structural level as the set of all tonalities estab-
lished by authentic cadence throughout the piece, including the nal tonality at the end
of the coda. Pitch-class inversion operations are found to govern the internal structure of
three particularly unusual passages, and, in two of them, are found to highlight the global
dominant in conjunction with the higher-level manifestation of the set described above,
helping to prepare the nal cadence of the piece. Far from being gratuitously non-con-
formist, then, Monks unusual passageshis Monkish moments, as it wereare
found to play key roles in the logical unfolding of this piece.
Appendix 1. Pitch-Class Inversion

Pitch-class inversion utilizes, rst, the concept of pitch class, which assigns to a pitch in
any octave a number from 0 to 11, corresponding to its letter name C (=0), C (=1), D
(=2), etc. up to B (=11). The counting of pitch classes wraps around from 11 up to
0 and from 0 down to 11, so that only the numbers 011 are used to label pitch classes.
This type of counting corresponds to what mathematicians call mod-12 arithmetic.
In pitch-class inversion, an axis of inversion is specied, which can be either a single
pitch class or two adjacent pitch classes. Numerically an axis of inversion is described
by an integer n, which is twice the pitch-class number of a single pitch-class axis of
inversion, or the sum of the two pitch-class numbers corresponding to a two pitch-
class axis of inversion. To invert a pitch class (we will call it m) about a specied
axis of inversion (described by the integer n), we simply subtract m from n, mod-12.
This operation is labeled In(m) (some authors use the alternative notation TnI(m)),
and the operator In is frequently referred to on its own as the inversion operator
with index number n.
Note that due to the properties of mod-12 arithmetic, specifying a single pitch-class
axis of inversion is the same as specifying the axis a tritone away, and specifying a two-
pitch-class axis of inversion is the same as specifying the two pitch-classes each located
a tritone away from the starting two pitches. That is because in both cases, the index
number will change by 2*6 = 12 = 0 in mod-12 arithmetic.
Visually, to invert a pitch class about a specied single pitch-class axis of inversion,
one counts the number of pitch classes from the pitch class being inverted down to the
axis of inversion (wrapping around if necessary), and then ips the pitch class about the
axis of inversion so that one now counts up to the axis by the same number. To invert a
pitch class about a specied two pitch-class axis of inversion, one counts down to the
lower of the two pitch classes and then ips the pitch class so that one now counts up to
the higher of the two pitch classes by the same number.
Two examples may clarify. First, we will invert A around the single pitch class F. F
has pitch-class number 5, while A has pitch-class number 8. Following the steps out-
lined above, we subtract 8 from two times 5, which yields the pitch-class number 2,
corresponding to the pitch class D. Visually this makes sense, as A lies three half
steps above F, and D lies three half-steps below F. Next we will invert B around the
two pitch-class axis of inversion D and E. The pitch-class number corresponding to
B is 11, while the pitch-class numbers corresponding to D and E are 2 and 3, respect-
ively, yielding a sum of 5. Following the steps outlined above, we subtract 11 from 5; the
result we obtain is 6 (mod-12), corresponding to the pitch-class F. Visually this makes
sense, since the interval from B down to D is the same as the interval from F up to E.
Note that we could have made the pitch-class counting easier in this example by trans-
posing the axis of inversion by tritone: it is easier to visualize ipping B downward
about the axis A-A than about the axis D-E. (Of course, as the reader can verify,
one can also invert pitch classes by ipping a pitch class up about an axis of inversion,
which would also have made this example easier.)
As a nal bit of terminology that we will utilize later, we say that a set of pitch
classes is symmetrical with respect to a particular inversion operation if applying
the operation to any pitch class in the set yields another member of the set or
itself. For example, the set (A, B, C, D, E, F) is symmetrical with respect to I1
(that is, inversion about the two pitch classes C and D), because, as the reader
can verify, inverting any pitch class in this set about the two pitch-class axis of inver-
sion yields another member of the set.
Appendix 2. Inversion Operators with an Index Difference of 6

It is demonstrated here that operating with the inversion operator In+6 on a set with In
symmetry does not disrupt that sets In symmetry. We do this in two steps: rst, we
show that operating with In+6 on such a set is equivalent to transposing it by tritone;
secondly, we show that transposing a set by tritone does not affect its characteristic
inversional symmetries.
Let a be an arbitrary element of a set S that possesses In symmetry. Let b = In(a). Then
b is part of S by the denition of In symmetry in Appendix 1, and furthermore, In(b) = a
since by the denition of inversion in Appendix 1 and the denition of b, In(b) = n b
= n (n a) = a. Now let c = In+6(a). Then from the denition of inversion in Appen-
dix 1 and the preceding result, c = In+6(In(b)) = n + 6 (n b) = b + 6, that is, c is the
tritone transposition of b. Since every element a of S can be written as In of exactly one
element b of S, applying In+6 to every element (labeled a) of S yields the tritone trans-
position of every element (labeled b) of S, which is what we wished to show.
It remains to show that transposing a set by tritone does not affect its inversional
symmetries. Again let S be a set with In symmetry, and let T be the set comprising
each element of S transposed up by tritone.29 Then we wish to show that T has In sym-
metry as well. By the symmetry of S, for every element a in S there is a b in S (possibly
the same as a) such that b = In(a). Now let us consider an element c of T such that c = a
+ 6 which exists by denition of T. Then In (c) = In(a + 6) = n a 6 = In(a) 6 = b
6 = b + 6, which is an element of T by the denition of T. Recognizing that for every
element c of T there is an element a of S lying six half-steps below, and an element
b of S equal to In(a), this completes the proof (because we have shown that In(c) is
an element of T, namely b + 6, where b is dened as above). Note that if we had trans-
posed S by an interval other than the tritone, the last step in the proof would not hold.
For a simple example drawn from the text, we turn to the sets comprising the
respective outer voices of the chords on 31.1 (B and E) and 31.3 (E and A). (See
Example 9 and the accompanying discussion.) Each of these sets possesses I1 symmetry,
and they are related to each other by I7 inversion. Since the indices of these inversion
operators differ by 6, the above arguments apply; we will follow them step by step.
Let n = 1 so that n + 6 = 7. We choose B to be the element a in the rst part of the
proof. Operating on this element with I1 inversion yields E (corresponding to the
element b) and operating on E with I7 yields the note E, which differs from B
(element a) by a tritone. Following the same steps but choosing E to be a yields B
as the element b, and A as I7(b), a tritone away from E (which in this case is a).
This completes the rst part of the proof. We turn now to the second part.
Let S be the set (B, E) and T be the set (A, E). Note that T consists of both notes of S
transposed up by tritone. We wish to show why it is that T possesses the same inver-
sional symmetry as S. We begin by selecting the note A of T to be element c in the proof;
the element a, a tritone below A, is E, which belongs to S. Because S is an I1-symmetric
29
Obviously, transposing up by tritone is the same as transposing down by tritone; this argument could be phrased
differently to reect that equality without changing the nal result.
set, b = I1(E) = B is the other member of S, while I1(c), equal to the note a tritone
above b, is E, the other note in T. Alternatively, starting with E as the element c in
the proof yields B as the element a a tritone below, E as b = I1(B), and A as I1(c)
= b + 6. Thus, we have shown that applying I1 to either element of T yields the other
element of T, which completes the proof.
Different Placements of Spirit: The

Unity Music of William Parkers Curtis
Mayeld Project
Casey Hale
The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld

Curtis Mayeld was a prophet, a preacher, a revolutionary, a humanist, and a griot.
He took the music to its most essential level in the America of his day. If you had ears
to hear, you knew that Curtis was a man with a positive messagea message that was
going to help you to survive. (William Parker, liner notes to The Inside Songs of Curtis
Mayeld1)
In March of 2001, William Parker, bassist and one of the leading gures in
New Yorks downtown avant-garde jazz scene, took the stage at the Banlieues
Bleues festival in Paris with a massive ensemblea choir of 90 children from sub-
urban schools, 25 djembe players, and horn and rhythm sections drawn from
local amateur musiciansto perform the songs of American soul music icon
Curtis Mayeld.2 The concert was the culmination of Parkers work arranging and
teaching Mayelds songs to school children as part of the festivals community out-
reach program Actions Musicales;3 it was also the prelude to an ensemble project
that Parker had considered for years, but that had not come together until the
opportunity was presented by the festivals director, Xavier Lemettrea project
entitled The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld. Dedicated to reinterpreting the music
of the late singer-songwriter with a group of veteran improvisers, and featuring
the recitation of original poetry by Amiri Baraka,4 Parkers core ensemble would
premiere the Mayeld project the following evening, and would continue to
1
William Parker, The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld, Rai Trade RTPJ 0011, 2007, CD.
2
William Parker, interview with the author, September 2011. Recordings of two songs performed on this concert,
This is My Country and New World Order, can be found on the compilation I Plan to Stay a Believer: The
Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld, AUM Fidelity 062/63, 2010, CD.
3
For a detailed ethnographic account of Parkers participation in this educational program, see Alexandre Pierre-
ponts contribution to the collaborative essay with Romain Tesler and Alexandre Pierrepont, Itutu (On how to
appropriately present oneself to others): Extra-Musical Pedagogical Values in Creative Music, Critical Studies in
Improvisation/tudes critiques en improvisation 4, no. 1 (2008). http://www.criticalimprov.com/article/view/382/
996 (The Inside (Outside) Songs of William Parker).
4
In addition to Parker and Baraka, the groups personnel for this date included vocalist Leena Conquest, trumpeter
Lewis Barnes, saxophonist Darryl Foster, pianist Dave Burrell, and drummer Hamid Drake. Subsequently, saxo-
phonist Sabir Mateen was added as a regular member of the ensemble.

260 Different Placements of Spirit
perform throughout Europe and North America over the next decade, producing
two albums of live recordings.5
The rst nights performance with outsized forces of children and amateurs, in so
many ways unlike the octet that would constitute Parkers core ensemble, nevertheless
embodied aspirations to collective participation and liberation central to Parkers prac-
tices as a bandleader, and key to his engagement with Mayelds music. Parker remem-
bers the performance as a very, very joyous event, a special concert, explaining,
when those kids came off [the bandstand] they were so happy, I mean these kids
were empowered that day.6 Parkers emphasis on empowerment resonates with the
lyrics to many of Mayelds songs, and particularly the four he chose to arrange for
the occasion, a selection that also highlights the political in Mayelds music: the
love song Im So Proud, legible in the context of an African-American politics of
uplift,7 and three others with stronger political associations, from the Civil Rights
Era implications of People Get Ready and the more explicit This Is My Country,
to the post-Million Man March vision of New World Order. As Parker noted,
many of the children in the concert were born of African immigrants, their French
language a legacy of colonialism. Thus, the empowerment felt by these children
coming together and singing the lyrics Some people think we dont have the right
to say its my country, takes on a new political signicance, reframing Mayelds mess-
ages of unity and radical integration in a transnational, post-colonial context.
This process of extending and reframing the liberatory messages of Mayelds music
is central to Parkers conception of The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld, and it embraces
musical materials as well as extra-musical referents. As Parker has asserted, Every song
written or improvised has an inside song which lives in the shadows, in-between the
sounds and silences and behind the words, pulsating, waiting to be reborn as a new
song.8 The goal for Parker is to bring these inside songs to the fore, with the ensem-
ble members collectively drawing out their own connections to the musical and cultural
materials of Mayelds music. They do this not by repeating the past through a delity
to Mayelds recordings, but by reincarnating his historically grounded music in the
present: channeling it through their subjectivities as improvising performers, with a
delity to the spirit in which Curtis Mayeld wrote his songs.9 In the process,
Parkers ensemble transforms these songs by breaking open both form and content,
expanding upon them with new musical and textual materials, and creating space, as
Parker suggests, for previously undisclosed perspectives.
Thus, Parkers project enacts a complex kind of historicism: it collapses temporal
distance by remaking Mayelds music in the present, while highlighting historical
5
The rst is a recording of a performance from their 2004 appearance at the New York Is Now! Festival in Rome,
available from the Italian label Rai Trade, The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld; the second is a compilation of per-
formances from 2001 to 2008: I Plan To Stay a Believer: The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld.
6
Parker, interview with the author, September 2011.
7
In his book Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayeld and the Rise and Fall of American Soul
(New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004), Craig Hansen Werner has written, Overowing with the joy of self-accep-
tance, Im So Proud quietly afrmed the Black Power movements slogan Black Is Beautiful (119).
8
Parker, liner notes to I Plan to Stay a Believer.
9
Parker, liner notes to The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld.
depth by creating palimpsestic revisions in which the layers of the past are visible.
Acknowledging this historicism is crucial to understanding the cultural politics of
Parkers project. As he notes,
at the same time were doing Curtis Mayeld, were doing a project called Raining on
the Moon that has got songs, lyrics, snap-crackle-and-popa lot of it is social,
politicalso, you say, Well, now I could have just done that.10
Indeed, many of Parkers original songs address themes similar to those found in May-
elds lyrics. The implication is that doing Curtis Mayeld carries with it a special
signicance, and I contend that this signicance lies in the transhistorical cultural
space created between the eras in which many of Mayelds songs were current
those of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movementsand the present moment of
reinterpretation. In this space, the musical and textual contributions of Parkers ensem-
ble might be understood to enact critical agency, signifying not only on musical but
historical and political matters. I also contend that Parkers collaboration with Amiri
Baraka is essential to Parkers historico-political project, for in choosing to self-identify
with the spirit of Mayeld as he does, Parker gestures toward another inside song: the
vision of a unied, self-aware, and politically active African-American culture, aspiring
to what Baraka, writing in 1966, called Unity Music.11 With The Inside Songs of Curtis
Mayeld, Parker transgresses the genre boundaries that obscure this vision, situating his
project in a lineage of Black Music and aspiring to a liberatory politics at the level of
musical process, all toward the end of fashioning from Mayelds sounds and spirit a
contemporary politics of African-American identity and political strugglethe rebirth
of a message that [is] going to help you to survive.12
Tribute Projects, Race, Genre, and Historicism

The differences between rhythm and blues and the so-called new music or art jazz,
the different places, are articial, or they are merely indicative of the different place-
ments of spirit.
(LeRoi Jones [Amiri Baraka], The Changing Same (R&B and New Black Music)13)
In the liner notes to his album, The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld, Parker reveals, This
is the rst project, in my 30-year career, that I have devoted to the music of someone
else14all of his prior outings as a leader have featured original music. In an inter-
view, Parker explained, I dont really like to do projects and to be a project
person, citing the tendency of such repertory projects to eclipse other efforts: you
get stuck on projectsyou only get hired for these projects, rather than your own
music. He continued, with some amusement, You know, I noticed, in the Downbeat
10
11
LeRoi Jones [Amiri Baraka], The Changing Same (R&B and New Black Music), Black Music (New York:
W. Morrow, 1967; reprint, New York: AkashiClassics, 2010), 20541. All citations refer to the 2010 edition.
12
13
Jones [Baraka], Changing Same, 215.
14
poll this year, I got an arranger nomination, and thats probably because of that Curtis
Mayeld record.15 Parkers bemused response to the nomination underscores what an
unusual gesture it is for him to assume the role of arranger and interpreter;16 it also
alludes to the way in which Parkers practice of ensemble improvisation, discussed
later, complicates both traditional models of arrangement and notions of his own
leadership.
Beyond the novelty of his leading an ensemble devoted to the music of someone
else,17 Parkers decision to focus on Mayelds music is itself notable, particularly
in light of how tribute projects often position their practitioners in the lineages of cano-
nical gures. In a sense, tribute albums help to construct and reafrm the boundaries of
the tradition, generating standard texts that interpreters can treat with varying
degrees of novelty, thereby keeping the interpreted music circulating while potentially
reinvigorating it. On the subject of tradition, Parker asserts,
I grew up listening to Smokey Robinson, The Temptations, Martha and The Vandel-
las, Gladys Knight and The Pips, and Curtis Mayeld and The Impressions. In my
mind, their music was not separate from Marian Anderson, Count Basie, Coleman
Hawkins, Ben Webster, Don Byas, Sarah Vaughan, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry,
Cecil Taylor, Bill Dixon, and Louis Armstrong. All this music is part of an African
American tradition that comes out of the blues. The roots of the jazz known as
avant-garde are also in the blues, the eld holler, and the church. Avoiding articial
separations is the key to understanding the true nature of the music. All these artists
ultimately speak using this reservoir of sounds and colors that we can use to paint our
own music.18
Thus Parker situates his tribute project not in the generically dened jazz tradition,
but in a tradition constituted by an ethnically marked cultural network: the African
American tradition that comes out of the blues. In a sense, he urges his listeners
not to hear this music as a hybridization of disparate styles but instead as the
coming together of a single lineage, the articial separations of style being music
industry ctions that mask the true nature of the musicthat is, at least in part, a
multivalent commentary on the African-American experience.
This understanding of a holistic African-American tradition unied by a broadly
dened conception of the blues is not unique to William Parker, and one of its most
forceful longtime advocates is his collaborator on The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld,
Amiri Baraka. Im particularly interested in the way that Barakas presence and his con-
tributions to the project interact with some of the aspirations outlined in his 1966 essay,
15
16
Parker has subsequently developed a big band project devoted to the music of Duke Ellington, The Essence of
Ellington. The groups debut performance, in Milan on 5 February 2012, was recorded for Parkers Centering
Records and is available from AUM Fidelity: William Parker, Essence of Ellington / Live in Milano, AUM Fidelity
CENT 1008/9, 2012, CD. At the time of the 2011 interview, Parker was working up the ensemble in preparation for
the Milan premiere, and claimed, for the reasons cited above, that the Ellington project would probably be the last
project I do.
17
18
Ibid.
The Changing Same (R&B and New Black Music). Here it is worth quoting the con-
cluding paragraphs of Barakas piece:
But here is a theory stated just before. That what will come will be a Unity Music. The
Black Music which is jazz and blues, religious and secular. Which is New Thing and
Rhythm and Blues. The consciousness of social reevaluation and rise, a social spiri-
tualism. A mystical walk up the street to a new neighborhood where all the risen
live. Indian-African anti-Western-Western (as geography) Nigger-sharp Black and
strong.
The separations, articial oppositions in Black Music resolved, are the ditty
strong classic. (Ditty bop.) That is, the New Black Music and R&B are the
same family looking at different things. Or looking at things differently. The col-
lection of wills is a simple unity like on the street. A bigger music, and muscle,
for the move necessary. The swell of a music, of action and reaction, a seeing,
thrown in swift slick tone along the entire muscle of a people. The Rhythm
and Blues mind blowing evolution of James-Ra and Sun-Brown. That growth
to include all the resources, all the rhythms, all the yells and cries, all that infor-
mation about the world, the Black ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, opening
and entering.19
Barakas vision of resolving the separations, articial oppositions in Black Music res-
onates strongly with Parkers comments above, and in fact it seems that their unanimity
in this vision of a unied Black Music speaks powerfully to their collaboration on The
Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld. I would contend that the project itself represents an
attempt at forging this sort of unity, a Rhythm and Blues mind blowing evolution
of James-Ra and Sun-Brown. Or, as Parker puts it,
We are trying to let [Mayelds] spirit nd its voice today through musicians who
not only know Mayelds songs, but more importantly, who know themselves.
They are familiar with the language of a music that includes Curtis Mayeld
and Sun Ra.20
I would also contend that Parkers use of the term project to describe The Inside Songs
of Curtis Mayeld can be illuminated by the analysis of Tanya Kalmanovitch in her dis-
sertation Indo-jazz fusion: Jazz and Karnatak Music in Contact, while at the same
time providing a corrective. In her chapter entitled Improvising, Identity and Hybrid-
ity in the New York Scene, Kalmanovitch proposes an understanding of the term
project that, when reframed regarding race and ethnicity, can be protably applied
to Parkers project:
In the downtown scene of the early 1990s, non-black performers responded to the
canonization of jazz, with its aggressive and nostalgic marketing of black young
lions, with a range of projects that echoed the increased circulation of global
sounds These and other actions by highly successful white performers served to
consolidate the concept of the musical project, a term which quickly displaced
band and which located music of previously un-hyphenated white musicians in
a zone of ideology and identity.

