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Intermusicality, Humor, and Cultural Critique in the Art Ensemble of Chicago's “A Jackson in Your House”

2011; Routledge; Volume: 5; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17494060.2011.637680

1749-4079

Paul Steinbeck,

Musicology and Musical Analysis

Abstract This article examines instances of intermusicality, humor, and cultural critique in the Art Ensemble of Chicago's “A Jackson in Your House.” The members of the Art Ensemble use the multi-stylistic and intermedia aspects of the piece to create—in real time—complex critical utterances about jazz history, race, and performer-audience dynamics. Multi-stylism and intermedia structures are also general features of the band's performance practice; the investigations in this article are proposed as models for future research on the Art Ensemble that integrates musical and cultural analysis. Acknowledgements The author wishes to acknowledge Jim Cassey, John Howland, Shaku Joseph Jarman, Roscoe Mitchell, Famoudou Don Moye, and two anonymous reviewers for their contributions to this article. Notes 1See Lincoln T. Beauchamp Jr., Great Black Music: Ancient to the Future (Chicago, IL: Art Ensemble of Chicago Publishing Co., 1997); Jason Berry, “Declamations on Great Black Music,” Lenox Avenue 3 (1997): 42–54; Peter Kemper, “Zur Funktion des Mythos im jazz der 70er Jahre: Soziokulturelle Aspekte eines musikalischen Phänomens dargestellt an der ästhetischen Konzeption des ‘Art Ensemble of Chicago,’” Jazzforschung 13 (1981): 45–78; and countless journalistic treatments of the Art Ensemble that have appeared in jazz publications and the popular press. 2Norman C. Weinstein, “Steps Toward an Integrative Comprehension of the Art Ensemble of Chicago's Music,” Lenox Avenue 3 (1997), 5. Besides Weinstein's essay, other scholarly examinations of Art Ensemble performance practice include Michael Joe Budds, “The Art Ensemble of Chicago in Context,” Lenox Avenue 3 (1997): 59–72; Allan M. Gordon, “The Art Ensemble of Chicago as Performance Art,” Lenox Avenue 3 (1997): 55–58; Ajay Heble, “The Rehistoricizing of Jazz: Chicago's ‘Urban Bushmen’ and the Problem of Representation,” in Landing on the Wrong Note: Jazz, Dissonance, and Critical Practice (New York: Routledge, 2000), 63–88; Robin D. G. Kelley, “Dig They Freedom: Meditations on History and the Black Avant-Garde,” Lenox Avenue 3 (1997): 13–27; George E. Lewis, “Singing Omar's Song: A (Re)construction of Great Black Music,” Lenox Avenue 4 (1998): 69–92; Bruce Tucker, “Narrative, Extramusical Form, and the Metamodernism of the Art Ensemble of Chicago,” Lenox Avenue 3 (1997): 29–41; and Paul Steinbeck, “‘Area by Area the Machine Unfolds’: The Improvisational Performance Practice of the Art Ensemble of Chicago,” Journal of the Society for American Music 2/3 (August 2008): 397–427. 3Ingrid T. Monson, Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 128. Intermusicality, according to Monson, “occurs primarily through musical sound itself, rather than words,” and can be regarded as a special case of intertextuality (ibid., 127). 4Ibid., 137–177. 5Roscoe Mitchell, email to author, September 15, 2007. 6Art Ensemble of Chicago, A Jackson in Your House, BYG/Actuel 529302, 1969, LP. 7For more on the Art Ensemble's activities in Paris from 1969 to 1971, see Paul Steinbeck, “Urban Magic: The Art Ensemble of Chicago's Great Black Music” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2008), 108–200. 8Joseph Jarman, interview by author, December 10, 2008, Brooklyn. 9The definitive study of AACM instrumental practice is Gregory Alan Campbell, “‘A Beautiful, Shining Sound Object’: Contextualizing Multi-Instrumentalism in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians” (D.M.A. diss., University of Washington, 2006). 10Ekkehard Jost, Free Jazz (New York: Da Capo Press, 1994), 178. 11Ibid., 179. 12Monson, Saying Something, 188. 13“entrée fracassante de la New-Thing à Paris…” Daniel Caux, “Le délire et la rigueur de ‘l'art ensemble’ de Chicago,” Jazz Hot 252 (July–August 1969): 8. 14Further information on the critical reception of the Art Ensemble in Paris can be found in Eric Drott, “Free Jazz and the French Critic,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 61/3 (December 2008): 541–581; and Stephen Lehman, “I Love You With an Asterisk: African-American Experimental Music and the French Jazz Press, 1970–1980,” Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisation 1/2 (2005): 38–53. 15Mitchell, email to author. 16“Parler des musiciens de Chicago, c'est toujours employer les memes expressions: black music, black power, aggression…” Paul Allessandrini, “Jazz on the Grass,” Jazz Magazine 169–170 (September 1969): 9. 