Jameson Bevington

Let us consider, for author Peter J. Steinberger’s case, August 9^th 1945; the day Nagasaki was hit with a plutonium bomb. As he claims, “it’s hard to think of any other occurrence that so shaped and constrained the mind of the 1950s in America”. The careful word is constrained, meaning this particular event led to certain problems or limitations: that of popular culture and that of freedom. In the case of jazz, for example, not only are these limitations questioned but also it is a culture that sought to evolve not as a social fact, but as a balanced and regulated lifestyle through music.

“From 1945 to about 1965, jazz found its true bearings and came of age as a serious art form”. In this period, the sound of this culture was ultimately defined for many generations to come. The author attributes the beginning of this period to the revolution of “bop”. Unlike its predecessor, “swing”, bop was focused more on the harmonic, melodic and rhythmic structures and improvisations in jazz. Following this revolution came several sub-divisions; such as hard bop, cool bop, post bop, etc. However these styles varied from one another, they all derived from the core idea of bop music. Among others, Charlie Parker (deemed bop’s “father”), Miles Davis and John Coltrane were improvising melodic lines that in some ways or another related to the harmonic theory of the instruments they were playing. This was all at once a giant innovation for the performers as well as the listeners. Not only was it recommended that the musicians have a certain level of theoretical knowledge and technical skill, it was also suggested that the listener should also have some theoretical knowledge. And herein we find the question of balance.

Steinberger presumes that jazz is a balance between high and low art; between freedom and necessity. He mentions that “however complex and ingenious a bop improvisation might be, if it doesn’t swing it isn’t jazz”. This is a statement as to the conscious decision of modern jazz to both “intellectually satisfy” everyone in the musical moment, but also to allow it to remain music; as the Concise Oxford Dictionary cites, “…something very pleasant to hear”. This would not be possible without established rules. The author uses the analogy of language here which is very helpful: that for a conversation to occur between two people, they would both require the knowledge of the rules of the language, of its grammar and of its social context. This can also be said of jazz; that it is based on strict and formal regulations. With that said, we should return to the historical facts that Steinberger claims to have an immediate impact on jazz.

The two most important facets to influence jazz are popular culture and freedom. As the author explains, jazz is not a Durkheimian social fact; which, according to Wikipedia.org, is something objective and independent from the actions of society. “Music develops on its own account, but it does not develop in a vacuum.” Simply put, there was an influential moment where a group of musicians sought to find their own freedom, apart from the mainstream of popular culture. If this is all true, including the historical debut of jazz, then should we secretly thank America for attacking another nation and spawning one of the most important styles of music of the past 100 years?

Bibliography

Steinberger, Peter J. “Culture and Freedom in the Fifties: The Case of Jazz.” The Virginia Quarterly review, 74, 1 (1998), pp. 118-133.

Wikipedia.org

Oxford University Press. “The Concise Oxford disctionary of current English”, (1964, 1976), p. 718

Robert Bolton

• considers the emergence of modern jazz from a historical perspective, “examining it in the context of two central problems of the 1950’s, the problem of popular culture and the problem of freedom.”

mid 40s - mid 60s — “most productive, creative and most definitive period of jazz”

• within the time period, jazz became a “serious art form”

mid 40s — Charlie Parker with Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell and Max Roach “change forever how jazz would sound and be conceived.”

1965 — Coltrane’s great quartet breaks up. later – Miles Davis’ quintet dissolves.

BOP REVOLUTION – modern jazz
basic rhythm played on ‘ride’ cymbal rather than ‘high-hat’ resulting in a ‘lighter, more open texture — giving other musicians opportunity to accentuate dif. beats / anticipate lag of beat – allowing an “on-goiing, improvised rhythmic counterpoint.

• Charlie Parker – new approach to improvised solos – Previously jazz musicians would play 4 measures of a song using a single chord, Parker would fill this space with 7-8 chords, moving in half-steps with ‘dazzling’ rhythmic variety before arriving at the “appropriate harmonic destination.”

POPULAR CULTURE & FREEDOM
Bop / Modern Jazz as High Art

• like classical music, modern jazz is difficult to play – “requires theoretical knowledge and technical ability far beyond pre-bop era”

• Audience must also put in time and effort to appreciate modern jazz. It is not dance music, sing-along music, or easy listening. Requires focused attention,

• “concert music... to be listened to without distraction and for its own sake”

naturally combined with
“Hipness, informality and irreverence” (unlike classical music)

• audience involvement in performance: ‘swing’ rhythm invites toe-tapping and finger-snapping
• body movement.

‘blue-notes’ link Bop w. popular ‘low-brow’ music - Tin Pan Alley, gospel, rhythm & blues. (jazz is a concert music – yet more at home in a night club)

Language – “bop” “be-bop” “cool” “funk”

• Names: Count, Duke, Yardbird, Dizzy, Cannonball, Philly Joe.