19
20
A project is more than a band: it is an aesthetically-, thematically- and temporally-
bounded body of compositions and performative approaches in which extra-musical
features give music a narrative frame.21
Parker was a central gure in the downtown scene of the early 1990sindeed, this
period saw his increasing visibility as both a bandleader and, with his wife Patricia
Nicholson, as an organizer of the Vision Festival22and his cohort included a
number of other African-American musicians who were held (or held themselves) at
arms length from the ossifying canonization of jazz. Though Kalmanovitchs point
about the reactions of non-black musicians to this hegemonic process is well taken,
her analysis does not seem to acknowledge that African-American musicians might
also be put off, or even pushed aside, by the conservative ideological underpinnings
of the MarsalisCrouchMurray consensus, or that some might posit competing con-
ceptions of blackness, thereby staking out zone[s] of ideology and identity.
With this corrective in mind, The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld seems aptly
described as an aesthetically-, thematically- and temporally-bounded body of compo-
sitions and performative approaches in which extra-musical features give the music a
narrative frame. In the liner notes to the AUM Fidelity recording, Parker identies the
historical and cultural frame explicitly:
In the 1960s during the civil rights movement there was a musical soundtrack in the
background: Max Roach, Charles Mingus, Archie Shepp, Jackie McLean, John Col-
trane. Curtis Mayeld was right in the middle directing his music to the cry of
freedom.23
This list juxtaposes Mayeld with some of the most visibly political jazz musicians of
the era24the cry for freedom calls to mind Abbey Lincolns momentous perform-
ance on Roachs Freedom Now Suiteand demonstrates how the shared struggle
against racial oppression provides a historiographic context that supersedes musical
genre. Parker continues by outlining a unied lineage of African-American music
that dovetails into political resistance:
Ritual into Field Holler > Field Holler into Spiritual > Spiritual into Blues > Blues
into Swing > Swing into Bebop > Bebop into Post Bop > Post Bop into Avant
Garde > Avant Garde back to Ritual. A Circle, and all part of the bigger tune
called Peoples Music. Reclamation of land, self-determination, and right to change
existing structure rather than assimilation into a quagmire misnamed progress,
Inside Songs are time into rhythm, rhythm into pulse into chant.25
21
Tanya Kalmanovitch, Indo-jazz fusion: Jazz and Karnatak Music in Contact, (PhD diss., University of
Alberta, 2008), 141.
22
For an insightful discussion of the origins of the Vision Festival and of Parkers career and worldview, see Scott
Curries dissertation, Sound Visions: An Ethnographic Study of Avant-Garde Jazz in New York City (PhD diss.,
New York University, 2009).
23
24
For accounts of the political activities and afnities of each of these musicians, see Ingrid Monsons Freedom
Sounds: Civil Rights Call Out to Jazz and Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
25
It is worth returning here to the political import of Barakas Civil Rights-era essay, from
the same passage cited earlier:
The collection of wills is a simple unity like on the street. A bigger music, and muscle,
for the move necessary. The swell of a music, of action and reaction, a seeing, thrown
in swift slick tone along the entire muscle of a people.26
Both authors invoke the imagery of a populace in active resistance, taking to the streets,
chantingrevolutionary imagery. The connection between the musical and the politi-
cal resides in this gesture of coming together.
At the same time, it is worth noting the decades separating the Civil Rights and Black
Power movements from the era in which Parker and Baraka began their collaboration on
The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld. Both artists lived through those earlier movements,
and their birth dates frame Mayelds: Baraka was born in 1934, Mayeld in 1942, and
Parker in 1952. Nevertheless, the gesture of revisiting Mayelds music is one of reaching
back to a political moment when revolutionary potential seemed more tangible. Parkers
motivations in this respect seem twofold. First, there is an overture to cultural memory:
for Parker, Mayeld becomes a symbol for a panoply of African-American artists, some
popular and some esoteric, some actively political and others not, but all folded together
within a history and a unity of African-American cultural production. Continuing in the
liner notes to the AUM Fidelity recording, he writes another list that shades across arti-
cial separations of genre and discipline:
Heartbeats, Stairsteps, Temptations, Supremes, Miracles, Impressions, Contours,
Crusaders, Clouds of Joy, The Messengers and The Arkestra. Rahsaan, Hassan, Han-
nibal Yusef Waliyaya, Yusef Iman. The unrecognized old days, Lowell Davidson, Alan
Shorter, Larry Neal, Bob Kaufman, Ed Bullins, Ben Caldwell, who are they? They are
also inside Curtis Mayeld songs, as well as Robert Thompson, Romare Bearden, Ted
Joans, Nikki Giovanni: to love one is to love them all.27
Second, this invocation of cultural memory is an act of reclamation aimed at a contem-
porary cultural politics. In the same liner notes cited above, Parker envisions the
almost-emergent revolutionary potential of this cultural history for a hip-hop gener-
ation beset by urban decay and corrupted by commercialism:
Underneath the pulse and crust are shouts for liberation and respect, to the left of the
melody ready to surface from the gaps in the cement that covers the grass in the South
Bronx inhabited by the low baggy pants clan who later signed contracts with Madison
Avenue.28
Later, he continues:
We need Those who can self-ignite and keep the re of compassion glowing, who
will never forget the despair on the faces of the people who think their only hope is
basketball. This music is for them and for the young girls who are born beautiful
but are told they are ugly by people who want to sell them makeup to cover up the
26
27
28
Ibid.
beauty Lets play all night for them until the volcano of justice erupts, stretching
the sentiments of each lyric as a way of responding to the call to get ready; get
ready to prepare for a new world. The music, the poetry, the dance and the theatre
once stolen will be returned.29
Thus Parker makes it clear that, by interpreting the songs of Curtis Mayeld, his aim is
not to return to the glory of an idealized past, but to return the stolen potential of a
revolutionary past to his contemporary political moment, recasting the aesthetic and
political world of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the present. In this way, Parkers
project points toward the era in which Mayelds music was most visible, simul-
taneously making it new while highlighting its historical distance. This is not a nostalgic
gesture, but an attempt to repurpose the message of Mayelds music in service of a
contemporary vision of African-American cultural identity and political engagement.
Spontaneity, Spirituality, Empowerment, and Musical Praxis

The school of music I wanted to be associated with was the black music revolutionary
spiritual school. At the same time, I had to be open to the unknown school that would
reveal itself as time went on.(William Parker, who owns music?30)
Parkers goal for the ensemble is to channel the spirit of Curtis Mayelds music col-
lectively, transforming his songs through improvisatory interventions in poetic
content, musical style, and form. While revisiting Mayelds music has to be, in
some sense, a historical excavation, Parker is very clear in his desire not to present
any mummied corpses:
The music that passed through the life and work of Curtis Mayeld cannot be dupli-
cated. The question becomes, how can it continue? I also ask myself this question in
connection to Duke Ellington or Thelonious Monk. It always seemed to me that
when Ellington died, the music physically died with him. We were left orphaned,
with just the recorded part of his work and all these notes on paper, but that is
not the reality. Once you realize this truth, you can nd a different way to proceed
to re-create the songs. Paradoxically, you can only nd a way to play the music by
initially afrming that it cannot be done.31
Parkers insistence on the irretrievability of the past might be read as a critique of reper-
tory jazz and the nostalgic canonization cited by Kalmanovitchin the AUM Fidelity
liner notes Parker writes, We dont need preservationists, revivalists, bootleggers or
music police.32 The ensembles solution to the paradox that Parker cites above is to
remake Mayelds songs not only for the present historical moment, but for the
present moment of each performance. As Parker stresses, every concert, every time
we do it, its different, totally different.33 This variability is not constrained within pre-
arranged solo or group improvisations, but extends to groove, tempo, stylistic
29
Ibid.
30
William Parker, Who Owns Music? Notes From A Spiritual Journey (Kln: Buddys Knife Jazz Edition, 2007), 33.
31
32
33
reference, musical and textual content, and formal structure. Thus, Parkers approach
to Mayelds music not only enacts a critique of repertory performance, but the ensem-
ble itself continually deconstructs its own repertoire: through the interplay of group
improvisation and an attentiveness to what Parker calls playing in real time,34 each
performance of a song is made anew, resisting the repetition of prior performances.
Parkers interpretive practice prioritizes individual agency as much as spontaneity,
but it is an agency that is responsible to the collective, in service of a spiritual commu-
nion35 thats grounded in Parkers broader worldview. In what Scott Currie has
termed Parkers theosonic ontology, music occupies a realm of existence separate
from and prior to mundane human reality.36 In Parkers words,
music existed before man, as a separate entity. Man didnt invent music, he discov-
ered music, or what I call the sound stream. When we play music, what were doing
is throwing lines into the sound stream, and then we try to get the sound stream to
come back through us as music.37
Here, it is worth noting Parkers language in describing Mayelds music, above: The music
that passed through the life and work of Curtis Mayeld cannot be duplicated.38 In Parkers
cosmology, individual musicians are not the creators of music, but the catalysts of a reac-
tion that brings forth a unique portion of musics innite potential.39 Thus, the reality of
music is channeled through the subjectivity of the live performer, and does not reside in the
objective traces that remain: just the recorded part and all these notes on paper. The
goal, then, for Parker and the members of his ensemble, is not to animate the remains of
Mayelds music, but to call upon the spirit in which Curtis Mayeld wrote his songs40
in order to be the catalysts for a new expression: we nd our center within his music
so that we may become ourselves. Hopefully to present a full spectrum story that would
be in tune with the original political and social message laid out by Curtis.41
In the process, the ensemble alters, and sometimes diverges entirely, from Parkers
own transcriptions and arrangements of Mayelds songs, guided by their sense of what
the music requires in the moment. Parker refers to this open-ended approach to
musical materials and ensemble organization as self conduction.42 Describing this
praxis in the context of performing his own compositions with his large ensemble
The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, Parker writes:
Self conduction is the concept of conducting oneself in and out of sections of a com-
position. It is the same concept one would use in a small group setting such as a trio
or quartet. Each player in a section can play prearranged or composed material. There
34
Ibid.
35
Currie, Sound Visions, 232.
36
Ibid., 231.
37
Pete Gershon, Pete Gershon talks with Contemporary Musics Best Kept Secret: William Parker, AUM Fidelity,
http://www.aumdelity.com/soundboardwp.htm (accessed October 23, 2013).
38
39
40
41
42
This is a riff on Butch Morriss term for conducted ensemble improvisation, conduction.
is also the option of creating parts or settings at the moment. Working individually or
as a section. The rule is the moment always supersedes the preset compositional idea.
Each player has the freedom to create their own part if they feel the part they would
create is better than the written part at that moment.43
In the context of The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld, this freedom means that, through
the interventions of individual players and their ensemble interactions, the arrange-
ments of Mayelds songs become not just malleable but mutable: form and content
are negotiated in real time, and, once broken open, need not be restored to some pre-
ordained state. The result is a music that is continually in the process of becoming,
where preset materials act as points of reference and musical signiers, but do not
necessarily dictate the musical ow or outcome.
This ensemble approach has a metaphysical dimension that reects Parkers musical
cosmology. Improvisation, Parker writes,
is not the art of making up, it is the art of emptying oneself of all preset ideas, not
making up music but just praying and attempting to live a life in the spirit. To even-
tually transcend all preset form but as prayer, let it be spontaneous, its order being
inside you.44
This goal of transcendence is also applied to interpreting existing music, including the
music of Curtis Mayeld. Parker sees no qualitative distinction between improvisation
and composition, but instead between the quantity of preset materials involved.
Every improvisation is a composition, but not every composition contains improvisa-
tion. He continues, Both concepts of composition, preset and spontaneous, have to
transcend themselves to work When the music procreates during performance to
create a living entity, it is successful.45 Thus, in order for The Inside Songs of Curtis
Mayeld to succeed, the ensemble must collectively transcend the materials of May-
elds compositions as well as Parkers arrangements, creating a new music with a
life of its own. This process of spiritual transcendence, of birthing a living entity,
is intertwined with the channeling of the sound stream cited earlier, and it
depends on spontaneity and openness to the unknown.
We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue

JazzTimes: Why do you call your project the Inside Song[s] of Curtis Mayeld?
[William Parker] Its like having a tablecloth thats reversible. We see only one side of
it, but theres another side, which may be the most beautiful side, which we havent
seen. And when you really tap into the music, it opens up and goes beyond his notes
and words. That was the concept, to tap inside. Because what he was doing, is not
really so different from what Im doing.46
43
William Parker, liner notes to Mayor of Punkville, AUM Fidelity 015/16, 2000, CD.
44
Parker, Who Owns Music? 100.
45
Ibid., 68.
46
Michelle Mercer, William Parker on Curtis Mayeld, JazzTimes, June 2001, http://jazztimes.com/articles/
20555-william-parker-on-curtis-mayeld.
Through The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld, Parker and his ensemble identify with
Mayelds music so that [they] may become [themselves],47 reframing his politics
of uplift and struggle for their historical moment and remaking his songs in the emer-
gent moment of each performance. In order to examine how this unfolds, I turn to one
of the songs that appears on both of the ensembles albums, We the People Who Are
Darker Than Blue. In dramatically reconguring and expanding Mayelds song, the
group gives it an epic treatment in the truest sense: it serves as a framework for con-
structing in sound and text a mythological history, one that builds upon Mayelds
materials but also extends and comments upon them. In doing so, it provides a
vivid illustration of Parkers description above of what it means to get inside the
music, to go beyond [Mayelds] notes and words.
Mayelds Recordings
In order to explore how Parkers group turns Mayelds song inside out, it helps to
establish how Curtis Mayeld structured and presented his material; after all, Mayeld
himself, or, in Parkers words, the spirit in which Curtis Mayeld wrote these songs,48
is a crucial agent in the collaboration. Moreover, We the People Who Are Darker Than
Blue provides a compelling case study not only for exploring the historicist interpret-
ations of Parkers ensemble, but for considering Mayelds own recorded versions and
revisions. Mayeld released two recordings of the song in the early 1970s: the rst
appears on his solo debut album, Curtis;49 the second, released a year later, is a live
recording from The Bitter End in New York.50 Remarkably, Mayeld revisited We
the People Who Are Darker Than Blue on his nal album, New World Order, released
in 1996, six years after a tragic on-stage accident left him paralyzed.51 This last version
is particularly signicant, since it presents Mayeld himself re-engaging with the songs
style and content, as well as its themes of unity and political consciousness, more than
two decades after the original recording was conceived. It is thus tempting to interpret
Mayelds nal recording as both a musical and extra-musical revision, reecting the
changed personal and political circumstances of its moment.
Appropriate to Barakas aspiration to Unity Music, Mayelds song is a call to soli-
darity within the African-American community, a plea for self-awareness and a
renewed commitment to collective uplift. Highlighting the cultural ground he shares
with Parker and Baraka, Mayeld addresses this community by way of the blues-as-
metaphor, referring to those who are darker than blue, are we gonna let what
others say come true? Mayeld draws attention to divisions yet to be overcome,
including internal race and class oppressions (high yellow girl) as well as black-on-
black violence (But theres the joker in the street lovin one brother and killin the
47
48
49
Curtis Mayeld, We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue, Curtis, Curtom CRS 8005, 1970, LP.
50
Curtis Mayeld, We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue, Curtis/Live! Curtom CRS 8008, 1971, LP.
51
Curtis Mayeld, We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue, New World Order, Warner Brothers 9, 463482,
1996, CD.
other.). Ultimately, as the nal lyric highlights, Mayelds song is an admonishment
not to rest on the accomplishments of the Civil Rights Era, but to maintain an aware-
ness of the challenges facing African-American communities, with a resolve to work
together toward collective uplift: let us not be so satised, for tomorrow can be an
even brighter day.
All three of Mayelds recordings share the same formal structure and basic text,
though there are some telling changes in the 1996 lyrics, discussed below. The song
is divided into two contrasting sections that alternate in an ABA form: the A section
is slow, with the expansive character of a ballad; the B section is faster, with the groov-
ing, driving rhythmic sensibility of dance music. The form and presentation of the
lyrics are also differentiated between the A and B sections: the A section consists of
verses and refrains (which begin Pardon me brother) in the style of strophic song,
while the B section consists of a single verse declaimed in the style of spoken-word
poetry. In each of the three versions, the character of the initial A section is established
by a different instrumental introduction, but each concludes the section with a variant
of the same transitional melody (Example 1); this melody builds to ve percussive hits,
the nal one landing on a downbeat that gives way suddenly to the contrasting B
section. This abrupt shift in tone creates a sense of dramatic rupture rather than tran-
sition, as if the elegiac, reective A section were broken open to reveal its more
dynamic, assertive counterpart on the other side. Both of the studio recordings
feature an arpeggiated harp re-transition to the A section that becomes an important
frame of reference in Parkers interpretations; in Mayelds live recording, this
missing instrumental texture is replaced by a brief bass tremolo. In each of the record-
ings, the A section returns by proceeding directly into the verse, thus reinforcing the
sense that the B section has been an interruptionor, perhaps more appropriate to
the political implications of both music and text, an intervention.
It is clear that the differences of instrumentation and arrangement in Mayelds two
recordings from the early 1970s reect the different practical realities of studio and live
performance: the live version features Mayelds touring group, including electric
guitars, electric bass, drums, and congas, while the studio recording incorporates
lush horn and string arrangements, as well as piano and harp. Signicant in both
early recordings, however, is the featured role of the congas, played by Henry
Gibson. In the songs three-part structure, the B section is dominated by the sound
Example 1. Mayeld, transitional melody, We the People Who Are Darker Than
Blue.
of the congas, and begins in both recordings with a conga solo. While the rhythmic
prole of the outer sections is relaxed and spacious, gently lilting through slowly chan-
ging harmonies, the central section is rhythmically sharp and driving, full of hard
attacks and short, percussive hits. Understanding the congas as an index of Afro-dia-
sporic identity in this period provides an interesting context for this shift of musical
tone. In the rst performance documented on Curtis/Live, Mighty Mighty (Spade
and Whitey), Mayeld himself alludes to this instrumental signication: as the
band cuts out, leaving Gibsons congas as the sole accompaniment to his vocals, May-
eld sings, We dont need no music, we got conga We dont need no music, we got
soul.52 This interpolation seems to answer another, also not included on the songs
original recording by The Impressions: a reference to the title and hook lyrics of
James Browns recent Black Power anthem Say it Loud (Im Black and Im
Proud).53 Thus, the congas become entwined with soul in the articulation of black
pride, an articulation that doesnt need musicthat is, an articulation that is self-suf-
cient, that does not require the artices of melody and harmony. In this context, the
dominance of the congas in the B section, combined with the change from the
measured observation of the ballad to the active intensity of the dance, as well as
with Mayelds change from singing to declaiming the text, seems marked by refer-
ences to black self-determination and liberatory struggle. The lyrics to the two early
1970s recordings express a shift in tone here as well. The text of the rst A section is
questioning, almost pleading, sung in Mayelds characteristic falsetto. In contrast,
the tone of the B section is more direct.54
Mayelds command to Get yourself together is not only a call to end violence
within the African-American community, but also to understand ones role within
that community, and perhaps to act collectively in the face of a common enemy:
learn to know your side. While Mayelds lyrics here do not explicitly call for militant
resistance, their musical setting, with its increased energy and percussive intensity,
seems to imply some kind of action; at the very least, it suggests a militancy of discipline
in the way one comes to self-knowledge, a kind of hard-edged realism about ones
social position and the dynamics of racial oppression. The theme of unity is reinforced
by Mayelds admonition to keep peace with me, and I with you serves as a call to end
sectarian violence. Thus the B section might be understood, guratively, as a sort of
inside song within Mayelds own composition, providing context for and forcefully
answering the questions of the imploring A section that frames it.55 In a sense, May-
elds song enacts a psychological drama where the latent frustrations aroused by
the internalized oppressions of the A section erupt forth in the B section, modeling
a rupture where restraint gives way to movement and change. It is this relationship
52
Curtis Mayeld, Mighty Mighty (Spade and Whitey), Curtis/Live! Chicago, Curtum CRS 8008, 1971. LP.
53
James Brown, Say it LoudIm Black and Im Proud, King Records 5-1047, 1969, LP.
54
Mayeld, We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue, Curtis. Complete lyrics for the song can be found at
http://genius.com/Curtis-mayeld-we-the-people-who-are-darker-than-blue-lyrics.
55
It is worth noting that Thelonious Monk referred to a songs bridge as its inside (see e.g. in Ira Gitler, Ira Gitler
Interviews Thelonious Monk (1957), reprinted in The Thelonious Monk Reader, ed. Rob van der Bliek, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001) 80.
between awareness and action, and the related tension between self-discipline and vio-
lence, that Baraka will exploit in his work with Parkers group.
Mayelds return to We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue in 1996 departs
from the earlier recordings in ways that give it a darker, more conicted sensibility.
This may be because, as the millennium drew to a close, the brighter day prophe-
sied in 1970 had not yet been realized. Also, as noted earlier, Mayeld had been
living with the physical trauma and limitations of his paralysis: the vocal track for
We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue was recorded with a portable setup
by producer Roger Troutman while Mayeld lay in bed at home.56 That Mayeld
may have been struggling with his own weariness, political or physical, seems
evident in the changes made to the lyrics in the central section of the song.57 Here
there seems a sense of bitterness or alienation (who in the hell am I to say?).
The nal, extra line appended to the verse, What goes around comes around,
seems almost a sort of recrimination. There is a sadness in it that belies the hope
for a brighter day with which the song still comes to a close. Perhaps most politically
signicant, though, is the change of the second line from learn to know your side
to learn to take the time. Here, what seems to be an admonition to be conscien-
tious has replaced a call to know your side in a racially dened struggle. All of this
might well be understood as a response to racial unrest in the early 1990s, as in the
LA riots following the verdict in the Rodney King trial: The peace we keep will be
the peace you reap, today there is no other way.
The synthesized instrumentation and musical treatment of the 1996 recording
reect Mayelds engagement with contemporary hip-hop production styles. Mayeld
was aware of the historical distance bridged by the recording, explaining,
Fusing elements of hip-hop on this CD was not so much a concession to the times, as
much as it was a connection to the times You have to stay true to yourself while
recognizing and acknowledging whats going on now.58
The structure of the song is the same: as before, the up-tempo, dance groove B section
provides a contrast, answering the slow, reective A sections that surround it, but now
the dance grooves frame of reference is updated, and the B section undergoes a trans-
formation in tone from the earlier recordings as notable as the textual revisions that
accompany it. The congas are still present, but they are synthesized congas with far
less presence in the mix, submerged in a busier texture of spatialized, sampled voices
and other synthesized percussion sounds (bells, claps, etc.), and laid out over a smoothly
funky bass line. The overall impression is one of a house party, with murmuring voices
providing ambiencean ambience from which Mayelds voice emerges, almost imper-
ceptibly at rst, drenched in reverb and sounding disembodied. One might read the rela-
tively light-hearted tone of this dance music as expressing the ambivalence of Mayelds
revised text: the rhythmic prole of the groove is more laid back, less driving than that in
the early 1970s recordings. Moreover, the sense of place invoked by this dance music
56
Werner, Higher Ground, 285.
57
Mayeld, We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue, New World Order.
58
Werner, Higher Ground, 284.
relocates Mayelds command to Get yourself together from the public square of the
congas to the domestic social scene of the party, seemingly transforming a public call to
action into a private didacticism. As with the changes to the lyrics cited above, it is tempt-
ing to read these musical changes as a reection of the seemingly diminished prospects
for movement politics some two-and-a-half decades after We the People Who Are
Darker Than Blue was originally recorded.
Parkers Recordings
The two recordings of We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue released by The
Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld are consistent with Parkers comments cited earlier:
The music that passed through the life and work of Curtis Mayeld cannot be dupli-
cated Paradoxically, you can only nd a way to play the music by initially afrming
that it cannot be done.59 Where Mayelds 1996 revision of the song maintains the
same structure, Parkers versions dismantle it, reducing its materials to essentials, omit-
ting entire passages, and elongating others through repetition; where Mayelds revi-
sion makes subtle but telling textual alterations, Parkers versions elide text,
substituting Barakas surreal poetics at great lengths, even giving him the last word;
and where Mayelds revision attempts to re-imagine the sound-world of the song
in the context of contemporary trends in hip-hop production, Parker channels the
reinvented music through his own musical ideal of live acoustic performance, an aes-
thetic self-consciously distanced from studio recording techniques.60 As should be clear
from the earlier discussion of Parkers ensemble practice of self conduction, the
recordings under consideration ought not be seen as realizations of a xed conception
of Mayelds song so much as documents of interpretations generated collaboratively
in the moment of performance. Nevertheless, the materials arranged beforehand by
Parker, however mutable, have a signicant bearing on the expressive content of May-
elds song, laying a foundation upon which the ensembles historicist interpretations
are continually reconstructed.
The musical elements shared between the two recordings highlight how Parker envi-
sions We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue. Toward the end of collective
improvisation, Parkers arrangement collapses the materials of Mayelds song to a
handful of premises, including changes to some elements that fundamentally alter
their character, while also adding newly composed materials. As in Mayelds original
1970 studio recording, the A section is given a melodic, instrumental introduction, but
Parker eschews Mayelds melody in favor of his own rst line (Example 2); Parker
also includes a second instrumental melody as a sort of interlude (Example 3), to be
introduced at the discretion of the horn section: the second line comes in when
they want to bring it in.61 This second line might be understood to take the place
59
60
As Parker once commented: I think whenever you listen to something recorded in the studio, its like eating
food with the plastic still on it. Gershon, Pete Gershon talks with contemporary musics best kept secret.
61
Example 2. Parker, rst line, We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue.
Note: * D# is used in the 2004 recording from Rome; E is used in the 2008 recording
from Cormons.
Example 3. Parker, second line, We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue.
of the melody that Mayeld uses to transition between the A and B sections in all three
of his recordings (see Example 1), but its function is very different, since, in perhaps the
most signicant alteration to the original song, Mayelds B section never arrives.
Instead, the harmonic and rhythmic character of the A section is transformed in
ways that open out to different formal possibilities.
In a gesture that liquidates the harmonic structure of Mayelds versions, Parkers
arrangement extracts the alternation of C# minor and F# minor harmonies that sets
the rst lines of the verse in the A section and extends them as a vamp over which
the music steadily unfolds (Example 4). Signicantly, the mode is changed from
minor to major, and each of the chords is conceived as a dominant 7th, resulting in
an alternating blue major/minor third above the tonic C#. The harmonic shift also
renders Mayelds melody bluer, since its original minor/pentatonic mode now
sits atop a major accompaniment. While on Mayelds three recordings the tempos
vary within a range of 120144 bpm to the quarter note, the tempo on the Parker
recordings is signicantly faster, in the range of 200216 bpm. As a result, when
Example 4. Parker, A section bass line, We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue.
Example 5. Mayeld, verse 1, line 1, We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue, as
recorded on Curtis.
Example 6. Conquest, verse 1, line 1, We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue, as
recorded on The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld.
Leena Conquest enters with Mayelds lyrics, the accompaniment is moving at

