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What Makes "Jazz" the Revolutionary Music of the 20th Century, and will it Be Revolutionary for the 21st Century?

1995; Saint Louis University; Volume: 29; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/3042307

1945-6182

Fred Ho,

Musicology and Musical Analysis

I do not use the term jazz, as I do not use such terms as Negro, Oriental, or Hispanic. Oppressed peoples suffer when their history, identity, and culture are defined, (mis)represented, and explicated by our oppressors. struggle to redefine and re-image our existence involves the struggle to reject the stereotyping, distortions, and devaluation embodied in the classifications of conquerors and racists. struggle over how to describe past and present reality is the struggle to change reality, and the continued usage of the term jazz persists in marginalizing, obfuscating, and denying the fact that this music is quintessentially However, it is the music of an oppressed nationality and not the music of the dominant, American, white, European heritage. It is white-supremacist racism that will not properly and justly accept both the music and its creators in a position of equality. As a result of the movements of oppressed peoples that exploded in the 1960s, we have replaced terms such as Negro with Black or American, and Oriental with Asian or Asian American. More problematical are Hispanic (literally, of or belonging to Spain) and Latino (emphasizing, again, the Latin or European) - I personally use Spanish-speaking oppressed when referring to Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Chicanos, Central and South Americans, and Caribbean peoples in the U.S.A. whose only commonality is that they speak Spanish (and even that Spanish has national particularities). However, a satisfactory replacement for jazz has yet to emerge, and continues to be part of the ongoing struggle to dismantle white supremacy and Eurocentrism in culture and society. At times, certain descriptors have gained some currency, such as Rahsaan Roland Kirk's Great Black Music, or Archie Shepp's Instrumental Music, or Max Roach's preference: The music of Louis Armstrong, the music of Charles Parker, etc. Billy Taylor simply said music. Some might argue that jazz should be reclaimed and that its meaning should be transformed from a pejorative term and usage to a statement of celebratory, in-your-face defiance - as militant gays and lesbians have reappropriated the once-derogatory and insulting queer and fag. Black was once a term loaded with negativity which the Black Liberation Movement transformed to symbolize pride and self-respect. It took a movement of oppressed peoples to adopt new terms and meanings for self-determination and to replace reactionary and oppressive ones. 19th-century racist blood quantum legislation in the U.S. had determined anyone with one drop of blood to be black. Yet Americans are a hybrid: neither mainly African nor American (in its dominant, mainstream understanding and context). They have a kreolized(2) identity - a revolutionary new cultural and social identity, forged in struggle against an oppressive society that still largely excludes, denies, and denigrates (i.e., niggerizes or chinkifies or spicifies) entire peoples. Indeed, the struggle of oppressed nationalities in the U.S. is to transform the very concept of American to its multicultural, multinational, multilingual reality. That struggle is inherently revolutionary: More than a proclamation of multiculturalism or integration into the dominant mainstream, it aims to dismantle the entire institutional power of white supremacy and Eurocentrism. Only when that happens will jazz become Yet, as the 20th-century comes to an end, we find a curious phenomenon: has become accepted into the halls of (white, mainstream) cultural citadels. We find Classical Jazz at Lincoln Center. We find a artistic director criticizing other musicians for not playing black music. We find the internecine war over what is and isn't jazz and who should define it. I will argue in this essay that, ironically, it is those most bent on defining and essentializing jazz who are indeed its greatest enemies, because they contradict the revolutionary essence of the …