Jazz Music and Musical Acculturation - Essay Example

Jazz Music and Musical Acculturation In ethnomusicology, acculturation can be considered as a form of trans-culturation of music. Trans-culturation is a broad reference to the way in which more than two cultures come into contact, as far as musical influences are concerned, setting in motion processes that alter the music of the affected culture in one way or the other. Consequently, music from different cultures could merge, resulting in one culture. When one culture absorbs, virtually, the musical styles of other cultures through selection and modification, this form of trans-culturation is referred to as acculturation. One significant example of how one culture has absorbed musical styles from other cultures is jazz music. The role that has been played by blacks, creoles, and whites in the musical amalgamation that eventually came up with jazz music is a vital element in the development of the genre. African Americans in the South, as well as those living elsewhere in America, adopted many values held by their white counterparts. However, their musical style has remained inherently reflective of dichotomies that they faced as Americans living in the United States and these were absorbed into their music (Hardie 31). Slave music remained a distinctive cultural form for African Americans. African Americans had little distinction between sacred and secular music. They sang varieties of songs as spirituals and for work, just as their ancestors had done in Western Africa. Black music was never limited to any single tradition of music. While we tend to view black music in terms of all genres such as funk and other art forms, some of these genres are not informed by the reasoning that African American musicians treat their music as an oral art form rather than a written one. African Americans, living in a country that was, and in some cases still is, covertly and overtly hostile to them, attempted to accommodate these different cultures in the United States with the aim of speaking out (Hardie 32). They fit these cultures very well into their music, which allowed them to incorporate and learn a new repertoire that became acceptable as part of their music, especially in the initial stages of jazz and its formation. In the 20s and 30s, many producers were in the business of marketing race records, which allowed them the chance to target the black demographic and had more chance of making money (Hardie 35). African Americans were exposed to different music genres, and they played blues music rich with influence from performance by the creoles. Their music also had borrowed aspects from Haiti, Cuba, and Jamaica and came to be known as Afro-Caribbean music. This style included some ethnic styles borrowed from the Spanish Creole, the French Creole, Germans, and the Cajun. A situation also arose where African Americans played jazz and folk music, sharing a repertoire of music with their counterpart White Americans (Hardie 35). Many locations in New Orleans, by the year 1940, consisted of an increasing population of citizens born outside the United States. In this city, the brass wind ensemble of the 1840s, for example, the Richmond Light Infantry Blues was enlisted in Southern America together with Allen’s Brass Band (Hardie 36). Some of the American states had a society that allowed free slaves. This allowed a few slaves and freemen to earn special a reputation and recognition as musicians and performers in the nineteenth century. Such artists included legends like Anthony Jackson and Klondike. Others included such Southern artists also Roland Hayes and William Grant, as well as female performers including Chieppie Hill and Bessie Smith. This list also extends to the Mississippi Urban Blues singers like B.B. King and Muddy Waters (Hardie 36). There were also the buck dancers and reels of banjo pickers and slave fiddlers that had evolved from Northern Mississippi’s fife drum bands, New Orleans’s brass bands and the Charlestown and Memphis based jug bands evolved into the early forms of Jazz music. They all contributed to world music and came to realize international recognition for their talent. In the 20th century Southern US, there were three groups of African American associated with the emergence of blues music: ragtime piano and music by Joseph lamb and James Scott (Hardie 37). The blues played in the South at this time included urban and rural blues, with its main functions involving acting as a vehicle for maintaining black culture’s integrity, mocking of Caucasian Americans, exorcism of sorrow, and sharing their hardships with each other. In this period, Dixieland Jazz, a form of ensemble jazz began to creep into white neighbourhoods, as well as bringing the Creole and Afro-American cultures. In this case, the strength of Southern African American music lay, in its diversity and ability, to capture the pertinent tensions of the African Americans, as well as their achievements. Southern music owes a debt to the heritage of the preservation