double-time: where Mayelds rendition sets one line of text to four bars of music
(Example 5), Conquests sets each line over eight bars (Example 6). The combi-
nation of this buoyant tempo with the alternating dominant-7th chords renders a
rather different mood from the slow, somber one of Mayelds original. The
effect of this is to activate the instrumental accompaniment, giving it more of the
dance groove sensibility associated with Mayelds central B section. In light of
the fact that Parkers arrangement elides Mayelds B section, this reversal of char-
acter has signicant dramatic implications.
As if to underscore this dramatic reversal, Parkers arrangement sets the refrain of
Mayelds song over a static F# minor drone, a shift in sonority rendered particularly
striking by the restriction of harmonic materials thus far. The change from the major
to the minor mode recalls the elegiac mood of Mayelds A section, and thus draws
attention to the very differences in Parkers arrangement by standing as a mnemonic
link to Mayelds original. The qualities of observation and reection expressed by
Mayelds A section are also recalled in Parkers setting of the refrain by a rhythmic
expansion into non-metered time, reinforcing the elegiac character by abandoning
the dance groove of his A section. Another allusion to Mayelds recordings comes
in the way pianist Dave Burrells articulates this new/old F# minor harmony, cascad-
ing in waves of arpeggiation across the keyboard. This gesture seems strongly remi-
niscent of the harp arpeggiation that provides the re-transition to the A section in
Mayelds two studio recordings, and it thus fuses two separate passages in May-
elds song: the refrain and the re-transition. This formal conation is particularly
signicant for Parkers elision of Mayelds B section: in Parkers arrangement, the
musical and dramatic contrast provided by the refrain holds the potential to open
onto a new section in its own right. This potential is realized quite powerfully in
the 2004 Rome interpretation of We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue by
Parkers ensemble, to be discussed below.
The presentation of Mayelds lyrics on the two recordings of We the People Who
Are Darker Than Blue is consistent with the approach taken by The Inside Songs of
Curtis Mayeld throughout, one that is characterized by processes of repetition, inter-
ruption, extension, and elision. Adding another layer of meaning to the conception of
inside songs, Amiri Barakas poetic recitation regularly breaks in on Mayelds lyrics,
sung by Leena Conquest. In a manner consistent with Parkers practice of self conduc-
tion, the two performers negotiate their shared space in real time, sometimes ceding to
one another, sometimes engaging in call and response, with Conquest repeating pas-
sages at will and Baraka engaging in dialogue or commenting obliquely. In Parkers
conception, Barakas role is a hermeneutic one:
Amiri Baraka is extending the message, writing off the words of Curtis Mayeld. It
adds another layer of text. You have the music, the lyrics, the arrangement of the
music, the improvisation, the unanswered questions that the music posesthe unan-
swered questions that are being posed spontaneouslythen you try to provide
responses with what Amiri Barakas doing.62
This role of extending the message is of particular interest for interpreting the revisions
that Parkers ensemble enacts upon We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue in per-
formance. Moreover, as is clear from comparing the two recordings, Barakas approach to
his texts is open-ended and exible, responsive to both his desires and to interactions with
the other performers: while his poetry on both recordings deals with similar themes, there
are no lines or even phrases shared between them. Taken along with the varying rep-
etitions and elisions of Mayelds lyrics provided by Conquest, Barakas spontaneous con-
tributions provide evidence of Parkers assertion that every concert, every time we do it,
its different, totally different.63 Thus, Baraka and Conquests engagement with May-
elds lyrics is analogous to the instrumentalists engagement with Parkers arrangements,
and this leveling of performance roles foregrounds the interplay between textual and
musical signication: in the complex network of layers described by Parker above,
Barakas responses feedback into the improvising collective, his inside songs
helping to shape the musical outcome.
62
Mercer, William Parker on Curtis Mayeld.
63
Rome, 2004
Of the two recordings of We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue by Parkers
ensemble, the 2004 Rome recording (outlined in Table 1) is more substantial in
length, poetic intervention, and formal invention.64 Barakas contributions to this per-
formance are particularly notable: while Mayelds lyrics are grounded in the historical
realities of 1970, Barakas interpolations expand upon his themes of self-awareness,
black identity, solidarity, and violence, reframing and deepening their perspective by
setting them against the backdrop of a mythological blackness that extends into pre-
history. In the course of performance, the Rome interpretation of We the People
Who Are Darker Than Blue evolves into an ABA form that is analogous to Mayelds
original conception, a remarkable gesture considering that Mayelds B section is not
included in Parkers arrangement. Instead, the ensemble arrives at its own B section by
extending the musical materials that Parker uses to set Mayelds refrain, discussed
above. Notably, however, this new section is not built upon Mayelds lyrics, long
since supplanted, but instead upon the imagery and cadence of Barakas poetry. This
new B section has a very different character from Mayelds B section, and, in combi-
nation with the revisions in Parkers arrangement of the A section, the Rome interpret-
ation of We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue projects a compelling reversal of
the dramatic juxtaposition between sections in Mayelds song: where Mayelds B
section turns outward, contrasting the A sections plaintiveness with a commanding
assertiveness, the new B section of Parkers ensemble makes an inward turn, contrast-
ing the grooving, almost playful character of his arrangement with a mood of expansive
reection. This inversion transforms the songs political message in ways that are elu-
cidated by Barakas text. It also enacts a historicist gesture on the level of musical style:
where Parkers A section is marked by references to R&B, the new B section inhabits the
sound-world of what was once called the New Thing. Thus, the 2004 Rome interpret-
ation of We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue articulates, through sonic
imagery, the uid juxtaposition of Unity Music envisioned by Baraka in 1966.
The A section on the Rome recording occupies the rst 11 minutes; its extended
scope is announced at the outset, as the instrumental introduction unfolds two turns
through Parkers rst line for over a minute and a half. In keeping with this
process of expansion, Conquest stretches Mayelds lyrics by breaking up the verses
with internal repetitions. In Mayelds rst verse (1:36), she pauses and repeats the
rst four lines, emphasizing the question they pose: are we gonna hang around this
town and let what others say come true? As if in elliptical response, and seemingly
prompted by a ringing, bell-like high C# octave from pianist Dave Burrell, Baraka
joins with his own poetic recitation, intoning: Negroes older than everything
(2:24). He repeats this phrase as Conquest continues with Mayelds verse, and as
she concludes by repeating the nal question, or is that really where its at?,
Baraka also arrives at the conclusion of his thought, Negroes older than everything
64
All textual and musical examples reproduced here are transcriptions from the recording of We The People Who
Are Darker Than Blue on The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld, and the timings included make reference to this
recording.
278
Table 1. Outline of We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue, as performed on The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld, Rai Trade RTPJ 0011, 2007, CD.
Different Placements of Spirit

Section Timing Musical or textual event Mayelds text Barakas text
A 0:05 Parker introduces the A section bass
line for We the People Who Are
Darker Than Blue
0:26 Parkers rst line (Ex. 2)
1:36 Conquest enters with Mayelds rst We people who are darker than blue, are
verse we gonna stand around this town and let
what others say come true?
2:24 Baraka enters with declamation Negroes older than everything
3:09 Conquest begins Mayelds second We people who are darker than blue, this
verse, but abandons it midway aint no time for segregating, Im talking
about brown and yellow, too
4:20 Parkers second line (Ex. 3) why they mama hum all the time, and say pray
child when they heard about ignorance and
sickness and crime
5:44 Intensifying ensemble interaction Negroes older than Jesus, Peter, Paul or Mary
supports Barakas declamation
6:55 Return of Parkers rst line and grandmama hummin tryin to remember why it
is they dont tell they children to kick these crackers
ass
7:24 Barakas fantasy of riot and Jojo come runnin out the whats-her-name
buildin sayin, you cant kill anybody.
9:12 Barnes/Mateen riff (Ex. 7) If it wasnt for Negroes bein older than everybody
they woulda killed a lot of mothafuckas by now
10:25 Unravelling of the groove When your grandmama stop hummin all hell gon
break out
B 11:04 Burrell introduces the F# minor and, if you could remember the words
sonority
12:05 Burrells cadential G# to F# motive is black horse, black rider
intoned by Baraka
Continued
Table 1. Continued
Section Timing Musical or textual event Mayelds text Barakas text
12:33 Baraka abandons declamation for
wordless singing
A 13:16 Parker reintroduces the A section
bass line
13:27 Return of Parkers rst line
14:19 Conquest returns with Mayelds Now I know we have great respect, for the
verse sister and the mother its even better yet
14:54 Burrell reintroduces the F# minor Pardon me brother, as you stand in your
sonority, ensemble returns to non- glory
metered time
15:44 Return to A section groove
16:02 Baraka returns with declamation and if you could remember the words, the pictures
embedded in that wordless melody from innity,
youd understand why you black
17:08 Burrells riff (Ex. 8) black rider of the black horse, seeking like the sun,
beyond what will come, leaving a trail of re
17:48 Return of Parkers rst line and the last thing we dig, the horse fades
18:07 Final crescendo of collective thats whats in the marrow of your grandmamas
Jazz Perspectives
improvisation hummi
279
but one thing: theyself (2:57). The implication is that where its at resides in the his-
torical primacy of blackness, a rebuke to the racist stereotypes Mayeld outlines in his
verse: Were just good for nothin, they all gure, a boyish, grown-up shiftless jigger.
This theme of the preeminence of blackness provides the ground upon which Baraka
builds both the dramatic arch of his text and its political program.
As Conquest continues with Mayelds second verse (3:09), Baraka introduces the
search for self-knowledge, as well as the aural image that will come to symbolize the
collective consciousness of the historical legacy of black culture, your grandmama
hummin: So they walk that line til they nd out who they is, and why they grand-
mama hummed that endless hum, older than any human sound in the universe, but
them about the drum (3:11). For Baraka, the tension between this exalted historical
legacy and the degradation of American racism points toward another tension
between violence and self-restraint, an emotional dissonance that begs resolution:
Its hard to cry and not know why (3:51). As if in response to Mayelds address
to urban black communities, Baraka asserts, Negroes older than cities. They stood
around til they thunk em up and they still dont know, some do, why they mama
hum all the time, and say pray child when they heard about ignorance and sickness
and crime (4:10). Here the hum, a song restrained, becomes itself a symbol of
restraint, the admonishment to pray a muted sort of response to the circumstances
of oppression. Parkers second line, slow and invocational in character, is introduced
by the horns, seemingly in response to the words pray child (4:20), and as it ascends,
Baraka sings, in imitation of the melodic outline, Ask yoself, ask yoself, ask yoself: do
you know who you is?65 (4:31). Here, Baraka addresses an imagined interlocutor who
will become the protagonist of his poetic narrative: the gure of an African-American
individual in search of self-knowledge and political engagement. For this individual, the
search is a journey inwards into cultural memory:
And listen to the cloud of silence enclose your face, and in that place a hum start to
come up, and tears roll back inside, and pictures come of something, you dont even
know what it is, and your grandmama hummin, your grandmama hummin, sayin
quiet, child. (4:40)
At this point Conquest has stopped singing Mayelds lyrics, breaking off midway
through the second verse, and instead she interacts with Barakas recitation by
humming, giving voice to the aural imagery of his poetry. Mayelds text will not
return for nearly 10 minutes, when Conquest brings in the second A section of the
song (14:20). In the meantime, a kind of shift in authority takes place, as Barakas
text supplants Mayelds. Baraka moves forward by elaborating on the theme of
black primacy in a jesting, boastful tone, as if signifying on the colonial ethos of
Western culture: Do you remember that December when the devil thought up
Santa Claus, told you that he was your father? (5:18). This passage rides upon an esca-
lation of ensemble interaction, as Hamid Drake switches to keeping time on his ride
65
Throughout my textual transcriptions of Barakas contributions, Ive used italics to indicate portions that are
sung.
cymbal and builds to driving, off-beat groove, while the horns slowly weave an inten-
sifying polyphony with Conquests vocables. Baraka continues: Negroes older than
Jesus, Peter, Paul or Mary Louis Armstrong was the one who gave Eve the idea
about the apple (5:44). The crescendo of ensemble accompaniment overtakes
Barakas recitation, then recedes, and, soon after he reenters, his jocular tone serves
to broach the theme of violent resistance: Negroes tryin to remember why it is
they dont tell they children to kick these crackers ass (6:43). As Baraka sings this last
phrase, trumpeter Lewis Barnes reintroduces Parkers rst line (6:55), and saxopho-
nists Sabir Mateen and Daryll Foster pick it up in succession, to which Baraka responds
by singing a countermelody. This moment of ensemble conuence, combined with the
implication of formal arrival brought on by the return of Parkers rst line, underlines
the signicance Barakas text: it is the imagining of a violent eruption that will precipi-
tate the rupture of the ensembles contrasting B section.
Returning to the theme of violence in the context of Mayelds versions here pro-
vides an example of how Baraka might be understood as extending the message of
the original song. Along the crescendo of Parkers rst line, Baraka continues his reci-
tation with a quasi-sung phrase that stokes the re of the ensemble dynamic: when
they grandmama stop hummin all kind of shit gon break out (7:05). In his lyrics, May-
eld condemns a self-defeating black-on-black violence and calls for solidarity in the
African-American community, exhorting his listener to learn to know your side in
the struggle for racial uplift; Baraka, on the other hand, addresses a threat of violence
that is not directed inwards but outwards, imagining a scene of abandonment to mili-
tant revolt, though one tinged with irony. This fantasy of riot unfolds over Parkers rst
line, but after the melody concludes and the energy of the accompaniment subsides,
Baraka reprises the scene, highlighting its signicance. In a sense, Baraka provides a
response to the militancy only implied in the central B section of Mayelds song,
where the shift in tone suggests a movement from observation to action. In the
scene above, Barakas imagined outbreak seems simultaneously cathartic and dyspho-
ric: the gure of the monkey lookin for the brothers calls to mind the trickster,
and thus it is not entirely clear whose screams and moans and pleads we hear. In
any case, for Baraka, the fact that this violent revolt has not yet occurred has to do
with the dignity and pride of place accorded by the mytho-historical primacy of black-
ness: If it wasnt for Negroes bein older than everybody they woulda killed a lot of
mothafuckas by now (9:15). Thus, he appears to riff on the question posed in May-
elds B section: Shall we commit our own genocide before you check out your
mind? In Barakas formulation, the process of check[ing] out your mind, one of
coming to self-knowledge within collective consciousness, is key to harnessing the
repressed rage that might otherwise nd outlet in violence.
As if in sympathy with this imagery of breaking restraint, the dynamic energy of
ensemble interaction here surges and ebbs in pockets of intensity. After Baraka
retells his fantasy of riot, he returns to a long list highlighting black primacy
Negroes older than religion, language, and so forthat the culmination of which
Barnes initiates a new riff on trumpet (9:12), joined by Mateen on alto saxophone
(Example 7). A crescendo follows Barakas line cited above (if it wasnt), with
Example 7. Barnes and Mateens riff, ca. 9:27 on We the People Who Are Darker Than
Blue, as recorded on The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld.
Foster ripping into the upper register of his tenor saxophone, and both Conquest and
Baraka singing. Shortly after Baraka reenters with recitation, the texture thins and the
energy is briey damped, as if to better hear his words: When your grandmama stop
hummin all hell gon break out (9:46). Here, though, the Barnes/Mateen riff carries
on, pushing the drama forward. As with the earlier riot scene, Baraka repeats his decla-
mation, and as he does the energy builds once again. When he returns to the previously
cited line, the steady vamp and groove that have been so assiduously maintained
throughout start to come undone: Parker pulls the bass out of sync with the rest of
the rhythm section (10:25); Drake keeps steady time for another half minute, but
then fractures the groove into a micro-timed irregularity (10:58); shortly afterwards,
Burrell begins to pound out a massive F# minor triad across the compass of the
piano (11:04), dissolving it into rapid arpeggiation. All the while, the horns interweave
an intricate polyphony, and Conquest seems to slip into speaking in tongues.
It is here that the ensemble arrives at the B section of the Rome interpretation. This
outburst of playing out responds directly to Barakas text (all hell gon break out),
musically manifesting the riot of repressed rage latent in the black collective conscious-
ness of his poetic narrative. Importantly, however, a metaphor of implosion might be
better suited to describing the process by which this space is achieved: where Mayelds
B section is more rhythmically driven and assertive (in a word, extroverted), this new
section by Parkers group is rhythmically expansive and diffuse, reective and intro-
verted. The combination of Burrells continual, drone-like guration, Drakes peripa-
tetic, coloristic drumming, and the horns ongoing, out-of-time polyphony renders an
invocational mood, while Barakas text takes an inward turn that suggests a struggle
within the self. The earlier admonition to pray child hangs over this section, but,
rather than showing restraint, this prayer carries the ecstatic abandonment and revolu-
tionary potential sublimated from Barakas fantasy of riot, musically manifest in the
unshackling of self-expression from the metrical groove. This is the sound-world of
Parkers black music revolutionary spiritual school,66 a prayer to the mystical
(abstract) God67 of the 1960s New Black Music: The secular voice seeking clarity,
or seeking religion (a spirit worship) compatible with itself.68 As Baraka writes in
66
Parker, Who Owns Music? 33.
67
68
Ibid., 223.
1966, this spirit worship is pushed by an emotionalism that seeks freedomnot

