A hidden side of jazz

From the 1930s, several music critics made a selection from the then vague field of jazz music. This will lead to the construction of a jazz tradition called “ authentic “, that of Louis Armstrong or the dance music of Duke Ellington, and to the exclusion of symphonic jazz embodied by Paul Whiteman (and more generally music which aimed to refine jazz by adapting it to the symphony orchestra and adopting a repertoire influenced by formal characteristics from art music). Consequence of this redefinition of jazz: the large-scale works composed by Johnson and Ellington during the interwar period fell into lasting oblivion. By placing this corpus at the heart of his reflection, John Howland highlights a musical genre that he calls jazz concert (“ concert jazz “), a hybrid genre inscribed within a musical triangle formed by art music, popular music which made the United States dance at the time, and jazz which would soon be called “ authentic “.

First great synthesis of this musical genre, Ellington Uptown gives it new life, at the same time as it opens up a still almost virgin field to musicology. Although somewhat scattered throughout six long chapters, three perspectives are shed on this corpus: one historical, the other analytical, and a third, predominantly culturalist.

Ellington, J.P. Johnson and musical life in early Harlem XX^e century

For John Howland, the development of concert jazz cannot be explained without an analysis of musical life in Harlem. African-American musicians, whose activity is growing thanks to the need for entertainment generated by the massive arrival of African-American populations in the large cities of the northern United States, aspire to recognition that goes beyond their community alone. From the 1890s, for them, it was a matter of showing that their music could be considered an art, in the same way as art music.

Taking eighty years of historiography on the wrong foot, Ellington Uptown shows that Ellington (1899-1974) and Johnson (1894-1955), two pioneers of orchestral jazz from the middle class African-American, trained respectively in Washington and New York, then by the pianists stride of Harlem in the 1920s, seek legitimization by placing themselves on the terrain of symphonic jazz. Far from slavishly imitating it, however, their concert works mix the wide variety of music played in Harlem, from stride to stage music intended to accompany vaudeville shows, including dance music and revues. Regardless of the critics who deny any legitimacy to symphonic jazz, the approach of the two composers comes in part from a desire to exploit the prestige enjoyed by this genre. Likewise, it was the aura of large concert halls that Johnson sought when he managed, in 1928, to perform Yamekraw at Carnegie Hall.

Same project, different modalities: John Howland shows very well how Ellington and Johnson distinguish themselves from their musical godfathers (notably Will Marion Cook) who seek to assimilate the characteristics of his music to the stylistic codes of art music. Cook himself studied under Joseph Joachim, then with Dvoŕák. His music betrays a desire for assimilation, which John Howland very convincingly relates to the aesthetic “ New Negro » embodied, among others, by WEB Du Bois. Johnson, in Yamekrawand Ellington, in Rhapsody in Black (1935), adopted a completely different approach: popular music remained the foundation of their works, but orchestral and formal processes from art music gave them a new dimension. John Howland perfectly sums up these differences between two generations: “ Ellington and Johnson’s unwavering faith in the artistic potential of popular culture contrasted sharply with the musical ideas of the “New Negro” movement based on assimilation to Euro-American classical forms and style (i.e. say art music as it was taught in conservatories, in Europe and the United States, NdT) characteristic musical idioms (the spirituals in particular) of the African-American community » (p. 103).

Such work of distinction implies taking into account the aesthetic projects of each musician. This is where the second major interest of the book lies: showing that concert jazz is not a monolithic genre.

Concert jazz, a genre in constant evolution

John Howland’s approach consists first of all in revealing the characteristics of the musical traditions and styles from which Ellington and Johnson draw: symphonic jazz, Novelty Ragtimethe style of Tin Pan Alley and the characteristic arrangements of musical numbers intended for vaudeville. This analytical device makes it possible to show that Ellington was indeed influenced by the music of Paul Whiteman from the 1920s, notably in Rhapsody Jr (1926), New World A-Comin (1943) and Black, Brown and Beige (1943). As is often the case in the book, the conclusions of the musical analysis are immediately supported by the use of original sources. Thus, a Manual for Advertising written in 1938 by the William Morris agency advised Ellington’s producers to systematically associate his name with those of Paul Whiteman and George Gershwin.

The divergences between the music of Ellington and Johnson come, for their part, from their respective relationship to classical compositional models. Johnson wants to integrate them more and more into his music. Most of the structural features of its Harlem Symphony (1932) for example have a lot to do with a treatise by Percy Goetschius that he had studied. One of the theses put forward in the introduction to the book is thus confirmed: “ Johnson and Ellington ultimately came up with two different but equally serious versions of concert jazz. While Ellington’s symphonic ambitions always remain linked to his career entirely devoted to big bandJohnson’s more overtly symphonic works bring to light an equally rich, dynamic, faithful, but also personal portrait of Harlem’s cultural heritage “. (p. 7). Even more than in the music itself, the link unifying the corpus of concert jazz is ultimately to be found in cultural history.

Promoting a culture middlebrow

The problems posed by concert jazz come, according to John Howland, from a discomfort felt by critics in the face of hybrid works, lost in the no man’s land cultural separation of art music from popular music. Beyond the significant stylistic differences noted in their concert works, it is the attachment to the ideals of the current middlebrow (as defined, in 1988, Highbrow/Lowbrow: the Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy by Lawrence Levine) which brings together Ellington and Johnson.

This current consists of claiming, on the one hand, the legitimacy of a culture located between scholarly art and popular entertainment and, on the other hand, of quality art, accessible to the greatest number of people. If concert jazz is difficult to understand, it is because it blurs aesthetic hierarchies by borrowing from areas a priori clearly partitioned. The legitimization strategy described by John Howland would benefit from being compared with that of the proponents of bebop who, for their part, claim its scholarly character without borrowing from music hitherto considered as such.

Certainly, the analyzes carried out by John Howland focus almost exclusively on the structure of the works, sometimes leaving aside the central questions of arrangement and harmony. Ellington Uptown nevertheless fills a gap in musicology. Understanding the importance of concert jazz is in fact understanding that the current “ Third Stream ”, or even the experiments of “ Modern Jazz Quartet » are not a spontaneous generation in the history of jazz. It also means understanding that the legitimacy claimed by some jazzmen was born at the same time as jazz itself.