Jazz and the Modernist Movement in the Arts

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1 Jonathan S. Matteson 1 Jazz and the Modernist Movement in the Arts Aaron Douglas, Song of the Towers, 1966 Photo courtesy of Perhaps the greatest influence on jazz is the Modernist Movement in the Literary, Visual and Performing Arts, which began in the Western world around the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries. In support of this somewhat provocative statement, Paul Lopes, a contemporary jazz saxophonist, professor of sociology and author of The Rise of the Jazz Art World, explains, modernists emphasized jazz as the legitimate expression of the times and a nation [United States of America] and modernists promoted the incorporation of jazz in serious music composition and performance jazz traditionalists supported vernacular jazz, while jazz modernists supported the continued cultivation of jazz by professional musicians. (Lopes 2002: 82-83, 158) Considering the gravity of his comments, Lopes infers that by the time jazz was born in America in 1917, the Modernist Movement in Art had gained enough momentum to play several vital roles in its genesis and evolution.

2 Jonathan S. Matteson 2 Thus, one might do well to see some of the key art movements in modern era such as Imagism, Abstract Expressionism, and Jazz as some of the swiftest currents collectively enveloped within the greater philosophical floodwaters of empiricism 1, not as unrelated entities. As musicologist Daniel Albright so eloquently said, To study one artistic medium in isolation from others is to study an inadequacy the twentieth century, perhaps more than any other age, has demanded a style of criticism in which the arts are considered as a whole. This is partly because the artists themselves insisted again and again upon the inextricability of the arts. (Albright 2002: ix) In his book on modernist manifestos, Milton Cohen offers readers a succinct summary of the common characteristics of the modernist that also shed light on why they have identified with, and drawn inspiration from, jazz 2. As Professor Cohen points out, these qualities artistic seriousness, optimism, enthusiasm, and eagerness to confront the conservative bourgeoisie were so widely shared among prewar modernists as to blur any categorical distinction between modernist and avant-garde. (Cohen 2004: 10) Furthermore, musicologist Daniel Albright provides a sort of thesis-thenantithesis-then-synthesis explanation of the development process observed in modernism, which has parallels in the history of jazz. Examples such as cool jazz s reaction to bebop or the incorporation of rock in fusion jazz spring to mind, Albright notes, the modernists tried to find the ultimate bounds of certain artistic possibilities each limit point presupposed an opposite limit point, a counter extreme toward the verges of the aesthetic 1 In essence, the socially heterogeneous world of modern jazz brought together a diverse community of musicians who in some fashion, whether aesthetics, values, or behaviors, worked against the grain of American culture at mid- century. And at the center of this general artistic rebellion was the modern jazz paradigm jazz as high art in which these musicians and future jazz musicians would articulate their own music making as well as the meaning of jazz music. (Lopes 2002: 214) 2 Modern painters have sought to learn from, and emulate, the structures and procedures of music, while modern composers, in turn, have wanted to enrich their resources by responding to the compositional and chromatic structures of paintings. (Leggio 2002: xx)

3 Jonathan S. Matteson 3 experience the extremes of the aesthetic experience tend to converge; in the modernist movement. (Albright 2002: x-xi) One can also see why modernists, often criticized for being bohemian elitists, would appreciate that jazz was difficult for the bourgeoisie to understand, especially during a time of segregation 3, since it is considered by many to be a mulatto amalgamation of European and African music 4. Jazz can be also challenging to categorize since it crosses many musical genres such as folk, pop and classical 5, making it another confounding expression for modernist to artistically wield in confronting their more conservative counterparts. However, maybe the most compelling evidence for the special interest that the modernist movement in the arts took in jazz has to do with its unique way of emphasizing and applying improvisation 6. The audience s active way of empathizing 7 with the 3 Unfortunately, even those white Americans who were strongly attracted to African American culture were mostly unable or unwilling to recognize the subtle and profound ways in which that culture spun off different angles of vision on such cherished American ideals as individualism, freedom, and equality. (Panish 1997: 143) 4 If cultural hybridity is at the core of early modernism, we might start to speculate on the effects this could have on late postmodernism. Maybe black expression will once again yield new (white) art forms. Or perhaps the knowledge of cultural hybridity within modernism will function as a harbinger for an integrated multiculturalism in American society. Or maybe postcolonial studies will continue to explore incidents that transcend binary logic. Maybe we will come to the understanding that hybridity can not be limited to colonized cultures, that is constitutive of white cultures as well. Even the most cursory glance at pop culture attests that this fascination with the cultural other continues America s dialectical dance of avowal and disavowal, even as it heads into the twenty-first century. (Lemke : 413) 5 see (DeVeaux and Giddins 2009: 53-54) 6 Unlike European classical music, for example, jazz emphasizes improvisation- invention during the act of performance over either composition or reproducing a written score. (Panish 1997: 79) 7 All music all art, all entertainment requires empathy, but jazz requires empathy of a particular sort. Jazz musicians are inventing a musical statement (improvising) in that space and in that moment. In order to share in their creativity, you have to follow the twists and turns of their musical ideas while simultaneously registering their interaction with other musicians; only then can you evaluate whether a solo is a success. (DeVeaux and Giddins 2009: 7-8)