the complacent privilege found in the freedom to be a white man, but the
freedom to want your own particular hip self.69 Seen in this light, it is at this sectional
juncture that Parkers ensemble not only situates the 1960s and 1970s avant-garde
alongside and within Mayelds idiom, but identies the conception of Unity
Music with the process of becoming a unied self: for Barakas protagonist, the aware-
ness of the self within the consciousness of a unied black culture is a catalyst for bring-
ing forth, in Mayelds words, an even brighter day.
Barakas recitation in this B section takes on a new tone as well as new imagery. Gone
are the jocularity and barbed signifying so prevalent thus far; instead, his voice seems to
become both more intimate and insistent. As the ensemble spins out its free-blowing
polyphony, Baraka gets hung up on a single thought: if you could remember the
words, the words, the words, the words! (11:18). Here, the churning musical
texture seems to manifest the searching of Barakas repetitions. In a sort of cadential
gesture, Burrell superimposes a C# minor triad over the F# drone, highlighting the
motive of the uppermost G# resolving down to the tonic. Baraka responds by repeating
a phrase, intoned to the same G# to F# motive: black horse, black rider (12:05). He
continues haltingly, splicing lines of text in repeated fragments: black horse, black
rider thats whats in the marrow of your grandmamas hummin, she rememberin
what is lost and what is comin. Barakas insistent repetition and emphasis on the
words to be remembered seems to signal an important concept: the ability to articulate
self-knowledge, to give verbal expression to a history that is understood, but previously
only in a muted wayhumming as song without wordsto be consciously aware of
whats in the marrow of your grandmamas hummin. To remember what is lost
is to acknowledge the history of oppression and violence, both physical and cultural;
to remember what is comin seems an intriguing way to describe the awareness
of how these historical conditions operate in the present, as well as the revolutionary
knowledge of how to proceed. As the B section draws to a close, Baraka himself aban-
dons words (12:33), evoking the aural image of humming by singing a wordless tune
that melds with the polyphonic lines of the horn section and then disappears, as if
transmuted into instrumental melody. The ensemble texture gradually thins until
Parkers bass comes to a cadential F# against Burrells still-resonating piano drone;
after a brief caesura, Parker re-articulates the A sections characteristic bass line (13:16).
This return to the head conrms that what has just transpired has replaced May-
elds central B section. The dance groove is a bit slower now, and Parkers rst
line is treated quietly (13:27), almost gingerly, as if registering the introspective heat
of the foregoing re music. When Conquest picks up Mayelds verse (14:19), at
the same place Mayeld does when he returns to the A section, it is with a muted inten-
sity, and she proceeds without any of the internal repetitions that characterized the
earlier verses. Likewise, she is no longer interrupted by Barakas recitation, and her
singing is framed only by the rhythm section, without responses from the horns.
This relatively direct presentation of Mayelds music evinces a sense of catharsis
69
Ibid., 223.
following the dramatic climax of the ensembles B section. As Conquest reaches the
end of Mayelds verse, however, a gradual crescendo accompanies the lines when
the time comes and we are really free therell be no brothers left, you see?
(14:45). At the height of the nal phrase, Burrell reintroduces the arpeggiated F#
minor drone and the ensemble slips again into non-metered time (14:54). For the
rst time in the Rome interpretation, Conquest sings Mayelds refrain, and the
musical materials that formed the basis for the ensembles B section return to accom-
pany it, but the texture here is thinner than at the height of the B section, with only
Daryll Fosters tenor saxophone obligato to comment on Conquests vocals. As in the
foregoing verse, this passage seems more an arrival than a development toward some-
thing new; because it follows after the ery B section, and because of its relative
brevity, it seems a reverberation of the earlier music. This sense of an echo,
brought about by shared musical materials, retrospectively brings Mayelds
refrain into dialogue with Barakas poetry in the ensembles B section. Thus, May-
elds nal plea that tomorrow can be an even brighter day, nds a response in
Barakas admonition to remember the words, to strive toward an awareness of
history in order to know how to shape the future. As Conquest reaches Mayelds
words brighter day, Burrells tremolo F# minor harmony resolves back to C#
major in an appropriately bright plagal cadence (15:44); the dance groove returns
again, and Conquest trails off in wordless singing, ushering in the return of
Barakas recitation.
For the remainder of the performance the ensemble remains in the pocket of the
grooveupbeat and condent, almost triumphant. Baraka picks up with the
imagery he introduced during the B section, but the sense of struggle and stubborn
insistence has been replaced with ease and uidity as he elaborates on the thought
unnished earlier: and if you could remember the words , youd understand why
you black. (16:02). Here, Sabir Mateen joins Baraka in a gleefully mischievous dialo-
gue, squeaking, honking, and running mercurial lines into the upper register of his alto
saxophone (16:21), and the rhythm section responds with jocular, off-beat accents.
Barakas recitation comes to celebrate the achievement of self-awareness for his prota-
gonist, the questing African-American individual, for whom evidence will be your
residence (16:42). His imagery has a cinematic quality, depicting his heroic black
rider and black horse riding victoriously into the distance (16:56). As Barakas narra-
tion unfolds, the character of the rhythm sections accompaniment becomes more
assertive. Dave Burrell gradually develops an octave riff on piano that pushes and
pulls at the beat, becoming fully formed as Baraka recites leaving a trail of re
(17:08, Example 8), and Hamid Drake responds to Burrells riff with ever more
heavily accented drumming. The stomping beat that they create builds intensity up
through the culminating reintroduction of Parkers rst line, at exactly the point
where Baraka concludes the narrative of the black rider: and the last thing we dig,
the horse fades (17:47).
This penultimate escalation of ensemble intensity frames a passage in Barakas reci-
tation that is key to understanding his political narrative. In it, the black rider is set
off against another who appears in the distance:
Example 8. Burrells riff, ca. 17:08 on We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue, as
recorded on The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld.
and behind [the smoke] we might see another horse about to be, so far away neither
the beast nor its rider presents any color, then they will fail to rise like the rest, a
whirlwind will turn them back as we round, go further out, gone. (17:27)
Here, geographical distance might be read as a metaphor for cultural dislocation,
and the failure of this colorless rider to rise seems reminiscent of a central claim
in Barakas 1966 essay: that it is the proximity to the Black Life Force70 that
imbues Black Music with the re of emotional engagement and the authenticity of
cultural expression. As he asserts, The New Music (any Black Music) is cooled
off when it begins to reect blank, any place universal humbug.71 To be
cooled off is to be isolated from the real force itself,72 and to be universal is
to be colorless, eschewing the particularity of cultural identity. Thus, the victory
of Barakas black rider is achieved through a self-awareness bound up in the col-
lective consciousness of blackness (if you could remember the words youd
understand why you black). Seen in this light, Barakas valorization of the heroic
individual seems not an individualist conceptionone in which identity is
formed in opposition to othersbut instead a conception in which the formation
of a unied self depends on engagement with community and shared historical
lineage. Signicantly, this conception of identity formation is modeled by Parkers
practice of self conduction and the cultural politics of his Mayeld project: we
nd our center within his music so that we may become ourselves.73
The manner in which Barakas narrative ultimately valorizes the achievement of self-
awareness for his individual protagonist can be read as another example of extending
the message of Mayelds song. The lyrics of Mayelds A sections focus on unity
and the collective experience; while at times he addresses archetypical characters,
there is a sense that Mayeld is speaking to the community as a whole: We people
who are darker than blue. The lyrics of the B section, however, seem more pointedly
focused on an individual interlocutor: Get yourself together. In this section, Mayeld
seems to argue that the attainment of collective uplift depends upon individual aware-
ness, responsibility, and engagement. Throughout Barakas narrative on the Rome 2004
recording, the central question is one of how his protagonist arrives at an identity that is
grounded in community and history, and how this self-becoming productively subli-
mates the repressed rage that might otherwise nd outlet in self-destructive violence.
70
Ibid., 225.
71
Ibid., 226.
72
Ibid., 225.
73
In this sense, Barakas narrative devotes itself to theorizing the kind of self-awareness
that Mayeld demands in his B section. Considering that Parkers arrangement of
We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue elides this very section of Mayelds
song, it is notable that Barakas recitation so effectively elaborates on Mayelds call
to learn to know your side.
The 2004 Rome recording rides out in a joyous, carnivalesque ecstasy that builds
from the reprise of Parkers rst line (17:48), over Burrells driving riff-ostinato, to
another passage of collectively improvised polyphony from the horns, over a hard-
swinging groove from Drake, before aming-out in one last, softly smoldering turn
through Parkers head melody. Throughout, Baraka focuses on repeated juxtapositions
of only a few phrases, which he alternates with wordless singing. These phrases reorient
his recitation toward collective themes: cultural memory, group identity, historical
awareness, and solidarity in the change to come. The energetic group improvisation
that grows out of this passage manifests the coming together of the collective, and
the build-up of ensemble interaction toward the conclusion of the performance
seems to open out to the future, suggesting that the achievement of Barakas self-
aware, heroic black rider is not the end of revolutionary action but only its beginning.
As the performance draws to a close, the open-ended optimism expressed in the musi-
cians collaborative efforts seems to evoke the passage from the closing paragraphs of
Barakas 1966 essay, cited earlier:
The collection of wills is a simple unity like on the street. A bigger music, and muscle,
for the move necessary. The swell of a music, of action and reaction, a seeing, thrown
in swift slick tone along the entire muscle of a people.74
This optimistic ending also resonates with another passage, written by Parker, that
effectively situates this 2004 performance in relation to the eras of Barakas essay and
Mayelds song, acknowledging the changes in cultural and political realities, yet main-
taining a determination to keep striving:
What happens to a cutting-edge musician when the edge is no longer sharp?
When the cries for freedom, clusters, tone runs, and poly-rhythms wear out, after 40
years of struggle in the music business we nd ourselves in the same spot.
Every music seems to have superseded Great Black Music. The question is, will our
day ever come?
The answer that sings out most strongly is that our day came the minute we made a
commitment to life. Each day we live and are allowed to play music and feel the warm
sunshine is our day.75
Thus, Parkers ensemble continues to remake Mayelds music anew for every per-
formance, signaling that both the songs and the history of struggle that they represent
are unnished and ongoing, and heeding the admonition with which Mayeld himself
closes We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue: Pardon me brother, I know weve
74
75
Parker, Who Owns Music?, 44.
come a long, long way, but let us not be so satised, for tomorrow can be an even
brighter day.
Disclosure statement
Abstract
This article explores the politics of musical process and historiographic revision in
bassist William Parkers project The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld. Comprising
veteran downtown improvisers and poet Amiri Baraka, Parkers group reimagines
Mayelds music and message for the twenty-rst century, reconstructing form and
content anew in the moment of performance. In revisiting Mayelds songs, Parker
transgresses the genre boundaries of jazz, framing his project instead within a
broader lineage of black music, a gesture that recalls Barakas vision of a revolution-
ary Unity Music from his 1966 essay The Changing Same (R&B and New Black
Music). By revisiting the 1970s cultural politics of Black Power, uplift, and resistance
immanent in Mayelds songs, Parkers project both foregrounds and collapses histori-
cal distance, creating a space in which musical and textual interventions signify on the
changing same of the political landscape. The analyses in this article focus on versions
of the song We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue, considering three versions
recorded by Mayeld (1970, 1971, 1996), as well as two recorded by Parker and his
ensemble (2004, 2008). I argue that both Mayelds 1996 revision and a 2004 recording
by Parkers ensemble might be understood as varied responses to the collapse of move-
ment politics in the decades since the songs conception, and, ultimately, I contend that
the interpretive practices Parker fosters within his ensemble enact their own form of
spiritual and political liberation.
The Culturally Conservative View of

Jazz in America: A Historical and
Critical Analysis
Andrew Sanchirico
Jazz in America, once heavily identied with social rebellion and political protest, has
since the 1980s become closely associated with cultural conservatism, a belief system
that places high value on traditionalism. As explained by James Seaton in his book Cul-
tural Conservatism, Political Liberalism, cultural conservatives are guided by the auth-
ority of the past, a perspective he contrasts to that of cultural radicals, who see the
past as a source of error and an object of criticism.1 In general, cultural conservatives
are primarily concerned with matters of culture rather than those of politics, and look
to the arts and humanities to convey the traditional values they believe are necessary for
the proper functioning of democratic society. This viewpoint became a signicant force
in American society during the nal decades of the twentieth century as a reaction to
the social changes brought on by the 1960s social movements. Perhaps the best example
of cultural conservatism in this regard is Allan Blooms The Closing of the American
Mind, a book in which he advocated the return of the western literary canon to
higher education as an antidote to what he perceived to be the decline of American
culture.2 Jazz cultural conservatives treat the music in a similar manner, which is to
say, they identify jazz as a solution to Americas social ills. They do so because they
view the music as the embodiment of traditional American values and norms, especially
those associated with the nations democratic principles. Jazz, from this perspective,
provides a model of (or metaphor for) democracy, thereby serving as a guide to indi-
vidual behavior and group interaction. The jazz-as-democracy concept has come to be
widely accepted within the jazz community, even among those who do not fully
embrace the more ideological aspects of cultural conservatism.
This essay has two basic objectives. The rst is to trace the historical development of
the culturally conservative view of jazz. For although the broad outline of this history is
quite well knownit follows a path from Ralph Ellison through Albert Murray and
Stanley Crouch to Wynton Marsalismuch of it remains largely unexplored and there-
fore only partially understood.3 The second objective is to critically analyze this theory,
1
James Seaton, Cultural Conservatism, Political Liberalism: From Criticism to Cultural Studies (Ann Arbor: The Uni-
versity of Michigan Press, 1996), 8.
2
Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987).
3
For the connection between Ellison, Murray, Crouch, and Marsalis see: John Gennari, Blowin Hot and Cool: Jazz
and Its Critics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), Chap. 8, Tangled Up in the Blues; Arnold

290 The Culturally Conservative View of Jazz in America
which, though having received some critical scrutiny, requires more thorough investi-
gation if it is to be adequately assessed.4 My ultimate goal is to combine the historical
and critical analyses into a comprehensive examination of the culturally conservative
viewpoint as it has evolved over time. My perspective, it should be noted, is that of a
critic who nonetheless recognizes the important role that cultural conservatism has
played in the social history of jazz.
The essay is divided into three sections, each of which represents a specic phase in
the development of jazz musics cultural conservatism. The rst section covers the
immediate post-World War II years through the 1970s. This was the period in
which Ellison and his intellectual colleague Murray initially conceptualized the cultu-
rally conservative theory of jazz. The second section describes the period that began
around 1981when Crouch and Marsalis rst brought this perspective to the forefront
of the jazz communityand ended around 2001when Ken Burnss documentary
Jazz brought it to wider public attention. This phase was directly related to the jazz
revival of that period. Through Murrays relationship with Crouch, and both mens
mentorship of Marsalis, what began as an intellectual tradition within American litera-
ture and letters was operationalized as a musical-economic system by the neo-classicists
and their proponents. The third section covers the period that extends from end of the
jazz revival (in the early 2000s) to the present. I conclude the essay by arguing that the
current phase of jazz musics cultural conservatism greatly exaggerates the functional
importance of jazz as a model of democratic principles and ideals.
Jazz and Cultural Conservatism in the Postwar Era

