Day 312: Improvisation, Creativity, and Consciousness

In the fall of 2003, I was a participant in a symposium convened by Harvard University’s Law and Business Schools called Improvisation and Negotiation. Perhaps ironically given the theme, jazz musicians comprised a distinct minority at the event, with the majority consisting of psychologists, sociologists, lawyers, corporate leaders, and colleagues from other fields beyond music in which interest in improvisation as key to optimal performance has been on the rise. I was deeply impressed by the level of dialogue about a process that I, and much of the jazz community, tend to take for granted as unique to our domain. As a jazz musician who teaches at a classically oriented institution, moreover, I greatly appreciated being part of an academic gathering in which my work was not viewed as peripheral but central to the discourse. I commonly stress to my graduate students that the marginalized status of jazz and improvised music in musical academe is not a clear barometer of the rising appreciation for this kind of creativity not only in the broader academic world but also in an increasing number of professional circles. Thus, my students are exposed to their share of commentary similar to this chapter’s epigraph from Maslow in hopes of inspiring them to appreciate the importance of what they do in the broader scope of things. Maslow, indeed, is a treasure trove for such inspiration, as when he further exhorts the need for educational systems to “create a new kind of human being who is comfortable with change, who enjoys change, who is able to improvise, who is able to face with confidence, strength, and courage a situation of which he has absolutely no forewarning.” And nothing tops my all-time favorite: “We must develop a race of improvisers, of here-now creators.”

 From an integral perspective, it might also be argued that we need to develop a race of “peak experiencers,” to invoke another important aspect of Maslow’s thought, this pertaining to the experience of transformed episodes of consciousness in which sense of self, clarity, wholeness, mind-body integration, inner calm and well-being, and a variety of other faculties are heightened. Hence, the interior dimensions of the creativity-consciousness relationship, at which point the New Jazz Studies—championing the creativity component—gives rise to what I propose as Integral Jazz Studies. As previously discussed, jazz musicians report vivid episodes of such heightened states, and it is thus no surprise that the tradition boasts a long legacy of leading artists who have significantly delved into contemplative practices and studies in order to enhance this dimension of their work and lives. And thus in addition to the common acknowledgment of Maslow as the founder of the humanist psychology movement, his work might also be regarded as important to the emergence of the integral jazz movement.

 It is from the standpoint of the creativity-consciousness relationship and its interior-exterior, integral dimensions that this chapter explores jazz’s journey into the academic world, the arena in which its integral properties, if harnessed, have the capacity to yield considerable impact on the broader educational mission, and by extension, society. In so exploring, we will make full use of our integral delineative and diagnostic faculties. For, as we are about to see, as rich as jazz might be in its inherent integral properties, academic approaches to the discipline have been strongly shaped by the overarching materialist patterns inherited from the broader musical and extramusical academic knowledge base. These will need to be identified and addressed if the field is to uphold the transformational function of which it is capable.

 Overview of Jazz Education

 In order to understand how materialist or self-confining third-person tendencies have taken hold in jazz study, it is first essential to acknowledge how the marginalized status of the idiom in musical academe, at least in part, contributed to them. Jazz not only brought to the academy a vastly different and expanded process spectrum that departed from the norm, it also introduced Afrological musicocultural features to which the prevailing Eurological culture was not receptive. To ignore the issue of race in any assessment of the situation would be a significant oversight. Between what LeRoi Jones reminds us was the “unbelievably cruel” circumstance of slavery dating back several centuries and reminders to what Karlton Hester candidly identifies as a musical “bigotry” still evident well into the twenty-first century, a topic to be explored in some depth, the dynamics of race in the broader society have clearly played out in musical academe. It is thus not surprising that jazz was overtly scorned and at times entirely forbidden, as Bruno Nettl points out, in university music departments. Oliver Lake recounts that this even included extracurricular jam sessions: “They didn’t consider jazz as music, and if they heard you playing jazz, you would be admonished. We would have to wait until all the instructors were gone, and then we would start jamming.” Dave Brubeck, reflecting on the early days of his college circuit performances, recalls “controversies at the institutions as to whether or not we should be allowed to play.” Underscoring entirely uninformed notions that playing jazz is somehow damaging to musical instruments, Brubeck adds that “[s]ometimes I would be led to an old, beat-up piano for the performance when there’d also be a great grand piano backstage that they wouldn’t let me go near.”