4 Jonathan S. Matteson 4 immediacy of each soloist s artistic expression 8, are things that any serious modernist would admire and seek to perpetuate in other forms of art as well. In summary, modernist artists believe in the freedom of each individual to radically experiment and express oneself in a way that challenges conventional ways of thinking and acting. And this knowledge is helpful to better understand why scholars such as American art historian Donna Cassidy report, Jazz had numerous shifting and sometimes contradictory meanings in early twentieth-century American culture 9 : It was variously defined as primitive and modern, having both the allure of the exotic and the raucous energy of urban mechanical sounds. Jazz was also at the center of debates about national identity. In art and cultural journals, commentators frequently identified this music as the American contribution to modern art. In the estimation of many critics, it possessed a distinctly native flavor and, along with the skyscraper, was considered a unique American cultural product 10. (Cassidy 2002: 203) 8 The particular foci of these representations are the interaction between the performer and the audience, and the creative process of the performer himself. The first of these obviously reflects the communal value that has been constitutive of musical performance in the African and African American tradition. Both Euro and African American writers interested in jazz recognize the importance of the performer/audience interaction to the creation of the music The second focal point of these representations also reflects an essential element of African American music: improvisation. In this literature, improvisation or, more generally, the jazz musician s creative process while on the bandstand is invested with a multiplicity of meanings, ranging from the strictly musical to the cultural, political, historical, and social. (Panish 1997: 80-81) 9 Even in visual works of art such as The Founding of Chicago one can observe how many black artists like the father of Black American Art, Aaron Douglas, did not shrink from wrestling with the contradictions of an African American modernism. In doing so he might show an urban skyscraper standing next to a rural shack or at a skewed angle. He combined African motifs and European modernist approaches, such as those of Constructivism and Cubism, with allegorical representations of issues central to African American life, addressing slavery, the search for freedom, and the potential power of education. (Earle 2007: 28) 10 It would appear that the culminating moment for American Modernism-and perhaps also the beginning of its end-came in the 1960s. The celebration of the animal component of human nature, the quest for spontaneity and authenticity, the desire to raze all dualisms and distinctions, the breaking down of social and cultural barriers, the quest for wholeness, and the effort to expand consciousness and discover new modes of experience-all were given heightened realization. A new generation of rebels, ironically spoken of as a "counterculture" when they were in fact riding the crest of a cultural tidal wave, carried the Modernist embrace of natural instinct and primitivism (Singal 1987: 21)

5 Jonathan S. Matteson 5 Bibliography Ashton, Dore The New York school; a cultural reckoning. New York: Viking Press. Cohen, Milton A Movement, manifesto, melee: the modernist group, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Douglas, Aaron, Susan Elizabeth Earle, and Renée Ater Aaron Douglas: African American modernist. New Haven: Yale University Press. Flam, Jack D., Miriam Deutch, and Carl Einstein Primitivism and twentiethcentury art: a documentary history. Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press. Giddins, Gary, and Scott Knowles DeVeaux Jazz. New York: W.W. Norton. Leggio, James Music and modern art. New York: Routledge. Lopes, Paul Douglas The rise of a jazz art world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Panish, Jon The color of jazz: race and representation in postwar American culture. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Singal, Daniel Joseph Towards a Definition of American Modernism. American Quarterly. 39 (1): Accessed on January 2,