The roots of the culturally conservative view of jazz can be traced most directly to Ralph
Ellison, whose conceptualization of jazz as democracy is best understood in terms of his
beliefs about race in America, which are themselves based in large measure on a cultu-
rally conservative sense of self-critique.5 To begin with, Ellison strongly criticized the
Rampersad, Ralph Ellison: A Biography (New York: Vintage Books, 2007); Leslie Gourse, Wynton Marsalis: Skains
Domain: A Biography (New York: Schirmer Books, 1999); Henry Louis Gates Jr., King of Cats, in The Henry Louis
Gates, Jr., Reader (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2012); Robert S. Boynton, The Professor of Connection: A
Prole of Stanley Crouch, The New Yorker, November 6, 1995, 95113.
4
I have been able to locate ve critiques of various aspects of the culturally conservative view of jazz: Charles
Hersch, America without Dissonance: Ken Burnss Jazz, Polity 34, no. 1 (Autumn, 2001): 10716; William
J. Maxwell, Ralph Ellison and the Constitution of Jazzocracy, Journal of Popular Music Studies 16, no. 1
(April, 2004): 4057; John Paul Myers, The World According to Marsalis: Difference and Sameness in
Wynton Marsaliss From the Plantation to the Penitentiary, Journal of Popular Music Studies 22, no. 4 (December,
2010): 41635; David R. Adler, Review of Jazzocracy: Jazz, Democracy, and the Creation of a New American
Mythology, Dissent 14 (Autumn, 2008): 15765, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/democratiya_article/
jazzocracy-jazz-democracy; Kurt Ellenberger, Music and Politics: Strange Bedfellows Get Stranger, Also
Sprach FraKathustra (blog), November 11, 2010, https://frakathustra.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/music-and-poli-
tics-strange-bedfellows-get-stranger/.
5
Ralph Ellison put forth his culturally conservative view of jazz in a series of essays written in the middle of the
twentieth century. Ellisons essays during this period were originally published in Shadow and Act (New York:
Random House, 1964), and are also included in a larger collection titled The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison,
ed. John F. Callahan (New York: The Modern Library, 2003). For a discussion of cultural self-critique see
Seaton, Cultural Conservatism.
dominant liberal perspective of the post-war period, one that commonly portrayed
blacks as victims of racial injustice. While not denying the existence of racism in
America, Ellison rejected the notion that racism had deprived blacks of their self-deter-
mination and self-esteem as was claimed by many advocates of racial equality. He was
particularly critical of those social scientists who described the African American
culture as culturally deprived and socially pathological, arguing that these negative
depictions tended to reinforce racial stereotypes (even if not intended as such). He
countered these negative depictions by asserting that blacks had been able to overcome
slavery and segregation by building a strong and resilient culture, one that provided
them with positive attitudes and abilities. The African American culture, he main-
tained, was a self-sufcient one that did not need the social programs advocated by
many white liberals and black activists.6
Blacks had been able to build a strong and self-sufcient culture, Ellison explained,
because of the positive effects of American democracy.7 Ellison had deep faith in the
American democratic principles and praised the founding fathers for creating a
system in which individuals and groups with conicting interests are encouraged to
compete and negotiate with each other until their conicts are resolved. As he
expressed it,
American democracy is a most dramatic form of social organization, and in that
drama each of us enacts his role by asserting his own and his groups values and tra-
ditions against those of his fellow citizens. Indeed, a battle-royal conict of interest
appears to be basic to our conception of freedom, and the drama of democracy pro-
ceeds through a warfare of words and symbolic actions by which we seek to advance
our private interests while resolving our political differences.8
Ellison also praised the founding fathers for envisioning a social system that promised
all individuals equal opportunity and the chance of upward mobility no matter how
lowly their social origins, thereby helping to unify Americas social stratication
system.9
Ellison acknowledged and criticized the fact that Americas democratic principles
had not been fully extended to blacks. They had been denied their rights, he explained,
because of their supposed racial inferiority, a rationalization that was used to justify the
anti-democratic institution of slavery. Blacks, however, did not passively accept the
inferior status assigned them by whites. They were not merely reactive objects
shaped by their oppressors; they were instead active social agents who developed a
culture based upon their own visions and needs.10
Blacks had acquired their strength, he explained, because Americas system of
democracy offered them the hope that freedom would one day be fully extended to
6
Ralph Ellison, An American Dilemma: A Review, in The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, ed. John F. Callahan
(New York: The Modern Library, 2003), 32840; Ellison, The Art of Fiction: An Interview, in Collected Essays,
214.
7
Ellison, Going to the Territory, in Collected Essays, 595616.
8
Ibid., 599.
9
Ellison, Hidden Name and Complex Fate, in Collected Essays, 206.
10
Ellison, That Same Pain, in Collected Essays, 75; Ellison, A Very Stern Discipline, in Collected Essays, 75051.
them.11 Moreover, blacks were able to sustain themselves because they had adopted the
American democratic form of social organization as their own, shaping their insti-
tutions according to democratic principles, thereby connecting themselves to the
larger society, and just as importantly, connecting the larger society to them.12 It was
this viewpointthat blacks were a part of (not apart from) the larger American
culturethat established Ellison as a cultural conservative. For him, blacks needed
neither social welfare programs nor black nationalism; instead, they needed to continue
the strategy that had already proven successful, which was to follow Americas tra-
ditional values (hard work, individual achievement, upward mobility) and to take
advantage of the nations democratic institutions (schools, museums, libraries) that
were becoming more available to them.
Jazz, for Ellison, reected the democratic nature of (African) American culture. Elli-
sons conceptualization of jazz as democracy, it must be noted, was largely conned to
the musics pre-bop era, when jazz was deeply interwoven into the fabric of African
American culture. Jazz represented democracy during this period because there was
no separation between musicians and audience, a democratic conguration that was
largely broken when bebop was invented during the 1940s. The democratic elements
of jazz were particularly evident in jazz dance and the jam session; the former reecting
the democratic interaction between the musicians and dancers, the latter reecting the
democratic interaction among the musicians, who also made up the audience (before
jam sessions became commercialized).
Ellison referred explicitly to the relationship between jazz and democracy in two
essays. The rst of these, Harlem is Nowhere, was written in 1948. In this piece,
Ellison discussed the difculty that black migrants from the South faced after
moving to Harlem and other large Northern cities. In seeking greater democracy in
the North, they had given up the black Southern folk culture that had sustained
them through centuries of slavery and segregation, nding in its place chaos: their
families disintegrated, their church splintered, their folk wisdom discarded. Even
their folk art, jazz, had been transformed:
the lyrical ritual elements of folk jazzthat artistic projection of the only real indivi-
duality possible for him in the South, that embodiment of a superior democracy in
which each individual cultivated his uniqueness and yet did not clash with his neigh-
borshave given way to the near-themeless technical virtuosity of bebop, a further
triumph of technology over humanism.13
Here we see that the superior democracy of the black Southern folk culture, which
inhered in folk jazz, had been sacriced for the technology of bebop. The link
between jazz and democracy, as Ellison perceived it, was broken when the music aban-
doned its cultural roots and adopted the chaotic sounds of bop.
11
Ellison, Hidden Name and Complex Fate, in Collected Essays, 197; Ellison, Commencement Address, in Col-
lected Essays, 415.
12
Ellison, Richard Wrights Blues, in Collected Essays, 13839; Ellison, A Very Stern Discipline, in Collected
Essays, 753.
13
Ellison, Harlem is Nowhere, in Collected Essays, 325.
In the second essay, Flamenco, written in 1954, Ellison expressed his love of a-
menco, explaining that, In our own culture the closest music to it in feeling is the
Negro blues, early jazz, and the slave songs.14 He goes on to describe amenco as a
communal art like black folk music, one in which people dont sit around to be enter-
tained, but instead participate as during a non-commercial jam session or a Southern
jazz dance: Flamenco allows a maximum of individual expression, and a democratic
rivalry such as is typical of a jam session for, like the blues and jazz, it is an art of impro-
visation.15 Again, Ellisons reference to jazz and democracy eludes the modern forms
of bebop and post-bop, focusing instead on the non-commercial jam session and
Southern jazz dance.
There is one other essaya crucial onein which Ellison makes an implicit refer-
ence to jazz as democracy. This essay, The Charlie Christian Story, written in 1958,
describes the life of Ellisons boyhood friend from Oklahoma City who made a name
for himself with the Benny Goodman Orchestra before succumbing to tuberculosis in
1942 at the age of 25. After describing how most other jazz musicians of that era never
made it beyond the local dance halls or remote battles of music, achieving only local
or regional recognition, Ellison explains that,
There is a cruel contradiction implicit in the art form itself, for true jazz is an art of
individual assertion within and against the group. Each true jazz moment (as distinct
from the uninspired commercial performance) springs from a contest in which each
artist challenges all the rest; each solo ight, or improvisation, represents (like the
successive canvases of a painter) a denition of his identity as individual, as
member of the collectivity and as a link in the chain of tradition. Thus, because
jazz nds its very life in an endless improvisation upon traditional materials, the
jazzman must lose his identity even as he nds it; how often do we see even the
most famous of jazz artists being devoured alive by their imitators, and, shamelessly,
in the public spotlight?16
The meaning of this passage has proven to be somewhat controversial. William
Maxwell has challenged the conventional interpretation, which is that it reects Elli-
sons view of jazz as democracy, arguing instead that it was in fact meant to illuminate
the musics competitive cruelty, in which local musicians battle for, but rarely achieve,
wider recognition.17 While Maxwells revisionist interpretation of this passage is plaus-
ible when examined within the immediate context of Ellisons essay, it is less compel-
ling when the passage is assessed in terms of Ellisons broader body of work. In
particular, Ellisons description of jazz in the above passage closely resembles his
description of American democracy quoted previously, indicating he considered the
individual assertion of the jazz musician within and against the group to be analogous
to the democratic processat least as jazz functioned during its pre-bop period,
when the music was an integral part of the African American community. I shall
14
Ellison, Flamenco, in Collected Essays, 23.
15
Ibid., 24.
16
Ellison, The Charlie Christian Story, in Collected Essays, 267.
17
Maxwell, Ralph Ellison and the Constitution of Jazzocracy, 52.
return to the historical context of Ellisons conceptualization of jazz as democracy
below.
Albert Murray, a close friend of Ellisons, is the other gure closely associated with
the initial phase of jazz musics cultural conservatism. Murrays culturally conservative
view of jazz, like Ellisons, is best understood in terms of his beliefs about race in
America. Murray rejected (as did Ellison) the idea that African Americans were
victims of racism who suffered from social pathology and cultural deprivation. He
inveighed against this viewpoint in his rst book, The Omni-Americans, a collection
of essays and reviews written explicitly to counter negative portrayals of African Amer-
icans.18 The book was deliberately polemical, but as Murray explained, it was dis-
tinguishable from the polemics of moral outcry, such for instance as are found in
the well-known works of Richard Wright and James Baldwin.19 Which is to say, his
attacks were not aimed at the usual targetswhite racistsbut at the multitude of
equal rights proponentssocial scientists, white liberals, black activists, black writers
who protested racism by emphasizing its harmful effects on black culture. He
argued that by focusing solely on the negatives, these advocates of racial equality over-
looked the positive aspects of African American culture.20
In this line of thinking, blacks had been able to build a culture of their own, one that
was capable of withstanding racism, because they had recognized and adopted (and
contributed to) the positive values and norms of the larger American society. Ellison
had previously made this argument, explaining that the democratic nature of American
culture had provided blacks with the vision and strength necessary to persevere in the
face of adversity. Murray adopted this theoretical perspective, but broadened its view
and shifted its focus, emphasizing the notion that blacks were able to overcome
racism by embracing those traditional down-home virtues, such as perseverance and
resilience, that formed the American character.21 These traditional American values
had helped blacks realizeeven as slavesthat racism, while harsh and unjust, was
one of lifes hardships, requiring an afrmative response if it was to be successfully
confronted.
Murray located African American cultural strengths in the arts, an aspect of life, he
argued, that was totally unappreciated by those social survey technicians and equal
rights activists who were xated on socioeconomic measurements and social problems.
This was a critical shortcoming on their part because,
The creation of an art style is, as most anthropologists would no doubt agree, a major
cultural achievement. In fact, it is perhaps the highest as well as the most comprehen-
sive fulllment of culture; for an art style, after all, reects nothing so much as the
ultimate synthesis and renement of a life style.22
18
Albert Murray, The Omni-Americans: Black Experience & American Culture (New York: Da Capo Press, 1970).
19
Ibid., 4.
20
Ibid., 56.
21
Ibid., 1516.
22
Ibid., 54.
For Murray, the most important style of art created by black culture was the blues
idiom.
The blues, Murray explained, started out as an African American folk art, which is to
say, it began as a music based on custom and tradition. This folk tradition evolved into
popular music, being performed by technically unsophisticated musicians such as
Leadbelly, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Tampa Red, and Muddy Waters. Over time, the orig-
inal folk art was extended, elaborated upon, and rened, becoming in the process a ne
artcommonly referred to as jazzperformed by more accomplished musicians such
as Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Charlie Parker. The evol-
ution of blues from folk art to ne art was necessary, in Murrays view, so that it could
keep up with the demands of modern society.23 Murray continued to use the term
blues, rather than the more conventional jazz, because from his perspective the ne
art (jazz) performed the same social functions in contemporary society that the folk
art (blues) had performed previously.
For Murray, the blues idiom, like all art forms, represents an attitude toward life. The
arts reveal how a culture perceives and deals with the experiences of life, and in this
regard the blues reveals that blacks deal with life head on:
The sense of well being that always goes with swinging the blues is generated, as
anyone familiar with Negro dance halls knows, not by obscuring or denying the exist-
ence of the ugly dimensions of human nature, circumstances, and conduct, but rather
through the full, sharp, and inescapable awareness of them.24
The blues is not a simpleminded expression of frustration and despair as some think,
but is instead an afrmative response to lifes travails in the stylized form of art. Thus,
when the Negro musician or dancer swings the blues, he is fullling the same funda-
mental existential requirement that determines the mission of the poet, the priest,
and the medicine man. He is making an afrmative and hence exemplary and
heroic response to that which Andre Malraux describes as la condition humaine
and thus also does the dance-beat improvisation of experience in the blues
idiom become survival techniques, esthetic equipment for living, and a central
element in the dynamics of U.S. Negro life style.25
As can be seen, Murrays ideas about jazz paralleled and at times overlapped with
Ellisons. Murray, like Ellison, viewed jazz as an art form that had brought African
Americans together. It did so through rhythm and dance, traits that can be traced to
Africa, but that were for the most part shaped by the experiences of blacks in
America. It is also evident that both Ellison and Murray located the cultural function
of jazz dance in the largely segregated pre-World War II black communities, when and
where it served to demonstrate afrmation in the face of adversity. However, unlike
Ellison, who clearly identied jazz dance and its cultural function in time and place,
Murray basically decontextualized the cultural role of jazz dance, removing it from
the pre-war black communities, treating it instead as an ahistorical component of
23
Albert Murray, Stomping the Blues (New York: Da Capo Press, 1976), 20914.
24
Murray, The Omni-Americans, 57.
25
Ibid., 58.
African American culture. Murrays highly inuential book, Stomping the Blues, for
example, makes virtually no distinction between past and present: anyone not familiar
with the evolution of popular music in the black community would assume the musical
culture he describesin which black musicians and dancers swing the blues at Satur-
day Night Functions in local dance hallsexemplied the social life of African Amer-
icans during the middle of the 1970s when the book was published. What is particularly
signicant here is that over time Ellisons historical viewpoint was folded into Murrays
ahistorical perspective, forming what became the core belief of jazz musics cultural
conservatism: the abstract notion of jazz as the embodiment of traditional democratic
values, which was at once historically dened, but timeless as well.
Murray not only shaped and spread the culturally conservative view of jazz through
his writings; he also did so by mentoring young scholars and members of New Yorks
jazz community, sharing with them his (and Ellisons) ideas about jazz and other social
issues. Among those he mentored were writer Stanley Crouch and trumpeter Wynton
Marsalis, the two gures most directly responsible for bringing the culturally conserva-
tive view of jazz to public prominence in the 1980s. As we shall see, their viewpoint
represented a synthesis of Ellisons conceptualization of jazz as the embodiment of
American democratic idealsnow detached from its original historical contextand
Murrays conceptualization of jazz as the embodiment of traditional down-home
American values.26
Cultural Conservatism and the Jazz Revival

The culturally conservative view of jazz, as initially espoused by Ellison and Murray,
portrayed a time when jazz was the nations most popular music. Jazz began to
decline in popularity after World War II as new forms of popular musicrst
rhythm & blues (a direct offshoot of jazz), then rock, soul, funk, and eventually hip-
hopattracted newer generations of Americas youth. By the 1970s jazz was commonly
perceived as dead or dying. Around the beginning of the 1980s, however, jazz began to
experience a resurgence in popularity. This jazz revival brought about the second phase
of jazz musics cultural conservatism, one that revolved around Crouch and, especially,
Marsalis.
Crouch was born in Los Angeles in 1945. While living there he established himself as
a free jazz drummer and Black Nationalist. In 1975 he moved to New York City, where
he developed a close relationship with Murray, who inuenced his views about jazz and
race issues, leading to Crouchs eventual renunciation of free jazz and Black National-
ism.27 Crouch began his writing career in the late 1970s, becoming an inuential social
critic whose views of jazz reected the cultural conservatism he had learned from
Murray.
26
Crouch and Marsalis also had contact with Ellison, whose input was inuential; but they did not have the per-
sonal involvement with him that they had with Murray.
27
Introduction: Blues to You Part II, in Stanley Crouch, The All American Skin Game, or, The Decoy of Race
(New York: Vintage Books, 1997); Robert S. Boynton, The Professor of Connection: A Prole of Stanley
Crouch, The New Yorker, November 6, 1995, 95113.
Marsalis moved to New York from New Orleans in 1979 at age 17 to attend The
Juilliard School, which he left in 1980 to join Art Blakelys Jazz Messengers. While
Marsalis was with Blakeys band he met Crouch, who soon introduced him to
Murray. Marsalis was mentored by both Murray and Crouch, who would introduce
him to their perspectives on jazz. Although he was brought up in New Orleansthe
musics birthplaceand although his father (Ellis) was an accomplished jazz pianist,
it was not until his tutelage under Murray and Crouch that Marsalis openly embraced
jazz musics cultural conservatism.28
Marsalis formed his own band in 1981, a quintet whose members were all in their
early- to mid-twenties. He received immediate recognition, not only for his musical
and leadership skills, but also for leading a movement of young musiciansthe so-
called Young Lionswho brought a sense of tradition to the music, eschewing free
jazz and jazz-fusion in favor of older jazz styles such as hard-bop. They also adopted
a traditional look on the bandstand, wearing suits and ties rather than the casual
dress styles and street wear favored by other young musicians. This conservatism in
music and style was promoted as jazz musics new trend, with Marsalis and the
Young Lions being credited with revitalizing the music. This marked the beginning
of the neo-classicist jazz revival, a period lasting approximately two decades, which
brought the music more attention and fans than it had for some time.
The jazz revival provided Marsalis and Crouch the opportunity to publicize the culturally
conservative view of jazz they had acquired from Murray. It also allowed them to update this
viewpoint, taking it from one primarily applicable to pre-World War II black culture, to one
directly related to 1980s American society. They did this by postulating the notion that jazz
musics rejuvenation signied the beginning of Americas return to its traditional values.
This sentiment coincided withand indeed can be considered part ofthe growing con-
servative movement that surfaced in the larger American society during the 1980s and
1990s. During the previous decades, Americas traditional middle class values had been
challenged by cultural movements that succeeded in bringing alternative ideas and lifestyles
into the mainstream of American cultural life. The youth counterculture that emerged in
the 1960s was one such subculture; the newly emergent hip-hop culture of the late 1970s
was another. The cultural conservatives sought to reverse this trend, viewing it as
harmful to the countrys social and moral fabric.29 One particular area of concern was
popular music, with its increasingly offensive (in the minds of some) song lyrics, suggestive
music videos, and drug use.30 Jazz, from the perspective of cultural conservatives, was seen
as an effective counterforce to the negative inuences of popular culture in general and
popular music in particular. Thus, unlike the previous phase of jazz musics cultural con-
servatism, which went against the grain of post-World War II liberalism, this newer phase
28
Gourse, Wynton Marsalis; Wynton Marsalis and Frank Stewart, Sweet Swing Blues on the Road (New York:
Thunder Mouth Press, 1994), 1167.
29
This viewpoint had signicant support among the general population. See: Elizabeth Kolbert, Americans
Despair of Popular Culture, The New York Times, August 20, 1995, http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/20/
movies/americans-despair-of-popular-culture.html?pagewanted=all.
30
Martha Bayles, Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music (New York: Free
Press, 1994).
t perfectly with Americas growing conservatism, thereby heightening its appeal for audi-
ences dissatised with the state of contemporary popular culture.
Marsaliss cultural conservatism was captured in a book he wrote with Carl Vigeland,
titled Jazz in the Bittersweet Blues of Life, which described his experiences on the road
from 1989 to 1994.31 Besides his musical performances, Marsalis commonly conducted
workshops while touring, discussing various aspects of jazz, including its relationship to
democracy. Marsalis shaped his discussions of jazz and democracy to t the various
workshop audiences. In one instance, while conducting a workshop at an elementary
school, he explained the relationship between jazz and democracy in terms of dialogue.
As described by Vigeland:
Wynton tried to tell the kids that one of the things that related jazz and democracy
was how you overcame the difculty of getting along with someone who didnt
like you or didnt think like you. And disagreement was part of Wyntons ideal of dia-
logue in democracy, like it was part of the conversation of jazz.32
At another workshop, with a more mature audience, he described the jazz-as-democ-
racy metaphor in musical terminology:
There are different devices we use. One is call and response, say Ill play and Wycliffe
[trombonist Wycliffe Gordon] will answer. Another is riff, something repeated over
and over. And polyphonic improvisation, which is the way jazz most resembles
democracy.33
The metaphorical use of jazz as democracy has continued to be an important pedago-
gical device for Marsalis over the years.
The book also conveyed Marsaliss animosity toward rap music. This was made clear
in a description of Marsaliss visit to a community center in Oakland, California. While
there Marsalis objected to the rap music that was being played during a pickup basket-
ball game, complaining to the centers director:
Man, its one thing for me and you to cuss each other. But all this profanity and that
one beat over and over and calling everybody nigger is just some more blaxploitation
minstrelsy. Im more nigger than you cause Ise mo ignant.34
Marsalis further explained his attitude toward rap in the following passage.
When someone tells me, Our art [rap music] is violent and ignorant because were
talking about what we see, I have to question what theyre looking at. Because life
here in a housing project is three-dimensional. Sure, its populated by people who
are hungry and need education and jobs. But there are also many productive
people right here raising their families and making ends meet with dignity. The cul-
tural and social complexity of life here is far too complicated for any art to mirror.
Sure, art can give organization and meaning to life, but the sounds coming from
the loudspeakers in the Acorn courtyard dont do that.35
31
Wynton Marsalis and Carl Vigeland, Jazz in the Bittersweet Blues of Life (New York: Da Capo Press, 2001).
32
Ibid., 114.
33
Ibid., 211.
34
Ibid., 37.
35
Ibid., 378.
This form of cultural self-critique is a variation of the cultural conservatism rst