17See Nelcya Delanoë, Le Raspail Vert: L'American Center à Paris 1934–1994—Une histoire des avant-gardes franco-américaines (Paris: Éditions Seghers, 1994), 113–175. 18George E. Lewis, “Gittin' To Know Y'all: Improvised Music, Interculturalism, and the Racial Imagination,” Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisation 1/1 (2004): 19. 19“humour aussi sérieux que celui de la vie….[ç]a sonne comme du bon vieux jazz, parce qu'ici on est bien comme on l'était là-bas.” Joseph Jarman, liner notes for Art Ensemble of Chicago, A Jackson in Your House. 20The relative familiarity of the early-jazz and swing musical styles employed in “A Jackson in Your House” may facilitate perceptions of intermusical relationships, according to Ekkehard Jost: “Getting this message across…means necessarily going back to models whose meaning the listener can decipher” (Jost, Free Jazz, 179). 21Anthony Braxton, Tri-Axium Writings: Writings Three (Lebanon, NH: Frog Peak Music, 1985), 297–298. 22See Allessandrini, “Jazz on the Grass”; and Caux, “Le délire et la rigueur.” These reviews, the first published reports on the Art Ensemble's Paris concerts, set the tone for future coverage of Art Ensemble events in France. 23For more on jazz and twentieth-century French culture, see Jeffrey H. Jackson, Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); Jean Jamin, “Au-delà du Vieux-Carré: Idées du jazz en France,” L'Homme 158–159 (2001): 285–300; Denis-Constant Martin, “De l'excursion à Harlem au débat sur les ‘Noirs’: Les terrains absents de la jazzologie française,” L'Homme 158–159 (2001): 261–278; and Tyler Stovall, Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996). 24Jarman, interview by author. 25Don Moye, interview by author, January 19, 2007, Chicago. 26Weinstein, “Integrative Comprehension,” 6. 27Tucker, “Extramusical Form,” 33. 28Lewis, “Singing Omar's Song,” 75. 29Art Ensemble of Chicago, live concert recording, Athens, GA, April 30, 1979, CD, collection of Jonathan Piper. 30See Sidney Bechet, Treat it Gentle: An Autobiography (New York: Hill and Wang, 1960), 114–115. 31Thomas Aldridge Newsome, “It's After the End of the World! Don't You Know That Yet? Black Creative Musicians in Chicago (1946–1976)” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2001), 186. 32John B. Litweiler, “There Won't Be Any More Music,” in Down Beat Music '71: 16th Annual Yearbook (Chicago, IL: Maher Publications, 1971), 24. 33Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 113. 34For more on stump speeches and the minstrel show, see ibid., 77–78, 143. The affinities between the Art Ensemble, the Chicago Surrealist Group, and other American surrealists are explored by Robin D. G. Kelley, “Freedom Now Sweet: Surrealism and the Black World,” in Surrealist Subversion: Rants, Writings & Images by the Surrealist Movement in the United States, ed. Ron Sakolsky (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2002), 134–150; Franklin Rosemont, “Black Music and the Surrealist Revolution,” Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion 3 (Spring 1976): 17–27; and Ron Sakolsky, “Surrealist Subversion in Chicago: The Forecast is Hotter than Ever!” in Surrealist Subversion, 23–110. 35Art Ensemble of Chicago. Live from the Jazz Showcase. University of Illinois, 1982, videocassette. 36Richard Wang, email to author, April 14, 2008. 37Isio Saba, liner notes to Art Ensemble of Chicago, Reunion, Around Jazz-Il Manifesto CD 122 SIAE, 2003, compact disc. 38Roscoe Mitchell, quoted in Anthony Coleman, “Roscoe Mitchell,” BOMB 91 (Spring 2005), 71. 39See, for instance, Bowie's remarks on Marsalis in Fred Bouchard, “Blindfold Test: Lester Bowie,” Down Beat 51 (September 1984): 41. 40Scott DeVeaux, “Struggling with Jazz,” Current Musicology 71–73 (Spring 2001–Spring 2002): 365. 41Weinstein, “Integrative Comprehension,” 7. 42Don Moye, interview by author, September 6, 2007, Chicago. 44Weinstein, “Integrative Comprehension,” 9. 43Albert Murray, Stomping the Blues (New York: Da Capo Press, 2000), 196. 45Malachi Favors Maghostut, Natural & the Spiritual, AECO Records 003, 1978, LP. 46See, for example, the analyses in Nicholas Cook, Analysing Musical Multimedia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); and Carol Vernallis, Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). 47For more on the regrettable detachment of music theory and music analysis from jazz studies and improvisation studies, see Paul Steinbeck, Review of A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music by George E. Lewis, Journal of Music Theory 51/2 (Fall 2007): 333–340. 48Art Ensemble of Chicago, Nice Guys, ECM 1126, 1979, LP. 49“Dreaming of the Master” was first recorded on Art Ensemble of Chicago, Nice Guys. 50Art Ensemble of Chicago, Bap-tizum, Atlantic SD 1639, 1973, LP.