 While nowadays it is difficult to imagine a music department or school that forbids its students from curricular or extracurricular jazz activity, ample indicators of continued institutional marginalization may be cited. Perhaps most notable is the fact that, despite the idiom’s rich foundational skills, jazz remains largely excluded from musical academe’s core curriculum. Short units on jazz, which generally do not involve hands-on contact with the music, may be found in core music theory and history sequences, but full semester coursework in jazz improvisation, theory, composition, or arranging are relegated to elective status for all but jazz majors. Because music curricula tend to be filled to the brim with conventional requirements, leaving little time, space, or energy for electives, the result is that the majority of music majors—for whom interpretive performance and analysis of European classical repertory is the focus—continue to graduate with little or no hands-on engagement with jazz. This is most conspicuous in the case of American music students gaining certification to teach music in American public schools. As David Baker points out, “one or two courses in jazz”—which appears to be the best-case scenario, with many teacher certification programs including no jazz training—is not sufficient “to be able to adequately teach this music.”

 ~~Improvisation, Creativity, and Consciousness:Jazz as Integral Template for Music, Education, and Society -by- Edward W. Sarath

Day 269: From Afro-Cuban Rhythms to Latin Jazz

Mongo Santamaría can be credited with making the Cuban drum known as the conga (or tumbadora) into an integral part of U.S. music,
whether jazz, rock-and-roll, soul, reggae, or other modern genres. No other percussionist achieved greater impact on the diffusion of Afro-Cuban folkloric music or recognition within mainstream jazz as well as through his own unique mixture of Cuban, jazz, and soul music. Following in the footsteps of Chano Pozo, Mongo’s labor, along with that of other percussionists such as Armando Peraza, Patato Valdés, Francisco Aguabella, and Cándido Camero, brought about a transformation in the traditional sound of jazz, rock, and R&B drumming. Today the conga is everywhere, either as lead instrument or as fundamental accompaniment to all kinds of music, from U.S. pop to Mexican norteña, from Latin jazz to Las Vegas show orchestras.

The musical biography of Mongo Santamaría reveals a constant back-and-forth between two styles of performance and recording. On the one hand, he distinguished himself as a performer of Cuban music in very traditional forms: folkloric rumbas, mambos, pachangas, and so forth. On the other hand, he developed his own style of fusion by combining jazz, Cuban-origin rhythms, and the sounds of soul music. Despite this ambidextrous career, Mongo was, in the end, a Cuban sonero, pure and simple. On several occasions he stated his commitment to maintaining the traditional styles of Cuban music and indeed helped preserve and develop Afro-Cuban drumming styles. His criticisms of salsa, which he considered an imitation of Cuban music, did not make him many friends. Yet he clearly admired and promoted the native sounds of all of the countries of the Caribbean basin.

Ramón “Mongo” Santamaría was born in the Jesús María barrio of Havana on April 17, 1917, the son of Ramón and Felicia. His father worked as a carpenter and mason and participated in the neighborhood activities of a national political party. His mother sold coffee, cigarettes, and candy in a street-corner stand.1 Mongo scarcely knew his African-born paternal grandfather, who had arrived in Cuba in a contraband slave-trading ship in the second half of the nineteenth century. But his maternal grandmother often cooked for bembés of the Santería religion, where Mongo began his drumming apprenticeship.


Growing up in Jesús María, a barrio famous for its drummers and the popular street carnival comparsa (band) La Jardinera, he was exposed from an early age to a rich musical environment. The year of Mongo’s birth coincided with the year the first Cuban son was recorded, the beginning of an era that it is still going strong with the Buena Vista Social Club, Cuarteto Patria, and many other groups. He witnessed firsthand the evolution of the son groups, from the original trios and quartets to the expanded sextetos and septetos, which added a trumpet and substituted the acoustic bass for the folkloric marímbula. Mongo was influenced musically by his maternal uncle, José Rodríguez (“Macho”), who led a neighborhood trio and played maracas with the Conjunto Jiguaní. Mongo’s mother wanted her son to learn to play the violin. But after a few lessons, the youngster decided that percussion was his calling. He played maracas and sang with neighborhood groups, La Lira Infantil first and, later, La Lira Juvenil. There were other important sources of inspiration. A cousin on his father’s side, Luis Santamaría, was a distinguished akpwón (singer) in Lucumí religious events. (He eventually became a founding member of Cuba’s national folkloric ensemble.) Mongo decided to take up the bongos after watching the amazing bongosero Clemente Piquero (“Chicho”)— who later played in Beny Moré’s orchestra—perform feats of dexterity on that double-headed Cuban drum.

Mongo was still in his teens when he became a professional musician. He played bongos for a group led by Alfredo Boloña and Marcelino Guerra—the latter the composer of many Cuban and salsa standards such as “Pare cochero” and “Me voy p’al pueblo.” Mongo’s first gig was at a well-known Havana nightspot, the Eden Concert club. In rapid succession, he went on to play with the most notable son groups of the 1930s. He played with the Alfredo León sexteto with pianist Silvio Contreras, composer of the catchy danzón “Masacre,” and bassist Cristóbal Dobal, who later would join the famed Conjunto Casino of the 1950s. Mongo also played with the Carabina de Ases sexteto. He recorded for the first time in the late 1930s with the show orchestra Lecuona Cuban Boys and with the veteran sonero vocalist Antonio Machín.