expressed by Ellison and Murray, who complained that emphasis on the negative
aspects of black culture overshadowed that cultures positive attributes. Previously it
had been the social scientists and black activists who were accused of this misrepresen-
tation. For Marsalis it was the black rap artists who were primarily responsible for mis-
representing the culture.
Marsalis and his culturally conservative viewpoint came to the attention of the broad
American public in 1990 when he appeared on the cover of Time magazine.36 The cover
article, Horns of Plenty, celebrated the jazz revival, praising Marsalis for the fact that,
largely under his inuence, a jazz renaissance is owering on what was once barren
soil. The article characterized Marsalis as a natural genius nurtured by hard work
and clean living, the last two traits also being attributed to the other young jazz musi-
cians of that period. Signicantly, the article described the inuence of Crouch and
Murray on Marsaliss views of jazz, followed by a discussion of those views. Explaining
that Marsalis sees jazz as a metaphor for democracy, it quotes him thusly:
In terms of illuminating the meaning of America, jazz is the primary art form.
Because when it is played properly, it shows you how the individual can negotiate
the greatest amount of personal freedom and put it humbly at the service of a
group conception.
Marsalis also conveyed his concerns about the mediocrity of contemporary American
culture and identied jazz as an antidote:
I know the music can work. To play it, you have to have the belief in quality. And the
belief in practice, the belief in study, belief in your history, belief in the people that
you came out of. It is a statement of heroism against denigration.
Thus, jazz for Marsalis was perceived as something of a cultural ideal that was capable
of bringing traditional democratic values to the forefront of American society, thereby
enhancing the nations culture.
Crouchs most denitive statement on jazz musics cultural conservatism was his
essay, Blues to be Constitutional, originally delivered in 1995 for a symposium at
Michigan State University.37 Crouch began the essay by describing the tendency of
Americans to admire the outlaw, or the anarchic individual, which he suggests is a
tendency embedded in the nations culture, for, as he explained,
We love to make fun of the rules and prick those who think themselves superior for
all the wrong reasons, especially since our democracy tells us that the little David of
the common man can knock down the Goliath of wealth, unfairness, privilege.38
Unfortunately, identication with the outsider and love of the scandalizing bad boy
had in Crouchs view reached disturbing levels in contemporary popular culture. For
what was once harmless disdain for smugness and pretentionas represented by the
proverbial pie in the face of the society man and matronhad become, in the worst
36
Thomas Sancton and David Thigpen, Horns of Plenty, Time, October 22, 1990, 6471.
37
Stanley Crouch, Blues to Be Constitutional, in The All-American Skin Game, 520.
38
Ibid., 7.
of rock music and gangster rap, the canonization of antisocial posturing and the
obnoxious appropriation of the racial stereotype.39 For Crouch, adulation and glori-
cation of the media outlaw is nothing more than brittle sentimentality, representing a
cowardly ight from engagement and a total misunderstanding of true heroism.40
Crouch, however, expressed optimism that the decline of the American culture
would be reversed. This optimism was based on the fact that, after a period of declining
popularity, jazz was experiencing a revitalization led by young black musicians who had
resisted the negative cultural trends embraced by other young Americans. These jazz
musicians, Crouch explained,
have not been suckers for the identity achieved through unearned cynical rebellion;
they seek individuality through afrmation, which puts them at war with the silly
attire and hairdos that descend directly from the rebel-without-a-cause vision of
youth that Hollywood began selling adolescent Americans nearly forty years ago.41
By re-establishing jazz as a prominent part of American popular art, these young musi-
cians were re-establishing integrity and hard work as core values, and by so doing, were
lifting the culture out of the depths of adolescent narcissism:
In their wit, their good grooming, their disdain for drugs, and their command of the
down home and ambitious, they suggest that though America may presently be down
on one knee, the champ is about to rise and begin taking names.42
For Crouch, these young jazz musicians had internalized the true meaning of heroism
and it was they who were going to bring down the phony rock and rap media heroes
responsible for perverting American culture.
The idea that the jazz revival was bringing America to a better place was presented in
dramatic fashion by Ken Burns in his documentary, Jazz, which aired on American
public television in 2001.43 As Burns described the lm,
JAZZ is this wonderful portrait of not only the 20th century, but of our redemptive
future possibilities. In JAZZ, we see the ultimate of the democratic idea. Different
races, different styles, different souls, all negotiating their agendas together. When
jazz works, its a kind of model, if you will, almost in physics, a kind of quantum
model, of what democracy is about.44
Marsalis played a particularly important role in the lm: he served as senior creative
consultant; was one of the lms interviewees, making frequent appearances as an
on-camera commentator; and was highlighted in the lms nal episode for his
39
Ibid., 8.
40
A clear example of this tendency can be seen in Crouchs blistering critique of Miles Daviss electronic-infused
music in the 1980s (as well as Daviss recently released autobiography), published in The New Republic in 1990. In
the article, Crouch blasts Davis for, among other things, the trumpeters street corner sensibility. See Stanley
Crouch, Play the Right Thing, New Republic February 12, 1990, 306.
41
Ibid., 12.
42
Ibid., 1213.
43
The lm spread the culturally conservative view of jazz to a large audience, estimated at 30 million according to:
http://thebetterangelssociety.org/about-ken-burns.htm.
44
Interview with Ken Burns, http://www.pbs.org/jazz/about/about_behind_the_scenes2.htm.
leadership role in the jazz revival. Crouch and Murray were also involved in the lm,
with both serving as advisors and commentators.
Marsalis opened Jazz by describing the music as a form of democracy. His opening
remarks were followed by those of the lms narrator, who explained that jazz has
enjoyed huge popularity and survived hard times, but it has always reected Americans,
all Americans, at their best.45 These opening comments introduced the lms primary
theme, that of jazz as the essence of Americas democratic ideals. But as the lm pro-
gressed, a sub-theme emerged: Although jazz represents Americas ideals, America itself
has not always lived up to those ideals, especially with regard to issues of race. The lm
focused on the discrepancy between Americas democratic ideals and its racist prac-
tices, and emphasized the paradoxical nature of this discrepancythat blacks, who
invented the music that embodies American values, have been the victims of policies
and practice that violate those very values.
However, although Jazz criticized the discrepancy between Americas professed
ideals and its actual practices, this criticism eventually took the form of optimism,
for despite the fact that American society has often fallen short of its ideals, jazz had
successfully embraced those same ideals, thereby providing an image of what
America should bewill beonce the country acts according to its ideals. This is
the promise of jazz, for, as explained by Marsalis during the lms concluding episode,
Jazz gives us a glimpse into what America is going to be when it becomes itself. And
this music tells you that it will become itself. And when you get a taste of that, theres
just nothing else youre going to taste thats this sweet.46
Marsaliss optimism was based on the idea that jazz, once in decline, had been revita-
lized, foretelling a positive future.
In our generation there was a belief that jazz music was dead so there was all the cel-
ebration that went with that. Ah, nally no more jazz. Now here we are, were still
swinging, and we aint going nowhere. Theres plenty of us out here swinging and
were going to keep swinging.47
The jazz revival, from this perspective, would serve as an enlightenment to America by
demonstrating how the nations traditional values and beliefs operated when applied by
jazz musicians. Jazz, in this manner, would serve as a model for the rest of society. This opti-
mism appeared to be quite reasonable at the time, for it was assumed that, as jazz musics
popularity continued to spread, so too would its positive values. Jazz was therefore seen as
ushering in a new and more positive version of American democratic culture.
This did not happen, however, for although jazz has continued to grow in stature, as
evidenced by the success of Jazz at Lincoln Center, it has not continue to grow in popu-
larity, as measured by audience size. The decline in the relative size of the jazz audience
is reected in a series of surveys sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts
(NEA) and conducted in conjunction with the U.S. Census Bureau. These surveys of
45
Jazz, Episode 1 (my transcription).
46
Wynton Marsalis, Jazz, Episode 10 (my transcription).
47
Ibid.
randomly selected adults are designed to measure participation in the arts, including
attendance at arts events. The results of ve surveysthose conducted in 1982,
1992, 2002, 2008, and 2012have been published.48 They reveal that between 1982
and 2002, the period of the jazz revival, there was an increase in the percentage of
respondents who had attended at least one jazz event during the previous year. In
1982, 9.6 percent of the respondents had attended a jazz event the prior year, a
gure that rose to 10.6 percent in 1992, and then to 10.8 percent in 2002. The next
two surveys, however, reveal a substantial decline in the percentage of adults who
had attended jazz events. In 2008 the gure dropped to 7.8 percent (from 10.8
percent in 2002), and although it rose to 8.1 percent in 2012, that gure was lower
than it had been in 1982. Although the recession that began in 2008 probably had
some impact on the declining attendance, we can surmise from the above gures
that jazz musics revival had begun to slow down by 2002.
The NEA surveys captured another notable trend: the aging of the jazz audience.
While this trend should be obvious to anyone attending jazz events over the past few
decades, the survey results reveal the extent to which the aging process occurred
during the jazz revival, a period when the Marsalis and the Young Lions had been
expected to bring younger audiences back to the music. In 1982 the median age of
those attending a jazz event was 29 years old; in 1992 it rose to 37 years old; and in
2002 it rose again to 42 years old. This trend continued into the post-revival period:
by 2008 the median age had risen to 46 years old (age statistics were not reported for
the 2012 survey). To put this into perspective; the median age of those attending classical
music events in 1982 was 40 years old, which was 11 years older than the jazz audience;
in 2008 the median age of classical music attendees stood at 49 years old, only three years
older than the jazz audience. It therefore appears likely that, although the youthfulness
of Marsalis and the Young Lions attracted young musicians to jazz, their traditionalism
appealed to a more mature audience, failing in large part to attract a substantial number
of new young (non-musician) fans. Furthermore, as the young fans they did attract aged
over the years, they were not adequately replaced by new cohorts of young people.
Thus, during the rst decade of the twenty-rst century, the traditionalist jazz revival
had come to an end, at least in terms of its public visibility. This in turn brought an end
to the second phase of jazz musics cultural conservatism. For no longer could cultural
conservatives portray jazz musics renaissance (which no longer existed) as a harbinger
of Americas cultural revival.
Cultural Conservatism and Democracy in the Post-Revival Jazz Era

The third phase of the culturally conservative view of jazzthe one we are now in
began after the demise of the jazz revival. This phase represents an extension of the
48
National Endowment for the Arts, Arts Participation 2008: Highlights from a National Survey, June 2009, http://
arts.gov/publications/arts-participation-2008-highlights-national-survey-o; National Endowment for the Arts,
How a Nation Engages with Art: Highlights From the 2012 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, September
2013, http://arts.gov/publications/highlights-from-2012-sppa.
previous one, resting as it does on the notion of jazz as a model of American democratic
values. It differs from the previous phase, however, because it is not premised on the
idea that jazz is regaining its popularity and is in the process of guiding America
toward the realization of its ideals. It is based instead on a more complex set of prop-
ositions: that jazz can guide America toward the realization of its ideals if its people
learn to appreciate the music, understand the democratic values embodied within it,
and shape their attitudes and behaviors according to these values. Below I examine
the sources of this post-revival version of cultural conservatism in jazz.
Despite the relative decline in the popularity of jazz in recent years, Wynton Marsalis
has remained at the forefront of jazz musics cultural conservatism. His 2008 book,
Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life, provides one example of
how this viewpoint is currently formulated.49 The book focuses on the positive qualities
that jazz can impart upon those who are willing to engage the music. It explains, in a
highly personal manner, how Marsalis became aware of jazz musics underlying values
and how these values helped him handle the complexities of life as an African Amer-
ican. The books message is that otherswhites as well as blacks, non-musicians as well
as musicianscan also learn the lessons of life through jazz, for, as he explains it, the
music can help individuals achieve the proper balance between your right to express
yourself and have things your own way, [and] your responsibility to respect others
while working with them toward a common goal.50 Jazz imparts such lessons
because of its democratic nature:
On a basic level, this music led me to a deeper respect for myself. In order to impro-
vise something meaningful, I had to nd and express whatever I have inside of me
worth sharing with other people. But at the same time it led me to a new awareness
of others, because my freedom of expression was directly linked to the freedom of
others on the bandstand.51
This awareness of self and of others is required of all jazz musicians if they are to suc-
cessfully communicate in the jazz idiom. Such communication, Marsalis stresses, is not
automatic, but must be practiced and learned. But when it works in jazzwhen the
rhythmic balance is achievedthe music swings; the musicians can feel it, and so
can the listeners, and in this manner the true meaning of democracy is revealed. The
rhythmic swing that characterizes jazz, which is achieved through communication
and understanding, can be accomplished in other facets of life, too, if individuals
learn the lessons that are available to them through the music.
Unfortunately, as Marsalis explains, the positive lessons contained in jazz have gone
largely unrecognized. This is because the music has been ignored by the vast majority of
Americans. Marsalis identies different factors that have combined to deny jazz its
seeming rightful level of appreciation. One is racism, as he writes: Because the knowledge
and intelligence and human depth of jazz demonstrated so clearly the absurdity of the
49
Wynton Marsalis, with Geoffrey C. Ward, Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life (New York:
Random House, 2008).
50
Ibid., xvi.
51
Ibid., 12.
treatment of black people, there was immediate intellectual pressure to denigrate it.52 Jazz,
in other words, was seen as a threat to the racist attitudes of American society, so the music
was marginalized. Jazz writers also unwittingly fed into the racist reaction against jazz:
although not necessarily racists themselves, they tended to harp on the negative aspects
of musicians lives, thereby creating and reafrming negative stereotypes. Marsalis notes
that Jazz and black folks were dened in terms of pathology, as if the only thing authentic
in life is the literal blues53 By stereotyping jazz musicians, the writers misrepresented jazz,
keeping the people away from the music and the positive messages contained therein. In
addition to racism and misrepresentation, jazz has also suffered because of the general
decline of American culture. Americans, according to Marsalis, have become inundated
by street-level pathology and are therefore deprived of true artistry represented by the
rhythmic swing of jazz.54 As a result, not many people really know or care much about
jazz because most of the nonclassical music theyve heard is performed by amateurs or
even complete non-musicianspeople who may possess personal charisma but can
barely play.55 This perceived decline of American culture corresponds to the decline of
American democracy, in which brash loudness and selshness have replaced reasoned
communication and compromise.
Therefore, in Marsaliss view, although jazz has a great deal to teach Americans about
the nations democratic idealsideals that can help individuals lead better lives and
help the nation achieve the democratic principles upon which it was builtthe
music has been plagued by discrimination, ignorance, and neglect. Jazz needs far
greater public awareness if it is to realize its potential as a positive force in American
society. Moving to Higher Ground represents one effort in this direction. Later I will
describe how Marsalis and others have taken more concrete steps to bring jazz to
the attention of Americas youth.
During the summer of 2004 a young college student named Kabir Sehgal toured as a
bassist with Marsaliss band. Four years later his book, Jazzocracy: Jazz, Democracy, and
the Creation of a New American Mythology, was published.56 In it, Sehgal argues that
jazz has historically served as a democratic force in America, but that this legacy is
being obscured by contemporary popular culture, which has moved the nation in
the direction of lewdness and vulgarity. To counteract this trend Sehgal proposes a
new American mythology, one that is built upon the jazz-as-democracy metaphor.
Sehgal describes mythology as a collection of stories and beliefs that help shape col-
lective identity. The function of mythology, he explains, is to provide a narrative that
represents a cultures core values, thereby serving as a guide to behavior that conforms
to those values. Myths contain various levels of truthfulness, but more important than
verisimilitude is a correspondence between the cultures myths and its underlying
values. Contemporary American culture, Sehgal argues, lacks such a supportive
52
Ibid., 90.
53
Ibid., 70.
54
Ibid., 83.
55
Ibid., 74.
56
Kabir Sehgal, Jazzocracy: Jazz, Democracy, and the Creation of a New American Mythology (Mishawaka, IN: Better
World Books, 2008).
mythology. This is because todays contemporary mythmakers, who come from the
ranks of hip-hop and rock, do not provide the types of images and symbols that
reinforce the nations underlying values and norms. As he writes,
Instead of speaking to the trusted and true core beliefs of Americalike self-reliance
and the melting mood of diversitymany of todays popular mythmakers speak of
vapidity, violence, and vulgarity. Many modern mythmakers rap of the angry black
man and the rebel without a cause.57
What is particularly disturbing to Sehgal is that Americans have come to accept the vul-
garization of Americas oral tradition and have grown accustomed to the images and
messages of violence that are antithetical to the nations democratic tradition.58
In the past, when jazz was Americas most popular music, there was seemingly no dis-
juncture between the nations popular entertainment and its core values. Jazz musics
adherence to Americas democratic ideals, its emphasis on individual uniqueness within
the context of group support, its ultimate goal of resolving discord through harmony,
meshed perfectly with the nations underlying beliefs. Jazz, in other words, contains the
ingredients of a true American mythology, not the false and dangerous anti-American
myths being propagated by todays rappers and rock stars. A new mythology built
around jazzthat is, a Jazzocracywould bring a cohesive set of positive values back to
American culture. Such a mythology would function like a classic American novel and
yield lessons, symbols, metaphors, and tropes that can help [us] understand and decipher
American culture.59 For example, Sehgal created The Myth of the Jam Session, which
demonstrates how everyone in the jazz community blends into the larger group, musicians
and audience alike. The message contained in this myth is this: To participate in the jazz
jam session is to become Americanto mix and create a lump character in which the pull
and push of the composite is perpetually in ux.60 This and other jazz-based myths would
provide Americans with positive images of how they should lead their lives in accordance
with the nations positive core beliefs.
To bring Jazzocracy to fruition, jazz must broaden its audience. Sehgal suggests that
jazzs relative lack of popularity is due to the fact that people are unfamiliar with the
music and therefore dont understand it. The key to increasing jazz musics popularity,
therefore, is to increase the musics availability. Sehgal offers different mechanisms by
which this could be accomplished. One is that jazz be introduced to youths through the
formal education system. As he explains it,
American school children read Twain, Whitman, and Poe. American literature
teaches us about Americas history, ideals, values, and aspirations . And just as
American schools teach the works of Americas greatest writers, so too should
schools educate about Americas classical art, the music of Armstrong, Ellington,
and Gillespie.61
57
Ibid., xxvi.
58
Ibid., 12122.
59
Ibid., xxiii.
60
Ibid., 144.
61
Ibid., 170.
In addition, other cultural institutions and government agencies should
recognize and preserve the artistic and cultural attributes of jazz by supporting the
music. Lastly, jazz should be recognized as part of the creative economy and be pro-
moted by jazz writers, economists, and politicians as an integral part of the capitalist
society.62
The most recent book formulated around the culturally conservative theory of jazz is
Gregory Clarks Civic Jazz: American Music and Kenneth Burke on the Art of Getting
Along, which was published in 2015.63 In this book, Clark deals with a problem that
has long confronted American society: how to get its people to identify with each
other and attain a sense of commonality, even though they often possess different view-
points and conicting self-interests. How, in other words, can Americans learn to
get along? Clark answers this question by combining the philosophy of Kenneth
Burke with the concept of jazz as democracy.
Burke was a twentieth-century literary theorist and critic who viewed art as a form of
rhetoric. Like other forms of rhetoric, art has the ability to change attitudes or opinions.
Unlike other forms of rhetoric, however, which use persuasion to exert change, art
wields its inuence by offering images of how things ought to be.64 Clark explains
that for Burke, art works rhetorically by carrying people through an experience of
enacting a particular shared identity as their own, of inhabiting the beliefs and attitudes
that would constitute the particular self that an artist projects upon them.65 The ability
of art to bring about a shared identity is particularly important in America, a nation of
individuals that lack a strong common identity. According to Burke, the task of art in
America is to shape individuals into the image of interdependent independence that
follows from the civic ideal of e pluribus unumin essence, unity in diversity.66 Art in
America must therefore function as a civic project, doing what politics alone is
unable to do, which is to bring people together as a commonality while at the same
time preserving their individuality.
Jazz, for Clark, is the American art form most capable of fullling the civic function
of art as conceptualized by Burke. Clark explains that he began to realize this while
attending a performance of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra led by Wynton Marsalis:
Between the tunes, Marsalis would step to the microphone to provide a primer on the
idea that jazz is the sound of democracy. That was when I began to recognize in the
making of jazz music a model for democratic interaction, for democratic
citizenship.67
Jazz is a model for democracy because, when it is done well, the music demonstrates
how unique performers nd in their very differences musical ways of getting
along, thereby contributing to the common good while at the same time advancing
62
Ibid., 17478.
63
Gregory Clark, Civic Jazz: American Music and Kenneth Burke on the Art of Getting Along (Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press, 2015). A review of Clarks book was previously published in this journal.
64
Ibid., 12.
65
Ibid., 38.
66
Ibid., 26.
67
Ibid., 29.
68
their individual interests. Clark stresses that democracy in jazz emanates from the fact
that the musicians must learn to listen and respond to each other if they are to achieve
their common goal of making music together. Jazz, in other words,
demands that performers share a commitment to subject their own equality and
freedom quite consciously to the project they share with the group. The democratic
situation that encompasses them when they make this music renders them accoun-
table to each other.69
This kind of commitment is necessary in order to give order to looming disorder, a
situation that inheres in the democratic form.
What is particularly signicant about jazz as a model of democracy is that, when they
are made aware of it, the audience can observe the democratic process as it unfolds
during a jazz performance. They can see that jazz musicians must change and adapt
to each other, making judgments all along about what is and is not good for the
music they are making.70 This is an important civic lesson, for it demonstrates that
in a democratic society the individual must learn how to balance his or her individuality
with the common good, a process that is not always easy, but one that if done well
brings its own rewards. Moreover, not only does the jazz audience observe, in the
making of jazz, the democratic process in action, they also come to identify with the
musicians and each other in the process.71 This shared feeling represents a shared iden-
tity in which the audience learns from the art of jazz how democracy ought to work.
The message we get from these three booksand the message that underlies the
current phase of jazz musics cultural conservatismis that, while Americans have
largely failed to live up to their nations democratic principles and cultural ideals,
jazz musicians have succeeded in doing so by virtue of their music. Jazz, from this per-
spective, is a vital component of American culture because it functions as a model of
Americas democratic values and beliefs. As such, jazz musics decline in popularity
is deemed far more critical than a mere reection of Americas shifting musical
tastes; it is instead treated as a symptom of the Americas drift away from its democratic
and cultural roots. This idea has received widespread support within the jazz commu-
nity, having led in recent years to the establishment of two education projects speci-
cally designed to bring the jazz-as-democracy concept into primary and secondary
schools. One of these is The Jazz & Democracy Project, established in Oakland, Califor-
nia, in 2009.72 The other is called Let Freedom Swing: Conversations on Jazz and Democ-
racy, established in New York City in 2010.73
The Jazz & Democracy Project was founded by Dr Wesley Watkins, an educator and
jazz acionado, who combined his love of jazz with his educational training to develop
a teaching program based on two interrelated ideas: rst, that an understanding of jazz
68
Ibid., 30.
69
Ibid., 84.
70
Ibid., 34.
71
Ibid., 87.
72
The Jazz & Democracy Project, http://www.jazzanddemocracy.com (accessed May 4, 2015).
73
Let Freedom Swing: Conversations on Jazz and Democracy, http://letfreedomswing.org (accessed May 4, 2015).
is essential for the understanding American democracy; second, that the jazz-as-
democracy metaphor can be used to demonstrate proper individual behavior and
group interaction, both of which are necessary for responsible citizenship and for a
stable democracy. Watkins put this pedagogical principle into practice by rst present-
ing workshops to fth grade students in the San Francisco Bay area and then by devel-
oping curricular materials to help teachers incorporate the jazz-as-democracy
metaphor into their own classrooms.
The Let Freedom Swing project was founded by Wynton Marsalis and former
Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day OConnor, who had joined together to co-
sponsor a jazz concert in Washington, D.C. one year before this project was launched.
This undertaking has generated substantial nancial support and strong institutional
backing: it is afliated with Jazz at Lincoln Center, Teachers College of Columbia Uni-
versity, and the Rockefeller Foundation. The projects key component is a set of three
videos that capture conversations between Marsalis and OConnor that explore various
aspects of the jazz and democracy relationship. These videos are supplemented by edu-
cational material (developed by Teachers College) for use in social studies, humanities,
and music classes in grades 6 through 12. The package of videos and material, which
has been distributed to schools across the country, is designed to meet core curriculum
national standards, thereby increasing the chances of its eventual implementation into
classrooms throughout America.
These educational projects reect the widespread acceptance and growing insti-
tutionalization of the culturally conservative view of jazz. They also indicate
growing concern about the musics diminished audience. Jazz, as viewed from
this perspective, must be supportedmust be kept alivebecause it embodies
the nations democratic ideals and provides the means by which to demonstrate
how these ideals are supposed to work. However, although this argument has
proven to be quite persuasive, it must also be considered problematic. I will con-
clude this essay by offering a critique of the culturally conservative view of jazz as it
is currently formulated and implemented.
To begin with, we must question the assumption that jazz, a musical style unfamiliar
to the vast majority of American people, provides a viable means of teaching democ-
racy. Will Americans learn the principles of democracy better or easier by learning
the musical attributes of jazz? Will they learn how to interact with each other better
or easier by observing how jazz musicians interact on the bandstand? The answer to
these and similar questions I believe is no. This is because most Americans (adults
and youths alike) are far more familiar with democracy than they are with jazz.
Thus, those who seek to explain the relationship between jazz and democracy must
typically reference better-known democratic concepts in order to describe how lesser
known jazz concepts embody democratic ideals. For instance, this is how Sehgal intro-
duces the jazz-as-democracy metaphor in Jazzocracy:
The jazz-as-democracy metaphor requires some explaining. Start with the basic idea
of democracy, no bells or bassoons. Democracy is a government in which the power
is concentrated in the people. The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz cites Abraham
Lincolns often quoted explanation: of the people, by the people, and for the
people. Democracy reconciles the interests of the individual with the group. For
example, Americans are granted the freedom of expression, but must also live with
the freedom of expression of others.74
It is only after providing an overview of democratic principles that Sehgal proceeds to
describe how jazz embodies these principles. Indeed, it could be said that knowing the
principles of democracy is more helpful in understanding jazz than the other way
around.75
The principles of democracy are fairly straightforwardat least at the level dealt
with in the books and education projects described aboveand are taught quite effec-
tively in direct fashion. If one believes that models and metaphors are helpful in teach-
ing the democratic process, there are many group activities, including other forms of
music, that can fulll this function. Jazz, in other words, is not as uniquely democratic
as implied by proponents of the jazz-as-democracy concept. As pianist and composer
Kurt Ellenberger made this point with regard to music: There is nothing unique about
jazz that identies it as the musical version of democracy. Everything said about jazz
could easily be said about any other style of musica denition without a distinction
is a denition without meaning.76 As such, there is no reason to force people to learn
how jazz embodies democratic principles when these principles can be conveyed
through more familiar and accessible musical forms.
This point is illustrated by Jon Pareles in his New York Times review of the Grateful
Deads 2015 farewell concert.77 Besides describing the concert in terms of its historical
signicancethe groups nal appearance after 50 years on the roadthe review con-
tained a pertinent sub-theme: that the show, held on the Fourth of July, cast the Grate-
ful Dead as profoundly American. After noting that the groups playlist included songs
citing locales such as Tennessee, Texas, and Utah, Pareles stated:
But the Grateful Deads American ideal always ran even deeper. Its music drew from
urban and rural sources, from deep blues and Latin rhythms, from jazz and the
avant-garde. And its performance, then and now, was about disparate individuals
forging something togethere pluribus unumin a participatory democracy in
which each members choices affected all the others . Its two drummers were
constantly knocking around each others decisions about the beat. Its lead and
rhythm guitars sometimes meshed, sometimes scufed. Mr. Leshs bass lines were
an additional layer of counterpoint, tugging against the guitars or talking back to
them.
Rock music is, of course, an offshoot of jazz through rhythm & blues, so it should not
be surprising that the democratic qualities commonly attributed to jazz can also be
found in rock, especially the style of improvisational rock epitomized by the Grateful
74
Sehgal, Jazzocracy, xx.
75
The idea that jazz may be an inappropriate or ineffective metaphor in contemporary American society because of
it lacks common familiarity (an important ingredient of a metaphor) has also been put forth by Ken Prouty,
Finding Jazz in the Jazz-As-Business Metaphor, Jazz Perspectives 7, no. 1 (2013): 3155.
76
Ellenberger, Music and Politics.
77
John Pareles, Review: No Song Left Unsung, Grateful Dead Plays Its Last, The New York Times, July 6, 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/07/arts/music/no-song-left-unsung-grateful-dead-plays-its-last.html.
Dead and other jam bands. Why then, if the objective is to use music to convey the
elements of democracy, shouldnt rock be ideally suited for this purpose? It is, after
all, a style of music that is familiar to multiple generations of Americans.
Even hip-hop, in its own way, can be used to convey American democratic ideals.
This is exemplied by the acclaimed musical Hamilton, which utilizes hip-hop
rhyme-and-rhythm to illustrate American democracy. In fact, the Rockefeller Foun-
dation has agreed to nance a program that will bring the musical to 20,000
New York City 11th-grade students at a reduced ticket price for the purpose of teaching
them about democracy. As explained by Judith Rodin, president of the Rockefeller
Foundation,
Heres a story that talks about American history and the ideals of American democ-
racy, and it features an immigrant [Alexander Hamilton] who is impoverished
initially and shows through perseverance and grit what he can achieve, in a vernacular
that speaks to young people, written by a product of New York public education
Could there possibly be a better combination in terms of speaking to students?78
Clearly, hip-hopthe style of music long denigrated by jazz cultural conservatives
has come to be recognized as vehicle by which to convey American democratic prin-
ciples to young people who have grown up attached to this musical form.
This leads to the supposition that emphasis on jazz musics democratic qualities may
have more to do with promoting jazz than with enhancing democracy. This argument
has been put forth by both Ellenberger and William Maxwell. As expressed by Ellen-
berger, in his caustic critique of the Let Freedom Ring project,
Were all in favor of democracy, so if youre in favor of democracy, then you must
begin to develop a love for jazz, because jazz is, as we all know, democracy at its
best. This remarkable campaign is therefore actually trying to leverage the unassail-
able power and cach of the term democracy to goad, cajole, or shame young
people into liking jazz, which makes this perhaps the most bizarre and patently
absurd attempt to bolster interest in jazz that I have ever seen [emphases in
original].79
Maxwell has identied the emphasis on the jazz-as-democracy metaphor as a symptom
of anxiety among the jazz elitesthose who administer Americas jazz institutions and
who must contend with the growing gap between the musics declining audience and its
rising social status. Among other things, he explains, the jazz-democracy link allows
jazz administrators to substitute a democracy of sound for the missing embrace of a
democratic listenership.80 Thus, while proponents of jazz-as-democracy argue that
the music must increase its audience if it is to serve its role as a model of democracy,
it appears instead that the image of jazz as a model of democracy is being used in an
effort to increase the musics audience.
78
Michael Paulson, Students Will Get Tickets to Hamilton, With Its Hip-Hop-Infused History, The New York
Times, October 27, 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/theater/students-will-get-tickets-to-hamilton-with-its-
hi-hop-infused-history.html.
79
Ellenberger, Music and Politics.
80
Maxwell, Ralph Ellison and the Constitution of Jazzocracy, 45.
This is not to imply that those who have adopted the culturally conservative view of
jazz do not sincerely believe that jazz embodies Americas democratic values. This con-
ceptualization of jazz was formulated long ago and has become an accepted part of the
musics identity and one that lends itself to the promotional efforts launched on the
behalf of jazz. Nor is this critique meant to demean efforts to support jazz. The
more access we have to jazz the better off we are. What must be questioned,
however, is the notion that jazzand seemingly only jazzcan guide American
society toward the realization of its democratic values. This represents a highly idealized
view of jazz, one that simplies the sociopolitical realities of Americas democratic
culture and exaggerates the functional importance of jazz within that culture. It is dif-
cult to know at this point what the level of jazz popularity will be in coming years, but
whatever it is, American democracy will proceed as it might, neither enhanced nor
diminished by the size of the jazz audience.
Disclosure statement
Abstract
Jazz in America, once identied with social rebellion and political protest, has since the
1980s become closely associated with cultural conservatism, a belief system that places
high value on traditionalism. Jazz, from this perspective, embodies traditional Ameri-
can values and norms, particularly those related to the nations democratic principles.
Those who perceive jazz in this manner commonly depict the music as a model of
democracy that serves as a guide to individual behavior. This essay has two basic objec-
tives: the rst is to trace the historical development of the culturally conservative view
of jazz; the second is to critically analyze this theoretical perspective. The essays goal is
to combine the historical and critical analyses into a comprehensive examination of the
culturally conservative view of jazz in America as it has evolved since its initial concep-
tualization by Ralph Ellison.
Media Review
Jazz Tap Originals: A Collection of Live Performances (19792012). Lynn Dally, Jazz Tap
Ensemble, Inc., 2014, 5 DVDs, $99.95, Educational/Institutional Price $375.00
Two men dressed in blue coveralls, their faces semi-obscured by the big hairdos,
beards, and large-frame glasses typical of 1983 fashion, syncopate each others footsteps
with successive accents that stem from their hands. With simply four drumsticks and
their own bodies, these experimentalists play a rhythmically complex Tune for KB
in an arrangement that is as much a dance as it is a musical score. In this choreo-com-
position, Keith Terry and Paul Arslanian embody the spirit and mission of the Jazz Tap
Ensemble (JTE), a company dedicated to the interplay between dancers and musicians
and the synchrony of their respective arts. Lynn Dallys recent DVD anthology, Jazz Tap
Originals: A Collection of Live Performances (19792012), showcases repertoire spanning
over 30 years, performatively highlighting the centenary relationship between jazz
music and tap dance.
In 1979, Lynn Dally founded the countrys rst touring tap dance company, along
with fellow dancers Camden Richman and Fred Strickler, and musicians Paul Arslanian
(piano), Tom Dannenberg (bass), and Keith Terry (drums). Together, they helped to
realize Dallys dream of bringing original tap dance choreography accompanied by live
jazz music to the concert stage. Dally narrates a detailed history of the company at the
beginning of each of the ve discs while selections from the companys comprehensive
archive of posters, programs, clippings, and photographs decoupage the underlying
screen, visibly bridging three decades of artistic collaboration. Several thematic
devices recur across the anthology: A newer version of the band (1998)Theo Saun-
ders (piano), Henry Franklin (bass), Jerry Kalaf (drums)plays a brass-less version of
the Thelonious classic, Monks Dream in the background of Dallys introductions.
Along with this soundscape, live performance footage of the band playing Monks
tune and a projection of Dennis Diamonds blue-hued video designtwo screen
close-ups of Saunders rapid-re ngers on the piano and Kalafs quick drum brush
strokes on a worn surface and adjacent high hatunify the ve distinct subject
matters Dally takes up over the collections 253 minutes of edited material.
While each disc encapsulates a different aspect of the companys aesthetic, the ve
discs coalesce under a series of Africanist principles that both tap dance and jazz
music share: call-and-response, polyrhythm, contrariety, ephebism,1 high-affect
1
The term Ephebism here can be understood as vitality, coming from the Greek ephebe meaning
youth. Gottschild denes this characteristic as encompassing such qualities as exibility, drive, and attack. She
writes, Attack implies speed, sharpness, and force. Intensity is also a characteristic of ephebism, but it is a kines-
thetic intensity that recognizes feeling as sensation, rather than emotion. See Brenda Dixon Gottschild, Digging the
2016 Brynn Wein Shiovitz