Modern Jazz of the 1950s = “distinctive comination of high and low” art, “the esoteric and the popular,” without compromising “aesthetic ambition for accessibility” – uncompromising with respect to artistic goals.

“Did not seek mass audience” ??

“elitest enterprise with folk elements,”

“natural showmanship” – “flashy clothes, hipster language, amd a general attitude of stupid eccentricity”

ARTISTIC FREEDOM –
Improvisational Jazz solos cannot be reduced to an “exotic and inexplicable knack”

-arduous training, serious theoretical study and

Modern Jazz is rule-governed.

The unrehearsed jazz jam session, concert or recording could not take place without strict rules. – some written in harmonic ‘charts’ – some unwritten guidelines

Jazz as Language

• language is improvisation in everyday life

without rules, no language. without language, nothing to be said.

“improviser of genius challenges the rules of grammar at every turn.”
but without those rules, jazz would ‘degenerate into unintelligible noise’

Understanding the rules of one’s discipline is liberating and allows one to test those rules.

Jazz demonstrates relationship between freedom and necessity.

Heather Cook

The reading for week three of FACS 1900 B, is an article titled, “Culture and Freedom in the Fifties: The Case of Jazz” by Peter J. Steinberger, which was first published in the Virginia Quarterly Review in 1998. In this excerpt, the author argues that jazz was created in the nineteen-fifties, and that it has changed little from then to today. It is Steinberger’s belief that “the emergence of modern jazz as a historical matter [is found] by examining it in the context of two central problem of the 50's, the problem of popular culture and the problem of freedom.” (P.3, pp. 118). He also notes that, although it may seem contrary to his previous notation, that jazz is not simply an “object in a culture war”, but that as an “aesthetic form” is has “relevance and appeal [that] is likely to persist for quite some time indeed” (P.3, pp 118-119).

Jazz, like the society it was created in was one of established rules, but instead of departing from these rules and forms, the music and the environment created a fundamental refinement or extension of these aforementioned customs. Some can argue that jazz is simply and purely and improvisation, created by the artist’s own mind, and that is the extent of the pressures upon it, but Steinberger argues that “music develops on its own account, but it does not develop in a vacuum”. Jazz is affected by situations, and the world’s events, but is not dependant on it. This is a correlation to the course material, as we are examining the idea that art, in whatever form, is not created in a vacuum. It may develop independent of other forms for some time, but it is still affected by them or the effect they cause, because all of the arts are interrelated in one form or another.

In short, jazz is an extension of its surroundings, taking from it useful trends and recent developments, but it is not reliant on these trends, but instead develops of its own accord, taking from its environment only what it needs, or feels it could use.

Jonathon Yule

Jazz in 1940-1960 American Culture

• To understand jazz is to understand the 50’s: to understand the 50’s is to understand jazz
• Minds of the 1950’s feared impending destruction of their reality
• Jazz emerged during the problem of popular culture and the problem of freedom
• 1940’s to 1960’s – World War Two, Cold War, Cuban Missile Crisis, and assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
• 1940s – 1960s: most productive, creative, and definitive period for jazz music

History of Jazz

• Music of themes, rooted in blues music
• A creative and respected art form; it affirmed distinction between high and low art
• Jazz was esoteric, an elitist enterprise, a following who understood and reveled in the unconventional music
• Solo and small group improvisations spontaneous and unwritten — artistic liberation
• Multiple (4 - 5) contrasting rhythmic patterns performed simultaneously from different instruments that followed a form, or chord progressions, not a melody
• World far removed from the mannerisms and pretenses of high culture
• Profoundly contemporary — jazz never sounds dated

Bop

• Bop-inspired jazz of the 1950’s characterized by diverse mood, temperament, and hypnotic rhythm
• Complex harmonic modulations, endless chord changes
• ension-and-release harmonic modulation
• mprovisations: chaotic, less linear and lyrical, trance-like, no inherent beginning or end

Post-bop

• Rejection of the bop aesthetic but retained rich and complex harmonic structure
• Minimalist harmonics of 2-3 chords, less elaborate and chaotic
• New-found emphasis on timbre/tone (distinctive property of a complex sound), coloration, muscularity, ostinato (short melody constantly repeated)
• Improvisations: repeated figures (example: chorus), unconventional scales, and innovative harmonies to create interest and variety

Personalities

• Nicknames for jazz musicians prevailed. Examples: Duke, Count, Dizzy, Cannonball, Lockjaw
• Musicians more recognizable and memorable and added unique flare to the music scene
• Challenged their foundations and limits, sought new possibilities in the intention to not conform

