Chicago Jazz

Chicago Jazz

            In class, we have been discussing the dialogic interaction between community and jazz musicians. This give-and-take between community and performer transformed jazz, and made it “America’s language” (Lecture 2/5/13). Applying the Bakhtin theory to jazz, we can see that jazz is a conversation between the performer and the listener. The reason jazz flourished in Chicago during this time period is due to the community, technology, and “dialogue” that ensued. While both cities are important, Chicago is most important during this time period because the style it creates then influences all later jazz—including that in New York.

            Chicago was a melting pot of culture where any and all nationalities could be found in their respective blocks throughout the city. While this is also true of New York, racial communities were a heavier factor in Chicago jazz—black people were mainly all located on the South side, where many jazz clubs popped up, versus whites on the North. While there is the stigma that only white people influenced jazz during the 1920’s, this is simply not the case. In fact, “the finest African American musicians from New Orleans and elsewhere…had already gravitated to Chicago by the mid-1920s” (Gioia, 71). People were coming to Chicago due to money. There were more opportunities to record and to perform in a big city in the North like Chicago and the pay was much better than in New Orleans (Gioia, 73).

In fact, there was dialogue that was happening between the blacks and whites. Because of the segregation of neighborhoods in Chicago, this meant that jazz clubs were segregated as well. However, while blacks were not welcome to go to nice “white” hotels or bars where white jazz musicians played, these white jazz musicians were free to walk into the black clubs to listen and take from the music being played there. This is the concept of white appropriation—taking and incorporating black musical elements into their own music: so, black influence even reached the more white or white-influenced jazz performers of the time, such as the all-white Austin High School Gang. As Gioia says well, “Black jazz, white jazz, hot jazz, sweet jazz, New Orleans jazz, Dixie jazz: no matter what you call it or how you define it, it all became part of Chicago jazz during these formative years” (Gioia, 71). There were an enormous variation of jazz styles at that point and they all converged in one city, Chicago, which is why is most important to jazz during this time.

            Chicago jazz is extremely important because it was the original and dominant jazz in Chicago that later influenced New York (Gioia, 69). “Chicago style” was many different types of playing, appropriation, and innovation coming together. Applying Bakhtin, dialogue via dance halls contributed immensely to this because this was occurring during a time of great industrialization, and combined with the appropriation occurring within these halls, jazz was molded by both blacks and whites. Many greats were in Chicago during this time period that contributed greatly to its style—“Armstrong, Hines, Morton, Oliver, Noone, Dodds” as well as white performers like the Austin High Gang (Gioia, 71). They created a Chicago style that differed from other jazz with its “certain restless energy [that] begins to reverberate in the music” (Gioia, 71). It had a great vital aliveness—from “cheeky attitude on the horn” to “the shuffle rhythm, which conveyed the feel of double time” to the break when the band held back for the soloist to step forward “to proclaim a hot phrase” (Gioia, 72). It is important to recognize one of the most important components of Chicago jazz—the solo. And there is one man who best represents the culture, community, and “solo” of Chicago jazz.

           Louis Armstrong is the epitome as well as founder of Chicago jazz as we think of it, especially with the emphasis on solos and improvisation that he created and perfected. When Armstrong first entered a recording studio in Chicago in the 1920s, he established himself “as the dominant jazz instrumentalist of his generation, perhaps of all time” (Gioia, 57). And Armstrong deserves this recognition as he had a key role in “transforming the focus of jazz from the ensemble to the soloist” (57). But additionally, it was just his creative, musical genius that allowed him to mold and shape jazz. He had “advanced melodic ideas [that] simply did not exist in jazz before” (Gioia, 57). Gioia even goes on to say that “Armstrong’s improvisational style must have been a revelation to other players of that era” (57). Armstrong’s innovation led to the innovative style of Chicago, and he was the leader in that transition. It is through Armstrong that not only ‘Chicago jazz’ was created as a style, but that he molded the “Jazz Age” as well.

            With the help of Armstrong and many others, Chicago definitely had its own style in the 1920s. Socially, the segregation of blacks and whites and accompaniment therefore of white appropriation contributed to style in interesting ways. Financially, the economic times and situation was better in the North as well, which drew a crowd of talented, hopeful musicians who populated the jazz halls. Combining a time of industrialization with all of these factors, “no town or city in the forty-eight states had the talents or the spirit to generate the kind of jazz that caused toe-tapping rhythm to course through the veins and arteries of Chicago, ‘the city with the big shoulders’” (Travis, 75). If it were not for Chicago and all of the factors it contributed during the 1920s, jazz as we know it today would not be the same, and for this reason I believe it to be more important than New York’s influences, simply because it came first and laid down the foundations for later jazz.