For many aspiring youngsters like Mongo, the dream of becoming a professional musician was nearly impossible given the realities of Cuban social conditions. The musicians’ ability to produce music was simply one more commodity in a capitalist market, and as such, it was subject to the tendency toward overproduction characteristic of capitalism. Simply put, there were too many musicians for the jobs available. Cuba’s sugarcane monoculture economy, dependent as it was on the United States, translated into structural unemployment in all branches of production. The local economy, built on a weak base, became further dislocated by the severe crisis of the 1930s. Within the vast mass of the unemployed, there was a musical reserve army of musicians desperately seeking opportunities.

~~From Afro-Cuban Rhythms to Latin Jazz -by- Raul A. Fernandez

Day 262:The Jazz Exiles

As the war raged on in Europe, a musical revolution, spearheaded by the standard-bearers of bebop, was taking place on New York's 52nd Street. Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk led a brigade of experimenters who sought to free themselves from the confines of the big swing bands and into the more adventuresome harmonic and rhythmic complexities of what would become known as bebop. In Europe, the boom in traditional jazz continued, but even in America the new developments in jazz were obscured by an additional factor.

A recording ban, which went into effect on August 1, 1942, and lasted until the fall of 1944, prevented anything like a mass audience from hearing the bands of Earl "Fatha" Hines, singer-trumpeter Billy Eckstineboth of whom employed a number of bebop musiciansor the small groups of Gillespie and Parker.
   
By 1945, bebop was firmly entrenched, and its effects were already causing reverberations in the big dance bands that had been the mainstay of the swing era. The bebop innovators injected their own ideas into the big band format and forged an entirely new music. In addition to Gillespie, Parker, and Miles Davis, pianists Bud Powell and George Wallington, bassist Oscar Pettiford, and drummers Max Roach and Kenny Clarke all sought and found new outlets for a new music. Pianist Tadd Dameron would emerge as the most important arranger of this period. Of these key musicians, four would become exiles.   

Although there were a number of holdouts from the more traditional forms of jazz, many of the leading swing players found themselves working alongside the beboppers in the clubs that dotted 52nd Street. Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young were two such musicians, but it was tenor saxophonist Don Byas who was regarded as the best to bridge the gap between swing and bebop. For Byas, 52nd Street proved to be only a brief stopover on the road to Europe, where he would become the first important modern exile. Byas had come to New York with Eddie Mallory's band in 1937. He remained for eighteen months before brief stints with Don Redman, Lucky Millinder, and Andy Kirk. In 1941, Byas joined the Count Basie Band. When he got off the bus in 1943, he began to work with Gillespie, a number of all-star groups, and several small bands under his own name.

Byas's playing was much in the vein of Coleman Hawkins, and the early records with Gillespie clearly show Byas was at home with the demands of the new music. His already melodic lines were further enriched by the influence of Parker and his disciples. With the lifting of the recording ban, Byas recorded for several of the new, small jazz labels that were springing up everywhere. He even had a minor hit with his own version of "Laura" in 1946. The same year, he garnered first place honors in the Esquire jazz poll. But Byas was restless, and when Don Redman formed another band, Byas joined him for an extended European tour. When the tour ended, Byas stayed on in Europe to have a look around. He was still looking around a quarter of a century later. He was not seen or heard in the State again until 1970 when he appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival. His Newport appearance was to be the final scene in a documentary film on his life in jazz, produced by a Dutch production company.
   
As the first of the postwar exiles, Byas became a guiding figure in the careers of the many musicians who would follow in his footsteps. Living first in France, Byas later settled permanently in Holland and was regularly featured at jazz festivals throughout Europe as a soloist with visiting bands such as Duke Ellington, or with Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic tours with Coleman Hawkins and Stan Getz.

While in Europe, Byas took up skin diving and deep-sea fishing and became something of a physical fitness buff. He had left a drinking problem behind, which was one of the principal reasons he had left the States, but eventually encountered the hazards many of the exiles experienced. His stay in Europe was so lengthy that he began to be taken for granted and was considered a "local" by many promoters and club owners. The mushrooming number of exiles that followed Byas's lead made working conditions difficult and bruised his fierce ego. He began to drink heavily again and his physical condition deteriorated. Finally, he became almost inactive, playing only sporadically, but often losing jobs to other Americans who ironically had come to Europe after him.

At one point, Byas considered going home. "I may do that," he said. "One more trip, one grand tour. I'll make some money, come back, and then I'll lie down and die." He returned to the States for the 1970 Newport appearance and toured Japan with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in 1971. He returned to Holland the following year and at age fifty-nine died of cancer.