Modern Jazz

• Skilled jazz musicians require time and effort, focused attention, a level of theoretical knowledge, and technical ability such as conservatory training
• Combines elements of seriousness and intellectuality, culture of ‘hipness’, informality, and radical improvisations
• Jam session, concert, formal recording: little to no group preparation and improvised
• roup performances played with unity and coherence
• Music of strict rules: harmonic forms for particular songs, particular roles assigned to each instrument, flexibility and mistakes made

Vanessa Stewart

Peter J. Steinberger sets on his article to define Jazz from a historian point of view by looking at two central problems of the 50s: popular culture and freedom. He gives the period of jazz a rough timeline between 1945 (when the plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki) to 1968 (when Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were murdered). These dates coincide with the arrivals of Charlie Parker and other jazz musicians in the mid-40s as well as John Coltrane’s disbandment in 1965. Steinberger claims this time period to be the most crucial in the development of jazz and that since that time there have been no major developments in jazz. Although, he admits there was the emergence of jazz-rock “fusion” in the 1970s, he does not think the electrification of musical instruments constitutes as a significant innovation.

However, it wasn’t because of the assassinations that bop ended, it was because there was just no where further for bop to go. It is true that jazz on some level was shaped by the politics and economics of the recording industry, cabaret laws, race, and social class, but it does not make jazz a social product or fact. It develops on its own, but it does not develop alone; it is shaped by the non-musical factors around it. What resulted was something that wasn’t dance music, sing-along music, or “easy listening.”

The problem of popular culture what the arguments about artistic freedom in terms of high and low art. Modern Jazz provided a solution by starting to breakdown the opposition between high and low art while at the same time keeping the distinction between them.

The issue of freedom is that Jazz is not a ‘free art’. It has strict rules that cover the entire performance, even rules about revising rules. So while Jazz allows for creativity in the improvised fashion, its freedoms are limited within rules. Steinberger uses the example of language, we improvise everyday conversations and we are allowed to be creative in how we go about it, but our language is also governed by grammar and other language rules.

Questions: Has commercialism taken over pop music? Or is it still at some level a free artistic expression?

Aidan Todd-Parrish

• What is Jazz? Good vs. bad, real vs. phony?
• Jazz emerged in the 50’s due to 2 problems -popular culture, freedom
• The 50’s “began” with the cold war – it shaped the mind of people of the age
• 50’s “ended” about 1968 with the murder of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King
• What Steinberger defines as the 50’s also corresponds to in his view the most productive and creative era of jazz
• Beginning — Charlie Parker, Powell, Roach …….End: Coltrane, Miles Davis
• Parker and others, changed jazz’s harmonic, rhythmic, and lyrical aspects to create a variation known as “bop”
• Bop was a new form of jazz, it sounded good, and felt the way jazz was supposed to sound.
• Today to learn jazz one studies the aspects of Bop and Neo-Bop
  • still sounds good today, however doesn’t allow for much innovation and creativity. (pgs. 118-120)

Aspects of BOP

• Music of brief themes, long solos, small groups, polyrhythmic
• “Songs” containing chord progressions vs. melody
• Swing feel is played on the ride cymbal vs. high hat
  • Allows for freedom to accentuate different beats etc. thus creating an improvised counterpoint
• Parker’s approach was a harmonic one. Used many different chord progressions for what was once filled with just one. – Used semitones, “half steps,” to change chords
• Jagged and abrupt, seemingly random but based on theory, thus actually quite structured. (pgs. 122- 125)

• Many version of jazz that arrived during or briefly after Bop were considered alternatives and different, but were just extensions or the rules laid out by Parker ex) free jazz, post jazz, neo-jazz
• Jazz was shaped and influenced by the events of the world, but it was not created because of them.
  • ex) a child is raised by parents, influenced by them, but they are their own person with own thoughts and reasonings (pg. 124)
• Jazz became a “true art form” in which a player needed to be trained (or a good as)
  • it was meant for listening and examining vs. easy listening or background music
• Jazz reflected pop culture in it’s…
  • nicknames ex) Duke, Lockjaw – words ex) cool, funk — intellectualism
  • new and odd combination of high and low art forms — about entertainment, fun, dance, swing, belonging in a night club, anti high class culture (pgs. 125-129)
• Jazz reflects freedom in it’s…
  • freedom and restrictions…improve was “free” but was based on rigid rules and theory – this contradiction reflected the idea of freedom and necessity – comparison to language, use of everyday words to improvise conversation, jazz was about the whole, the aesthetic (beautiful) aspect, not the small “grammatical” areas of music (pg 130- 132)

Why does Jazz from the 50’s still appeal to us now? Has our society changed or not? What in the last decade could be an equivalent to jazz if anything?