Jazz: More Than Just Background Music?

     My assumptions about the history of jazz were relatively simple compared to what I know now having taken this course. Before this class, I assumed jazz was only the smooth, cool, modern jazz that we usually hear on the radio today, and I suspect it is a common misconception that others have who did not grow up with much exposure to or appreciation for jazz.

     Growing up, my parents would have the radio permanently turned to the local jazz station; this was not because they were particularly fond of jazz, but because the music (at least on that station) was mellow and calm enough for their sensitive temperaments. My parents did not tolerate noise, so to me, jazz seemed like the most subdued and unobtrusive kind of genre, purely background music and not something you really had to pay attention to. I would be a lazy and oblivious student if I said that this course did not change my perception about jazz. I have learned that the history of jazz was a series of movements that began in New Orleans with traditional African influences as well as original, American creations, like the blues. Jazz then molded and transformed into new styles as it travelled from New Orleans to Chicago, Kansas City, and New York, where the environments of the cities would stimulate innovation. Now that I have taken the course, my previous assumption that jazz was homogeneously “cool” and “smooth” has been proven false; the different genres of jazz, like swing, ragtime, stride, and bebop are distinct and diverse.

     Even though I was exposed to jazz through the radio, I was unaware at how fundamental it was for popularizing jazz, especially in the Swing Era. According to Gioia, “The creation of a truly nationwide mass medium in the form of radio catapulted a few jazz players to a level of celebrity that would have been unheard of only a few years before” (136). Jazz broadcasts over the radio were also an important early step towards desegregation; music played by black artists was being broadcast in white homes, exploring a new audience that perhaps did not even know they were listening to black musicians.

     My previous presumption of the radio was that of something universally accessible, or at least in the US, so it was different to think that it was a new technology and that the radio actually played a big role in the popularity of the artist. In fact, it became the main marketing tool and source of advertising in the entertainment industry during the Great Depression (Stewart, lecture 2/12). Of course, the radio is still prominent, but I would argue it has declined in use. Personally, I only listen to the radio in the car and use my iPod or computer to play music, and I would say that record sales, tours, music video views on YouTube, and social media are better methods to assess the popularity of an artist than the radio. Honestly, I do not think jazz is as popular a genre today; although you can see jazz influences in pop songs (take the swing effect in Justin Timberlake’s “Suit and Tie” for example), it is not played on pop radio or Hot 100 stations, but rather seems reserved for high culture tastes or, in my parents’ case, background music. However, it was interesting to learn about the Swing Era in which it was the height of American entertainment and was widely broadcasted on the radio.

Thelonious Monk

     When Thelonious Monk said, “There’s no reason why I should go through that Black Power shit now. I guess everybody in New York had to do that, right? Because every block is a different town. It was mean all over New York, all the boroughs. Then, besides fighting the ofays, you had to fight each other. You go to the next block and you’re in another country” (Kelley 19), he demonstrated his belief that racial conflict was a given, natural to urban life in America. This was especially true in San Juan Hill, the area of New York City where Monk grew up. There, racial tensions, though at times culminating in violent break outs, contributed to Monk’s musical upbringing. As a result, Monk used music as a way to vent frustration from the racial discrimination he would face all his life, especially with his 1958 arrest in Delaware.

     Not only was San Juan Hill an unsanitary disgrace, riddled with “tuberculosis, flies, […] high infant mortality rate among blacks, and alcoholism” (Kelley 16), it also had a reputation for violence. The neighborhood, named after a famous battle in the Spanish American War (which reflects its history of fighting), was known for its race riots. There were many instances of police brutality against blacks; as Monk recalled, “It looked like the order of the day was for the cops to go out and call all the kids black bastards” (Kelley 19). Racial conflict was not limited to blacks and whites, however. Caribbean blacks fought with Southern blacks, Chinese with blacks, and Spanish, French, Italians, Germans, and Jews amongst each other.

     The positive side of all these contentious cultures being crammed together in such a small space was that they offered a diversity of influences that are reflected in Monk’s music. For example, he learned piano from a Jewish teacher, Simon Wolf (Kelley 26) who taught him European classical music from composers like Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Rossini, Strauss, Chopin, and Liszt (Kelley 22). San Juan Hill also contributed to Monk’s general multicultural identity; “With the music, cuisine, dialects, and manners of the Caribbean and the American South everywhere in the West 60s, virtually every kid became a kind of cultural hybrid” (Kelley 23). The neighborhood’s ethnic disjunction is manifested in Monk’s Dionysian style of music, which involves scattered, erratic piano notes, improvisation, and atonality. This is significant in terms of the broader scope of jazz’s trajectory and the rise of Bebop; New York, where all these diverse cultures intertwined and clashed, is where a more modern style of jazz developed, one that was a “more angular, more dissonant, more complex kind of beauty than that of swing” (Stewart, lecture 2/26).

     Even though Monk was able to embrace the racial tension in San Juan Hill and inject its energy and dissonance into his style of music, he could not do the same with his 1958 arrest on the charges of “assault and battery on a police officer, […] breach of peace, resisting arrest, and narcotics possession” (Kelley 254). The incident, which started when an ill Monk wandered into a motel for a drink where the owners refused to serve him, ended with white policemen beating him severely and searching his companions’ belongings without a search warrant. The case would have a lasting effect on Monk’s psychological health and his career; the police seized his cabaret card for six years after a crime he did not commit. This is significant because even Monk, who was able to turn the racial disparity of San Juan Hill into a positive influence in his music, was not immune to racial injustice. Even though Bebop was a way for black artists to alleviate the frustration of living in a xenophobic society, it was not strong enough to curb racism altogether.