~~The Jazz Exiles : American Musicians Abroad -by- Bill Moody

Day 253: Post-Jazz Poetics

Ron Mann’s 1982 film Poetry in Motion features 24 poets performing and discussing their work, sometimes accompanied by musicians whose compositions respond to the spoken word. One such musical- poetic performance takes center stage in the five- minute segment on Jayne Cortez’s work. Here Cortez describes the improvisatory ethic that guides both her writing and her work with the Firespitters, the band with whom she performs her pieces:

    I’m playing with the visual and the verbal connections. On paper. And then when I’m reading, then it’s, you know, the verbal and the, the music coming together. It’s sound, it’s about sound. The sound of the poetry against the sound of the music. The way I work is, improvised or invented off of the word, it’s like the call and response pattern, which is an old African pattern. I am making statements, or I’m asking questions, and the music is responding to me, and I’m responding back to them, and we’re listening to each other. Making not only comments on what you’re doing, but extending that, taking it out and exploring the possibilities of the    poetry and the music together. (Poetry in Motion)

Cortez provides this analysis in voiceover as the picture cuts back and forth between a scene in which she sits on a couch with Mann and one in which she and the band react to one another midperformance.

This collage precedes the group’s rendition of Cortez’s poem “I See Chano Pozo.” Here she wears a red- and- blue- striped dashiki with dark pants and a large silver necklace in the shape of a stylized African face. Her decisions to wear traditional African clothing and to perform this particular poem with the band demonstrate that naming takes a central place in her poetics. Like Sonia Sanchez, she depicts her performance’s cultural roots as African in order to invoke a specific set of historical associations. The poem affirms Pozo, a Cuban conga player who is credited alongside trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie with introducing Afro-Cuban elements to jazz. The poem’s repeated lines assert that Pozo’s music motivates “Atamo,” “Mpebi,” “Donno,” “Obonu,” “Atumpan,” “Mpintintoa,” “Ilya Ilu,” “Ntenga,” “Siky Akkua,” “Batá,” and “Fontomfrom” : “various Africa drums” (Cortez, Coagulations 111) whose timbres resonate with music’s power to articulate human emotion. By repeating her affirmations of Chano Pozo and varying through vocal tone and inflection the printed versions of the poem, Cortez oversignifies the poetic form, defying the rhetorical boundaries of both print and previous performance. Her naming of Pozo’s accomplishments functions as a political act that positions his work in opposition to Western methods of public communication. Her commitment to social protest through linguistic alteration roots her textual improvisations in a cultural ethic that resembles Sanchez’s later strategies.

Jayne Cortez’s work explodes, through hyperbolic poetic images and innovative performance strategies, the social and rhetorical structures that enable oppressive social conditions. Her poetry’s themes, many of which are articulated via scatological imagery, align her work with contemporary artistic movements such as Black Arts and the early-century surrealists. Franklin Rosemont describes surrealism as an “unparalleled freedom” of image and a commitment to revolution “in every aspect of life” (“Introduction” 65, 67), both elements that Cortez continues to explore. She has published work in the surrealist journal Arsenal and in Franklin Rosemont’s 1980 collection Surrealism and Its Popular Accomplices (Woodson 73), though specifically African- American sources help to shape her brand of surrealism. Tony Bolden argues, for instance, that surrealism’s “radical politics . . . are compatible with the ideas of Black Arts theorists” ( Afro- Blue 121). Aldon Nielsen calls Cortez’s artistic approach “a black American surrealism” drawn from “the compacted imagery of the blues” (Black Chant 225). D. H. Melhem uses Cortez’s own term “supersurrealism” to denote the associations she creates in her poetry between graphic surrealist imagery and political offenses (“Supersurrealist” 206). She employs surrealism in order to critique modern social conditions, while her poetry’s performative elements signify a rebellion against conventional methods of public expression.

Cortez crafts poetry based in conceptually difficult surrealist imagery, yet she also advocates the communal, egalitarian atmosphere of spokenword performance. This juxtaposition, which might at first seem contradictory, illustrates her work’s political resolve. Her audience cannot participate in her poem’s affirmation of Chano Pozo as an innovative cultural icon without understanding the rationale behind the images—like “a very fine tube of frictional groans” (line 4)—that she uses to characterize him. The poetry occupies a narrow space on the edge of competing differences, often refusing reconciliation and synthesis even as it moves with a sense of deliberate uneasiness among oral and written traditions. The best theoretical framework for understanding these differences derives from the cultural traditions of the African- American music to which Cortez owes much of her source material. Some of her vocal performance strategies, for instance, originate in gospel music. The esoteric imagery of her surrealism also shares thematic material with the blues and artistic impulses with heavily theorized jazz traditions like the bebop and free jazz movements; several of her musician friends worked in these movements. The historically black musics of blues and jazz thus provide her with a flexible yet culturally specific language in which to voice her critiques of contemporary political situations.

~~Post-Jazz Poetics: A Social History -by- Jennifer D. Ryan