of older performances that, to this day, acts as a hallmark defining the quality of Jazz music (Hardie 38). Jazz, which was a hybrid of European instruments and African music traditions, evolved and began to be heard in dances, parades, and picnics throughout Southern cities. Jazz musicians were also invited play in New Orleans brothels while Billy Holiday, a white musician, played the song Strange Fruit by Pearl Primus, which dealt with black lynching. The Juke house was a peculiar institution that eventually came to refer to a black man pleasure house as a house meant for gambling, drinking, and dancing. In these Juke houses, African American dances were born and spread to the rest of the world (Hardie 38). As a musical genre, jazz also helped to spawn a many other musical styles in its “democratic way”. For many generations, jazz had assimilated different musical and cultural expressions into its structure and form. Jazz music was formed from the merging of African jazz, Afro-Caribbean, big bands, blues, ragtime piano, Cajun songs, Christian hymns, and black gospel music (Hardie 40). When African Americans moved out of the South and to the North, the jazz and blues that they had formed came to evolve and splinter into new music forms as they absorbed musical influences from the cultures of the areas they moved towards. One form of music that evolved from jazz as it absorbed local influences was ragtime, which was not a form of jazz in the contemporary sense (Hardie 41). However, it had a profound and telling impact on jazz as we now know it. The form of music involves a syncopated and highly rhythmic style and did not have any form of improvisation, being played and written from the score. This form of music gained popularity in Chicago and was highly associated with Dixieland jazz. With funeral-evoking dirges and a collective improvisation, this style had a party and freewheeling feel to it. Swing music was another form of this music. It was the big-band domain and became increasingly rocking and poplar in the 30s and 40s (Hardie 42). This music had its biggest attraction in its highly danceable style, being made with arrangements of a complex nature and let its musicians use their discretion in improvising the musical scores. Glenn Miller and Count Bassie were two famous band leaders in this musical scene, as well as other bands that, throughout their existence, did nothing else, but swing music. Bebop music also came to be around this time of migration. Such musicians as Max Roach and Thelonious Monk formed part of a new generation that played a form of music that was highly different from the music prevalent with the swing performers (Hardie 43). They concentrated on their rapid tempos and preferred to play in a small combo groups rather than the large bands that were in vogue during that particular time. Their improvisations were dependent on underlying changes in chord rather than melodies inherent in the tune. Post-Bop or Hard Bop was a genre that had a busier and funkier feel that acted as evolution from the formulas and arrangements of the bop music (Hardie 44). Musicians who pioneered this music included Mile Davis, John Coltrane, and Horace Silver, all famous for their rather soulful styles. Post boppers like Wallace Rodney and Wynton Marsalis also made their mark. Another style that took a different path of evolution from the post-bop, bebop, and swing forms was avant-garde free Jazz. The style first began to appear in the late 50s and early 60s at a time when Miles and Coltrane were making paid songs and that were not utilizing traditional chord (Hardie 45). The musicians at the forefront of this sub-genre allowed for improvisation that was not encumbered and did not follow any chord structure. It was later refined after Sun Ra teamed up with Coltrane and came up with music that had a freer feel to it than straight Jazz. Fusion music was originally thought to be a combinative form of electric, rock, and Jazz. Artists popular from this genre included Miles Davis, Chick Corea, and Herbie Hancock, as well as bands such as; “Weather Report” and “Return to Forever” (Hardie 47). These bands and artists have come to be recognized as icons of this jazz sub-genre. Fusion evolved into smooth jazz and was characterized by computer rhythms that were repetitive, as well as smooth melodies and keyboard licks. Great and celebrated improvisers were not very receptive to this new style, although great artists like Sypro-Gyra and Yellow jackets did make a name for themselves in this sub-genre (Hardie 47). Latin Jazz also arose from the original Jazz as it absorbed elements of the Latino culture (Hardie 48). The category included Latin American, Caribbean, Brazilian, and Cuban musicians. The genre added percussion rhythms, Afro-Latin American drums, and Portuguese chords into jazz. Dizzy Gillespie made the sub-genre prominent after he made a recording with Chano Pozo, a Cuban musician who made its connection to jazz and music in general permanent. Artists to be found in this sound