314 Media Review
juxtaposition, and improvisation.2 While this Africanist presence remains a constant,
the manner in which it presents itself on stage develops through the discs, shifting
with new casts and at different points throughout Dallys career. Viewing the anthology
in its entirety allows viewers to see choreographic and musical mainstays evolve over
time, rhythmically, spatially, and even fashionably. On Disc One a split screen shows
viewers a 1982 version of Sweet Blues performed as a solo by Dally with Arslanian
on piano and a version of the same composition performed by Dally a decade later fea-
turing pianist Tom Garvin. As the sequence demonstrates, the choreographic frame-
work remained almost unchanged between 1982 and 1992, but each performance
allowed rhythmic reinterpretation to manifest. The juxtaposition of the two versions
allows their unique sonic particularities to surface and, at the same time, creates a
third composition: the score that surfaces when one distinct rhythm is laid over
another. The lm thus creates its own counterpoint, collapsing time and space into
a series of complementary rhythms.
Dallys diachronic evolution as a dancer can be seen in perfect synchronicity: her
changing relationship to body and space becomes hyper-visible in the side-by-side pla-
cement of these two performances. Her costumesone a low cut black tunic, tightly
cinched by a belt at the waist, the other an oversized silk blouse in an electric nineties
shade of greenare not the only differences. Dallys upper body mirrors that of her
distinctive sound quality in each iteration, making her more seasoned tone visible by
dint of her uid por de bras in the later version. While this might have something to
do with the apparent shift in her gaze from one decidedly downward (1982) to one
that seems to implicate the heavens above (1992), it might also be the result of a chan-
ging relationship to the music itself. This dance, no matter how inwardly focused it
appears to be, entails an intimate connection to the bluesy rhythms as interpreted by
Arslanian and Garvin. Dally recalls being, totally and endlessly inspired by the blues
the structure, the feel, and by all the music of Thelonious Monk.3 This would
explain the over half dozen choreographies the company created in response to
Monks music: JTE gave classic works such as Monks Dream, Evidence, Mister-
ioso, Round Midnight, Blue Monk, and Rhythm-a-ning visible motility while
contributing volume and mass to an already rich set of musical notes.
The collections rst disc, Blues Legacy: Blues, Rock, BeBop, & Monk Early Inu-
ences, lays the foundation for the series, introducing its audience to the companys
founding members and some of the original players. Producing editor Cari Ann
Shim Sham intersperses this discs 57 minutes of company rep with retro backstage
B-roll, as Dally, Strickler, and Richman discuss the canon of jazz and tap legends
that shaped them as individual dancers and contributed to the more global inuence
of jazz on tap and vice versa. Richman explains
Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996),
15.
2
See Gottschild, Digging, and Jacqui Malone, Steppin on the Blues: The Visible Rhythms of African American Dance
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996) for an understanding of the Africanist presence in dance and music.
3
Lynn Dally, Disc One [18:2018:30].
In the forties when there was a big shift from swing to bop, the tap dancers also
made this shiftthey became much more complex rhythmically, and their syncopa-
tions became very exciting and when Baby Lawrence performed at the Monterey
Jazz Festival they called themselves the jazz tap percussionists, and there was a par-
allel here between the history of jazz and the history of tap dance, and I think a lot of
people havent heard this history, and it needs to be known.4
The remaining discs in Dallys anthology continue to articulate this history. Discs One
and Two, in particular, make the two forms interdependence and congruent evolution
visible to the eye and audible to the ear.
Disc Two, Percussion Mania-African, Latin Jazz, Samba, Worldbeat, Body Music, evi-
dences the reason that tap dancers have long struggled with a collective identity crisis: is
the tapper a dancer or a musician? According to the second disc, the tapper can be both.
The disc opens with an infectious score written by Jerry Kalaf played by seven tap musi-
cians: eight hands tap four types of drums while six more hands accent the down beat
with a triangle, wood block, and set of egg shakers. After a few short bars of Hands
On (1997), Channing Cook Holmes stands up from his bongos and begins to
dance with his feet. He maintains eye contact with his fellow musicians and allows
his whole body to absorb the polyrhythmic beat. The music builds as several of the per-
cussionists leave their objects behind and begin to use the instruments they already
possess; clapping hands and tapping feet, the percussionists make their way to
center, giving the composition a texture only the body is capable of providing. The
musicians qua dancers cut the rhythm in half with their slow and controlled use of
the upper body, giving off the impression that a corps de ballet has usurped the stage.
If one shifts ones gaze to stage left and focuses on the musicians qua dancers,
however, one will nd that the drummers hands move in high affect juxtaposition to
the tap dancers arms in center. Two tempos, styles of movement, and distinct
modes of sound production, all unied by rhythm and expressed through eight
highly individualized bodies moving in unison. The distinction between dancer and
musician is further blurred in pieces such as Hey Rube (1983), where one gets a
good taste of Terrys unique style of body music, as he and Richman perform a titillat-
ing duet a capella; they leave not a surface of the body untouched nor a unique rhythm
unexplored. The playful nature of JTEs company members emerges as the two move
sound through space in patterns that resemble everything from a Patty Cake to the act
of swatting a y. Disc Two is lled with these sorts of spirited connectionsDerick
Grant and Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards in Reunion Blues (1994), for example, or
Josette Wiggan, Channing Cook Holmes, and Joseph Wiggan in Trio (2005).
Whether it is the way a dancer relates to the music or the connection she feels to
her partner, relationships serve an important role in these two arts.
The anthologys last three discs, Masters and Mentors, illustrate the signicance of
relationships across time. Because so little of taps history has been written down,
the men and women who have passed down the form by way of body and sound,
are responsible for taps legacy and its future. Discs Three through Five pay tribute
4
Camden Richman, Disc One [6:287:09].
316 Media Review
to the masters and mentors of the art, and honor the range of styles tap dance has seen
over the last century. Notable guests such as Eddie Brown, known for his long career as
a tap soloist in nightclubs alongside such jazz greats as Jimmie Lunceford, Duke Elling-
ton, and Dizzie Gillespie, and Jimmy Slyde, who regularly performed with 1930s big
bands such as the Count Basie Orchestra, play feature roles in the collections third
disc, Rhythm Tap Legends. An opening duet danced by a 73-year-old Eddie Brown
and nine-year old Jason Rodgers shows the power of mentorship and its ability to
bridge generations. As the two dance Browns B.S. Chorus, a young Rodgers
dances condently and energetically, embodying the Africanist aesthetic of ephebism.
Still, he occasionally glances up at Brown for a smirk of approval. That this relationship
is captured in the anthology becomes all the more important when viewers learn that
Brown died only one year after his memorable performance with Rodgers. This DVD
also captures Slyde reminiscing a bit about the dancers who inspired himSteve
Condos, Cookie Cook, Ralph Brownand the dancers he has seen mature, like JTE
company member Derick Grant, who, Slyde claims was like a little Babe Ruth
growing up in Boston and major inspiration to him.
One of the strengths of the last three discs is the way they materialize the passing
down of an aural (and oral) tradition by way of the body. Seeing Brown dance alongside
Rodgers, or Dally share the stage with one of her biggest inuences, Brenda Bufalino, in
a duet choreographed to Monks In Walked Bud, shows the body as a vessel for
absorbing history and as an instrument for change. Years of rhythmic collaboration
and friendship between Dally and Bufalino made them pioneers in securing level
ground for women in tap. In Walked Bud represents just that, a reclaiming of the
stage that had for so long been dominated by men. In addition to showing how a
company like JTE helped to equalize the tap dance stage, this collection of footage
reveals how it integrated a historically racialized space. Despite taps intrinsic hybridity,
the black and white bodies responsible for its development have found themselves on
separate stages. Pieces like Interplay (1995) choreographed by Slyde and performed
by Dallys diverse company, however, advocate for the integration of tap dance. Inter-
play is as much collaboration as it is an opportunity for individual company members
to have a moment in the spotlight. At times the tap dancers provide the only audible
music while at others they hold still and let the musicians solo. Everyone plays together
in this dance; rhythmic communication dissolves markers and boundaries.
Dissolving Boundaries could in fact be another name for Discs Four and Five,
which feature some of the many famous guests JTE has shared the stage with over
the last three decades. The Entertainers and New Ideas continue the work of Disc
Three, bridging generational gaps, recategorizing distinctions between dancers and
musicians, and disbanding long-seen racial divides on the tap dance stage. These two
discs also bring together the array of styles that both tap and jazz have contributed
to Americas identity thus showing the complexity of these performance mediums
and challenging the notion that a particular type of body belongs to a particular
aesthetic.
While dancers like Brown or Slyde were well known performers to tap dancers of a
certain era, they did not receive the same recognition outside the tap community that
performers like Bill Robinson or Fred Astaire gained from long term exposure on the
Hollywood screen. The Entertainers convokes both the living and the dead, bringing in
guest artists such as Charles Honi Coles and the Nicholas Brothers to share the stage
with the rest of the JTE ensemble as well as paying tribute to dancers like Eleanor
Powell and the Condos Brothers by way of reconstructing classic choreographies of
The Hollywood Journey. Over the course of the discs 54 minutes, one gets to
know these innovators, not just as dancers or choreographers, but also as people.
We watch many of these guests improvise, experience the way they seem to t in per-
fectly with the rest of the company (despite the apparent discrepancy in age), listen to
them share storieseven sing. They are true entertainers, but also bear witness to the
challenges many black artists experienced in an industry run by white men. For those
dancers no longer living, JTE honors their contribution by restaging immortal compo-
sitions. Coles pays respect to his mentor, Bill Bojangles Robinson with his rendition
of Doin the New Low Down. As Dally remarks, we stand on the shoulders of those
who came before us.5 Josette Wiggan and Michelle Dorrance perform a high-energy
tribute to the Nicholas Brothers in their rendering of the Hollywood routine Lucky
Number (1936). In addition to capturing the spirit of the Brothers, these women
teach us that gender, color, and age are not requisite for authentic reconstructions,
as other famous tap tributes have led audiences to believe over the years.6
New Ideas, the collections nal disc, is a tribute to a man that, changed our lives
his generosity, sense of humor, and true creativity inspired everyone, dancer and
non-dancer alike.7 It tracks Gregory Hines long-standing relationship with JTE,
one that survived up through the performers last few months of life. We see Hines
in his element, performing in concert, rehearsing with the company, giving master
classes across Los Angeles, and offering true artistry in several iterations of his work
Groove that he created for JTE in 1998. His life was far too short, but New Ideas
allows viewers to see a glimpse of the full life he lived and the great number of contri-
butions he made to American dance. The nal disc also shows the evolution of Dallys
choreography for JTE. Her early work was solely grounded in tap dance and evolved to
encompass rhythm tap, amenco, modern, and bharata natyam. Solea (2003) shows
that tap is not just about collapsing binaries, but rather an opportunity to bring differ-
ent worlds together through music.
Jazz Tap Originals celebrates inclusivity and creativity, foregrounding the interplay
among people, the arts, and difference. As a work of art, it represents a virtuosic
display of both tap dance and jazz. As a choreographic tool, it shows the benets of col-
laboration and experimentation. As a lm, it preserves histories, capturing people and
stories as eeting as performance itself. This anthology is an instrument for anyone
wishing to explore concrete ways in which the Africanist aesthetic manifests on the
American stage, understand the interdependency of tap dance and jazz, or examine
5
Dally, Disc Four [12:0912:11].
6
I am thinking of Astaires famous Bojangles of Harlem in Swing Time (1936) or Powells Tribute to Bill Robin-
son in Honolulu (1939) where both actors believed blackface was necessary in order to convey whom it was they
wished to pay respect, for example.
7
Dally, Disc Five [17:2517:41].
318 Media Review
how art can challenge preconceived binaries, bringing people together through rhythm.
Lynn Dallys new work will prove an invaluable resource for teachers, artists, and art-
enthusiasts alike.
ORCID
Brynn Wein Shiovitz http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3505-7985
Brynn Wein Shiovitz