The Evolution of Jazz in New Orleans

The physical location of New Orleans provided an extraordinary birthplace for jazz to emerge in America. It was the culmination of elements that set the perfect stage—these included a cosmopolitan atmosphere, the fact that it was a center of trade (especially the fact that trade was via water commerce), its history of a more lenient Latin-based slave system, as well as a high population of blacks and mixed-raced Creoles. Being a trading port, there was a mixture of people coming to New Orleans from not only the rest of the United States, but from the rest of the world! Other cities in America may have had one or a couple, but definitely did not have all of these elements. New Orleans became a mixing pot, filled with African, American, African American, Haitian, Caribbean, Spanish and other influences, and when this mixture was later poured out of the pot—jazz emerged. This introduces a commonly discussed term in both Gioia and our lectures—syncretism—the merging of traditional African musical elements that began to combine with European music styles.

Gioia’s main argument is that the creation of jazz is partially due to the influence of African culture. I agree with this; jazz was created from a mixed foundation, and African roots definitely are a strong part of that foundation. And New Orleans, with it’s incredible mixture of people and ethnicity, could add even more to this foundation. To begin with, New Orleans had French roots, which is turn means latin roots. The Latin slave system was much more humane toward blacks than the traditional (American) English system—allowing them rights such as purchasing themselves, getting married, and being freed. With a history of greater freedom for blacks, this resulted in later years in them having more freedom and influence on things like music. According to Gioia and our class lectures, the Creoles of Color created a barrier between themselves and “actual” blacks by immersing themselves in European tradition and identifying with their white heritage over their black side. However, according in Gioia, in the very beginning of the 20^th century the United States government passed a law that basically said if you were of any colored/African descent, then you were labeled black—and this applied to these Creoles of Color (33). Now, these people who had tried so hard to focus on European culture, were making music with ‘traditional’ black slaves who exemplified more of a cultural African side in their music. The mash-up of these two musical styles, this syncretism, was a factor that led to the creation of jazz.

Within the text, Gioia mentions a huge number of musical artists budding from New Orleans. Some of these sources of jazz include the works of Charles “Buddy” Bolden, Bunk Johnson, King Oliver, Sidney Bichet, Jelly Roll Morton, and Louis Armstrong.  On this short list of greats includes one man who ‘debatably’ fathered jazz. About him, Gioia states, “Certainly Bolden, even if he did not invent jazz, had mastered the recipe for it, which combined the rhythms of ragtime, the bent notes and chord patterns of the blues, and an instrumentation drawn from New Orleans brass bands and string ensembles” (34).

This quote helps us as readers see that jazz is the combination of many different things (such as blues and ragtime, a new set of notes and chords, etc). If jazz was created partially through practices taken from New Orleans brass bands and string ensembles—and these things were influenced and molded by blacks and African culture—then we can imply that jazz is also molded by Africa. Indeed, African musical traditions such as attack, syncope, and multiple meters are heavily prevalent in jazz. So, as stated by Thompson, there were now direct examples to see in these new music styles that were directly taken down from past Western African culture. The vital aliveness, the “get down” factor, etc.—these were all around in past African music and now were elements of the new and evolving musical genre of jazz.

After reading Gioia and attending lecture, I would personally say that the most important factor on why jazz emerged in New Orleans has to do with ‘freedom’ and energy in New Orleans. New Orleans had freedom in so many aspects: people were free to come and go, which meant different types of people were always bringing new influences to the city. Because of the more lax Latin-based slave history, the black population in general had more rights and more freedom to do things like create music. Also, there was the freedom to change and create music any way one wanted—and indeed, this did include mixing  in African conventions such as a call-and-response and the combination of music with dance.

Buddy Bolden’s grandson called his grandfather a true musician, explaining that “no one had to explain notes or feeling or rhythm to him. It was all there inside him, something he was always sure of”(5). I think his innate music ability, as described by his grandson, is something that truly exemplifies his African roots. This is something that’s been talked about extensively both in lectures and in The History of Jazz, and that is “vital aliveness”. He brought his music to life—the vital aliveness that is so prevalent in traditional Western African music had now also found it’s way in this new form: jazz.