style were Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Monty Alexander, and Tito Puente among others (Hardie 48). These musicians utilized their love and intimate knowledge of the Jazz genre to form and create their unique sound. Hip Hop Jazz can be taken as the last frontier for Jazz in music, which occurred as many rappers became aware of Jazz in the late 80s and early 90s, as well as some Jazz musicians becoming aware of rap poets (Hardie 50). Just like the earlier avant-garde, hard-bop, and bebop form, Hip Hop had a rebellious streak, as well as an improvisational and intellectual skill set. Producer-rappers such as Q-Tip, Gangstarr, Prince Paul, C.L. Smooth, Pete Rock, and Ali Shaheed Mohammad started to incorporate samples of old jazz records into their music. Musicians such as Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, and Ron Carter all made collaborative songs with hip-hop artists and producers, enabling two different, but similarly innovative African American music genre artists to work together (Hardie 50). Jazz, as a musical form, has come to reach all parts of the globe and is now a worldwide recognized and appreciated music genre by all people from around the world, from all ethnicities and races. Jazz music does tend to cause a feeling of democratic independence and togetherness as it allows for indigenous people to manipulate its form and structure to make it fit their culture and musical traditions (Hardie 51). This genre is an especially potent stimulant of musical acculturation as it transcends all cultures, races, gender, and embraces the entire human race. Jazz music involves the motion of changing and rising, the thoughts of musicians and listeners alike given form, seeing the musician’s thoughts, hearing them, as well as living the reflection of human -material life, drama, and sonographics. In terms of world music, when the Africans arrived in the United States and became African Americans, they did not remain purely African in the foreign American land (Hardie 51). It is said that when Tony Williams, a drummer who made his name playing alongside Miles Davis arrived from the United States and landed in Africa, he set up his drums and began to bang and boom on the hides, he stopped playing and listened. The African people were remarked that, while they had heard him playing his drums, they could not understand what he was attempting to portray. Apparently, while they had heard his majestic drumbeats, he was playing in a style that seemed familiar, but at the same time, very unfamiliar (Hardie 80). This was because he was using an industrial instrument that was very different from the traditional African drums used by the slaves taken to the United States. It made his African audience think that, rather than one person, at least ten to fifteen players were working on the drums. This can be exemplified through the idea that the drums had absorbed various elements from native, African, and European mixtures that gave a rise to the plurality of the audio experience heard by the Africans. Additionally, it is impossible to speak one sentence in America without using phrases and nuances from Africa, Native America, and Europe (Hardie 80). Even though, social and economic class keeps Americans apart, people share cultures despite the separation and occasional racial and ethnic friction with many misunderstandings due to individual cultures. Jazz festivals are good examples of diverse occasions around the world, let alone in America, because it has managed to incorporate many elements from different cultures that allow a wide range of cultures to identify with the music. In looking at jazz as a music genre, it is vital to consider famous author’s Melville Herskovits and his question regarding what the Africans had given to the American culture in his book, New Republic. In a radical response for the period in which he was working, he mentioned, albeit briefly, the influence that the African Americans had portended on the food, manners, language, and music of the American nation (Hardie 87). Most of his examples were set in the South with a majority of what people from Africa had brought with them from their homeland becoming so familiar and popular to the American population, especially in the Southern territories, which the origins of particular customs and expressive forms introduced by African Americans becoming blurred and even forgotten. One example is the musical instrument, the banjo that is, in itself, an African instrument in form and name. While, today it is considered an Appalachian instrument, the slaves first used it. While the contemporary banjo is different from its African ancestor, the drumbeat are drone string are reminders of its African origins. This is a perfect example of acculturation that helps to explain the incorporation of Jazz into American culture or, rather, the absorption of American culture by Jazz. Works Cited Hardie, Daniel. The ancestry of jazz: a musical family history. New York: IUniverse , 2011. Print. Read More