Chapman University
Media Reviews
Jaco: The Film. Directed by Paul Marchand and Stephen Kijak. Iron Horse Entertain-
ment. 2015. DVD and Blu-Ray. 217 minutes. $19.99.
Jaco: Original Soundtrack. Jaco Pastorius and others. 1 CD and 10 pp. booklet. Liner
notes by Robert Trujillo and Chuck Doom. 2015. Sony Legacy 88875141332. $11.99.
My name is John Francis Pastorius III, and Im the greatest bass player in the world.
According to Weather Report co-founder Joe Zawinul, this is how electric bassist Jaco
Pastorius introduced himself when the two rst met in the fall of 1974.1 At the time,
Zawinul was unimpressed by the bassists trademark playful ego (as he recalls, he
simply responded with, Get the fuck out of here), but Pastorius eventually landed
the gig anyway: in 1976 he was enlisted to replace bassist Alphonso Johnson, and
over the next ve years his work with Weather Report brought his distinctive
musical style to worldwide attention. Pastoriuss rise, fall, and ultimately tragic end
are the subject of Jaco, a new documentary about his life and career.
Jaco tells Pastoriuss story through new interviews with his friends, family, and
collaborators, including Weather Report members Wayne Shorter, Alex Acuna, and
Peter Erskine, singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, engineer and friend Peter Yianilos,
and Pastoriuss children. The result is an inherently human portrait, one that focuses
on Pastorius the man, rather than Jaco the mythbut one that also raises new ques-
tions about the bassists legacy in the twenty-rst century.
The lm opens in 1983 at the beginning of Pastoriuss downward spiral. We see an
excerpt from his pedagogical videowhere he claims that he cannot get a gig
juxtaposed against footage of him at the height of his powers, touring Japan with his
Word of Mouth Big Band just six months earlier. After some brief commentary, we
are transported back to Pastoriuss childhood in South Florida, where he encountered
the eclectic range of music that formed the backbone of his aestheticas we hear him
explain, I grew up in Florida, where there was no real musical prejudice Whatever
you wanted to hear, you could hear it. And everything was hip.2 The lm slowly builds
to the formation of Pastoriuss signature style, a development presented as entirely
rooted in practicality: at the age of 19, Pastorius had become a father and knew he
would need to stand out if he was to support his young family as a musician. It then
breaks down the key components of this stylePastoriuss fretless bass, his use of
1
00:33:0500:33:12.
2
00:06:3100:06:52.
2016 Brian F. Wright

320 Media Reviews
harmonics, his virtuosic technique, and his horn-inspired phrasingproviding a
helpful primer for the uninitiated.
From here Jaco follows the entire arc of Pastoriuss professional career, from record-
ing his rst solo album and his work as a studio musician, to joining Weather Report, to
his work as a sideman for Joni Mitchell, up through his solo career in the 1980s. The
real highlight of the lm are the interviews with Mitchell and drummer Peter Erskine,
who both provide behind-the-scenes insight into Pastorius as a man and musician; Ers-
kines candid discussions of Weather Reports internal tensions, jealousy, and in-ght-
ing especially stand out. The last section of the lm details Pastoriuss nal years.
Having succumbed to drinking, drugs, and mental illness, Pastorius ends up homeless,
playing for change on the street. As he struggles to control his worsening bipolar dis-
order, he is eventually killed after picking a ght with a Florida bouncer during a manic
episode. His tragic end is contrasted with the music he left behind for subsequent
generations.
Given that the lm is presented and nanced by Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo, it is
perhaps unsurprising how little the lm concerns itself with jazz discourse. In fact,
outside of those who knew Pastorius personally, the majority of the lms talking
heads are rock and funk musiciansTrujillo, Geddy Lee, Bootsy Collins, Sting, and
Flea, just to name a few. The lmmakers thus deliberately focus on Pastorius as a
bassist, depicting him as a jack-of-all-trades able to adapt seamlessly to any musical
situation. Yet Pastorius considered himself rst and foremost a jazz musician, a label
that was often denied him. Despite his talent and skill, Pastorius played electric bass
and was continually pigeonholed as a fusion musiciana derogatory term even
back thenby critics skeptical of commercial success and the incursion of rock
elements.3 The backlash against fusion is most clearly distilled in Leonard Feathers dia-
tribe A Year of Selling Out, in which he refers to 1970 as the Year of the Whores
and attacks fusion musicians for creating music in a style often more representative of
what they hoped might sell than of what they believed might endure.4 This perception
of fusion as a cheap attempt at broad commercial appeal worsened throughout the
decade, and the electric bass became an easy target for critique; as Charlie Haden
claimed in 1977, As far as creative music is concerned, there can only be the acoustic
bassthere cannot be electric bass.5 These detractors affected Pastorius deeply, and
taken within this context, it might be better to read his infamously arrogant public
persona as an attempt at self-legitimization rather than mere braggadocio. For
example, this is how he defended himself in 1978:
3
As I have addressed previously in this journal, the assumption that the electric bass is somehow foreign to jazz is
historically inaccurate. While the electric bass is most associated with rock and funk, it was rst adopted by jazz
dance band musicians in the 1950s; see: Brian F. Wright, A Bastard Instrument: The Fender Precision Bass, Monk
Montgomery, and Jazz in the 1950s. Jazz Perspectives 8, no. 3 (2015): 281303. For a broader discussion of fusion,
see: Kevin Fellezs, Birds of Fire: Jazz, Rock, Funk, and the Creation of Fusion (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2011).
4
Leonard Feather, A Year of Selling Out, Down Beat 16th Annual Yearbook: Music 71, 10.
5
Quoted in Bass Lines: Crystal Gazing With A Bonanza Of Experts, Down Beat, January 27, 1977, 14.
So when everyone else is saying that isnt music and youve got to play the big bass
and all this bullshit I say, Well, dig this. And now I can play and everyone else is
sort of crying. It was just that sort of positiveness, it was just being pragmatic, I
had to work, I had babies on the way, and to hell with that ego trip. That aint
jazz? Bullshit! This is jazz and Im playing the jazz.
Because I can improvise and I can play new stuff and I know tradition pretty well too.
And I think those are pretty good ingredients to be called a jazz musician. I aint
hanging on to the past. I aint putting people down that do that, dont get me
wrong, because lots of people arent capable of doing anything else but hold on to
the past.6
Here, as in many of his interviews from the 1970s, Pastorius rails against those who
deny his status as jazz musician due to his chosen instrument and his association
with fusion. By contrast, the lms only mention of the critical backlash against
fusion comes from drummer Lenny White, who briey recalls that, The so-called
jazz police were having ts. These same people that were going to Ozzy Osbourne con-
certs were now coming to see Return to Forever and Weather Report.7 The lm does
not explore the issue further and instead presents fusion as new and exhilarating, a glor-
ious triumph of the 1970s.
While the lm emphasizes other parts of Pastoriuss story, the tension between his
desire for both commercial appeal and acceptance by the jazz community inherently
complicated his career. This is best seen in the making of his second solo effort,
1981s Word of Mouth. The album was the result of a substantial deal with Warner
Bros., who provided Pastorius a six-gure, multi-album agreement, expecting a bestsel-
ling fusion record ( la Weather Report). Instead, they are given Word of Mouth, a jazz
patchwork in which Pastorius variously shows off his chops as an avant-garde jazz
improviser, a bass virtuoso, a bandleader, and a composer. As detailed in the lm,
Warner Bros. believed the album (especially its blistering opening track, Crisis)
lacked mainstream appeal. This moment is presented as an example of Pastorius not
being beholden to commercial pressures, but that oversimplies the story.
Given free reign and a massive budget, Pastorius attempted to use Word of Mouth to
solidify his place within the jazz tradition. He brought in jazz legends such as Toots
Thielemans and Jack DeJohnette to play on the record; he presented himself principally
as a composerthe albums only picture of Pastorius comes from its inner sleeve,
which depicts him composing at a piano instead of playing bass (see Figure 1); and
afterward he even formed a big band to promote the album. For all this effort,
though, the album was still met with mixed reviews (the Down Beat review inadver-
tently summed up the critical consensus: On one hand, the album is largely derivative
and unresolved; on the other, it contains some overwhelming and amazing
moments.8). Rather than silencing his critics, Word of Mouth instead caused him to
lose his mainstream American audience, and with it, his million-dollar recording
6
Steven Rosen, Jaco Pastorius: Portrait of Jaco, Player, June 1978, reprinted at: http://jacopastorius.com/features/
interviews/portrait-of-jaco/.
7
00:40:3300:40:43.
8
Lars Gabel, Review of Word of Mouth, Down Beat vol. 48, December 1981, 53.
322 Media Reviews
Figure 1. Word of Mouth inner album sleeve.

Notes: Jaco Pastorius, Word of Mouth, Warner Bros. BSK-3535, 1981, LP. No photo
credit is indicated on the original album sleeve.
deal. The lm does not delve into these details. Jaco, as a whole, thus raises a much
larger question concerning the bassists legacy: namely, should he be remembered as
a signicant electric bassist or as a signicant jazz musician? While the two are not
mutually exclusive, the lm certainly emphasizes the former: [W]e all say it. Hes
our Hendrix,9 Racer X/Mars Volta bassist Juan Alderete states in the lm (note
they dont say, Hes our Coltrane).
This issue of Pastoriuss legacy is further evident on the soundtrack released in con-
junction with the lm. As a collection of his musical output, Jaco: Original Soundtrack is
somewhat limited, particularly when compared to previous anthologies such as Punk
Jazz: The Jaco Pastorius Anthology (Rhino) and The Essential Jaco Pastorius (also on
Sony Legacy)it omits, for instance, his signature arrangements of Charlie Parkers
Donna Lee and Pee Wee Elliss The Chicken, as well as anything off of the phenom-
enal Birthday Concert album. Nonetheless, it succeeds in supporting the lms narrative
of Pastoriuss eclecticism and subsequent inuence: for example, he is featured playing
9
00:05:0400:05:07.
virtuosic solos (Okonkole Y Trompa and Portrait of Tracy), soul music (the upbeat
Come On, Come Over featuring Sam & Dave), fusion (on his Weather Report com-
positions Teen Town, River People, and the funky Barbary Coast), avant-garde
jazz (the aforementioned Crisis), and as a sideman for rocker Ian Hunter (All Amer-
ican Alien Boy) and singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell (a live version of The Dry
Cleaner from Des Moines, co-written by Mitchell and Charles Mingus). This material
showcases Pastoriuss immense range as a musician and composer. The nal ve tracks
on the album, all recent selections inspired by Pastorius, are meant to demonstrate the
bassists inuence on, and continued relevance for, later generations: there is a new
track from rapper Tech N9ne that samples Pastoriuss Kuru; a classical guitar
arrangement of Continuum; a reinterpretation of Come On, Come Over by Tru-
jillos hard rock supergroup Mass Mental; and two ambient darkwave tracksone fea-
turing Pastoriuss daughter Mary singing about her father and another by (Crosses)
featuring Pastorius-like bass harmonics. Contemporary jazz electric bassists such as
Marcus Miller and Victor Wooten are conspicuously absent from this collection, as
is SWVs 1997 hit R&B song Rain, based on Portrait of Tracy.
Like the lm itself, the soundtrack reveals the complicated position of Pastoriuss
reception today, especially regarding his status as a jazz musician. The omission here
of his arrangement of Donna Lee is particularly telling. As detailed in the lm, it
was this tune that so impressed Bobby Colomby that he took Pastorius out of South
Florida to record his rst album, thereby jump-starting his entire professional
career;10 although not explicitly stated in the lm, it was also this tune that inspired
Zawinul to hire Pastorius for Weather Report. Donna Leea Charlie Parker
bebop standardwas Pastoriuss entrance fee to jazz credibility. As he once told a
BBC journalist who admitted to not having heard his rst solo album:
Oh, you gotta check it out! Listen to the rst tune, the rst cut on the album, and
youre dead, he shouts. You will not believe it! This is my claim to fame, I play
Donna Lee. yknow? Charlie Parkers Donna Lee, just bass and conga drums
[played by Don Alias] and LOOK OUT! You never heard nothin like this, just
be-ware!11
While it is possible that Donna Lee was left off the soundtrack due to licensing issues,
this is unlikely given that four other selections from his debut appear on the sound-
track; rather, it seems that the lmmakers simply chose material more consistent
with their perception of Pastorius as an electric bass virtuoso. For to appreciate
As Colomby describes meeting Pastorius in the lm:

10
I says [Sarcastically], Oh! I understand youre the greatest bass player in the world? And [Pastorius]
said, I am. I went Okay. Of course, the arrogant New York side of me came out and I said, Well
why dont you get your bass and just play a little bit He played Donna Lee He played it with
the facility and phrasing and nuance as a saxophone player which I had never heard before on
that instrument. And I said, Look. Im gonna try and get you a record deal. (see: 00:26:1500:27:11)
11
Clive Williamson, interview with Jaco Pastorius, Bassist & Bass Techniques, October 1997, p. 12; reprinted at
http://jacopastorius.com/features/interviews/interview-with-clive-williamson-bbc/.
324 Media Reviews
Donna Lee and its signicance requires some recognition of Pastoriuss conscious
self-positioning within jazzotherwise, it is just one virtuosic solo among many.
Jaco tells the life story of a man who has gone on to be enshrined as a mythic gure
among electric bassists, and it does so in a way that is both grounded and humanizing.
That it does not complicate his status in jazz does not detract from the lm; perhaps it
simply reveals that these particular debates have become dated. In the nearly 30 years
since Pastoriuss death, scholars have begun to carve out a place for fusion in the jazz
canon, and from the vantage point of the 21st century, his struggles for legitimacy
increasingly seem like the battles of a bygone era.
Brian F. Wright
Fairmont State University
About the Contributors
Doug Abrams is a theorist, composer, pianist and arranger. He holds a masters degree
in music theory from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a masters
degree in jazz piano from the Manhattan School of Music, and a bachelors
degree in physics with a minor in math from M.I.T. He has produced two
CDs of original music, and has performed professionally with saxophonists
James Moody, Dick Oatts, and Felipe Salles, vocalists Johanna Grssner and
The New York Voices, bassists Sean Smith, Martin Wind, and Eivind Opsvik,
and drummers Dan Weiss, Allison Miller, and Alex Snydman. He has written
for ensembles including big band, a capella jazz choir, wind quintet with
vocals, and vocals with clarinet, string quartet, piano, and bass. He is currently
working on a Ph.D. in music theory at the University of Massachusetts at
Amherst, and his research interests include jazz and mathematical methods in
music theory.
Casey Hale is a composer, guitarist, and researcher who lives in Bristol, UK. He
received his Ph.D. from The Graduate Center of the City University of
New York, where his dissertation research focused on the cultural politics of revi-
sionist repertory projects by African American improvisers. His recent creative
projects have explored extended harmonic resources in acoustic and electronic
media, and he is currently organizing performances, lectures, and symposia in
conjunction with EUROMicroFest 2017.
Andrew Sanchirico holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the State University of New York at
Albany and is a former Senior Research Scientist who has published several
articles in social science journals. He is currently an independent scholar
whose interests focus on music (particularly jazz) and culture. His article, Is
Conventional Jazz History Distorted by Myths? appeared in the Journal of Jazz
Studies. He is currently working on a study that examines the historical relation-
ship between black music and the black middle class.
Frederick Schenker is a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in the Department of Music at
Washington University in St. Louis. He received a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at
the University of Wisconsin Madison. His research explores the intersections
of empire, race, and musical labor in colonial Asias jazz age. It examines the
impact of the circulation of jazz in Asia in the 1920s on different types of
musical laborers, including migrant Filipino performers, professional Filipina
dancers, and touring African American entertainers.

326 About the Contributors
Brynn Shiovitz is a lecturer in the Department of Theatre at the University of Califor-
nia, Los Angeles and the Department of Dance at Chapman University. Her
writing on dance can be seen in Dance Chronicle, Women and Performance, and
Dance Research Journals, Dance, Dance Spirit, and Dance Teacher Magazines,
and a forthcoming anthology on African Diaspora Dance edited by Thomas
DeFrantz. Her current book manuscript project asks readers to consider multiple
forms of masking at play in twentieth-century American tap dance performances
of the stage, screen, and sound cartoon. She received her Ph.D. in Culture and
Performance from the University of California, Los Angeles and her MA in Per-
formance Studies from New York University.
Brian F. Wright is a Ph.D. candidate at Case Western Reserve University and is cur-
rently Temporary Assistant Professor of Music at Fairmont State University.
His research focuses on the cultural history of the electric bass in jazz, rock,
and rhythm n blues, and his work has been published in Jazz Perspectives,
Vintage Guitar, Notes, and the Journal of World Popular Music.
JAZZ PERSPECTIVES Directions for Contributors
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF The journal will consider all jazz studies articles reporting on original research and analysis (musical,
Ken Prouty, Michigan State University, USA historical, cultural, or otherwise). The journal additionally welcomes articles on topics in biography, oral his-
tory, discography, and primary source studies (recordings, texts, transcriptions, manuscripts, etc.), though
BOOK REVIEW EDITOR
Paul Engle, Berklee College of Music, USA such submissions must follow the journals normal form and style guidelines. All submissions should follow
the form and style guidelines presented in The Chicago Manual of Style (latest edition) and should be dou-
MEDIA REVIEW EDITOR ble-spaced, with accordingly formatted full citations set in footnotes rather than endnotes. Please note that
Tammy Kernodle, Miami University, USA
we do not include bibliographies in our published articles nor do we use in-text author-date citations.
EDITORIAL BOARD All communications and article submissions should be submitted via email to the editor in chief,
Graeme Boone, Ohio State University, USA Ingrid Monson, Harvard University, USA
Eric Charry, Wesleyan University, USA Ben Piekut, University of Southampton, UK
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Scott DeVeaux, University of Virginia, USA Steven F. Pond, Cornell University, USA institutional affiliation (if applicable), email address, mailing address, and the articles full title. Manuscripts
Krin Gabbard, State University of New York at Eric Porter, University of California at Santa Cruz, USA must be attached in either Microsoft Word (for either OS platform), AppleWorks, or in Rich Text formats
Stony Brook, USA Brian Priestley, noted jazz scholar, author, pianist, UK (see under File Menu/Save As in most word processing programs). Word Perfect and PDF text files will not
Leslie Gay, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, USA Ronald Radano, University of Wisconsin at Madison, USA be accepted.
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Wolfram Knauer, Director of the Jazz-Institut, Conservatory of Amsterdam, The Netherlands journal, and we will consider articles of both shorter and longer lengths than conventional journal essay
Darmstadt, Germany Michael Veal, Yale University, USA norms. Once an article is accepted, the author will be notified if cuts are required due to space
George Lewis, Columbia University, USA Christopher Washburne, Columbia University, USA
Kristin A. McGee, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
considerations. Please note that we only send out final versions of essays to our reviewers. We will not
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formal review must be in the English language. Authors may nevertheless inquire about our interest in a non-
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Significant books, CDs, DVDs, web publications, and concerts will all be considered for review. Reviews
are generally assigned and not peer-reviewed. However, on occasion, a suggestion for a review will be
accepted. All review ideas should be sent to the appropriate review editor, Gabriel Solis for books, and
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Jazz Perspectives, 2015

Vol. 9, No. 3, 215216, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17494060.2015.1259672

Letter from the Editor

2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Jazz Freedoms: Balkan Rhythm, Race,

2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Third Stream Music and Jazz Freedoms

of possibility engendered by a discourse of personal freedom and consumption embol-

Balkan Rhythms and Realness

Contesting Jazz Freedoms

Recursive Structure and Inversional

2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Three Monkish Moments

Example 2. Unexpected Chord on 31.3, with Immediately Preceding Notes.

Example 3. Deceptive Cadence on 32.1, and the Notes Leading Up to It.

The Musical Text

Inversional Symmetry and Recursive Structure

A Description of the Musical Surface

Example 6. Three Transpositions of a Prominent Tetrachord on the Bridge, Which

Here we extend Caniatos demonstration of recursive structure by taking three more

Inversional Pitch-Class Relations

Example 8. Near-I7 Inversion of Notes on 31.1 and Preceding Represented by Hexa-

Perhaps, then, the complex network of pitch relationships in Ruby, My Dear

Appendix 1. Pitch-Class Inversion

Appendix 2. Inversion Operators with an Index Difference of 6

Different Placements of Spirit: The

The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayeld

2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Tribute Projects, Race, Genre, and Historicism

Jones [Baraka], Changing Same, 2401.

Spontaneity, Spirituality, Empowerment, and Musical Praxis

We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue

Leena Conquest enters with Mayelds lyrics, the accompaniment is moving at

Different Placements of Spirit

1966, this spirit worship is pushed by an emotionalism that seeks freedomnot

The Culturally Conservative View of

2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Jazz and Cultural Conservatism in the Postwar Era

Cultural Conservatism and the Jazz Revival

This form of cultural self-critique is a variation of the cultural conservatism rst

Cultural Conservatism and Democracy in the Post-Revival Jazz Era

2016 Brynn Wein Shiovitz

Brynn Wein Shiovitz

2016 Brian F. Wright

Figure 1. Word of Mouth inner album sleeve.

As Colomby describes meeting Pastorius in the lm:

About the Contributors

2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

RJAZ 9_3 Cover.indd 2 26-11-2016 15:16:31

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